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The kayaks were made ready at once, and when they began to make them ready, Tugto's wife said: "No one must hunt them yet; until five days are gone no one may hunt them." But before those days were gone, one of the young men went out nevertheless to hunt. He tried with great efforts, but caught nothing after all. Not until those days were gone did the witch-wife say: "Now you may hunt them."
Sinfjotli answered, "Dim belike is grown thy memory now, of how thou wert a witch-wife on Varinsey, and wouldst fain have a man to thee, and chose me to that same office of all the world; and how thereafter thou wert a Valkyria in Asgarth, and it well-nigh came to this, that for thy sweet sake should all men fight; and nine wolf whelps I begat on thy body in Lowness, and was the father to them all."
Came we then back to that lordly perron, and there, at the foot thereof, stood the witch-wife, and received us joyously; clad was she all gloriously in red scarlet broidered and begemmed; her arms bare and her feet sandalled, and her yellow hair hanging down from under its garland; and certainly it was so that she had grown fairer, and was sleek and white and well-shapen, and well-haired; yet by all that, the visage of her was little bettered, and unto me she was loathsome.
Nevertheless we fared the next day to seek the wood and the cave in the sheer rock, but nowise might we find either wood or cave. Now it was the night of the day hereafter, as we went to our chambers, that the witch-wife took me by the hand and led me apart, and said me many soft things of her accursed lust, whereof I will not say one again.
Now the Sage led them through the wood till they came to a grassy lawn amidst of which was a table of stone, which it seemed to Ralph must be like to that whereon the witch-wife had offered up the goat to her devils as the Lady of Abundance had told him; and he changed countenance as the thought came into his mind.
And a man named Gyrdir, on board the King's ship, dreamed a dream . He saw a great witch-wife standing on an isle of the Sulen, with a fork in one hand and a trough in the other . He saw her pass over the whole fleet; by each of the three hundred ships he saw her; and a fowl sat on the stern of each ship, and that fowl was a raven; and he heard the witch-wife sing this song: "From the East I allure him, At the West I secure him; In the feast I foresee Rare the relics for me; Red the drink, white the bones.
But how should Birdalone heed her prayer? She saw the sax; and withal had her heart forgotten, her flesh might well remember. She sat still, nor so much as turned her head toward the witch-wife. Then came wild yelling words from the witch's mouth, and she cried: Go then, naked and outcast! Go then, naked fool! and come back hither after thou hast been under the hands of the pitiless!
"The draught is drugged!" he cried a third time, "and that witch has drugged it!" And he began to tear at his breast. Then Groa laughed so shrilly that men trembled to hear her. "Yes, lord," she screamed, "the draught is drugged, and Groa the Witch-wife hath drugged it! Ay, tear thy heart out, Asmund, and Unna, grow thou white as snow soon, if my medicine has virtue, thou shalt be whiter yet!
Birdalone waited not for more words, but sprang out of bed, and had her work-a-day raiment on in a twinkling, and stayed but to wash her in a pool of the brook, and then was amidst the tall grass with the swathe falling before her. As she worked she thought, and could scarce tell whether joy at her present deliverance, or terror of the witch-wife, were the greatest.
Because I will not mix the blood of a traitor with my own. See!" He set the haft of his broad spear upon the rock and bent forward over the blade. "You and your witch-wife have brought me to nothing, O Saduko. My blood, and the blood of all who clung to me, is on your head.
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