Mightier things were afoot.
She was only a female, and a slave.
“I have at this time no rings to give,” said the giant.
“I would not serve for rings,” said the young man.
“What is your name?” said the giant.
“Vandar,” said the young man.
“It is a good name,” said the giant.
“I am ready!” said the young man. “Summon me to your side!”
“At my side is danger,” said the giant.
“I would rather die at the side of one such as you than live elsewhere,” said the man.
“Do not move,” said a man.
“The night is cold, and the stars are indifferent,” said the young man. “I answer only to myself.”
“Cease your obscure rantings,” said a man.
“Milord!” cried the young man to the giant.
“Remain where you are!” said the giant.
The young man cried out in misery.
“Can you not see?” asked a man. “He stands alone.”
“At this time one such as he must stand alone,” said another.
“He who cannot stand alone deserves to have none stand with him,” said another.
“He has brought to the hall the pelt of a white vi-cat,” said Ulrich.
“No, no!” cried Valdemar, looking about himself. “Kill him! Kill him!”
One of his men turned to him. “We follow you, my liege,” he said.
Valdemar did not move.
Then his men drew away from him.
“You are no longer first among the Tiri,” said a man.
“No!” cried Valdemar.
Valdemar drew his blade, and cried out, and he, then followed instantly by several men, those of the Tiri in the hall, rush toward the giant.
“No!” cried Urta. “Only the lord, or his champion, may challenge!”
But none gave ear to the plaint of the King Namer.
The giant struck about him with the great sword.
A shield was cut in twain. Men were struck to the side, buffeted. The mighty sword flashed again, and sparks, like flaming snow, bright from three blades, exploded in the hall. Men pressed forward.
“Stop!” cried the King Namer.
“Stop!” cried others.
The giant, looking about himself, backed away. The fire pit was behind him, long, some eighteen feet in length, some five feet in width, a foot deep with glowing coals. The two supports on which the spit had been mounted were still in place. The spit itself, one end pointed for insertion in the meat, the other end bent to a handle that the device might be turned, that spit on which the boar had been roasted, lay to one side, on a wooden rack. The giant felt the heat behind him.
Valdemar lunged forward, his charge turned by the great blade, and the noble, screaming, losing his footing, fell into the pit. Otto forced the retainers back with a terrible blow, and spun about, turning to Valdemar, who, screaming, twisted in the coals, rose up wildly, slipped, fell, climbed again to his feet, and began to wade, frenziedly, stumbling, to the edge of the pit, but the giant turned about and plunged after him, wading into the coals, and seized Valdemar at the edge of the pit, by the collar of his furs, and threw him back, on his back, into the coals. Two men plunged after the giant, but he cut them down with one stroke, over the body of Valdemar, which he forced down, deeper, with one foot, into the coals. He then, to the horror of the liegemen, who hesitated, aware they could not reach him with their smaller blades, not having time to circle the pit, raised his blade above his head, holding it there with two hands, as he had, earlier, over the roast boar.
“No!” cried one of the liegemen, raising his hand.
“Strike!” cried Valdemar.
The sword was poised.
The liegemen cast their weapons to the floor of the hall.
“Strike!” screamed Valdemar.
But the giant stepped back from the body, through the coals, ascending the far side of the pit.
Valdemar’s liegemen drew him swiftly from the coals, covering his own body with theirs, to smother flames.
Two other bodies were drawn, too, slashed, half dismembered, from the coals, one leg hanging by a muscle to a trunk, furs blackened, and, at the sides, burned away.
A grayish smoke, like haze, hung over the coals.
There was an ugly, sweet odor of burned flesh, of skin, of muscle and fat, in the hall.
The left side of Valdemar’s face was gone, burned away.
The giant came about the pit, and stood over Valdemar, looking down at him.
Valdemar’s men drew back.
Valdemar looked up, unblinking, staring, his right eyelid burned away.
“You are Otung,” he whispered.
“I do not know,” said the giant.
The giant wiped on his furred thigh the long blade.
“Aii!” cried a man.
Too, at the same time, the slave had screamed, but the giant had already slipped to the side.
The blow of Rolof’s sword rang on the thick iron spit, it lying on its rack.
Sparks sprang upward.
“A felon’s stroke!” cried a man.
“Pig!” cried another.
The giant rolled beneath the spit, the long blade lost, and another blow struck down, again ringing, showering sparks, from the spit.
“No longer are you first among the Gri!” cried an angered retainer.
Rolof snarled, and put his foot on the blade of the great sword, holding his own blade ready.
“Pig!” cried a man.
The noble of the Gri was flanked by two cohorts.
The giant now crouched behind the heavy iron spit, it on its rack, a foot above the ground, its metal now twice scarred from the blade of Rolof.
Before him was the noble, and his two fellows, and three blades.
He did not take his eyes from the steel. The giant’s eyes were terrible. From his throat there came a rumbling, growling noise.
“Sheath your weapon!” called Urta to Rolof.
“I sheath my weapon for no man,” said Rolof. “I am king!”
The huge hands of the giant felt for, and closed upon, the long, thick, weighty, still-warm spit on its rack.
Before him were Rolof, and two of the Gri, behind him, glowing, bright with heat, deep with coals, was the fire pit. Its heat was fierce upon his back and legs.
The hands of the giant were upon the spit. The spit had held the weight, unbending, of the great boar, which, ungutted, had weighed better than four hundred pounds. Two men had turned the spit in its mounts. Rolof raised his sword.
With a cry of rage the giant rose up. The spit, like a snake, striking, was not even lifted from the rack, but shattered free, bursting, scattering wood.
The man to the giant’s right had no time even to scream, for the spit, a yard from its end, caught him beneath the left ear, breaking the neck, half tearing the head from the body. Rolof and his fellow were struck to the side by the same blow, and fell, rolling, to the floor. The giant kicked aside the remnants of the rack. Rolof scrambled back. The man to the giant’s left was struck on the return of the spit, and his arm, the elbow smashed, running with blood, hung like rope to the side. He put up his left hand to fend the next blow, but the crook in the spit’s handle, tearing back through the fingers, struck him in the throat, crushing it back, breaking cartilage, inches. Rolof reached for his lost blade. The giant lifted and plunged the portion of the spit handle, two feet long, parallel to its shaft, down twice, once through the jaw and mouth of the man, then on his back, breaking teeth and bone, and driving through tissue, and, then, more carefully, through the forehead, until it stopped, inches deep, in the dirt floor of the hall. Rolof now had his sword in hand but backed away from the giant, who was now regarding him eagerly, terribly, who now held the huge spit, drawn free, its length well beyond the reach of even the great blade, holding it as one might have held the peasant’s weapon, one hand at the center, the other below, the long staff.