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This Erpwald was no very good neighbour of ours, as it happened, for he and my father had some old feud concerning forest rights and the like which he had taken to heart more than there was any occasion for, seeing that it was but such a matter as most thanes have, unless they are unusually lucky, in a place where boundaries are none.
I do not think that any man had seen it since that time until this night. Now Erpwald stood for a moment in the gate, with his men hard behind him, expecting a rush at him, as it would seem. But our folk stood firm in the line across the courtyard, shoulder to shoulder, with my father and Owen before them. So they looked at one another.
Even now he had not more than a score of men with him. Our men were chasing the flying foe across the open hilltop now, outside the camp, and there were but few left within its enclosure, though I saw the dim forms of some who were turning back without going beyond the rampart, and one of these was Erpwald.
"I have seen three men whom I know well among them." "Who are they?" "Wisborough men freemen of Erpwald's." My father and Owen looked at one another. Words my father knew he should have to put up with, after today, from Erpwald, but this seemed token of more than words only.
Now that was a question on which I had no thought ready, seeing that I had never held any man of much rank to ransom before, and I hesitated. At last I remembered what some great Mercian thane had to pay to Owen some years ago, and I named that sum, which was good enough for me and Erpwald and Thorgils to share between us. Thereon his face flushed red, and he scowled fiercely at me. "What!
So presently, while the hounds were drawing this wood below us, I and Elfrida and Erpwald found ourselves together and waiting on the hilltop at the edge of the gorge.
Erpwald glowered into the darkness, but he could see nothing of the man who had spoken. But one of his men had seen the spear cast, and knew what was meant, though the fight had set it out of his mind. So he ran, and found the shaft easily in the darkness, and took the ring from it, bringing it back to Erpwald. "It is luck," he said. "Spear and ring alike have marked the place for Woden."
Erpwald and I followed him into the hall, and there stayed. He was long gone thence to the bower where Elfrida sat with her maidens preparing for the morrow. "What will she say?" asked Erpwald presently. "I think that she will bid you fight for the king, though it will be hard for her to do so."
"Not altogether. How was it?" "Really, that you had better ask some one else," I said, keeping a grave face. "I think that it would have been fairer to me to have done so first. But if there was any real blame to me, do you think that the ealdorman would have been glad to see me just now? I think that it was plain that he was so." "I am an owl," Erpwald said. "Of course, he would not have been.
With the sound of the horn and the moving away of Erpwald the horse had waxed restive, as horses will at a cover side when the time to move on seems near. I think that it had probably reared a little and that she had tried to check it, for now it was backing slowly and uneasily toward the edge of that awesome cliff that was but ten paces from its heels.
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