"Sigurd, you must not do this thing. There is no reason why you should
run this risk."

"There would be no reason why you should call me your friend if I did
otherwise," Sigurd cut him short. "Do you think me a craven, to let you
go alone where you might be tricked or murdered? Have you a weapon?"

"Leif will not allow me so much as a dagger, so to-night I borrowed from
his table the old brass-hilted knife that Eric gave him in his boyhood.
It is unlikely that he will miss that. I have it here." Throwing back
his cloak, he showed it thrust through his girdle.

"Come, then," said Sigurd curtly. "And have a care for your skees. You
are not over-skilful yet."

He caught up the long staff that acts something like a balance-pole in
skeeing, and darted away. Alwin followed, with an occasional prod of his
staff into a shadow that seemed thicker than it should be. By a
side-gate, they left the courtyard and struck out across the fields,
where the snow was packed as hard as a road-bed. Noiseless as birds, and
almost as swift, they skimmed along over the snow-clad plains and
half-frozen marshes.

As was to have been expected, the young Viking was an expert. To see him
shoot down a hillside at lightning speed, his skees as firmly parallel
as though they were of one piece, his graceful body bending, balancing,
steering, was to see the next best thing to flying. Alwin's runners
threw him more than once, lapping one over the other as he was
zigzagging up a slope, so that he tripped and rolled until a snow-bank
stopped him.