"Shout for your guards!
It may be that they will get here in time."
But the King neither gave back nor raised his voice. "I will not," he said,
"nor will I lift hand against you. Never shall you have it to say that I
forgot you had endangered your life for mine. On your head it shall be to
break the blood-oath."
Now they were breast to breast. In her mind, the girl in the shadow flung open
the doors and shrieked to the sentinels and roused the Palace; in her body,
she stood spellbound, voiceless, breathless.
Still Rothgar did not strike. It was the King who spoke this time also. "Among
the sayings of men in Norway," he said coldly, "there is one they tell of a
traitor who carried a sword of death against his King, but lacked the boldness
to use it before the King's face. So he begged his lord to wrap a cloak around
his head that he might get the courage to ask a boon. When that had been done,
he stabbed. Do you want me to cover my eyes?"
With a hoarse cry, Rothgar flung his sword back to his sheath, recoiling,--
there was even a kind of fear in his manner: "A fool would I be, to set your
ghost free to follow me with that look on its face! Keep your life--and
instead I will torture every Angle I can get under my grip, for it is they who
have turned a great hero into a nithing--may they despise you as you have
despised your people for their sakes!" Invoking the curse with a sweep of his
handless arm, he strode from the room.
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