“By the blessed Ethelberga, you have a horse in all respects befitting your spirit, my shield-maiden! I hope it is not the King’s intention to punish you by frightening you.”
Could it be possible that he should stoop to so unworthy an action, the girl asked herself? And yet it was as understandable as any of his behavior during the last fortnight. Suddenly it seemed that a hand had awakened the Viking blood which slumbered in her veins; it fired her cheeks and flashed from under her lashes. She answered clearly, “I hope it is not, lady,—for he would experience disappointment.”
From all sides laughter went up, but there was no time for more, for now a hunter—one of the men who had brought news of the lair—galloped up, dust-choked and breathless.
“He has broken cover, King!” he gasped. “He is moving windward—loose the hounds—or—you will miss him—”
Canute’s horn was at his lips before the last broken phrase was out. “Forward!” he shouted with a blast. “The hounds, and forward!” A whirlwind seemed to strike the ambling train and sweep them over the ground like autumn leaves.
Over stubble fields and leaf-carpeted lanes, with half frightened smiles upon their parted lips, Elfgiva and her fair ones kept up bravely; then across a stream into a thicket, over hollows and fallen logs, under low-hanging boughs, through brush and brier and bramble,—leaping, dodging, tearing, crashing. Leonorine the Timid uttered a cry, as her horse slid down a bank with his feet bunched under him; and the Lady Elfgiva dropped her reins to press her hand where a thorn had scratched her cheek.
“Stop!” she commanded. “Stop! We will turn back and wait—until he strikes across a field.”
As well have tried to call off the hounds after they had caught the scent and doubled themselves over the trail! It is unlikely that any man so much as heard her. For one flash of time she beheld them seesawing in the air before her, as their horses rose over the brush; then there was nothing but the distant crashing of dry timber and the echo of Canute’s jubilant horn.
“And the Valkyria has gone also!” the lady ejaculated, when her injured gaze was able to come sufficiently close to earth.
And so the Valkyria had, though with as little of free will as on that day when her runaway steed carried her out of the press of the fleeing army. At the first call of the horn, Black Ymer had taken the bronze bit between his teeth and followed, and his rider’s one concern in life became—not the guiding of him—but the staying on. Before they left the first thicket her mantle was torn from her shoulders, and she was lying along his neck, now on this side, now on that, to escape the whipping twigs that lashed at her, threatening to cut out her eyes. From the thicket out into the open, where it seemed as if the wind that rushed against her would blow not only the clothes from her body but the flesh from her bones!