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"I do not believe that a tree-toad can change color more easily," he observed to the old cniht who rode at his side. "That Englishmen are not stout fighters, no man can say, but the love of it is not in their breasts; while with Northmen " "With Northmen," Morcard added, "to fight is to eat." Another faint smile touched Sebert's mouth as he glanced over his shoulder at the red-cloaked boy.
Sebert's frank face betrayed his surprise at the complaisance, but he gave his pledge and his thanks with what courtliness he could muster, and releasing his passive prisoner, pushed her gently into the safe-keeping of the old cniht. Yet he was not so obtuse as to step back, as though the incident were closed; he read the King's inflection more correctly than that.
The old cniht bent forward and whispered in his chief's ear: "Make haste, Lord Sebert; they will be cheering in a moment, the churls; so pleased are they at the thought of going home. Hasten with your retiring." It was a clever appeal. Forgetting, for the moment, humiliation in responsibility, the young leader whirled to his men.
Wild with helpless misery, the Lord of Ivarsdale would have charged the Berserkers with his handful of armed servants if the old cniht had not restrained him almost by force; when he spent his breath in railing at everything between earth and sky. "It is the folly of it that maddens me," he cried over and over, "the needless folly!
It appeared that the Etheling had recovered from his surprise, for now he said steadily, "I will not believe it. Until their oaths have been spoken and their hands have clasped and my own eyes have witnessed it, I will not believe it of him." Motioning them from his path, he was starting forward a second time, when the old cniht laid a hand lightly upon his shoulder. "Hear me, Lord Sebert!
The only sound that disturbed it was a growing rustle in the bush around them, which was explained when the old cniht Morcard and some two-score armed henchmen and yeoman-soldiers, singly and in groups, filtered quietly through the shadows and placed themselves at their chief's back. But though the King's brows had met for an instant in a lowering arch, some second thought controlled him.
"The old ways are clean fallen out of England, and it becomes a man to consider diligently how he will order his future," he told Hildelitha and the old cniht when they inquired the reason for his abstraction.
The old cniht, who considered that a command to military service could be justified only by imminent national destruction, was deeply incensed when he learned that the call was to no more than an officership in the new body of Royal Guards, but the young lord checked him with even a touch of impatience. "What a throng of many words, my friend Morcard, have you spoken!
"If the question may be permitted me, whither do you betake yourself, my lord?" the old cniht asked. With the light wand he carried, the young man made a gesture quite around the horizon. "Everywhere and nowhere. After I have been to see what they are doing with that portion of the palisade which I bade them repair as soon as they had finished the barrier, I am "
He was a stout white-bearded old cniht with an obstinate old face that looked something like a ruddy apple in a snow-bank. Flushing, the young noble ceased examining his sword-edge to meet the eyes bent upon him. "I hope you do not think I stand in need of a rebuke for lukewarmness, Morcard," he said gravely.
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