For The White Christ Part 63

"The drunkard has again given over his bowl. You will find a sober host. Come in time for the noon meal. Yet stay! There may be horse-flesh in the trenchers. Is the Dane hawk so zealous a Christian that the meat of sacrifice--"

"How of the Christian host and this my hearth-friend?" laughed Olvir.

"I pledge myself to eat of the same dish, if the fare is savory."

"It is well. There will be room for all at Hardrat's board. Now I go before you," replied the woman, and, wrapping her grey cloak about her, she glided out into the night.

Olvir watched her go, and then he turned gravely to his companion.

"I would speak out my inmost thought," he said. "Could youth come again to my host, would he choose for the second time to wed with a worker of spells?"

"It is five and twenty years since, in the land beyond the Sorb country, the Wend chief's daughter cut free the withes which bound me, and fled away at my side. I have never since had cause to grieve that we plighted troth on the Saale bank. I do not lay it upon her that she has now brought us an ill boding."

"Nor I. She is but the tidings-bearer."

"Bitter tidings!" growled Rudulf, and he began to whet his sword.

CHAPTER XX

Strife and din in the hall, Cups smitten asunder; Men lay low in blood-- LAY OF HAMDIR.

But with the morning the Grey Wolf's thoughts had lightened. Side by side, he and Olvir rode through the ancient forest, as, years before, they had ridden through the beech-wood to Fulda. The black stallion was dead, pierced by a Saxon spear. In his stead, the Thuringian rode a long-limbed horse of coursing blood, the gift of the king. Even Zora had to lengthen her stride when the big roan raced across the meadows.

As it chanced, however, the roan cast a shoe and went lame, so that the journey, which began so briskly, ended in a walk. When the two counts rode into the yard of Hardrat's burg, the horses of their fellow-guests were already standing in their stalls, and their riders were within the feast-hall, sitting before half-emptied trenchers. But the host himself came out to do the last guests honor, and they returned his greetings with heartiness when they saw that his face, though harsh and morose, had lost the purple flush and bloated look of the drunkard.

"Again I welcome our Grey Wolf and that Dane hawk whose fame is in the mouth of every hero," the host repeated. "Let them enter and sit at meat with those who bear them good-will. My head groom shall see to their horses. He is a skilled smith, and the forge is red. The Count of the mark will find his roan shod again for the homeward riding."

"A good deed,--for which I give thanks," answered Rudulf.

"Stay a moment," said Olvir, as Hardrat turned to lead the way into the hall. "Bid your groom leave my mare free in the yard. She is not used to being stall-tied."

"As you wish, hero. I do not wonder that you give thought to a steed that has borne you through two pitched battles and countless frays. Men say you care for the beast as one of kin to you."

"They say true. More than once she has borne me out of the closing hand of Loki's daughter. It may be that she will again carry me through battle, though at heart I now long for peace. Her strength has at last come again, and though the years lie heavily upon her, she can yet outrace any courser other than one of her own blood."

"That I can well believe, hero," replied Hardrat, and he led in his guests.

Within the skin-hung feast-hall the late-comers found that the seats of honor, on the right and left hand of the host, had been kept waiting for them. Next below Rudulf's place on the bench sat a huge Wend warrior, beside whom was the Wend witch in her grey cloak.

Upon the entrance of the counts, many of the guests had risen, with br.i.m.m.i.n.g horn or bowl, to drink health to them, and Rudulf, as he pa.s.sed up the table, greeted many by name. But the black-bearded Wend giant was bent over his trencher, and the old count took his seat on the bench beside him, with a puzzled shake of his grisly, bristling head.

"By the fiend Odin!" he muttered; "have I come here to sit with Karl's foes?"

"Be at ease, my lord!" entreated his wife. "Would I have asked you to this feast had not all been well?"

"All sit here as friends, hero," added Hardrat, earnestly. "We meet like kinsmen, to talk upon weighty matters. Only give us fair hearing, and I pledge myself you will not rue your coming."

"Let be, then. I will listen," replied Rudulf.

"Well said!" called out one of the guests, and many echoed the words.

Hardrat rose, smiling, and addressed Olvir. "The guests sit in their grey iron coats, and you in your linked mail, hero, as is fitting for warriors gathered in council. Yet all heads other than your own are bare of helmet. Uncover your sunbright locks, and sit at ease."

"The war-cap rests lightly upon the head of a viking," replied Olvir.

"Count Olvir doubts the faith of his host," sneered Hardrat. "Let him sit with naked sword across his trencher. We ask only that, with the Grey Wolf, he hear out whatever his fellow-guests would say."

"I will listen till all is said," replied Olvir, coldly. "But, instead of the sword, I would have meat upon my trencher."

"Bring mead and the mead-horns for my high guests," called Hardrat.

"I pledge the host in the black mead," said Rudulf, as a Sorb thrall handed him the drink.

"I pledge the Grey Wolf on my sword," answered Hardrat. "No longer does the wa.s.sail-bowl touch my lips. I take thought of higher matters."

"Well said, hero!" exclaimed the Wend woman. "And now, men of the forest land, give heed while our host tells what happened on the Moselle, before the pa.s.sing away of the good Queen Hildegarde."

Hardrat rose heavily, his face flushed and forbidding.

"It is hard for a man to speak of his shame," he began in a harsh voice.

"The shame of my drunkenness is the greater because it has blurred that which I would now recall. I owe it to the crafty wit of the alruna that I have at last fished up the memory from the bottom of the wine-jar, where I sought to drown it. Count Olvir will remember the wolf-chase on the frozen Moselle, since it was then he won Karl's pledge for his daughter's hand."

"I remember," replied Olvir; and his eyes glowed as he saw again the burning witch-hut in the midst of the storm-swirl, and his princess, standing with him before the good abbot to plight their troth.

But the harsh voice of Liutrad's red pig broke in on the pleasant musing,--"Give heed, then, Dane hawk, and you, Grey Wolf of the mark.

To all that I now say, I take oath on my sword--by the holy cross--by all the fiend-G.o.ds of the Saxons and our own heathen fathers! At Thionville, when the Yule games were closing, Fastrada, daughter of Rudulf, lured me to race down the frozen Moselle on the track of certain skaters. Count Olvir will tell Count Rudulf that those skaters were himself, the queen, the king's daughter, and others."

"So far the tale is true," a.s.sented Olvir.

"No less what follows," retorted Hardrat; "only, I wish it were clearer to the eye of my memory. I see the gnarled oak stems race past on either side as we sweep down the blue road of the frost-giant. Borne up by the spell of her witch-ring, the maiden at my side skims along with magic swiftness. Hardly can I, a skilled ice-runner, keep the pace.

But when we glide in the depths of the winter forest, the maiden makes pretence of a sprain. I see a fire burning on the river-bank. The maiden sits before it, muttering spells to drive away the nixie that has seized her ankle,--such is her claim; but she has lied. She utters the fearful spell of the werwolf, and from the pouch casts pieces of an evil charm upon the snow and in the flames. Foul with the stench of the burning drug, the smoke rolls low beneath the naked boughs. Grisly shapes peer out from among the alder stems; the wood resounds with the yelling of the werwolves--"

Panting heavily, the speaker paused to wipe away the great drops which had gathered on his forehead. In his glaring eyes and the sweat of fear, the guests saw full proof that their host did not lie. Many shuddered in the bright sunlight, and there was a hush in the hall as Hardrat resumed his seat. All turned silently to old Rudulf, who, with his grisly head bent forward between his shoulders, sat glaring at the guests from his narrow slant eyes, more like one of the evil beings of whom Hardrat had spoken than a natural man. But the Grey Wolf restrained the fury which raged in his savage breast, and the silence was broken only by the heavy breathing of the guests. Then the Wend woman rose up.

"I read the faces of the heroes," she said. "None here doubts the truth of our host's tale."

"Hold, dame; do not speak for all," broke in Olvir. "I believe that Count Hardrat has told what to him is the truth; yet I doubt his tale.

He has himself spoken of the wine-jar--the mead-cask were enough! Men in drink often see beasts unknown to sober eyes. What is more, I see no cause for your daughter to dabble in black magic."

"My daughter, ay; she was then my daughter,--an apt daughter of the Wend witch! Shall I tell how the witch's daughter whispered in the ears of her mother the tale of her wild vengeance?--of the drawing of the wolf-pack; of the luring of Pepin's son, and how, when Karl would have given her love without the queen's crown, she sent him on down the ice-street, to find his bairns and his bed-mate in the jaws of the grey ones? She told all to her mother while the storm-fiends howled about the forest hut. And then Karl and his Dane hawk came faring safe with the others to the witch's hearth, and that false trull fawned upon those whom she had sought to destroy. The fiend-G.o.ds bear me witness; she fawned upon her foe, and forswore the mother who bare her!"

Old Rudulf's fist fell upon the table in a blow that split the oaken board.

"G.o.d in Heaven!" he yelled; "would that my child had come into the world still-born! Hate and vengeance,--such befitted the Grey Wolf's daughter; but lying--lying and fawning!"