Both stood before the fire, and both were brightly dressed, and hardly, but for the drowsy hawk which sat unhooded on his hand, should I have known Lodbrok in the rich dress my father had had prepared for him.

The other was Beorn, the king's falconer, who went everywhere with his master.

These two were speaking together as they stood before the fire, and I thought that what Beorn said was not pleasing to the Dane, for he turned away a little, and answered shortly.
When they saw me both turned, Lodbrok with a smile of welcome, and Beorn with a loud, rough voice crying to me: "Ho, Wulfric, here is a strange thing! This gold ring have I offered to your stranger here for his falcon--which has three wing feathers missing, moreover--and he will not sell, though I trow that a man cast ashore must needs want gold more than a bird which he may not fly save I gain him leave from the king." "The bird is Wulfric's," said Lodbrok quietly.
"Nay, Jarl," I answered, "I would not take so loving a hawk from her master, and over all our manors you may surely fly her." "See you there!" cried Beorn, with a sort of delight, not heeding my last words, "Wulfric will not have her! Now will you sell ?" Then Lodbrok looked at me with a short glance that I could not but understand, and said that it would surely grieve him if I would not take the falcon.
Pleased enough I was, though half unwilling to take what seemed as a forced gift.

Yet to quiet Beorn--whom I never liked, as he was both overbearing and boastful, though of great skill in his art of falconry--I thanked the Dane, and went to where a hawking glove hung on the wall, for my arm would feel the marks of those strong talons for many a day, already.

As I put it on I said that I feared the bird would hardly come to me, leaving her master.
"Once I would have said that she would not," said Lodbrok; "for until today she would bide with no man but myself and her keeper.
But today she has sat on your wrist, so that I know she will love you well, for reasons that are beyond my guessing." And so he shifted the falcon lightly from his wrist to mine, and there she sat quietly, looking from him to me as though she would own us both.
Then said Beorn, holding out his hand, on which he wore his embroidered state glove of office: "This is foolishness.