o
me, and you, too, who were as my twin, are about to be lost. Night has
you all, and with you a hundred other men, because of the madness that
was bred in you by the eyes of Iduna the Fair, who also is lost to
both of us. Steinar, I do not blame you, for I know yours was a madness
which, for their own ends, the gods send upon men, naming it love. I
forgive you, Steinar, if I have aught to forgive, and I tell you, so
weary am I of this world, which I feel holds little that is good, that,
if I might, I'd yield up my life instead of yours, and go to seek the
others, though I doubt whether I should find them, since I think that
our roads are different. Hark! the priests call me. Steinar, there's no
need to bid you to be brave, for who of our Northern race is not? That's
our one heritage: the courage of a bull. Yet it seems to me that there
are other sorts of courage which we lack: to tread the dark ways of
death with eyes fixed on things gentler and better than we know. Pray
to our gods, Steinar, since they are the best we have to pray to,
though dark and bloody in their ways; pray that we may meet again, where
priests and swords are not and women work no ruin, where we may love as
we once loved in childhood and there is no more sin. Fare you well, my
brother Steinar, yet not for ever, for sure I am that here we did not
begin and here we shall not end. Oh! Steinar, Steinar, who could have
dreamed that this would be the last of all our happy fellowship?"

When I had spoken such words as these to him, I flung my arms about him,
and we embraced each other. Then that picture fades.

It was the hour of sacrifice. The victim lay bound upon the stone in
the presence of the statue of the god, but outside of the doors of the
little temple, that all who were gathered there might see the offering.

The ceremonies were ended. Leif, the head priest, in his robe of office,
had prayed and drunk the cup before the god, dedicating to him the blood
that was about to fall, and narrating in a chant the crimes for which
it was offered up and all the tale of woe that these had brought about.
Then, in the midst of an utter silence, he drew the sacrificial sword
and held it to the lips of Odin that the god might breathe upon it and
make it holy.

It would seem that the god did breathe; at least, that side of the sword
which had been bright grew dull. Leif turned it to the people, crying in
the ancient words:

"Odin takes; who dare deny?"