shadows mouthed at her. "You have not dared to be a woman,"
they mocked. "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. The last charred log had fallen apart, spreading a swarm of
golden glow-worms over the black earth, there was still enough light to
reveal a ring of muffled forms sprawling around the sloping sides of
the hollow, with their feet toward the fire and their heads lost in
darkness. Pausing in the tree-shadow, the girl thrilled with sudden
hope. Since their faces were all hidden, how was she to distinguish
her victim? Even the dead must see that it would be impossible. If the
burden could only be lifted from her!

Fate was inexorable. At that moment, the warrior directly in front of
her stirred in his sleep and flung a jewelled hand over his face. Those
broad gold rings with the green stones that sparkled like serpents' eyes
as they caught the light! They were fixed indelibly in her memory, for
she had seen them on the rapacious hand that had seized upon her while
it was still red with her father's blood. Only from them, she could
reconstruct every hard line of the hidden face. Suddenly, in the rage
that rose in her