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Updated: June 9, 2025
Presently she rose, and, turning, said slowly: "Olaf is not dead, though near to death. His pulses flutter, the light of life still burns in his eyes, and though the blood runs from his ears, I think the skull is not broken." When she heard these words, Thora, my mother, whose heart was weak, fainted for joy, and my father, untwisting a gold ring from his arm, threw it to Freydisa.
Some minutes later the clouds broke and the great moon was seen riding low down in a clear sky, illumining the grave mound and all the plain, save where we stood in the shadow of the mount. "Do you see aught?" asked Freydisa presently. "If not, let us be gone, for when the Wanderer comes at all it is at the rising of the moon."
Indeed, she wept bitterly, and cursed the name of Iduna the Fair, who had brought this trouble on her House. Freydisa was sad also. Yet, watching her opportunity, she glided up to me just before I embarked and whispered to me, "Be of good cheer, for you will return, whoever is left behind." "It will give me little comfort to return if certain others are left behind," I answered.
He was a tall, spare man, to all appearance of between fifty and sixty years of age. His face was thin and fine; he wore a short, grizzled beard; his hair, so far as it could be seen beneath his helmet, was brown and lightly tinged with grey. "Does he call anyone to your mind?" asked Freydisa. "Yes, I think so, a little," I replied. "Who is it, now? Oh! I know, my mother."
"Did you hear what Freydisa said?" I asked. "That he who wrought this sacrilege would bring upon himself evil and death?" "Yes, I heard; but it is folly, for who need fear dead bones? As for the shape you saw, why, it is strengthless for good or ill, a shadow drawn from what has been by the magic moon, or perchance by Freydisa's witchery.
Her face was mild and beautiful, and in her right hand she held a looped sceptre. Her hair descended in many long plaits on to her shoulders. For head-dress she wore two horns, supporting between them a burnished disc of gold like to that of the moon when it is full. "Strange gods!" I muttered. "Aye," answered Freydisa, "yet maybe true ones to those who worship them.
"What has chanced?" asked Freydisa when we stood beneath the light of the friendly stars. "I know nothing; my mind is a blackness." I told her word for word. When I had finished she said, "Give me the Wanderer's sword." I gave it to her, and she held it against the sky by the naked blade. "The hilt is a cross," she said; "but how can a man worship a cross and preach it and conquer thereby?
"Doubtless, Olaf, being young and foolish, as you are; also that is your nature. Now here is the broth. Drink it, and I, whom some call a wise woman and others a witch, say that to-morrow you may rise from this bed and sit in the sun, if there is any." "Freydisa," I said when I had swallowed the broth, "why do folk call you a witch?"
But of Freydisa I had heard nothing. Probably she was dead, and, if so, I felt sure that her fierce and faithful spirit must be near me now, as that of Ragnar had seemed to be in the Battle of the Garden.
Then she sighed heavily and turned her head, and by the light of the lamp I noted that her face was white and ghastly. "What do you seek?" her lips asked, for I saw them moving. Yet the voice that issued from them was not her own voice, but that of a deep-throated man, who spoke with a strange accent. Next came the answer in the voice of Freydisa.
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