ack
One growled. "At meal-time I have other uses for my jaws than babbling.
Thrall, bring me more fish."

Alwin waited long enough to possess himself of a sharp bronze knife that
lay among the dishes; then he advanced, alertly on his guard, and
shovelled more herrings upon the flat piece of hard bread that served as
a plate. Egil, however, noticed him no more than he did the flies
buzzing around his food. Whatever the cause of their enmity, it was
evidently a secret.

The English youth was retiring in surprise, when Rolf took it into his
head to accost him. The wrestler pointed to a couple of large flat
stones that he had placed, one on top of the other, beside him. "This is
very tough bread that you have given me, thrall," he said reproachfully.

Their likeness to bread was not great, and the jest struck Alwin as
silly. He retorted angrily: "Do you suppose that my wits were cut off
with my hair, so that I cannot tell stones from bread?"

Not a flicker stirred the seriousness of Rolf's blue eyes. "Stones?" he
said. "I do not know what you mean. Can they be stones that I am able to
treat like this?" His fist arose in the air, doubled itself into the
likeness of a sledge-hammer, and fell in a mighty blow. The upper stone
lay in fragments.

Whereupon Alwin realized that it had all been a flourish to impress him.
So, though unquestionably impressed, he refused to show it. A second
time he was turning his back on them, when Helga stopped him.

"You must bring something that I want, first. In the northeast corner of
the provision shed, was it not, Sigurd?"

Young Haraldsson was scrambling to his feet in futile grabs after one of
the hounds that was making off with his herring, but he nodded back over
his shoulder. Helga looked from one to the other of her companions with
an ecstatic smack of her lips. "Honey," she informed them. "Sigurd ran
across a jar of it last night. That pig of an Olver yonder hid it on the
highest shelf. Very likely the goldsmith's daughter gave it to him and
it was his intention to keep it all for himself. We will put a trick
upon him. Bring it quickly, thrall. Yet have a care that he does not see
it as you pass him. That is he with the bandaged head. If he looks
sharply at you, hide the jar with your arm and it is likely he will
think that you have been stealing some food for yourself, and be too
sleepy to care."

Lord Alwin of Northumbria lost sight of the lounging figures about him,
lost s