Other thoughts came to be uttered, but he spoke them not, and he walked onward into the deepening gloom. Very dark it was until the moon arose, and he knew not that the Saxons at the inn were inquiring angrily concerning him.
"What are we if we lose our jarl?" said Wulf the Skater. "But for him we had been lost long since. We would have no more help of Odin if our jarl were taken away."
Ben Ezra and Abbas pacified them, and Tostig the Red said to the others:
"There are but few Romans near and they are bound under Caius. What danger to the son of Brander were a drove of these Syrian cattle, even if they were armed?"
"The son of Thorolf was slain by an arrow shot in the dark," said a viking, surlily. "The jarl doeth not well to go among arrows. I would see his face again."
Murmurs were many, and they all came out and stood before the inn examining their weapons and tightening their mail.
Ulric walked on, but not far, in the brightening moonlight.
"It is like the North country moon in winter," he said, for the air was clear and many things could be seen as in the day.
Beyond him arose a hill, such as may be in so great a plain, and on it there were ruins, grass-grown and mossy. In the old time there had been here a castle or a pleasure palace, none could tell which, and some of the stones were large, arising as pillars with stones laid across their summits.
"Not a temple," said Ulric, thoughtfully. "I hope not. I would not go too near an abiding place of the dead gods. Oft they come back again to trouble men. So saith Ben Ezra. So saith Abbas. They hate men, for men worship them no more."
He walked more slowly, thinking of the gods and of Hilda and of the strangeness that he himself was here without a ship or a strong company, and not knowing what might be before him on the morrow.
"I am jarl no more," he began to say, but at that moment he was suddenly silenced and he stood still to listen.
Not many paces beyond him was an open space on the summit of the hill and around it were fallen pillars, many and great, made of white stone. From this open there arose a voice and the light of the moon trembled among the white pillars.
"He kneeleth!" said Ulric to himself. "Ben Ezra called him the rabbi of Nazareth. If there be dead gods or evil demons here, he feareth them not, for they know him."