ight?"

"No," she faltered.

He rolled his eyes around at her as he threw back his head to catch the
last drop that clung to the golden rim. "Can you handle a sword?"

Randalin hesitated, uncertain how far her idle play at fencing with her
brother would bear her out; she provided as many loop-holes as she could
devise. "I think you will find my skill slight. I have--I have grown so
fast that I lack strength in my arms. And I have not exercised myself as
much as I should have done."

"It is in my mind that you have been a lazy cub," the warrior pronounced
deliberate sentence, as he set down his goblet. "It is easily seen
that Frode has been over-gentle with you. But you will pay now for your
laziness, by receiving a cut each time I pass your guard. Stand forth,
and show what your skill is worth. This sword will not be too heavy."
Selecting the smallest of the jewelled blades upon the floor, he thrust
it into her hands.

It is good to have in one's veins the liquid fire of the North, blood to
which the presence of peril is like the touch of the Ice King to water.
At the first clash of the blades, strange tingling fires began to flash
through Randalin,--and then a hardness, that burnt while it froze. The
first pass, her hands had parried seemingly by their own instinct; now
she flung back her tumbling curls and proceeded to give those hands
the aid of her eyes. They were marvellously quick eyes; for Fridtjof's
thrusts, consulting no rule but his own will, had required lightning to
follow them and something like mind-reading to anticipate them. Three
times her blade met Rothgar's squarely, and deftly turned it aside. The
big warrior gave a grunt of approval and tried a more complicated pass.
Her backward leap, the sudden doubling of her body, and the excited
clawing of her free hand, were not graceful swordsmanship, certainly,
but her steel was in the right place. The next instant, she even drew a
little clink from one of the Jotun's silver buttons.

As she was recovering herself, she felt something like a pin prick her
wrist; and she wondered vaguely what brooch had become unfastened. But
she gave it scant attention for the big blade was threatening her from
a new direction. She leaped to meet it, and for the next minute was kept
turning, twisting, dodging, till her breath began to come in gasps, and
her exhausted hand to relax its hold. Her weapon was almost falling from
it by the time the son of Lodbrok lowered his