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A great fear for the holy men shut up in the little monastery came over me now, and I asked Halfden to let me warn them, for I knew that he was like his father and would not deny me in this. "Go and do so if you can," he said, "and so farewell till we meet at Reedham. We shall bide here till Rorik's men join us, and you will have time."
"See here, Wulfric," he said, "you are in evil case; for all Rorik's men and the men from outside are calling for your death; they say that Rorik had no luck against you because the Asir are angry, and that so it will be with all the host until you have paid penalty." "What say you and our crew?"
They were Rorik's men, therefore, and not our crew who likely enough would but have jeered at me had they found me hiding thus. "Halfden's men have drunk all the ale in the place, and that was not much," said one man; "let us try the water, for the dust of these old storehouses is in my throat." Then he began to draw up the bucket, and it splashed over us as it went past our doorway.
And that was Rorik's last stroke, for even as I had parried Thormod's stroke in sport, the man's wrist lit on the keen edge of my axe, so that hand and weapon flew far beyond me with the force of his stroke. Then flashed my axe, and Rorik fell with his helm cleft in twain. Then roared our crew, cheering me: "Skoal to the axeman! Ahoy!"
The remaining force of the Slavs, knowing nothing of the slaughter of their friends, hung in doubt wondering over the reason of Rorik's tarrying. And after waiting long for him as the months wearily rolled by, and finding delay every day more burdensome, they at last thought they should attack him with their fleet. Now among them there was a man of remarkable stature, a wizard by calling.
"We two are alone," he said, "therefore I do not mind saying that I have been fairly afraid how felt you?" "I would I might never be so frightened again," I answered, for truly I had made myself so at one with this brave man that I had forgotten that there was little fear for myself, as I have said, unless that it had been Rorik's crew who had found us, for only a few of them knew me.
Yet once and again as I slept I dreamed and woke with the cry of Rorik's men in my ears, and before me the bell seemed to flash again as it crashed through the ship's side. And once I woke thinking that the smell of burning was round me, and felt, half awake, for the stone walls of the well chamber. But at last I slept soundly and peacefully.
Then, not to fail of his compact, he buried him royally, gave him a howe of lordly make and pompous obsequies. Then he pursued and slew Koller's sister Sela, who was a skilled warrior and experienced in roving. He had now passed three years in valiant deeds of war; and, in order to win higher rank in Rorik's favour, he assigned to him the best trophies and the pick of the plunder.
But Rorik's men had their eyes on me, and when the cauldron passed Thormod, and I had not taken thereout, one rose up and said, pointing to me: "Lo! this Saxon will not eat of the sacrifice." At that was a growl of wrath from the company, and Ingvar rose, looking over the heads of my comrades, saying: "Have a care, thou fool; go not too far with me."
Some of the men who watched were strangers to me, but as they sat among our crew, they must be the rest of the saved from Rorik's following. Others were men from beyond the village walls, and as Rorik's men had some reason and the others knew me not, I thought little of their unfriendly looks.
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