"Foolish bairn! Do you not know that I can blast you with the curse of your own gods,--that I can wither your limbs like the boughs of the stricken linden?"
Olvir drew up his lithe form, and his black eyes flashed defiantly.
"Now, by Loki!" he cried; "here we stand, witch-dame. Let us test the power of your spells."
"Not so, hero. I have tested what I would test, even as the Grey Wolf has tested you. Yet there is more. Answer me with a straight tongue. Can you name yourself a king?"
"Sea-king,--no land-king. Yet my father, whose name you divined, was King of Lade, and I am now heir to the high-seat."
The woman bent her head, and muttered to herself in her strange tongue. Rudulf stood waiting, as though spellbound; but Olvir, grown impatient, stepped about to go.
"Go, king's son-- Yet listen! I doubt. It should be _king_; not _king's son_--and _grey of eye_. _Hei_! all is misty. The fiend-gods are angered. Stay with us this night. I will make sacrifice and sing the fate-songs."
Olvir laughed. "I ask no aid from gods I scorn."
"What the Norns weave will come to pass. Again I say, farewell, dame. Come, Rudulf, if your word is true."
Rudulf turned to his wife, and, meeting a gesture of assent, hurried out after Olvir and the red mare. At his whistle, a powerful black horse came running from the meadow, and the count mounted without saddle or bridle. Side by side, Thuringian and Northman rode through the wild beech-wood to Fulda; and, on the way, the old count plied his daughter's suitor with many shrewd questions. To all alike Olvir made satisfactory answer; and the Thuringian raised no objections even when he learned that the young sea-king might soon bear off his bride to his far Northern home. It was enough for the Grey Wolf that the suitor was a tried warrior of good birth.
At Fulda he refused the urgent hospitality of Abbot Sturm, and waited only while Olvir, quicker than any of the monastery scribes, drew up the betrothal agreement in beautiful Irish script. Then he made his rude mark upon the parchment, and, with a word of farewell to Olvir, gruff but hearty, he mounted his horse and rode away homeward through the gathering night.
But Olvir gladly accepted the abbot's hospitality, not only for the night, but for two more days to come. Though the pick of a breed that could claim greater speed and endurance than perhaps any other stock known in all Arabia, even Zora had been too severely taxed by the strain of the long race from the Southland; and Olvir himself, with all his lifelong training, had to own the need of rest before undertaking the return journey.