What may lie in the days to come, who shall know ?" "He who acts now shall see.

Until the Norns set the day of doom for a man, he makes his own future.

Surely they set his end on Ethelbert when he came here." So she says in the old heathen way, but Offa does not note it.

It is in his mazed mind that Ethelbert wrongs him by living to hold back the frontier of Mercia from the eastern sea.
"He is my guest, and I may not touch him," he says dully.

"All the world would cry out on me if harm came to him here.