“That will we gladly,” answered they.
“Let us share out the sides for the game,” said Styrbiorn. “I and my Jomsburgers shall be of one side to play against you stay-at-homes of the other. That will be the greatest sport.”
“We shall like that well,” answered Helgi.
“The greatest sport?” said Biorn: “but belike the greatest make-bate. That will be better, Styrbiorn, if thou be of one side, and Helgi of the other side along with me. And the rest you may share out evenly, some of our folk and some of your own countrymen here of either side.”
Styrbiorn said he cared not which way it should be, so the game were good.
“That will be better,” said Helgi then, “even as Biorn hath counselled. For you of Jomsburg are of such might and prowess in all feats, ye were sure to get the better of us if we were pitted against you: and that the more, Styrbiorn, seeing thou art become so great a man: in every other place I mean, save in Sweden alone, and that thine own native land and rightful realm.”
And now they went to share out the sides as Biorn would have it. In the meantime not once nor twice only but many times would those companions, Helgi and his, be keeking and girding at Styrbiorn to the like tune; and every time he laughed them off in seeming carelessness and merriment, as if he imagined not into what port their rotten barque would arrive.
When they began their game there was not a man might stand up against Styrbiorn, nor bear away the ball if he were in the way. He played most against Helgi, and Helgi gat ever the worst of the market when they two came together. Until on a time when Helgi would have held him to keep him from the ball, Styrbiorn caught him and cast him down so rudely on the hard ice that for a minute’s space or more he abode there senseless, and the blood gushed out of his nose, and his knees and knuckles were scraped raw with the rough ice. Helgi thought he saw Styrbiorn’s drift now. He liked this handling little enough; but he could not for shame cry out upon it, since it was in the game. And now Biorn of the other side flung the ball so hard at Thorir, taking him fair in the belly, that it knocked all the breath out of his body.
Earl Wolf was there with Thorgnyr the Lawman looking on at the game. He said to Thorgnyr, “It is easily seen which be here the stronger players, though the sides be fairly matched.”
“There is envy enough and discontents,” said Thorgnyr, “without these plays to blow them bigger.”
“Thou and I are not every day set forth on the same road,” said the Earl; “nor, an we were, is it always easy for us to walk together without jostling. But I think we are at one in this, that we would gladly bid farewell to my foster-son until winter’s end, according to the King’s word and his own.”
“Many,” said Thorgnyr, “would blithely bid Styrbiorn farewell, but not all would wish him safe return.”
“I know not that,” said the Earl. Then he said, “Let us two be open with one another. Canst thou guess what is in the King’s mind?”
Thorgnyr gave him a look from under his deep-shadowing eyebrows. “I can guess as well as thou canst.”
“What say Helgi and his?” asked the Earl. “Methinks thou art in their secrets.”
“They are no friends of mine,” said Thorgnyr.
“No,” said the Earl. “But that sayeth not that they would not gladly use thy wisdom.”
“I am not to be used by other men,” answered he, “except only by the King. Or is that news to thee?”
“That I knew too,” said the Earl then. “And therefore have I wondered somewhat that Helgi and Thorgisl and Thorir should be so oft in thy company. But then I bethought me that, all and if no man is able to use thee for his tool, yet thyself wilt not stick, belike, to use the first tool thou shalt light on, so only thou mayst thereby avail to shape the matter as thou wouldst have it.”
The Earl, so speaking, watched him narrowly. But as much might he learn from a carven pillar as from that old man’s face. Thorgnyr spake: “He is a man of sense, none can gainsay it, who will make shift with a dung-fork if he lack spear. But why shouldst thou think, for a matter of this kind, I’d need either? I can bide my time.”
Now snow began to fall in swirling eddies of large white feathery snowflakes. Yet they played on as briskly as ever. The Queen looked on at the game, muffled in a cloak of woollen stuff that was dyed the colour of the rowan leaf in the first nip of autumn and lined with swansdown. She had drawn the hood of it up over her ears, so that the proud and lovely face of her and the bright hair above her brow looked out as it were from a doorway or ice-cave mouth of snowlike whiteness; and her face was bright with the snow’s touch and the biting air, and her eyes most bright and eager as she followed the game. Folk marked her so standing and watching, and man said to man, “This is a strange new fashion, that women should wish to look on the ball-play, and in this wild weather.”
And now thicker and thicker fell the snow, until the ball was hid by it from the players and they
