“As thou wilt,” answered he.
Sigrid sat down beside him with the grace of a seabird alighting on the wave. His shoulder was turned towards her. He went on with his work. Herself unobserved, she sat there quiet, looking on what he did, but most on him.
“Arrows is women’s weapons,” said Styrbiorn after a while, looking along the shaft to see he had fitted it true. “I know not why I fash myself with such things.”
Sigrid said nothing, watching the ripple of the muscles beneath his skin of arms and neck and shoulder, the great clean-modelled knees, and the yellow hair of his head so close and thick.
“It is a wonder thou shouldst like to sit all by thyself in this place,” she said.
He made no answer. She was so near that the breath of her, sweet like kine’s breath, mixed with his own.
“There be few men so strong as to hold down that bull,” said she.
“He getteth me down now and then,” said Styrbiorn.
Sigrid’s shoulder touched his, lightly as a moth. He shifted away a little, laying down one arrow and choosing another. She shifted too, the other way. Her face flamed red on a sudden, and turned fierce and hard so as it was a wonder to see in a girl so young and tender. For a long time they were silent. Then she said, “I did never see a man slain till last night.”
“Wast afeared to see it?” asked Styrbiorn.
“Not afeared,” she said. “Thou hast ta’en to the work young.” She was looking at him somewhat strangely, her eyes a-sparkle.
“I slew him not sackless,” said Styrbiorn. “ ’Would have stabbed me first. Thou knewest that?”
“I knew it truly,” she answered.
“And I’ll pay no boot for his slaying,” said Styrbiorn, turning to look her in the eye. “I’ll learn these bonders’ sons to bear them more quietly in kings’ houses,” said he.
She said nothing.
“It is good to be a king,” said Styrbiorn after a little.
Sigrid seemed as if she heard him not. She was gazing with an altered countenance south over Fyrisfield. Styrbiorn looked up and saw her so stare, wide-eyed, as if in fear: as if in those silent water-meadows she saw some strange matter, hidden until now.
“Wouldst not thou be a queen, Sigrid,” said he, “and ’twere offered thee?”
Still she spoke not. A cloud in that instant hid the sun. The girl shivered.
“Wouldst thou not?” said Styrbiorn.
“Not what?” said she, shivering again and turning to look at him. “I marked not what thou saidst.”
“Be a queen?” said Styrbiorn.
“Yes,” she said.
“Why dost thou look so, as if thou hadst seen something?”
“ ’Tis nothing,” she said. But seeing in his eyes that her looks belied her words, “Nothing,” said she again. “Thou art but a child, Styrbiorn, for all that thou didst slay a man last night.”
“Something too childishly,” said he, scowling, “goeth mine affair. It needed not thee too, to thrust that down my throat.”
Sigrid shivered and said, “Come from this place. I am three years older than thou, and can see things thou canst not see. The dead be in this place. Come away.”
But Styrbiorn budged not from his seat. He took another arrow, then smiling scornfully said to her, “Thou art a woman, Sigrid. Women are ever afeared of bugs and bogles. The living be in this place: thou and I: not the dead. And well I love this place. ’Tis a place of Kings. And if any dead man be hereabout, it is the King my father.”
He looked up at her again. Her eyes were fixed on him, but as if she saw him not. She looked ghastly. He leaped up and took her by the arm, being bit with remorse a little for his churlishness, and a little touched with the infection of her strange speechless dread; even as it is a man of rare coolness, who, sitting alone with his dog in a desolate house at nighttime, seeth the dog stare and growl as if at some unseen presence in the room and feeleth in himself no answering tremor. “Come,” he said, “I’ll go in with thee. There’s naught to fear. Come.”
II
Thorgnyr the Lawman
Now there was mighty discontent among the bonder-folk because of this slaying of Aki, and much murmuring against Styrbiorn and his lawless and unbridled vein who should so slay the man and pay no boot therefor. In the end the King himself did boot it, and so these growls died down for the while.
When it was spring, the King fared north into the coasted parts of Helsingland and into Jarnberaland a-guesting, and it was full summer when he came home, riding with them of his bodyguard down to the high arm of the firth over against Sigtun. It was a windy day of driving mist that made gray and ghostly the whole face of the countryside, blotting out the hills and woods and confounding water and sky in the same hue and tone of pale grey without colour; only the water was darkened with the little shadows innumerable of the hastening waves, and here and there a reef showed, darker than aught else visible, and against it the flash of breakers that leapt and fell. Like swooping birds, black squalls swooped and chased one another, scurrying in zigzags far and wide, doubling and turning, always with little glass-smooth strips of calm water on the edges of the squalls. And there were swift changing markings made by the wind and tide, as it were a white sword and a black that crossed edges on the troubled surface of the loch. A man on a dark horse came riding up from the waterside to meet the King. The King knew him for Earl Wolf.
“Thy colour looketh trouble,” said the King. “What’s the tidings?”
The Earl told him in his ear, as one who disburdeneth himself of a weighty matter and a grievous and feareth the while lest
