He had looked forward so much to the journey to town—scarce knowing what he looked for in it. Whenever he had been here before, it was in the company of grown men, and it had been a fair-day in the town; to his serious and inquiring eyes all had been excitement and festivity: the bargaining of the men, the booths, the houses, the churches they had been in; they had been offered drink in the houses, and the street had been full of horses and folk. Now he was only a raw youth wandering about with a young girl, and there was no place where he could turn in; he knew no one, had no money; and they had not time to enter the churches. In an hour or two they must set out for home. And he had an unspeakable dread of the endless rowing and then the walk up through the fields—God alone knew what time of night they would reach home! And then they might look for a chiding for having run away!

They found the way to the smith. He looked at the axe well and long, turned it this way and that, and said it would be a hard matter to mend it. These horned axes had gone wellnigh out of use; ’twas not easy to fit an edge on them that would not spring loose with a heavy blow, on a helm, to wit, or even on a tough skull. This came from the shape of the blade, a great half-moon with barbs at either end. Ay, he would do his best, but he could not promise that the gold inlay should come to no harm by his welding and hammering. Olav considered a moment, but could see naught else to be done—he gave the axe to the smith and bargained with him as to the price of the work.

But when Olav told where he came from, the smith looked up and scanned his face: “Then you would have it back in all haste, I trow? So that is the way of it—are they making ready their axes at Frettastein these days?”

Olav said he knew naught of that.

“Nay, nay. Has Steinfinn any plan, he is not like to tell his boys of it—”

Olav looked at the smith as though he would say something, but checked himself. He took his leave and departed.

•   •   •

They had passed the pond, and Ingunn wished to turn into a road between fences which led up to Green Street. But Olav took her by the arm: “We can go here.”

The houses in Green Street were built on a ridge of high ground. Below them ran a brook of dirty water at the edge of the fields behind the townsmen’s outhouses and kale-yards. By the side of the brook was a trodden path.

Ashes, apple trees, and great rosebushes in the gardens shaded the path, so the air felt cool and moist. Blue flies darted like sparks in the green shadows, where nettles and all kinds of coarse weeds grew luxuriantly, for folk threw out their refuse on this side, making great muck-heaps behind the outhouses. The path was slippery with grease that sweated out of the rotting heaps, and the air was charged with smells—fumes of manure, stench of carrion, and the faint odour of angelica that bordered the stream with clouds of greenish-white flowers.

But beyond the brook the fields lay in full afternoon sunshine; the little groves of trees threw long shadows over the grass. The fields stretched right down to the small houses along Strand Street, and beyond them lay the lake, blue with a golden glitter, and the low shore of Holy Isle in the afternoon haze.

The children walked in silence; Olav was now a few paces in front. It was very still here in the shade behind the gardens-nothing but the buzzing of the flies. A cowbell tinkled above on the common. Once the cuckoo called—spectrally clear and far away on a wooded ridge.

Then a woman’s scream rang out from one of the houses, followed by the laughter of a man and a woman. In the garden a man had caught a girl from behind; she dropped her pail, full of fishes’ heads and offal, and it rolled down to the fence; the couple followed, stumbling and nearly falling. When they caught sight of the two children, the man let go the girl; they stopped laughing, whispered, and followed them with their eyes.

Instinctively Olav had halted for a moment, so that Ingunn came up beside him and he placed himself between her and the fence. A blush crept slowly over his fair features and he looked down at the path as he led Ingunn past. These houses in the town that Steinfinn’s house-carls had talked so much about—for the first time it made him hot and gripped his heart to think of them, and he wondered whether this was one of those houses.

The path turned and Olav and Ingunn saw the huge grey mass and pale leaden roof of Christ Church and the stone walls of the Bishop’s palace above the trees a little way in front of them. Olav stopped and turned to the girl.

“Tell me, Ingunn—did you hear what Brother Vegard said—and the smith?”

“What mean you?”

“Brother Vegard asked if Steinfinn had sent for the armourer to Frettastein,” said Olav slowly. “And Jon smith asked if we made ready our axes now.”

“What meant they? Olav—you look so strangely!”

“Nay, I know not. Unless there is news at the Thing—folk are breaking up from the Thing these days, the first of them—”

“What mean you?”

“Nay, I know not. Unless Steinfinn has made some proclamation—”

The girl raised both hands abruptly and laid them on Olav’s breast. He laid both his palms upon them and pressed her hands against his bosom.