Hasta and Nigh bent their heads in reverence as the Old One rose; but Hawkon stared boldly.
Koor uttered a bark of greeting.
‘Greeting, O Koor our Father!’ cried Hasta, in his shrill voice. ‘Sin has been done in our midst. Woe and pestilence on them that suffer it!’
Koor, peering with dim eyes, motioned the Wise One nearer. ‘Stand here, my son, within reach of me. What are these young men doing in my house?’
‘Sin has been done, O Father, and they have brought the sinner for judgement.’
Koor seemed not to understand. He was filled with feeble anger by this interruption of his peace; and the display of power before him, the stalwart young men and the bristling spears, disconcerted him, so that for one instant he forgot that he, Koor, was greater and more terrible than them all.
‘Sin,’ he muttered testily. ‘What sin is this?’
Hasta crooked his finger at Nigh, who approached the Old One with gestures of fawning respect. Between them the two counsellors poured the dreadful story into Koor’s ear. Ogo watched them with eyes that had never been so keen before, nor seen so much. What these men were saying he could not hear, for there was a strange tumult in his brain. In his mortal parts he was appalled by the coil of disaster he had snared himself with; but he remained steadfast in his resolve that Wooma, his woman, must not die at the hands of Hasta: rather, if needs be, at his own, since he was her lord and had taken her. Despite its roaring commotion his brain worked busily. But it worked in secret, without his conscious supervision: like a swarm of ants his thoughts ran this way and that, picked up seeming trifles, and stored them away. One thing went here, another there: the collection grew under his dreaming gaze; but still he was unaware of the emerging pattern. Hawkon was a great hunter. Koor was old. Ogo’s enemies were many, and he had no friend. It pleased him that, being so many, or for very eagerness to see him doomed, they had not spared time to bind him. Hasta and Nigh and the Old One were still in conference. Soon it would be his turn to speak; and then—death. But he did not look so far ahead: he was content to stare at the moving lips of his accusers, and to listen idly to the patter of syllables in his mind.
When Hasta and Nigh, making much of little, at last came to an end of their story, Koor sat blinking fiercely. At last he rose to his feet and pointed a long withered finger at Ogo.
‘Speak,’ he commanded.
‘I have spoken,’ said Ogo, and he seemed to speak with a voice other and larger than his own. And the words that came seemed not of him; for they had a strange authority, as though the gods spoke them. ‘The woman chosen for the sacrifice must not be given to the earth-god, or a pestilence will come upon us all. She is curst, for I have touched and taken her.’
‘She is sib with him,’ said Nigh.
‘She is sib with him,’ murmured the young men in chorus.
‘Woe, woe, woe,’ wailed Hasta, ‘on them that suffer a sinner in their midst!’
‘Kill him,’ snapped Koor, ‘and drive the woman into the wild. Kill him, but let no drop of his blood fall among us.’
‘We will kill him,’ agreed Hawkon coolly. His manner was insolent. He spoke as to an equal, if not to an inferior. For an idea had flashed into his mind, and to Hawkon an idea was an impulse. ‘Listen, my Father. Listen, my brothers. Was this woman chosen by the gods?’
Koor looked at Hasta. ‘Answer him, my son.’
‘By the gods she was chosen,’ faltered Hasta.
‘Through the mouth of Hasta the Wise One,’ added Nigh quickly.
Hawkon’s tone became uglier, ‘Yet it was a bad choice and would have brought pestilence upon us. Were the gods, then, at fault? Or was Hasta the Wise One deceived?’
There was a murmur of admiration and anger from the young men behind him. Koor blinked stupidly. Hasta grinned with sudden terror, and turned in frenzy to the Tale-Bearer.
‘It was Nigh,’ he wailed, ‘it was Nigh that deceived me.’
‘It is not,’ said Nigh. ‘There is no fault in me. The fault is in Hasta.’
Hawkon stared challengingly at Koor, who still blinked and said nothing.
‘We are waiting,’ said Hawkon, ‘for the judgement of Koor in this matter.’
Koor stood listening to a faraway sound, and gazing with dim eyes down a forest vista. He heard the thunder of the bull’s hooves approaching, and he put out his hands and grinned fiercely. The great beast came plunging and roaring towards him. Then he saw that it was no bull after all, but a young man, an insolent young man.
‘What are you called?’ he demanded, facing Hawkon. ‘What do they call you, my son?’
‘They call me Hawkon,’ said Hawkon proudly.
‘Hawkon!’ echoed his comrades.
The murmur rose to a shout, and the Old One smiled in triumph; for in his mind it was himself they were acclaiming, Koor the mighty one, the slayer of bulls. But in the midst of the clamour the sight of Hawkon pressed back into his eyes, and he grew angry. He remembered a grievance. He remembered Ogo and the tale of his sin. He scowled.
‘Ha! You have spoken in scorn of the Wise One. You and the accurst shall die together.’ He laughed. The speech pleased him. He was intoxicated with his fantasy and delighted in the thought of this cub’s death. ‘You shall die, my son,’ he repeated, with a titter.