Fastrada drooped her head to hide a look of resentment, and her dainty foot tapped the floor ominously. Olvir, however, the moment he sensed the queen's meaning, smiled up at her and answered gaily, "Why speak of strictness, dear dame? True love has nothing to hide."
As he spoke, he took Fastrada's hands, and bent to kiss her, thrilling with all the love and reverence of the Northern heart for a pure woman. But as their lips met, the girl, unable to restrain the impulse of her wild Wendish blood, threw herself upon his breast, and flung her arms about his neck. He could feel the throbbing of her heart through his mail.
"Farewell, my lord--my hero!" she whispered brokenly. "Hasten back again. If you linger, I shall die!"
"Never has man gone that journey swifter than I shall go, dear one. If you have need of service, ask for Liutrad Erlingson. All my sea-wolves are at your command. Now, farewell, for a little time!"
Tearing himself from the girl's embrace, Olvir turned and walked quickly away. Rothada and her brothers joined the queen in a chorus of _God-speeds_; but Olvir waved his hand and leaped out through the doorway, without a single glance even for Fastrada.
He found Roland with one hand on Zora's neck and the other caressing the mare's bony cheek. The Frank turned at once at the sound of Olvir's light step, and caught his outstretched hands. For a moment the two gazed at each other with eyes aglow. Then Olvir leaped into the saddle and called to the mare in Arabic. Wheeling at the word, she leaped through the gateway and shot away down the road like an arrow.
Riding swift on his errands On the bit-gripping steed. SONG OF ATLI.
Though reared on the iron coast of Northern Norway, Olvir Thorbiornson had coursed more than one good horse over the flat shores of Jutland and Frisia. What was no less to his present advantage, he held clearly in mind all that Otkar Jotuntop had told him, in his childhood, of the emir's red racers of the desert. Yet, confident as he felt of Zora's endurance, throughout the first day's ride he restrained his desire to course at full speed, and held the willing mare in check. Even a Frankish horse, if spurred, might have kept the road with them to the first night's rest,--at a Gothic farmstede just beyond Périgueux.
