Thorgnyr said naught, looking on the King from under the dark eaves of his brows. His lean hands twitched a little. Then he spoke, “You have sometimes thought I played for mine own hand, Lord, and not for yours. Will you not see him?”
“If I should see him,” answered the King, “that should be his death. Go thou, and do my bidding.”
Thorgnyr went out from before the King. There was great stir throughout the house, and a noise of horses in the King’s garth. Thorgnyr went out into the garth and came upon Styrbiorn as he went a-horseback, and his Jomsburgers were mounting round about him on every side. Thorgnyr came close to Styrbiorn, so that none might hear save the twain of them, and gave him the King’s message neither adding aught to it nor taking aught away. Styrbiorn had the look of a man stupid for sleeplessness during many nights. Thorgnyr, knowing not for sure if he had heard the message aright, spake it over again word by word. But Styrbiorn answered and said, “I heard thee very well. Thou hast gotten the goal, then. What need to trattle more on’t?” Therewith he swung his leg into the saddle and, without looking back or giving further heed to Thorgnyr, rode with his men out of the King’s garth and out of Upsala southward to the sea.
XI
Jomsburg Seawalls
Styrbiorn stood on the outer seawall at Jomsburg while they brought his fleet in through the sea-gates: a tricky work, seeing there was a heavy sea running, and the last part worst of all, for it was now long past sunset, and their only light torchlight and the moon shining fitfully through flying racks of vapour. But it was by his command; and there was that in his eye since they sailed out of the Low three days gone that made his folk count it safer to risk the smashing may be of one ship or two sooner than meddle with him. Styrbiorn stood there in his war-gear, wearing under his gold-edged byrny that Greek kirtle of cramoisy silk and gold which the princess of Holmgarth had given him in days gone by, and about his middle that mighty silver girdle with horse-headed serpents intertwined at every link, the same which he had taken from about Jomala’s middle in the temple amid the wolds of Kirialaland, and the barbarous people had watched in vain to see earth gape for him that wrought so impiously; and from that girdle hung the heavy two-edged sword, Eric’s gift, wherewith he had made so many famous conquests: the same wherewith he had fought and prevailed against Palnatoki’s self when first he came to Jomsburg. He was bareheaded and, according to his common wont in these days, without cloak or mantle, so that the glory of his arms was naked to the eye, and the breadth of his shoulders, that cast about him, in their proud shapely poise, a mantle of more kingliness than royal and costly stuffs might ever shed about a king.
Fierce and sullen was the countenance of Styrbiorn, yet quiet, as of a fierce beast charmed with music, as he watched that dance of the rolling surges sweeping and pausing and falling and rising again: Ran’s eternal children leading their round as if in sad ceremonial observance of some divinity hidden apart, removed from all knowledge or communion of human kind; and listened to the swelling roar of the breaker as it rode on, the thud and thunder of its fall, and the grinding hiss of the shingle in the backwash, as if wrath, which is older than the world and older than the Gods, drew in its breath once again, pondering some greater mischief.
Stepping back to avoid a wave that flung itself with more than ordinary violence against the seawall and tossed high above it a wild white man of spray, Styrbiorn found himself in the arms of Biorn Asbrandson that was come up behind him unheard.
“What fiend bewitched thee?” said Biorn. “Could’st thou not have beached ’em in the firth where calm water is and a sheltered shore? There’s one stove in but now by the gate, and men drowned, like enough: we cannot tell i’ this windy dark.”
“Let them drown, then,” said Styrbiorn; “and thou too, unless thou mend thy talk.” He swung round away from Biorn, and the great sword at his side, Eric’s gift, clanked against his thigh. He took it in his two hands, peered at it for a moment in the glimpsing moonbeams as if at some strange thing, then unfastened it sheath and all from his girdle and sent it hurtling into the sea. “And that, afore all,” he said.
Biorn, being a man of sense, held his peace.
The last ship was in. After a while Styrbiorn, still in his former posture watching the endless procession of surges, said in hard toneless accents, “Shall I tell thee what I did in Sweden?”
“Am not I thy brother?” said Biorn.
Styrbiorn said, “I dallied with a whore,
