"You have not dared to be a woman, so you must dare to be a man."
A night wind shuddered through the trees, and the hovering shades seemed to
hiss in her ear. "Coward! Traitor! Nithing! Do you not get afraid that you
will experience the wrath of the dead? Listen! Is that the wind rustling the
leaves? Or is it --"
A gasp burst from the white lips, and the die was cast. While the cold drops
started on her pain-racked body, she dragged herself to her knees and fumbled
with trembling hands about her belt. For an instant, something like a moonbeam
glimmered amid the shadow; then her lips closed convulsively upon the steel.
Tipping forward upon her hands, she tested cautiously the strength of her
wounded leg, smothering groans of pain that seemed to tear her throat in the
swallowing. But the whispering of the night-wind was like a spur in her side;
inch by inch, she crawled steadily toward the flickering light.
Chapter X
As The Norns Decree
This I thee counsel tenthly;
That thou never trust
A foe's kinsman's promises,
Whose brother thou hast slain,
Or sire laid low;
There is a wolf
In a young son,
Though he with gold be gladdened.
Sigrdri'fuma'l.
It was a long way to the King's fire, but at last it lay before her; before
and below her, for it had been built in a depression of the little open.
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