第82章

Then, as Erik advanced a little, it came into his mind that strangers ought to fix on gifts for the king.So he carefully wrapped up in his robe a piece of ice which he happened to find, and managed to take it to the king by way of a present.But when they reached the palace he sought entrance first, and bade his brother follow close behind.Already the slaves of the king, in order to receive him with mockery as he entered, had laid a slippery hide on the threshold; and when Erik stepped upon it, they suddenly jerked it away by dragging a rope, and would have tripped him as he stood upon it, had not Roller, following behind, caught his brother on his breast as he tottered.So Erik, having half fallen, said that "bare was the back of the brotherless." And when Gunwar said that such a trick ought not to be permitted by a king, the king condemned the folly of the messenger who took no heed against treachery.And thus he excused his flout by the heedlessness of the man he flouted.

Within the palace was blazing a fire, which the aspect of the season required: for it was now gone midwinter.By it, in different groups, sat the king on one side and the champions on the other.These latter, when Erik joined them, uttered gruesome sounds like things howling.The king stopped the clamour, telling them that the noises of wild beasts ought not to be in the breasts of men.Erik added, that it was the way of dogs, for all the others to set up barking when one started it; for all folk by their bearing betrayed their birth and revealed their race.But when Koll, who was the keeper of the gifts offered to the king, asked him whether he had brought any presents with him, he produced the ice which he had hidden in his breast.And when he had handed it to Koll across the hearth, he purposely let it go into the fire, as though it had slipped from the hand of the receiver.All present saw the shining fragment, and it seemed as though molten metal had fallen into the fire.Erik, maintaining that it had been jerked away by the carelessness of him who took it, asked what punishment was due to the loser of the gift.

The king consulted the opinion of the queen, who advised him not to relax the statute of the law which he had passed, whereby he gave warning that all who lost presents that were transmitted to him should be punished with death.Everyone else also said that the penalty by law appointed ought not to be remitted.And so the king, being counselled to allow the punishment as inevitable, gave leave for Koll to be hanged.