The Ward of King Canute Part 5

"I shall not starve; Avalcomb is mine."

"What food will that put in your mouth, since Leofwinesson has conquered it and driven out your servants and set his own in their place?"

Her heart sickened within her. Once more the impulse came to creep away, like a wounded animal, and fight it out alone. She turned again to the door.

"I will starve, then. Let me go."

Leaning at his ease in the great chair, the young King regarded his ward thoughtfully. "It is not possible that the son of Frode the Fearless should be a coward," he said at last; "but you are over-peevish, boy.

That you have never known government is easily seen. Listen now to the truth of the matter. If you were a maiden, it would be easy for me to--Are you listening?" He paused, for the slim figure had suddenly become so statue-like that he suspected it of plotting another attack upon the door.

The boy answered very low, "Yes, Lord King, I am listening."

Canute went on again: "I say that if you were a maiden,--if you were your sister, to tell it shortly,--I could easily dispose of you in marriage. Thus would you get protection, and your father's castle would gain a strong arm to fight for it. I would wed you to my foster-brother, Rothgar Lodbroksson, and thus bring good to both of--Are you finding fault with that also?"

But the lad stood before him like a stone. If a faint cry had come from him, it was not repeated; and there was nothing offensive about a hidden face and shaking limbs.

The King continued more gently: "But since you were so simple as to be born a boy, such good luck is not to be expected. It is the best that I can do to offer you to become my ward and follow me as my page, until the sword's game has decided between me and Edmund of England. But I do not know where your ambition is if that does not content you. There are lads in Denmark who would give their tongues for the chance. What say you, Fridtjof the Bold?"

For a time it looked as if "Fridtjof the Bold" did not know what to say.

He stood without raising his hanging head or moving a muscle. Silence filled the tent, while from outside leaked in the noise of the revel.

Then, through that noise or above it, there became audible the notes of far-away horns. Edric Jarl was fulfilling his pledge. Cheers answered the blast. An exclamation broke from the King's lips, and he leaped up.

At that moment, "Fridtjof the Bold" fell at his feet with clasped hands and supplicating eyes.

"Let me go, Lord King," he besought pa.s.sionately. "Let me go, and I will ask nothing further of you. I will never trouble you again. Let me go!--only let me go!"

Canute of Denmark is not to be blamed that he stamped with exhausted patience.

"Go into the hands of the Trolls!" he swore. And again, "In the Fiend's name!" And at last, "By the head of Odin, it would serve you well did I take you at your word! It would serve you right did I turn you out to starve. Were it not for your father's sake, and for the sake of my own honor, I vow I would! Now hearken to this." Bending, he picked the boy up by his collar and shook him. "Listen now to this, and understand that you cannot move me by the breadth of a hair. I shall not let you go, and you shall be my ward, whether you will or no. And if you run away, soldiers shall go after you and bring you back, as often as you run. And if you answer me now or anger me further--but I will not say that, for it is your misfortune that makes you unruly, and you are weak-spirited from hunger. Take this bread now for your meal, and that bench yonder for your bed, and trouble me no more to-night. I would not be hard upon you, yet it would be advisable for you to remember that I have sufficient temper for one tent. Go as I bid you. I must meet with the Jarl. Go! Do you heed my orders?"

Only one answer was possible. After a moment the page gave it in a low voice.

"Yes, Lord King," he whispered, and crept away to his corner.

Chapter VI. The Training of Fridtjof The Page

A foolish man Is all night awake, Pondering over everything; He then grows tired, And when morning comes All is lament, as before.

Ha'vama'l.

Who that has youth and a healthy body is not made a new being by a night of dreamless slumber? What young heart is so despairing that to waken into a fair day does not bring courage? Wakened by the sun's caress, to the morning song of blowing trees, Randalin faced her future as became the kinswoman of warriors.

"I do not know why it was that fear crept into my breast last night,"

she told herself severely, when the first wave of strangeness and grief had broken over her, and she had come up again into the sparkling air.

"Great dangers have threatened me, but I have escaped them all with great luck; it is poor-spirited of me to despair. And it must be that witches had thinned my blood with water that I should have thought of running away. To do that would be to lose my revenge forever. I should become a creature without honor, like the girl with the necklace. To stay is no less than my duty. If I think all the time of Fridtjof, it is certain that I can hide it that I am a girl." Turning in her furry bed, she rose cautiously upon her elbow and looked about.

The tent was empty, though scattered furs along the benches showed where sleepers might have rested. But from outside, a clatter of hurrying feet and excited voices broke suddenly upon her. Did it mean a battle? She sat up, straining eye and ear. The jubilant voices shouted greetings that just missed being intelligible. The sun, glancing from moving weapons, flashed through the doorway in fantastic shapes.

While she was trying to unravel it all, one pair of the hurrying feet halted before the entrance. After a muttered word with the sentinel, they came on and brought the son of Lodbrok into view. The girl started up with a gasp of alarm, then made the strange discovery that she was no longer afraid of him. Though he showed against the linen wall as brawny and big of jowl as he had loomed up the night before, she found herself moved only to dislike. What had been the matter last night?

Understanding nothing of the clairvoyant power of sharpened nerves, she set it down to cowardice, and put on an extra swagger now as her eyes met his.

Rothgar surveyed the sprig of defiance with no more than a perfunctory interest. "It seems that you are the son of Frode the Dane," he said in his heavy voice. "Frode was a mighty raven-feeder; for his sake I am going to support you until you can go well on your legs. Have you had anything to eat?"

As she shook her head, Randalin's heart rather softened toward him. But it hardened again when the thralls had brought the food, and he had sat down and begun to share it. Seen in a strong light, his rich tunic proved to be foul with beer stains, while his great hands reeked with grease. His thick lips, his heavy breathing--bah, he was revolting!

Before she had finished the meal, she had come to the conclusion that she hated him.

Perhaps it was as well that there was something to add firmness to her bearing. As he swallowed his last mouthful of food, Rothgar said abruptly, "Canute has put your training into my hands. It is his will that I find out how much skill you have with weapons."

It was nothing more than she should have expected, yet it came upon her with the suddenness of a blow. She could only stammer, "Weapons?"

The Jotun's voice rumbled hideously as he talked into his goblet. "Have you the accomplishment to wield a battle-axe or throw a spear? Can you shoot straight?"

"No," she faltered.

He rolled his eyes around at her as he threw back his head to catch the last drop that clung to the golden rim. "Can you handle a sword?"

Randalin hesitated, uncertain how far her idle play at fencing with her brother would bear her out; she provided as many loop-holes as she could devise. "I think you will find my skill slight. I have--I have grown so fast that I lack strength in my arms. And I have not exercised myself as much as I should have done."

"It is in my mind that you have been a lazy cub," the warrior p.r.o.nounced deliberate sentence, as he set down his goblet. "It is easily seen that Frode has been over-gentle with you. But you will pay now for your laziness, by receiving a cut each time I pa.s.s your guard. Stand forth, and show what your skill is worth. This sword will not be too heavy."

Selecting the smallest of the jewelled blades upon the floor, he thrust it into her hands.

It is good to have in one's veins the liquid fire of the North, blood to which the presence of peril is like the touch of the Ice King to water.

At the first clash of the blades, strange tingling fires began to flash through Randalin,--and then a hardness, that burnt while it froze. The first pa.s.s, her hands had parried seemingly by their own instinct; now she flung back her tumbling curls and proceeded to give those hands the aid of her eyes. They were marvellously quick eyes; for Fridtjof's thrusts, consulting no rule but his own will, had required lightning to follow them and something like mind-reading to antic.i.p.ate them. Three times her blade met Rothgar's squarely, and deftly turned it aside. The big warrior gave a grunt of approval and tried a more complicated pa.s.s.

Her backward leap, the sudden doubling of her body, and the excited clawing of her free hand, were not graceful swordsmanship, certainly, but her steel was in the right place. The next instant, she even drew a little clink from one of the Jotun's silver b.u.t.tons.

As she was recovering herself, she felt something like a pin p.r.i.c.k her wrist; and she wondered vaguely what brooch had become unfastened. But she gave it scant attention for the big blade was threatening her from a new direction. She leaped to meet it, and for the next minute was kept turning, twisting, dodging, till her breath began to come in gasps, and her exhausted hand to relax its hold. Her weapon was almost falling from it by the time the son of Lodbrok lowered his point. Imitating him, she stood leaning on her sword, making futile gasps after her lost breath.

A grin slowly wrinkled his face as he watched her. "It appears that one who is no bigger around than a willow twig may be capable of a berserk rage," he said. "Do you not feel it that you are wounded?"

Following his eyes down to her hand, she found blood trickling from her sleeve. Oh, and pain! Now that she had wakened to it--pain! p.r.i.c.king, stinging, stabbing. Dropping her sword, she caught at her wrist.

"How did it happen? I thought a pin had p.r.i.c.ked me!"

Roaring with laughter, he caught her under the arms and tossed her in the air.

"A pin!" he shouted. "A pin! That is Frode himself! A beard on your chin, and you also will be a feeder of wolves! For that you shall have a share in the battle. I swear it by the hilt of the Hanger!"

For the moment, the girl forgot her wound and hung limp in the great hands. "The battle?" she gasped. "I--I fight?"

Roaring afresh, the Jotun gave her another jubilant toss. "You bl.u.s.tering field-mouse! Showing your teeth already? Who knows? If you meet a blind Englishman without a weapon, you may even kill him. Here,"

he tumbled her roughly to the ground, "tie up your pin-scratch and then come after me. I must go up yonder to Canute, under the oak tree. If you are too tired to wield the sword, tie your hand to the hilt, and no man shall have a better will to do harm to the English. Frode the Dane will experience great pride when he looks out of Valhalla to-day." Putting out one great hand, he patted her soft curls as though she were some s.h.a.ggy dog, then hurried out to his chief.

It was a respite to be alone, and she accepted it gratefully, sinking among the cushions with closed eyes and a hand on her throbbing wrist.

But it was only a respite; she never for a moment lost sight of that.

The battle must be faced, and faced boldly. One word of reluctance would be the surest betrayal of her secret. And betrayal meant Rothgar! She shivered as she fancied she still felt his greasy touch upon her hair.

To become his property that he might even kiss! With a gasp of relief, she turned her thoughts back to the battle.