"The walls are high, O sultan. The townfolk will bar out my lord's foes and my foes. Can my lord doubt that they will hold fast for the sultan of their own faith?"
"How, lord vali," demanded Anselm, the Count Palatine; "if your folk are so friendly, why should they seek to be rid of us? I would not be the one to speak of mishap; yet here is bitter truth, sire: Should not God and the holy saints give your Majesty victory; should we fare homeward, a war-broken host; would these timorous Navarrese then open their gates to give succor; or would they not rather seek our harm, to gain favor with the pagan king?"
Kasim smiled blandly, and would have spoken again, had not Karl held up his hand for silence. For a little, the king gazed at the thousand and more Saracen horsemen massed together in dense ranks on the spot where they had been halted by the cry of their chief. Then he glanced up at the burg on the height and back to the little maiden behind him.
"O sultan of sultans--" began Kasim; but again Karl held up a restraining hand.
"I cannot grant your wish, lord count," he said. "I must hold to the compact. Count Olvir, you will guard this stronghold with your vikings, and Rothada and her companion shall remain here in your care. It had been wiser to have left the maidens at Casseneuil."
Olvir frowned with disappointment at this unexpected turn of events.
"It was not to sit behind stone walls, lord king, that I joined your host," he protested.
"Yet I ask it of you, my Dane hawk," replied Karl, gravely. "For a time, at least, I ask you to shield this little maid, who is more precious to me than all the old Goth realm."
"For her sake," muttered Olvir, half reluctantly.
Karl spoke in a lowered voice: "For her sake, lad! I would not ask the service but for her. Would that I had not brought her across the mountains! I look for treason from this fawning hound. I must safeguard the maiden and this stronghold at all cost."
"Enough, lord king!" exclaimed Olvir. "I give you willing service."
Blithe then grew the breaker of rings. BEOWULF.
Early two months had passed since from the loftiest tower of Pampeluna's citadel Olvir had watched the Frankish warriors wind away across the green plateau, on their southward march to the Ebro. In all the dreary weeks of waiting no tidings had come back from the invading host,--not a word to tell whether Karl was battling for the old Goth realm on the Ebro's banks, or, finding Abd-er-Rahman too cautious to encounter him near Saragossa, had ventured on south to Toledo or to Cordova itself, in search of the fierce but wily old Emir of Andalus.