“Floating?”
“No, the head’s too heavy. They said it was close to the shore, in about three feet of water. The head was lodged on the bottom, but the shaft was still bobbing about.”
“What do you think it means?”
“They could have drowned on the rotten ice,” suggested Stein. “It all went quite suddenly early last night, when the rain came on.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“It’s the dogs,” said Stein. “There’s something fishy there, and Ragnhild is hiding something.”
“Maybe a man?”
“Probably a man.”
Both heads turned to the third man in the room, the remote unbending figure of King Olaf.
“This seems to affect the good name of your family,” said Valgrim, a trifle uncertainly.
The king smiled. “What you are thinking is that it is also a good test of luck. If King Shef was on the rotten ice last night, and survived, that was one test passed. If he got past the wolfhounds, that was another. You want me to set him a third?”
“Third time pays for all,” said Stein.
“I agree. A third test it is, and then no more, from me or from you. Agreed.”
Valgrim nodded, reluctantly, eyes full of calculation.
“Then I will send word to my brother that there is reason to think things amiss on Drottningsholm. I have never done that before, and he knows I would not do it lightly. So he will believe me and give permission for a thorough search of the island and every building in it, from end to end. You must think how you would make it, Stein. And if intruders are found there, hiding, then they must go to the king’s justice. It will be heavy, when he thinks the good name of his son Harald is concerned.
“Till then, Stein, you had better double the guards on the bridges, both from Drottningsholm to the second island, and from that to the third and to the mainland. A bold man could swim between the islands too, so have your guard-boats out between them. I need not tell you to make sure there is no boat a man could steal.
“If this is to be a test, it is in your hands to make sure it is a strict one. Do not come to me afterwards and say, this was no fair test, any man might have escaped. You must make sure that the only escape is by Völund’s path, through the air! Then if King Shef escapes, we will know that Völund he is, in whatever shape.”
Stein and Valgrim nodded again.
“And no word to his friends,” added Valgrim. Out of the window of the high room where they sat, he could see Thorvin walking across the college precinct, Brand at his side. Both men looked deeply anxious.
“No word to his friends,” Olaf agreed. “I will play fair on this one, Valgrim. See you do too. Otherwise it is no test of king’s luck.”
As he turned and went out, Valgrim and Stein looked at each other.
“He said make it a strict test,” said Stein. “I could make it a little stricter than he plans.”
“Do that,” said Valgrim, looking again at the ‘Gungnir’ runes on the spear he still held. “No strictness is too harsh for the man who pretends to come from All-father.”
“And if his luck does prove stronger?”
Valgrim hefted the spear, shook it like a man about to strike. “I think it has left him already. I hated him for aping my master Othin. I hate him more now he has thrown away my master’s token.”
From the shadows of the great hall, Karli watched his friend-and-master musingly. All the signs, he thought. I should have realized earlier.
Almost from the moment of their first meeting—certainly from the first time they had talked together—Karli had unconsciously assumed that Shef was the elder of the two, the wiser, the more widely-traveled, the more weapon-skilled. It had given Karli no sense of inferiority. His own animal spirits were too strong for that, and he remained unshakably confident in his own ability to knock any man down with his fists, and bed, if not any woman, at least any woman reasonably good-humored. He did not feel inferior to Shef. But he had assumed that Shef knew as much as he did.