Vandrad the Viking Part 21

"'My friend, I am loth to lose your company, but here is the parting of our ways. Mine I need not trouble you with, but yours for a s.p.a.ce will lead you little further in any direction.' And with that I bound him firmly to a tree, and left him to think upon his misdeeds. Since then, Estein, I have wandered through these forests like a man in a fog, cursing roundly the land and all its inhabitants."

"Yet it would seem that it is they who have most reason to complain of your dealings with them," said Estein, smiling.

"I would I were well quit of the land," replied his friend. "My heart felt glad when I saw in the glade a man habited after the fashion of the natives. 'There will be one less Jemtlander to- night,' I said, as I laid an arrow on my bow. 'By all the G.o.ds, Estein, I shall laugh whenever I think of it!

"But tell me your adventures."

Estein told him shortly what had befallen him, excepting only his seeing the girl in the village. He had made up his mind that the resemblance must have been the work of fancy, yet as soon as they had reached the house of Atli, he took the old man aside, and asked him,--

"Shall I then sail when the snows have melted?"

"a.s.suredly," replied the seer; "wouldst thou delay what the G.o.ds and the dead enjoin?"

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MIDNIGHT GUEST.

Jomar had returned early in the day, and they found him already wrapped up in his bear-skin fast asleep before the fire.

"Gave he my warning to Ketill?" Estein asked Atli.

"a.s.suredly," replied the old man; "I have never known him fail me, little though he may have liked the errand."

"And what said Ketill? Had they been attacked? What news brought Jomar back?"

"Let us wake the knave, and ask him," said Helgi; and suiting the action to the word, he drove one foot sufficiently hard into the sleeper's side to rouse him with a start.

"What said friend Ketill?" Helgi went on, careless of the man's ugly look; "sent he back any message?"

Jomar answered with a dark scowl, regarding him steadily for a minute as if to make sure who he was, and then he snapped back shortly,--

"He said he had lost a dog that answered to the name of Helgi, and would be well pleased if the beast had died of the mange in the wood," and without another word he rolled over and closed his eyes again.

"'Dog!'" cried Helgi. "Hound, I will beat one dog as it deserves!"

In another instant the Jemtlander would have suffered for his temerity, had not Atli seized the angry Norseman's arm, exclaiming,--

"Peace, Helgi Sigvaldson! Wouldst thou strike my servant in mine own house? The man loves not Nors.e.m.e.n, yet has he saved thy foster-brother's life, and likely, too, those of Ketill and all his company."

"Tell us, Atli," interposed Estein, "what he said on his return."

"Little he told even me," replied Atli, "save that he had seen Ketill for the briefest possible s.p.a.ce, and then returned straightway home."

"Did he hear aught of the twenty good men who followed us to King Bue's hall?"

It was Jomar himself who replied, though without turning over or looking at the speaker.

"Would you have me save them, too, from their fate? I heard naught of them, and wish only to hear of their deaths. Too many enemies have I helped already."

Helgi was about to reply hotly, but Atli checked him with a gesture, whispering,--

"Will not his deeds atone for his words?"

Low as he spoke, Jomar caught the words, and muttered loud enough to be heard,--

"Would that my words might become my deeds."

Nothing about the mysterious old man had impressed Estein more than his extraordinary influence over this strange disciple or servant, for he seemed to be partly both; and that one who so loathed and hated the Nors.e.m.e.n could be made to serve his enemies at a word, seemed to point to a power beyond the ken of ordinary man. Helgi, too, was evidently struck, for he looked askance from one to the other, and then fell silent.

By sunrise next morning, the foster-brothers arranged to start for Ketill under Jomar's guidance, and little time was lost in getting to bed. They went up to the loft by the ladder, heard Atli open a door and evidently enter some inner room, then being very drowsy after the cold air, shortly fell asleep.

Yet the night was not to pa.s.s without incident. Helgi knew not how long he had been asleep, when he woke with a shiver, to find that his blankets had slipped off him. He gathered them over him again, and then lay for a few minutes listening to the rising wind. As it beat up in mournful gusts and soughed through the pines, he said to himself, "The frost has left at last, and thankful am I for that." He was just dropping off to sleep again, when his attention was startled into wakefulness by a knock at the outer door. It was repeated twice, and then he heard Jomar rise with much growling, and go softly across the floor. There followed a parley apparently through a closed door, which ended in a bolt shooting back, and the door opening with a whistle of wind. So far he had been in that half-waking state when things produce a confused and almost monstrous impression, but suddenly his wits were startled into quickness. Among several voices that seemed to talk with Jomar, his ear all at once caught a woman's. Even the approach of an enemy could not have made him more alert. He listened keenly and, with a sensible feeling of disappointment, heard the door close, the noise cease, and Jomar's steps quietly cross the floor again.

This time, however, they went right to the other end of the room, and an inner door opened. He thought he caught Atli's tones answering his sullen servant, and presently he heard two men come out and go to the outer door. Again, with a blast of cold draught, it opened, and the talk began a second time. His curiosity was keenly excited; he could pick out a woman's voice most unmistakably, and at last he heard the conference come to an end.

The door closed, the party seemed to go away, and then whispering began in the room below him.

"The woman has come in!" he said to himself, with a start of excitement. "Helgi, this matter needs your attention."

His bed, the outermost of the two, consisted merely of a coa.r.s.e mattress laid so far back in the loft that the edge of the flooring hid all view of the room below. Very softly he proceeded to throw off the blankets and crawl quietly towards the edge, till he had gone far enough to get a clear sight of the fire. There he lay, and smiled to himself at the prospect below.

The fire had been raked up to burn brightly, and Jomar, as before, lay fast asleep beside it; but between Helgi and the blaze stood the old seer and the hooded and cloaked form of a woman. Her face was hidden, but her back, the watcher thought, promised well. She was tall, and seemed young, and her movements, as she held out her hands to the flames, or half turned to address the old man, had grace and the marks of good birth. They talked so low that Helgi could catch nothing they said, and even the quality of the girl's voice only reached him in s.n.a.t.c.hes.

"A pleasant voice, methinks," he said to himself. "Atli, this booty must be shared."

She seemed to be telling a narrative to Atli, who, with folded arms and deep attention that sometimes pa.s.sed into suppressed emotion, looked intently at her, and frequently broke in with some whispered question.

The Viking had not been watching very long when the girl's voice rose a little as she said something earnestly, and Atli, with a slight movement and a warning frown, glanced up at the loft and pointed with one finger straight at where Helgi lay. Instantly he dropped his head, and as quickly as he dared crawled back to bed again. There was silence for a moment, but apparently they suspected nothing, for the whispered talk went on again.

"By valour or guile I shall see that maiden's face," he said to himself, as he lay revolving possible schemes in his mind.

At last the whispering stopped, and Atli's step crossed the room and pa.s.sed into the inner apartment. The door closed behind him, and then saying to himself, "Now or never, my friend," Helgi quietly slipped into his sheep-skin coat, and stepping softly so as not to disturb Estein or the seer, came boldly down the ladder.

The girl's look, as he turned at the foot and faced her, stuck in his mind for long after. Consternation and her sense of the ludicrous were having such an obvious struggle in every feature, that after looking straight into her face for a moment, he fairly burst into a silent convulsion of laughter that shook him till he had to steady himself by a rung of the ladder. So infectious was it, that after the briefest conflict, consternation fled the field, a little smile appeared, and then a merrier, and in a moment she was laughing with him. And certainly for a man commonly most careful of his appearance, he cut a comical enough figure, with his shoeless feet and tangled hair, and the great ill-fitting sheep-skin coat huddled round him to hide the poverty beneath.

"I fear my habit pleases not your eye," he said at last, striving to control his countenance.

"It is--" she began, and then her gravity for an instant forsook her again. "It is highly befitting," she said, more soberly and a little shyly.

"In truth, a garb to win a maiden's heart; but I recked not of my clothing, I was in such haste to see the maid," said Helgi boldly.

She looked at him with some surprise, and just a sufficient touch of dignity to check the dash of his advances. He saw the change, and quickly added,--

"To be quite honest with you, I knew not indeed that you were here, and feeling cold I came down to warm me. I should ask your pardon."

"Not so," she said; "how could you know that I was here? I have only just arrived."