He used woodcraft to hide their trail the first part of the way. Later was no need, in that spear-wall of brush. He did not drag her along. Once she tried to break from the deerpath he found. The withes stopped her with claws.

His own wayfaring was none too easy in the gloom. She reached the cove as ragged as he, footsore, bleeding, tripping, and gasping.

Waves clinked on the strand. A nightingale sang. The moon, low, made a gleaming bridge across the waters, against which hull and dragon head of the beached ship reared black. Not many stars showed through its bright-ness, in the dusky sky. A breeze strolled cool, bearing a smell of kelp.

When he trod forth, Helgi's watchmen ashore leaped from their little fire. He greeted them. Their cheers roused the rest from sleeping bags, to crowd about, pound him on the back and offer their coarsest good wishes. He grinned and urged Olof onward, over the side, into the hull of his ship.

"Now take off your clothes," he said; and this she must do in the moonlight before them all.

He pointed under the foredeck. She crept into the tarry-thick darkness beneath and lay down on a mattress, fists clenched at sides. He sought her.

At dawn he fetched his chests, then stood out across the Belt. On lonely Ærö the Danes made a safer camp. For a week they hunted, fished, wrestled, swam, gambled, yarned, or idled. The king joined them, save when he took the queen.

She gave him no trouble; she only suffered him. She never wept; nor did she speak more than she barely must. "You are a fair woman, Olof," he whispered one night into her hair. "I wish our weird had been otherwise." She lay stiff. He sighed. "I think you cannot care for men. And now it's too late between us two."

"We may not be done yet, you and I," she said.

"What?" he asked. She would speak no further. A curlew shrilled through rising chill mist. Helgi shivered and drew close to her, merely for warmth. She did not flow to meet him.

Next day he crossed the Belt again and set her off near her lodge. Neither said farewell. She waded ashore in the grimy tatters of her gown. His men shoved the ship clear, hauled themselves back aboard, and took oars, Olof did not watch them spider-walk from her. She was already trudging home.

IV

That same summer, to King Hroar in Leidhra came his father-in-law Ægthjof the Göta jarl. Feuds had broken out. Ægthjof slew Heidhleif of the Ulfing family, but the kinsmen proved too strong and he must flee.

Young though he was, Hroar did not order the war-arrow passed from steading to steading. "What boots it to raise a host, kill and burn and sack, making still more death-foes for ourselves?" he asked. "Oh, the Ynglings in Uppsala would like that! What was left of Gotaland would stand firm on their side."

He sent word to Jarl Sævil in Scania, who in turn sought the heads of the Ulfings. As go-between, Sævil arranged peace. Ægthjof must pay a high weregild, but Hroar helped him. A pair of marriages were made as well, to bind the houses together for at least a while.

"You have served me most wonderfully," said Ægthjof, wringing Hroar's hand before leaving for home. "I hope I or child of mine may someday do the like for you."

"That's a kindly thought," smiled the king. "However, for me to need help, first I must be in trouble."

"Thence comes fame," said Ægthjof.

"May not a fame better and longer-lived come from building the land? We've work for many lifetimes—nailing down peace within and without this kingdom, clearing fields, raising houses, launching ships for fishery and trade, making good laws and seeing that they're kept, bringing in outland arts. . . . Well, kinsman, I need not talk as if I stood on the Thingstone!"

Helgi returned in the best of humor and was thereafter his old self. At first he lost no chance to make known how he had avenged himself upon Queen Olof. In time he stopped speaking or even thinking about it.

Not so the woman.

She knew folk would guess what had befallen her, and word floating to Saxland from Denmark would soon end any doubts. This would not unseat her if she showed strength. Hence she refused to talk about that week. When she learned that a thrall and a hireling had been gossiping, she had them haled before her; for besmirching her name, she ordered the freeman slain out of hand, the thrall flogged to death. In other ways, too, she fared forward so sternly—withal, skilfully—that men said she was a king, not a queen, in all save body.

They did not know how long she lay awake of nights, how ill she slept, how alone in the woods she raised crooked fingers to heaven and screamed.

Worst for her was when she knew she was fruitful.

After a witchwife failed to bring the child forth early, Olof made plans. Never should the world snicker or Helgi Halfdansson gloat because of this. She gave out that she would fare to Slesvik on the mainland, travel around and see what might be done to end the strife between houses which was wrecking that kingdom.

And indeed she did, and did it well, sometimes bringing two sides together, sometimes throwing the weight of her small but good host on one pan of the scales. None thought it strange that now and then she vanished. She must talk to the headmen in secret.

Heavy clothes for winter weather hid the rounding of her belly. Did some wonder, they knew well to keep their lips sewn.

When her time drew nigh, she went to a lonely hut chosen and readied beforehand. Guards ringed it. The queen did not let them in, on the grounds that it was cramped and she wanted peace to think and (she hinted) work magics. They pitched tents against rain, huddled in the mud over smoky fires, blew on blue fingers and tried to keep the worst rust off their iron. Olof stayed indoors, with none but a midwife and two old women servants.

On a night of storm, dankness and darkness, hail dashed against walls, trees groaning in wind, she brought forth a girl-child. "Cry out," said the midwife, seeing the sweat upon her. "It eases pain."

"No," said the queen between clamped jaws. "Not for this."

No father being on hand, the midwife took the babe, newly washed and swaddled, and laid it on the earthern floor at the mother's bedside. Olof stared dull-eyed through unrestful redness of torches, at the tiny squalling thing. "Will you keep it, my lady?" asked the midwife.

"Never will I lay that at my breast," said Olof. She
raised a hand. "Hold, though. Don't do away with it. It
may come in useful, somehow, someday ... I know
not "

"Then what will you name her?"

OloFs gaze wandered listlessly about until it fell on a hound she had, a bitch called Yrsa. Laughter clanked in her throat. She pointed from dog to baby. "Yes, I'll give her a name," she said. "Name her Yrsa." She lay back.

The midwife and the crones shivered.

They could but obey, however. And, this being not unawaited, they had already found a wet-nurse.

When Olof was ready again for travel, they dared ask what she wanted done about Yrsa. "A single word about the brat will be your banes," she snapped. "But bring her along. I'll find the right house for her to adopted in, as highborn children are adopted."

Back on Als, she got hold of a poor crofter and his wife. She handed them the baby and some gifts, and told them this was the offspring of a faithful thrall-woman who died giving birth, and hight Yrsa. They were to raise the girl in every way as if she were their own.

Thereafter Olof never saw or asked about the daughter she hated.

Years went by.

Denmark waxed in might and wealth. The kingly brothers worked well together. Hroar steered the realm and strove to better it, with a wisdom that grew as he himself did. Showing enough manly skills to keep the respect of warriors, he became much loved. He and his queen Valthjona had three children who lived: a girl Freyvar and two boys, Hrodhmund and Hrörik, the latter being born rather late in their lives. They were a happy pair. Hroar only took another woman to his bed when he had long been away from home.

He must travel a lot, building up the land as he wished. Yearly he made a round of the shire-Things, and also heard men out alone at great length. He went to see for himself how matters stood here or there. He sailed abroad, under the white shield, though oftener he guested outlanders in one of his own halls and listened closely to what they told.

Before men could do good work, they must know that what they wrought would not merely become bait for the greedy and ruthless. To this end, Hroar took the field himself every now and then. Mostly, though, he left war to a willing Helgi.

Each summer the younger king sought battle. Sometimes these were plundering cruises, to keep his guardsmen content and make yeomen eager to join him between sowing and harvest. But mainly he stayed around Denmark. In the earlier years he tracked down robbers, he ransacked viking lairs, he overawed whoever might have thought of troubling the peace.

Outlanders stayed all too likely to do this, especially if egged on by Svithjodh or Saxland. When he and Hroar felt themselves firm-seated at home, Helgi began to make them sorry for their mischief. Would they not yield on being asked, take his sword in their hands, plight faith and pay scot to the lords of Leidhra, they were apt to wake one morning and see dragons on the water, or inland a host in the swine-array of battle, a red shield and a raven banner.

These little chieftains could never match Danish strength. Nor did they often league together; the brothers soon learned how to bring their quarrels to a boil.

Armed clashes gladdened the wolves and carrion birds. Helgi gained scars, and a few times lay at the head of hell-road. Always he healed, and always he snatched victory.

In the course of those years, he overran Fyn and every lesser island. He bragged he had brought nearly as many kings under him as he had women.

"And when will you marry?" Hroar would ask.

"When I'm ready," Helgi would shrug. "No haste. The one time I did go wooing, it went not well." He could joke about that fading memory. "I know how you dangle the idea of a tie with me before great men, to get what you want from them. Why not keep the lure useable?"

"When you and I are dead—"

"Then you've already a son. You fear by-blows of mine may challenge him? Unlikely. My bastards come cheap, they're so many. Indeed, Hroar, best for the Skjoldungs may be that I do not ever take a queen, whose children may think they have a claim. Now do pull together that long face of yours and let's fill another horn of mead."

The brothers no longer saw each other daily, even in winter, and thus their meetings called for merriment as much as for council. Hroar had gone from Leidhra.

He did not leave in anger. The understanding between those two was such that once, when he came back and Helgi gave a feast for him, Hroar could say:

"You look like the greater of us, in that you keep the olden seat of the Dane-Kings; and this I'll freely give to you, and to any heirs you may have. In return I want the ring you hold—for I have as much right to that as you do."

Men who overheard caught their breath. They knew Hroar could only be speaking of one ring. It was not a plain gold coil, off which pieces might be broken to reward a skald for making a lay or someone else for some other service. No, this was a thick band in the form of a snake which twisted about and about itself until it bit its own tail, there where its garnet eyes glittered baleful. A story says it was first among the riches which Fenja and Menja ground for King Frodhi the Peace-Good. In any case, it had long been the pride of the Skjoldungs.

Helgi merely smiled and answered: "Nothing would be more seemly, kinsman, than that you got that ring."

Nonetheless, Hroar had sound reasons for moving away. Two royal households in the same town, each holding its troop of mettlesome young men, spelled fights that might become deadly. Not always could a feud then be stopped, between families who ought to war on the enemies of Denmark instead of each other.

Furthermore, Leidhra was ill-placed for his uses. The tale went that formerly the fjord had reached this far inland. That was no longer true. Only a sluggish brook wound past. A sheltered harbor, open to the sea but deep within the island, would draw traders and their wealth.

Hroar founded Roskilde on the bay named for it. This became the chief town of the kingdom. An easy ride from Leidhra, it was still far enough away to hold off most trouble. In his day men called it Hroarskildi, Hroar's Spring, from an outpouring of pure water which gave the stead not only drink but holiness.

Of course, the settlement did not leap into being overnight. At first naught was there but a hall which the king had made, with its outbuildings and the houses of free-born hirelings, sheds and wharfs on the shore for ships. Though fields rolled away southward, heath and marsh lay to the east, wildwood gloomed to the west. Yet men said no goodlier home had been in the North since Odin dwelt on earth.

Huge it was, of the finest timbers, cunningly carved and painted. The beam-ends atop the gables branched out in the shape of mighty antlers, gilded to blaze beneath sunlight: wherefore the hall was called Hart.

Upon this house came grief.

It may have been ill luck. It may have been the wrath of a god. Open-handed toward men, the brothers were rather heedless about offering to Æsir and Vanir. They did what kings were supposed to do at the high holy times. Otherwise, Helgi might slay a cock or the like, once in a while for luck; but mainly he trusted in his own strength. When Hroar's thoughts turned from kingship or kindred, they went more to outland learning than what he might owe any gods or buried forebears.

Be that as it may, the tale goes that Hart became haunted. Long ago a king named Hermodh was driven from home for his greed and cruelty: he was among the worst of the dark Skjoldungs. Skulking in the fens, he got children on a trollwife. Of his blood was that being hight Grendel, who entered the new hall at night and grabbed men for his food.

In England they say this went on for twelve years. The Danes call that unlikely. Would not a warrior like Helgi have rid his brother of woe? Suppose, instead, Hroar built Hart soon after he had done well by Ægthjof and Helgi had done ill by Olof. He lived there nine years, while the brothers worked together until at last Danes felt happier in their homes than ever since the Peace-Good. Then Helgi, restless, busked for a long-faring to lands unknown. He may have sailed west to England, or east and north to Norway and Finland and Bjarmiland, or east and south down the rivers of Russia, now raiding, now trading, ever tasting fresh winds beneath new heavens; and three years blew by ere his ships came home again.

Hardly was he gone when Grendel shambled forth. Through those three years the hall Hart lay waste, and sorrow dwelt on the brow of Hroar.

He waited for Helgi's return, since he knew of none else who might cope with the monster. Yet he could not tell if Helgi's bones bleached upon strange earth. Thus he welcomed an offer of help from the son of Jarl Ægthjof whom formerly he had saved: his kinsman Bjovulf of Götaland, the man that in England they call Beowulf.

The tale is well-known, how Bjovulf gripped Grendel and tore the arm from him, how Grendel's mother came in vengeance, how Bjovulf followed her beneath the water and slew her likewise, to win a name which will be undying as long as the world shall stand. Enough, here, that he had but lately gone home, when Helgi came—and found all Denmark ringing with what that outland hero had done, hardly an ear left open for his own deeds.

He was not so unmanly that he begrudged Bjovulf a well-earned fame. Nonetheless he harked back wistfully to years when he too was young. He was no gaffer—little more than thirty winters had whitened the world since first he yelled his way into it—but a freshness was gone from his eyes. If naught else, folk took for granted that Helgi Halfdansson would do things like sailing further than men had done before. Ah, otherwise it was when he, a boy, overthrew a king and avenged himself upon a queen!

Maybe that was the reason why, next summer, he planned a cruise which would take him by Als. He said he wanted to scout out Saxon realms. He could do little in northern Jutland before he knew how stood the south. No doubt this was true. However . . . did he remember crowing over honor regained ... or, even, brown eyes and bravely clenched fists?

He knew nothing about Yrsa. None did, save Olof her mother, the midwife, and two grannies who had since died. The crofter pair who were rearing her had well-nigh forgotten that the girl was not bom to them.

They dwelt on the north shore of the island, which gives on Aabenraa Fjord. Southward reached heath, speckled with stands of low, gnarled oak and evergreen, till this turned into willow marsh and afterward a greenwood impassable save for a few trails. Northward were broad yellow dunes, then water, a glimpse of mainland on the left and otherwise waves, clouds, gulls. Often rain, mist, snow, or endless winter nights closed in. Here was a lean and windy land, where a few families dwelt well apart because each needed many acres to wrest a living from and none had much to lure robbers.

Here grew up Yrsa, daughter of Helgi the king and Olof the queen.

She knew she was a fosterling. Besides being told so, she looked altogether unlike the parents or their children. However, this was common. A man might drown or a woman cough out her lungs, leaving a brood behind. A child was a pair of hands, therefore always wanted. Yrsa gave scant thought to a mother whom she believed had died in thralldom, a father unknown. Nor did she think whether her lot was happy or unhappy. Later she remembered these years as better than they maybe were.

True, she knew toil, hoe and hatchet, quern and kettle, loom and broom, the untold and untellable tasks of a girl who was meant for a croftwife. But life was not wholly aching back or bleeding fingers. It could be caring for a baby, or gathering nuts and berries amidst a giggling gang, or singing and daydreaming while she grazed the geese.

Garb was harsh gray wadmal, patched and tattered. Children went barefoot in summer, at best had birchbark shoes in winter. But they grew hardy and seldom minded the weather. Food was rough and sometimes scant. But gruel, black bread, a bit of goat cheese, hoarded leeks kept one going until the seasons came for fresh-caught fish, oysters, cormorants' eggs, the harvest of woods and moors. The dwelling was a single murky room, if Yrsa did not count the part wherein goat, geese, and pig were penned. Yet those beasts breathed forth warmth as well as smells, and she knew closeness to her dozen foster-siblings, and when in the dark she heard Father and Mother thresh about, she could hope to welcome a small newcomer next year.

She knew terror. Gales whirled from the north while Father was out in the fishing boat he shared with his neighbors. Did he never come home—or did he come home a strandwasher, a staring bloated eel-eaten thing such as drifted ashore now and again—it could mean not only sorrow but hungering to death, or going into thralldom for lack of any other help. Ran grinned on the sea bottom; nicors lurked in the fen-pools; the Elmwife brewed fog; drows rode the ridgepole at night, thatch acrackle beneath their drumming heels; the least thing done wrong might bring deadly-bad luck. Or, when a ship drew close as if to make landing, or strangers came afoot, it was into the underbrush and hide, for the poorest of girls still owns what a robber will want!

Yet she also knew friendship and merrymaking, both at home and among the neighbors. Neighbors could backbite, dreadful squabbles could hatch, but in the end everybody stood together against the world. There were the four great holy times: Blessing, Midsummer, Harvest, Yule, times to be awed and afterward rejoice. Someday she would be grown, and for a year or two steal off in the light nights with youth and youth, until one of them married her and she as housewife would offer milk to the elves and beer to her guests in the sight of all. Meanwhile the children watched ships pass by, miles off, ships that clearly would never land here (oh, but if they only would!)—striding oars or boldly striped sail, a far, far spark of sunlight off metal; who knew, maybe a king was aboard, maybe a god?

Winter brought cold and darkness and tightened belts . . . likewise lessened work, ice to crunch underfoot and ice to slide across, snowballs and snowmen, time for the beloved old stories. Spring brought toil and spilling rains, likewise white hawthorns and a sky full of birds returning from none knew where. Summer was green, everywhere green, dizziness of smells, honeybees abuzz, sunlight in blinding hot torrents—save when a thunderstorm came, but that was wonderful: flash! flew Thor's hammer, and crack! it smote trolls, until the wheels of his goat-car rumbled away, down and down the reaches of heaven. Fall blazed, gave fruits with both hands, bellies got filled to bursting, heather bloomed purple, long-lived full moons drenched night in brightness which glistened on hoarfrost and on the dew over spiderwebs, and made a rocking roadway across the waters from here to world-edge; and high overhead sounded the wild goose wander-song. ...

Yrsa did not understand why her foster-siblings paid no heed to such things. Well, they were dear, but they were different.

V

"I'd like to see for myself how this land has fared," said Helgi, "but somehow don't think I'd be very welcome under my own name." None could talk him out of his wish to tramp alone about Als. His ship let him off in a cove he remembered and would call there daily, beginning a week hence.

He looked for no trouble. Who would attack as big a fellow as him, especially when he went in rags? Besides, his staff was the shaft of a spear whose head and pins he carried next his skin, along with a dagger. He waved a cheery farewell and strode off under the trees.

The news dashed him a bit, that Olof was not at her lodge. Her overseer gave him a sour stare, but a hireling filled a bowl and let him sleep in a haymow, in swap for his songs and tales. He gave out that he was a homeless Himmerlander in search of work. "Here we've no need for you," his host told him. "If you go further, though, to the north coast, you'll find a clutch of poor folk who do some fishing. I daresay they'd be glad of stout arms on a pair of oars."

Helgi shrugged and followed the rede, mainly to spy out those beaches. Now that he had Fyn, he needed close knowledge about this side of the Little Belt.

And thus he topped a high dune, and from afar saw a girl who walked along the strand. Last night had been stormy. She was out after driftwood, amber, or whatever else might have come ashore.

He knew that if she saw him coming she would dash toward a hut, unseen behind dwarf pines, whose smoke smudged the sky. It would be pleasant to chat alone if she was not too ugly. Anyhow, when he had shown by laying no hand on her that he meant well, her kinsmen should open up to him. Else they might fear he was an outlaw, or a thrall-catcher looking them over.

Helgi crouched back down behind the dune while his eyes scouted a path. He could zigzag from thicket to bush to boulder, he could use his hunter's tricks to sneak through the ling, until he was almost upon her.

And so he did. But when he peered from behind a scrub oak, the heart soared in him.

This was a windy day. Sunlight speared through hurrying clouds, sheened on the waters, then was gone again as shadow swept across the world. Waves boomed inward, burst white over skerries, tumbled back and rushed in afresh, gray, green, and steel-blue. To one side, misty as a dream, lifted mainland hills. The wind whistled up white-caps, roared in boughs and soughed in heather. Gulls rode upon it, mewing. It was cold and tasted of salt, it thrust and slid. It tossed the hair of the maiden who picked her barefoot way over the sand between the sprawled brown strands of kelp.

She was not tall; standing straight, which she did, she would reach halfway up his breast. A drab gown strained across small breasts, slim waist and limbs, suppleness overlaid by an endearing coltishness. Beneath soot and suntan, her skin was fair; freckles dusted a tilted nose. That face was broad and high in the cheekbones, tapering to a strong little chin, mouth wide and soft, lips parted a bit to show good teeth, eyes huge, wide-set, long-lashed under arching brows, the gray-blue of her seas. She had woven herself a garland of yellow dandelion flowers. The locks beneath flowed to her hips. When the fleeting sunshine touched them, they shone as if burnished.

Helgi trod forth. "Why, you're lovely!" he cried.

She sprang back with a stifled shriek, dropped the wood she had gathered, and ran. He loped alongside her. "Don't be afraid," he said. "I'd never harm you. I want to be your friend."

Grimly, she ran. He put on speed, got ahead of her, barred the way. She snatched a stick, spat like a wildcat and jabbed at him. He liked that grit. Spreading his arms, he gusted forth laughter. "You win," he said. "I yield me. Do whatever you will."

She lowered the stick. Her breathing slowed. He could overwhelm her—but he merely stood and smiled. What a big and handsome man he was, too! That frame did not belong in those foul, flapping tatters. His face went with the body, craggy-nosed, eyes heaven-blue, flaxen mane to the shoulders and beard closely cropped. Scars lay white among the golden hairs on his arms.

"What's your name, lady," he asked with an outlander lilt, "and of what folk do you hail?"

She pointed to the smoke. "I'm yonder crofter's daughter," she whispered through wind and surf. "Well, no, really, I... my mother was a thrall. I hight Yrsa."

He stepped to her. She stood as if under a spell, hearing her heart knock. He took both her hands in his, which were hard and warm. Gazing for a long time, he said thoughtfully: "You do not have the eyes of a thrall."

They sat down, backs to the blast, and talked. She had never imagined a stranger would care about the day-today life which was hers. "Who are you?" she kept asking. He would put her off: "Tell me more of yourself, Yrsa."

"There's something hidden about you," he said. "How old are you?"

"Why, I ... I never counted," she answered, astonished.

"Think." He took her fingers. "This year; last year—" After a good deal of finger-play, she was flushed and half dizzy, and guessed maybe she had thirteen or fourteen winters.

"I was that age when—Well, no matter," he said. "We both come of fast-growing stock."

They shared cheese and hardtack from his wallet. Later, when he laid an arm about her waist, she did not shrink, but sighed and leaned her head on his breast.

A gull wheeled low, milk-white in a shaft of sunlight

"I'm head over heels with you," said Helgi. "I am."

"Oh, now," breathed Yrsa.

He must grin. "You being a crofter's daughter," he said, "it's fitting that a poor beggar should get you."

She jumped from him in horror.' What? No, no, no!"

He rose to loom above her. "Yes, oh, yes." Taking a careful, unbreakable hold: "Come away with me, Yrsa. You must. A Norn stood here today."

She started to weep and plead. He stood a while, in noise and chill and hasty shadows, before he said: "I could bear you off against your will. But your tears would hurt me too much. That's a word few women have ever had from me. I ask you, then, if you'll freely be mine."

She looked at him, and recalled the neighborhood louts she knew; and suddenly the headlong blood overran her. Crying and laughing, she came to him.

They sought shelter together. She knew a spring where trees gave murmurous lee and summer had mellowed the grass into hay.

Helgi abode in the woods, not wanting anybody to pry and leer. She sought him daily, smuggling along food which neither of them truly tasted. They in the hut marked that something had come over her, but she slipped free of their watchfulness. Not that that was very much; nobody hereabouts would take to wife a girl whose belly did not show she would give him children.

At the right time, Helgj went away. He told her not to be frightened if a ship came. When that happened and everyone else fled, she stayed. The richly clad man who leaped ashore told her he was the Dane-King. "I wouldn't have cared if you were only a gangrel," she gasped, and fainted.

Afterward she found her foster-folk and coaxed them back. Helgi gifted them lavishly before he sailed off with Yrsa.

He could not leave his fleet, which he had told to stand by at Fyn. Men would scorn him, did he give up his yearly faring and moon lovesick ashore. So he turned Yrsa over to his brother Hroar and then put out to sea. For him and her alike, the next months were weary.

Said Queen Valthjona to her husband: "I think she'll be more than just another of Helgi's doxies."

"Maybe." Hroar tugged his beard and scowled. "HI is this. A thrall-born crofter-brat!"

"No, now, she's a sweet girl," Valthjona said. "Besides, for the good name of the Skjoldungs, I'll have to take her in hand."

There was much that a lady must know: everything about the running of a big household; arts such as weaving and brewing; good dress, good manners, good speech; the lore and rites of the high gods and the ancestors; who her man's friends were, who his unfriends, and how to deal with each. Yrsa could not learn it all in a day.

"Yet she's willing," said Valthjona to Hroar, "and had I begun that lowly, I'd have mastered what I must slower than she does."

Aside from missing Helgi, Yrsa was a gladsome soul, every day singing while she flitted about her tasks. She kept many beasts, dogs and horses and birds, and made much of them. She did not like to go hunting. On the other hand, in a boat she was as deft and gleeful as any boy. Young herself, she frolicked amongst the youngsters at Hart. Humbly reared, she was friendlier toward hirelings and thralls—even listening to their long-drawn tales of woe and trying to help—than Hroar or Valthjona, though these were reckoned kindly.

"And yet," said the queen to the king, "she knows their work so well, having done it herself, they don't twice try cheating or slacking on her. Not that she has them whipped. She asks in the mildest tone if they'd rather serve someone else. Of course they wouldn't."

"Hm, yes, I've come to like her myself," Hroar said.

"She's of good stock," Valthjona said. "Her mother may or may not have been a thrall as was told her. But if so, I swear she was a highborn woman taken captive. And her father, why, he may have been a king."

When Helgi came home and saw Yrsa in linen and furs and gold, the keys of his household at her belt, graciously greeting him, he stood as if hammer-smitten. Toward dawn of that night, he said that being his bed-mate was not good enough for her. He would make her his queen.

And thus he did. Their wedding feast was talked of for years.

Hroar took that chance to befriend his new-caught islander chieftains. He invited them, and by gifts and fair words he bound them to the Skjoldungs. "Yrsa's brought us this, at least," he remarked to Valthjona.

"Do you hold it against her that she stands in the way of Helgi making a more useful marriage?" she asked. "Why, he can take as many wives as he pleases."

"None other do please him," said Hroar. "He doesn't even keep lemans any more." He smiled at Valthjona. "Ah, well, I'm like that myself."

Yrsa kept on learning how to be a lady, until folk said that young though she was, Leidhra had seldom had so fine a queen. They marked, too, that Helgi grew more and more mild. He began to spend his summers in Denmark, doing Hroar's kind of work. If less patient than his brother, he was equally just. Men became happy to give their lawsuits into his hands. They thought he talked things over with Yrsa and that she softened his sternness.

Young she was, however. For two years she got no child. In the third year she had a boy.

That was a long and hard birth, upon Yule Eve to boot. Helgi sat in his hall, drinking, hearkening to a skald, talking to his men. What he said made scant sense; and ever he turned his head doorward, as if to strain through the storm outside to hear cries of pain in the lady-bower.

At last the midwife came. In a huge hush, save for the roaring of fires and gale, she walked, bearing a bundle which she laid on the earth before the high seat. Helgi sat still. Sweat gleamed on his brow and cheeks, reeked from his clothes.

"I bring you your son, King Helgi," said the midwife.

"And Yrsa?" croaked from him.

"I hope she does well, my lord."

"Give me our son." The hands shook which Helgi lifted, to take the baby and put him on his knee.

Next day, being sure Yrsa would live, he slaughtered a herd of horses and oxen in the holy shaw, and called men to a feast only less mighty than his wedding. Himself he poured water upon the boy and named him Hrolf. Warriors who had fared beside him from end to end of the known world, clanged blade on shield and hailed their atheling.

Yrsa was slow to get back her full health. She never bore another child. Nonetheless she and Helgi stayed happy together. They rejoiced in their Hrolf. He was small but handsome, merry, quick on his feet and quick of wit.

Those were quiet years for Denmark. Still, the brothers held a close eye on Gotaland and Svithjodh, where much was happening.

The Göta-King Hugleik—maybe in search of fame to match Helgi's—took a war-fleet past Jutland and Saxland, to Frankish country. There he harried about; but the Franks trapped him and his, and he fell in battle, Among the few Götar to win free was Bjovulf, who swam in his byrnie out to their ships. Sad was his homecoming. For this doughtiness, the Götar would make him their lord. He refused, and himself raised Hugleik's son Hserdredh before the Thing. However, as the strongest headman after Ægthjof died, Bjovulf must needs steer the land in all but name.

At that time, the Swede-King in Svithjodh was Egil. Like other Ynglings, he was a spendthrift offerer to the gods, and a wizard besides. Maybe a spell of his went wrong; anyhow, once a bull which he was about to give broke loose, gored its way past the thralls already hanged in honor of Odin, and escaped to the wilderness. Long did it roam, wreaking harm upon folk. King Egil led huntsmen after it. He rode from them in those leafy reaches, and suddenly came upon the beast. He cast his spear. The bull shook loose the barb, thundered forward, laid open the king's horse and tossed him to earth. Egil drew sword. The bull got in first. A horn stabbed him to the heart. Then the king's men arrived and did away with the brute. Afterward they bore Egil away and buried him at Uppsala.

He had had a brother named Ottar. Now strife over the lordship broke out between Egil's son Aali, and Ottar's sons Asmund and Adhils. It raged in Svithjodh for years. Asmund fell, and a beaten Adhils fled into Götaland. The Götar, under King Hxrdredh. backed him. But when their host entered Svithjodh, Aali was again victorious and Hserdredh himself met death.

The Götar took Bjovulf for their new king, as they had wanted to do all along. He called on his kinsman and friend Hroar, who sent warriors. In another fight, on frozen Lake Vanem, Aali died. Adhils rode to Uppsala and was hailed King of the Swedes.

Hroar and Bjovulf thus had hopes of a lord in Svithjodh who would be thankful to them. Furthermore, this was no warlike man. Rather, Adhils went deeper into spellcraft than any Yngling before him. Having gained what he wanted, he left the world in peace as far as he was concerned.

Even so, when the Skjoldung brothers helped him they made a mistake. They did not know this right away. Other sorrows came upon them first.

Seven years had passed since the day that Helgi found Yrsa on the strand, when Queen Olof came for her revenge.

VI

The crofter dared do no otherwise than seek out Olof and tell her how a seafarer who said he was the Dane-King had borne off the girl she gave him. She sat unmoving until, very faintly, she quirked a smile. From then on she was always eager to hear news from Denmark. It did not come readily, because she never let on that anything had changed and folk still feared speaking to her of Helgi Halfdansson. But in this way and that, she learned how he and one Yrsa, whose parentage was unknown, were happily wedded,

"You shall get grief and shame, Helgi, where today you have honor and gladness," she vowed, alone with her ghosts.

Time passed, though, for she could not fare off at once like a man. Moreover, she found joy in thinking about what anguish lay in her bestowal. Foremost was her need to make sure he would not strike back. To that end she wove a web of alliances, both with other Saxons and with Jutes to the north. After what had happened in the islands, these lords knew they must stand together if they wanted to stay free. But Olof worked and waited until she was certain their greed and quarrelsomeness could not be used to pry them apart.

At last she made known that she would fare to Denmark in quest of understanding with the Skjoldungs. Folk liked this. It would much help trade if the dread of war could be lifted. She had only three ships. Therefore none thought it odd that she chose a month when she knew Hroar and Helgi would be away from home, making their round of the shire-Things. She could establish herself with their queens, sound those women out, win their friendship and thus a good word to their husbands.

The Saxon craft came down Roskilde Fjord and moored at the docks before the town. A number of merchantmen were already on hand. It bustled around warehouses and the gaily decked booths which traders had set up—men, wives, horses, dogs, cattle, swine, children atumble among the livestock, here maybe a whore, yonder maybe an outlander from as far off as the Frankish realms, a broiling racket and a swirl of colors. High rose the stockade behind, at each corner a watch-tower where gleamed the helmets and byrnies of warriors on guard, and the heads of outlaws moldered on stakes. Above that wall could be seen the sod roofs of many houses, green and flower-flecked now in summer. Smoke drifted savory toward the gulls which shrieked in a snowstorm of wings.

On either side the land rolled back from sun-glittery water, cleared save for woodlots, plowed and planted, rich and peaceful. High on a hill, ringed by a holy oaken-shaw, a shingle-built temple lifted roof upon roof. Nearby, mighty amidst its outbuildings, the hall called Hart raised antlers which flamed with gold.

"They've done right well, yon brethren," said her skipper to Olof.

She stood on the foredeck, fists clenched at her sides: a small woman, her gown sea-stained, gray streaks in her hair and lines graven deep in a face where the broad bones stood stark, nonetheless stiff of back and haughty of look. "Maybe they won't forever after," she said, and beckoned the marshal of her household troops. To him she gave a most exact message. He and several of his men strode to Hart, in mail they had carefully polished, spears aloft, cloaks of red and blue blowing off their shoulders.

While Helgi was gone, Yrsa's custom was to bring her son Hrolf and stay with Valthjona. Those women liked each other. Besides, Hroar's dwelling was better than anything in Leidhra. Olof had learned this.

Her men asked to see Yrsa alone. She received them in a bower where she sat spinning with her maidens. The girls made big eyes when the shaggy Saxons trod into their room.

"Welcome," smiled Yrsa. "Talk has buzzed, how three more ships have docked this day. Whence come you and what would you?"

"I hight Gudhmund, lady." The marshal's way was as rough as his form of the Northern tongue. Folk had not the manners at Olof’s little offside court which they did here. "I bring you greeting from my queen." And he told who she was.

"Why, how wonderful!" Yrsa clapped her hands, though she reddened as deeply as any of her maidens. While the tale of her husband's doings long ago in Als was not common talk any more, she had heard it. "Olof would at last be our friend? Of course, of course! Let her come at once." She turned to a girl. "Thorhild, go find the cooks—"

"Hold, lady," said Gudhmund. "My queen told me to tell you, she would on no account be a guest here." Yrsa frowned. "What?"

"She has a word for you, lady, if you will come to her."

Yrsa's scowl deepened. Queen Valthjona might have warned her to refuse so insulting an invitation, had Valthjona been there. But Yrsa felt she had better learn what this was all about. She took time to dress well: in a white gown embroidered with green vines and leaves, linen headdress, golden chain around her neck and golden coils on her arms, shoes of kid buckled with silver, a scarlet cloak trimmed with ermine. She summoned guardsmen to ride along. Almost, she let the Saxons walk, then at the last moment thought they should not have to be humbled just because their queen was bitchy, and ordered horses saddled for them.

In color and clatter, between gaudy shields and under bright spears, Yrsa rode forth to her doom.

At the dock she dismounted, left her men ranked, and herself sprang lithely onto the foredeck of the ship. For a while she and Olof clashed eyes. The crowd ashore, goggling at the sight, grew still. Only the gulls cried, a breeze whittered, wavelets clucked on strakes, tackle creaked.

"Welcome to Denmark," said Yrsa slowly. "Why would you not be our guest?"

Still Olof stared at her. In seven years, the barefoot strand-lass had become a woman. Not tall either, Yrsa likewise walked straight and supple; bronze hair, gray eyes, gently molded face were good to see; small dimples made by laughter edged her lips. Even today she could not really glower.

"I have no honor wherewith to repay King Helgi," said Olof in a flat voice.

Yrsa bridled. "Little honor did you show me when I dwelt in your land." Yet eagerness leaped in her. She leaned forward, reached as if to take the older woman by the hands, and said not altogether steadily: "I wonder . . . can you tell me about my kindred? I've thought it may not be such as I heard—"

Then Olof smiled. "Why, yes, my dear. It's not impossible I could tell you something about that. In fact, I made this journey hither mostly because I wanted to make the truth known to you." She drew a deep, tasting breath. "Tell me, are you happy in your marriage?"

Bewildered, flushing, Yrsa nonetheless answered with gladness. "Yes, I must say I am, I who have such a brave and famous king to husband."

Shuddering for joy, Olof spoke forth, that men might hear not merely down in the hull but on the wharf: "You've less reason to be content than you think, He is your father, and you are my daughter."

One scream did Yrsa let out.

Thereafter she shouted that this was a filthy lie and Helgi would burn everything on Als to cleanse his honor. Olof pressed in, unrelenting. She had had years to make ready her words. She had brought along as a witness the midwife who drew Yrsa from her and heard how that name was given; she had even brought the skull of the dog.

Guardsmen saw their Dane-Queen sink to the deck, riven by weeping, while the Saxon woman stood above her and grinned. They hefted their weapons and shuffled forward. "No, hold, hold," mumbled their captain. "I fear . . . this is nothing ... we can kill. O all bright elves, help us this day!"

But naught flew over Yrsa save sea-mews.

At length she rose and gasped, "I think my mother is the worst and most heartless who, who, who ever lived. This thing is unheard of. It will—will never be forgotten."

"You can thank Helgi for that," said Olof.

And, astounding those who stood there under the sun, she stepped forward, took her daughter in her arms, drew the tangle-tressed head onto her bosom, and said: "Come home with me, Yrsa. Come home in honor and respect, and I'll make everything as good for you as I can."

Yrsa drew free. She waited until she had gathered strength, then answered evenly: "I know not what the outcome of that may be. But here I can stay no longer, when I know how impossibly I am placed."

Turning, she left the ship, mounted her horse, and rode back at an easy gait. She was a Skjoldung.

The tale does not say what passed between her and Queen Valthjona, or her and Hrolf Helgjsson.

Nor does it say just what Olof did. No doubt she held further talks with her daughter, and a tongue made cunning by years of kingcraft urged over and over that Yrsa come back to Als. In truth, if she forsook her husband, where else might she find shelter? A woman alone is booty. At the same time, belike Olof lingered no great while. Word would have gotten to Helgi, and he would be killing horses on his way home. The Saxons must soon have rowed off. Their best plan would have been to lie to beyond the strait which links Roskilde Fjord and Isefjord, so that they could readily flee out into the Kattegat.

The tale says little more than that Helgi and Yrsa met. This would have been under four eyes, not even small Hrolf on hand to be frightened by his father's wrath and grief. She would have sent maidens, carls, and guards out of the bower-building where he and she slept, and where once she had sat singing at her distaff while she waited his return to the news that she bore his child.

Their room was on the upper floor. Doors gave on a gallery where a man could stand, overlooking hall and courtyard and the life which swarmed there, his glance faring onward to town and bay, sweep of deep-green meadows where cattle grazed, tall rustling trees, grain-fields white for harvest, roofs asmoke from nothing worse than hearthfires, on and on to a ridge and a dolmen. Clouds loomed like snowpeaks, a hawk soared, a lark sang. Sunbeams streamed in onto sand-scrubbed planks, glowed darkly in wainscoting and carven furniture, stroked the skin of a bear he had tracked down and spear-slain only to give her a warm blanket, called cedar smell forth from the chest where she kept some clothes of fine foreign make that he had likewise offered her.

Helgi bulked helpless above his love and stammered, "Foul and heartless she is, your mother. But let everything be between us as it was before."

"No, no, that can't be," she begged of him, and drew back when he would lay arms around her. "You—I—No. Helgi," she well-nigh wailed, "what luck can it bring to a land, that the king lies with his own child?"

Then he was the one who sank. Blighted fields, murrain on the stock, sickness sweeping through a starveling folk, Denmark the haunt of naught but ravens and wolves, cutthroats and madmen, until an outland ax hewed down the tree of the Skjoldungs—surely that dread left him felled and speechless.

"Yrsa," he got out at last; but she was gone.

She may have dared kiss her son farewell. She may have had a man row her in a boat, forth across the bay, through night and rain, till she found the ships of her mother.

VII

Yrsa spent three years on Als. Her mother treated her righteously if coolly. She was much alone, and in company talked little. Her least unhappy days were when she went sailing in a boat she owned, as she and Helgi had been wont to do. Even then, nobody ever heard her sing.

Though Olof’s standing made Yrsa the best of queenly matches, no kings came wooing. That was mostly because they were unsure whether Helgi would fetch her back, or whether he would take it ill did she wed another.

But he never stirred. He had raved to Hroar, after his brother joined him, about leading a fleet and a host to seek his wife. "You speak nonsense, and well you know it," snapped Hroar. "We're not ready to fight half Jutland, which warfare against Als would bring on. And what could you gain? A girl, your own daughter, who'd have to be kept caged lest she flit from you—and surely the gods turning their backs on us, when you wittingly did such a thing. No!"

Crushed, Helgi spent a long while abed, staring at emptiness. Afterward he was moody, harsh, and nearly always drunk. When he took women he could do nothing with them—the whisper went that Frigg herself had smitten him—and at last he stooped trying. He built a shack in the wilds and often stayed there, quite alone, for weeks on end.

Hroar and Valthjona reared Hrolf. Whatever bane lay in his parentage did not seem to have touched him. He was a sunny-tempered lad who won the hearts of the motherliest serving woman and the starkest guardsman.

Good at those boy's skills which grow into a man's, he was likewise given to thinking, asking questions, wondering aloud if the answers he got held the whole truth: even as his uncle had been at that age.

In the third summer a fleet came to Als under the white shield. Never before had Olof guested so big and splendid a troop. At its head was Adhils the Swede-King. He had fared hither straight from his burg of Uppsala.

Olof received him with utmost respect. In his guest quarters she put the best of everything she owned. Yrsa was merely polite, and soon went back to the separate house where she dwelt. That evening Olof and Adhils drank together in the high seat.

"I have heard about your daughter." he told her, "and I see the tales were true about how fair she is and how strong the kindred she stems from. Lady, I ask for her hand."

Olof regarded him closely, Adhils was a young man, tall and broad though already running somewhat to fat. His hair and beard were long, amber-hued, and greasy; he kept running his freckled fingers through those whiskers. A sword-sharp nose looked out of place between his wide red cheeks. While he walked in gold and the finest linens, these were not as clean as they might have been; a sour smell hung around him.

Withal, he was no butt for laughter. His voice rolled heavy as North Sea surf. The little ice-pale eyes sunken beneath his brows were unwavering. He was known to be deep into wizardry. His folk felt the weight of his greed and grimness, but he steered them with a cunning beyond his years. Svithjodh was the biggest kingdom in the North, reaching from the hills of the Götaland marches to the endless wet wildernesses in Finland. Scores of under-kings and tribal headmen paid scot to Adhils. Thus he had at least as much wealth and as many warriors at his beck as did the Skjoldungs.

"You know well how it is with her." said Olof slowly. "However, if she herself wishes this, I will say naught against it."

"I should hope not, my lady," said Adhils unsmiling. And while the night was warm and fires burned high, Olof shivered a bit.

Still, she thought, granted him for an ally, she needed no longer fear Helgi or anyone else.

Next day Adhils sought Yrsa. She sat outdoors, on a bench under a willow tree in a herb garden behind her dwelling. A pair of girls helped her sew a gown. She kept only a small household, and not a single thrall. Quietly though she lived, she did not lack for hirelings, because they knew they would be kindly treated.

Today she was clad as usual in a plain dress and no ornaments. Sunlight spattered through shade to waken ruddy hues in her braids. The air lay hot and moveless, full of the smells of herbs for cooking or healing—sharp leek, chervil, wormwood, wintergreen; milk-souring sorrel; bitter rue; sweet thyme; shy cress. A pair of swallows darted woad-blue on a mosquito hunt. When gravel in the path scrunched beneath Adhils's feet, Yrsa looked up. "Good morning, my lord," she said dully.

"We missed you at the feast yestereven," he rumbled.

"I am not one for merrymaking,"

"I had hoped to make you a gift. Here." Adhils held forth a necklace. The servant girls squealed. Those links and plates of burnished gold, those blinking jewels, could buy a longship,

"I thank you, my lord," said Yrsa, troubled. "You are too kind. But—"

"I will hear no buts." Adhils dropped the thing into her lap and flapped a hand at the maidens. They scampered off, to gossip out of earshot with the squad of Swedish warriors who had followed their king. He lowered himself beside her.

"Your mother is a rich queen," he said. "You should not have to lead as lonely a life as you do."

"It's my own choice," said Yrsa.

"You were happier once."

She whitened. "That's my business."

Adhils turned his head to spear her on his glacier eyes. "No, you're wrong. What a lord or lady does is the business of the whole folk. Not so much because they want to pry. Their lives hang on us."

She tried to draw away from him without seeming either rude or frightened. "I have left that," she whispered.

"You cannot leave your blood," said his slow, hammering voice.

"What do you seek, King Adhils?" "You for my wife, Queen Yrsa," She tautened. "No."

Adhils's smile barely touched his lips. "I am not such a bad match."

She leaped to her feet and flared: "Here there's nothing good for me to choose. Well do I know how hated you

are!"

"I am feared, Yrsa," he said, shakingly unshaken.

She handed him back the necklace. "Go. I beg you, go." Wildly, she waved at the storks' nest on her rooftop. "Those birds are supposed to bring luck and children. I've gotten none. You don't want a barren queen."

"You have slept alone here," he reminded her.

"And I always will!"

He raised his hulking frame to block her off from the leaves. "You may well have gone barren since you bore that child you never should have," he said bluntly. "No matter. I've begotten others. Between your mother and her Saxon friends as allies, and you as my wife, the Skjoldungs ought to behave themselves toward me." He pressed the necklace into her clasp. "Moreover," he said, "you'll be a brighter ornament to my house than this." He did not speak merrily, as Helgi would have done; rather it was like something he had put together and learned beforehand.

"I would not cause trouble, I do not want to insult so ... so great a king," said Yrsa. Sweat stood forth upon her; and did tears mingle? "Yet go. Go!."

He turned and walked calmly off. When he was out of sight, Yrsa cast the necklace down, huddled on the bench and struggled for air.

Olof learned what had happened and came to see her in her home. That was after sunset. Dusk brimmed the room. Yrsa called for no fire to light a lamp. The two women saw each other as shadows where they sat. A window stood open to coolness. Now it was bats which darted about, and somewhere an owl hooted.

"You're a fool, Yrsa," snapped Olof. "An utter, rattle-headed fool. There's none like King Adhils."

"There is—there was a better one for me," mourned the daughter.

"Yah, an unshorn tosspot who dens all by himself!" Olof jeered. "You've heard what Helgi has become."

"You lost no chance to gloat over it."

"You lay by your own father—the same horn which gored me bloody, Yrsa. That you've not been smitten dead or blind . . . that now the mightiest lord of the lot comes wooing you, yes, gives you a gift which could be the Brisingamen itself, that you let fall in the dust—"

Yrsa tossed her head. "To get the Brisingamen, Freyja spread her legs for four foul dwarfs."

"You need only go, hallowed and in honor, to a great king." Olof was still for a time, until: "My hankering was never toward men; no, my loathing was. You're otherwise. I heard from afar how your hand in his and your gaze upon him told the whole world how glad you were with Helgi. In these years here, I've marked how you'll smile at naught I can see, or hug to you a blooming dewy apple tree by moonlight, or—don't gainsay me!— let your look stray across a handsome youth. Yrsa, you need a man."

"Not that man."

"That very one. I was saying—in spite of your coupling aforetime, like that bitch I named you after; in spite of your treating him today in such wise that he could rightfully bring war—Adhils is patient. This has to be more than luck. A Norn stands nigh, and your doom is to become the queen in Svithjodh."

Hoo-hoo went the owl. Yrsa cowered as if it were her that it hunted.

"Much worse could that doom be," Olof pursued. "Much worse will it be, if you let your folly grow into madness. I have no heirs, Yrsa. The Alsmen will not take you to rule them when I'm dead, nor could you if they did. What would you rather be, the prey of some viking, the willy-nilly leman of some grubby little chieftain, or the lady of high Uppsala? What's worthy of a Skjoldung?"

"No," Yrsa beseeched, "no, no, no."

"If you are his queen," Olof said, "Adhils will have a claim on this kingdom too. He can set a jarl over it when I'm gone, a strong man who'll keep it safe. Otherwise— well, think of your foster-siblings on the north coast. Think of brothers lying dead, ravens picking out their eyes; think of sisters ravaged and dragged off to rum a stranger's quern. Then they will say her mother did well to name Yrsa for a dog!"

Olof rose and walked out. Yrsa wept.

Next day she was steady of mien. When Adhils came, she gave him careful greeting. He offered her more gifts, ornaments and costly stuffs. She did not say aloud that she would be wearing those things anyhow, did she become his wife.

After a pair of weeks between him and her mother, Yrsa bowed her weary head and said, "Yes."

While the Swedes sailed off, bearing the bride away, Olof stood on the strand looking after them. As the last hull dropped below world-edge, she laughed and cried: "That's another for you, Helgi!"

She lived only a few years further. A growth killed her.

VIII

When King Helgi got the news, he grew even heavier of mood and withdrew altogether to his shack.

This building he had made himself, hewing logs as if they were foemen, in the thinly peopled north of Zealand. At need he would walk several miles to the nearest farmstead and pay for food and beer. The wagoner who brought it never lingered, and nobody came calling. They said his was a haunted ground. At its back stretched a wilderness of low, storm-twisted trees and brush. Before it, heath, broken here and there by thickets, rolled off toward a fen where mists were ever swirling and dripping. In sight of the house lifted a gaunt ridge, into which the Old Folk had once sunk a stone-lined chamber.

Scant game was around, a few deer, mostly hares and squirrels and other scuttering frightened things; yet wolves often howled. The fen drew waterfowl whose wings and clamor could fill the sky; but men hunted nowhere near those deep, green-scummed pools. Birds of prey and carrion lived off the flocks, eagle, kestrel, osprey, goshawk, merlin, kite, crow, raven, chough, and more and more. Helgi took fledglings and tried to tame them. He failed, mainly because he was always drunk. But he did like lying on his back in the springy ling, watching how they soared and wheeled.

When winter drew over him, he could watch no longer.

That Yule Eve got bad weather. In Roskilde, in Leidhra, in homes everywhere through Denmark, humans drew close, stoked fires, raised good cheer like a wall between themselves and the beings which prowled this night. Helgi bolted flatbread and stockfish, swilled down many hornsful of beer, and lurched to his bed of straw and bearskins. He did leave a stone lamp burning.

After a while he woke and frowned into gloom. The chamber was bitterly chill; night seemed to breathe out of the clay floor. Wind hooted. Where it found an unchinked crack between logs, it fluttered fingers across his nakedness. A different sound, a weak whimpering and scratching at the door . . . why had it roused him?

Some stray beast? His head felt eerily clear, as if he had drunk no common beer but instead had tasted the mead they say Odin brews for his midnight guests. He thought it would not be kingly to leave a living creature outside when he could save it.

Rising, he took the lamp, groped his way over hoar-frosted hardness, through bobbing huge shadows, to unlatch and open the door. Snow hissed on the wind. A nearly shapeless heap of gray rags huddled shuddering on the threshold. He stooped, urged the poor thing inside, closed the door again and lifted the lamp for a better look.

It was a girl. She was scrawny as death. Lank black hair fell around an ill-shaped skull wherein clattered what teeth had not rotted away. Her feet were bare and swollen from frostbite. She squatted on the floor, hugged herself with blue hands at the end of broomstick arms, and moaned. He heard: "You have done well, King."

Helgi made a face. However—he set the lamp back down on the ground, took the two or three strides needful to cross the room, bent over and began to pluck straw and a pelt from his bed. "Put this around yourself and you won't freeze," he said.

"No, let me get in by you," whined the beggar girl. "Let me lie against you. Else I'll die. I'm so cold, so cold."

Helgi scowled. But having taken her as his guest, he could do naught else than say: "That's much against my wish. Still, if you must, then he here at my feet in your clothes. That can't harm me." He hoped her fleas and lice had already perished.

Like an ungainly spider, she crawled where he bade her and pulled a skin over herself. Helgi got back in the straw and stretched out his legs. The forlorn wench could at least take warmth from his soles, he thought.

What was this? They did not touch filthy tatters or rickety bones. No, a silkiness glowed; the tingle of it went through the whole of him.

He sat up and hauled back the fell. There lay a woman in a sheening sark. Never had he seen any this beautiful. The straw hardly crackled as she rose to her knees and smiled at him. Full breasts and hips thrust against her garment, shone through it; their sweetness overwhelmed all winter chill and stench, he was suddenly drowned in summer. Raven's-wing locks flowed past a face pale and strange, too cleanly carven to be wholly human. Her eyes were the unblinking gold of a hawk's.

"But—but you—" Fear jabbed him. He scrambled backward and made the sign of the Hammer. She smiled, and fright whirled out of head and heart. Dim though the lamplight was, it gleamed off her skin, driving murk from everywhere indoors. Far and faint seemed the yowling wind. Shaky-armed, he reached for her.

She nearly sang: "Now I must go from here. You have saved me from sore need, for a spell was laid on me by my stepmother. I have sought many kings. You alone, Helgi Halfdansson, had the courage to do what would set me free."

"It took no courage." As he touched her, his manhood arose.

She saw, and lifted a hand. "No," she said softly, "you must not lie with me. I will stay here no longer."

He gripped her and answered in upward-tumbling blitheness: "Well, you won't get leave to fare off that soon. We'll not part thus."

She took him by the shoulders. The feel of her went through him to his marrow. "You have done me good, Helgi. I'd not be the means of bringing woe on your house."

"You bring greater joy than I can tell you," he babbled. ‘I’ll wed you as early as may be. Tonight—"

Sorrow dimmed those falcon eyes. "As you will, lord." Then they flamed, and she cast off her sark and came to him.

Long, long afterward, morning stole wolf-gray across a white and silent world. He had loved her more often and burningly than he had known lay in the might of any man. Stirring half out of sleep, in the dimness he saw her stand above him. She was clad. Where had her green gown and cloak come from, or the red wreath of rowan about her head? She bent down, laid a finger across his lips, and told him most quietly:

"So you have had your will, King. Know, we got a child together. When you took me in, I wished you well; and I do not yet wish you ill. Do as I say, and it may be we can still halt the bad luck you have sown in my womb. Our child must be born undersea; for mine is the blood of Ran. Be down by your boathouses, this time next winter, and look for her." Pain crossed her mouth. "If you fail, the Skjoldungs will suffer."

King Helgi thought that then she fared away. When he came fully awake, she was gone.

He went out into the snowfields, and saw her in every blue shadow and in every glimmer off ice; after the short day ended and the stars blinked forth, she whispered around him. She was not Yrsa, though, a heart wrenched out to leave a bleeding hollowness. Elven, she was like a wind of springtime, soon gone, never really remembered, bequeathing newly unfolded blossoms.

He found that he had back both his manhood and his will to be a man. Singing, he rode home to Leidhra.

Hroar had done what he could in the years of his brother's despair. Nevertheless much had gone agley. A king was a great landholder, a great owner of trade goods and merchant ships. Helgi's stewards and skippers dared do little without orders which were seldom forthcoming. He took matters in hand and shortly set them aright. Likewise did he with the kingdom, and his brother and his sister-in-law, and his son Hrolf.

Busy as he was—among womankind as well—he forgot what his elf-love had asked of him. Indeed, she seemed so strange to everything else he knew, he sometimes wondered if she had been a dream and no more. Then who had sent the dream and what did it mean? These were daunting thoughts. He pushed them aside, he plunged back into the world of men.

On the third Yule Eve, he was again alone in that house near the barrow.

He supposed it was happenstance. A man, lately outlawed for murder, had been skulking about those parts and wreaking harm. When Helgi passed through, the yeomen asked his help. "Scant use to hunt him with a flock of beaters," laughed the king. "Well, maybe I and my hounds can track him by ourselves." They did. Helgi slew the fellow and took his head to show. By then, twilight was on him, and he recalled his hut. Undwelt in for three years, it was a cheerless enough place to keep this night However, its walls gave some Ice.

About midnight, the baying of his dogs roused Helgi. He took his sword and went to the door. The sky had become very clear and quiet. Stars frosted a vast blackness; the Bridge glowed silver-cold; snow shone beneath, save where the mound with the tomb reared.

Three men and a woman sat horses which shimmered wan and changeable as waterfalls, long-maned, long-tailed, hoofs making the frozen snow not creak but ring—elven horses. The men were clad in byrnies that chimed, in shirts and trews and cloaks where wavered faint rainbows, in boots whose golden chasings flickered like fire. Their heads were too beautiful to be human. The woman—Helgi knew the woman.

She leaned down. In awe, he dropped his weapon to take the sealskin bundle she laid in his arms. Sadness freighted her tone: "King, your kinsmen must pay because you cared naught about what I wished. Yet wed shall it be for you yourself, that you loosed me from my wretchedness. Here is our daughter. I have named her Skuld."

Swifter than flesh, those horses fled off across the world.

Helgi never saw the elf-woman again. He stood holding a child asleep, who hight Skuld: That Which Shall Be.

IX

Then grief came back upon him. He kept from his former wildness and drunkenness, dwelt in Leidhra and steered things well. But he spoke hardly more than he must, never laughed, and went for many long rides alone or sat staring hour after hour into the fire.

Hroar learned of this, and toward spring bid him to Hart for Blessing. That was a mild and early year. Hawthorns were white across the land, roads dry and heaven full of songbirds, when the kings rode forth from the temple just behind Frey's wagon. Bright was the gold of the shrine thereon which hid the god's image; stately was the lady chosen to attend him for the month; garlanded were the oxen which drew them, and garlanded the Roskilde girls who danced forth to meet them. Song lilted through the lusty mirth of swains; snow-water gurgled in every ditch; trees lifted branches across which a goddess had strewn the first frail green, into a heaven of slanting sunbeams and towering clouds; cattle stood rust-red in the mists that steamed off paddocks; a breeze blew cool and damp, swollen by the smells of growth.

Coalsack nights and huddling indoors were ended. Day had come again. New life was on its way; one could all but hear how the soil stirred. Let joy rise with the rising sap. Let man rise too, and plow his woman over and over, so that Frey and the land-elves would not fail to make fruitful our mother the earth! After the god's wagon had gone from Roskilde to carry him around the shire, there was a feast. As ever, folk left early, hand in hand, not only young ones but the gravest of householders and wives.

Helgi sat cheerless. What words he had were mostly for his son Hrolf, asking how the boy did, what he planned. At eleven, Hrolf was slim and on the short side. He moved like a deer, though, and rich garb sat well on him. His hair was a deeper shade of yellow, with reddish tints, than was his father's. His eyes were big and gray under dark brows—Yrsa's eyes—and much of her lay in his clear-skinned face, along with the jutting Skjoldung chin. He answered readily. Otherwise he was himself apt to stay quiet, watching what the rest did and thinking his own thoughts.

That night Helgi slept alone.

Hroar sought him out in the morning. "Come, let's go for a ride," said the older brother. Helgi nodded. Grooms saddled horses for them and they trotted briskly off. Their guards saw they meant to talk, and fell well behind.

The bay sparkled, woods breathed and burgeoned, wind whooped. High overhead went a flight of storks. At length Hroar said: "I'd not tell you what to do, Helgi. Still, some will call it a bad sign that you, a king, were so glum at the offering and the feast, and later gave none of your seed to a woman."

Helgi sighed. "Let them."

"You told me how the elf warned of trouble to come. Well, trouble always comes, of one kind or another, and she said she at least bears good will toward you. As for that girl-child—"

Helgi turned to him and said hoarsely: "I'll tell you what the matter is. Seeing her a second time, finding she was real after all, and ever since then seeing our daughter, who cries too seldom and whose eyes are too sharp for a baby ... I remember Yrsa."

"What? I thought you'd put her out of your mind."

"Never. Oh, I found I could live without her. But . . . I know not ... the Other Folk do eldritch things to our hearts . . . maybe I hark back to Yrsa because I'm afraid to dwell on her who sought me—and meanwhile Hrolf, the son Yrsa and I got together, who has her eyes—"

Helgi slumped. "She goes about in Uppsala, not gladly from what I hear," he mumbled. "I sit in the home that was ours and grow old."

Hroar peered at his brother. Bones stood forth in Helgi's face, his skin was deeply furrowed, grayness had begun to dull his locks. Hroar ran a hand across his own grizzled beard and said, "We all grow old."

"Need we rot before we are dead?" rasped Helgi.

"We've mighty works ahead of us yet." Hroar tried to smile. "Anyhow, I said to cheer you, you've won the fondness of a most powerful being—"

He broke off, because suddenly his waymate jerked straight upright in the saddle. The hair stirred on Helgi's arms; he stared before him and hissed like a lynx.

"What is it?" asked Hroar in unease.

Helgi lifted a fist. Iron rang through his tone: "By the Hammer! You're right! Why should I mope out my days?"

Hroar began, "Good, I'm glad to hear—" His brother's shout cut through:

"I'll go to Uppsala and fetch her back!" "What?" Hroar cried. "No!"

It rushed from Helgi: "Yes. Hear me. I've brooded on this, till in a flash you made me see—" He gripped Hroar's forearm with force that left fingermarks. "I, I do have the goodwill of one who stands high among the Others, is of the very blood of Ran. I fathered her child, that I'm rearing myself. Would she let harm come on her own daughter? Why need I further fear any curse? Why need you, or the Dane-lands? Need we ever have? Would Hrolf be as fair and promising as he is, were there a doom in his begetting? No, our grief was from none but that she-wolf

Olof. who's dead now, may she never walk again." He lifted his hands to the sky and yelled. "We're free!"

"No man is free of his weird," said Hroar. Helgi heard him not, but instead struck spurs to horse and was off in a breakneck gallop.

There followed a whirlwind of making ready. Feverishly mirthful, Helgi overbore every naysayer. His household troopers were so glad to see fresh heart in him that they would have followed him anywhere. Those who had been to Uppsala aforetime told such tales of it that young men swarmed off the steadings to help crew the ships, as soon as the planting was done.

"We'll fare in peace," Helgi made known. "If Adhils will grant my wish, I can offer him good terms on outstanding questions such as the amber trade. If not . . . Adhils is unwise."

In vain did Hroar protest, "Bjovulf and I worked hard and spent men to get an Yngling who would not be our foe. Do you want to spill this on the ground, for the sake of your own lust?"

"What threat is that sluggard?" Helgi scoffed. "We could plunder up and down his coasts, and he'd never stir from his bloody altar stones." He tightened. "I'd count myself no fit lord, did I leave my Yrsa with one who gives her woe."

A single time he was taken aback. He and his boy Hrolf had gone hawking. Their bird struck down a crane. Helgi said into the sunlight: "Thus will I bring your mother to you."

Hrolf answered gravely: "Dead like yonder prey?" "What do you mean?"

"They tell me she left us against your will. It may be against hers to come back."

Helgi stood still in the blowing air for some while before he said, tight-lipped, "Well, I'll have given her the chance."

Speaking alone with her husband, Queen Valthjona uttered the same doubt: "If I know Yrsa, Helgi will have had this trip for nothing."

"I hope the upshot is no worse than that," fretted Hroar.

"Yrsa will do what she can for his safety and honor."

"But Adhils—I never liked Adhils, useful though it seemed he could be to us. And what I've since heard of him does not leave me unworried."

Valthjona cast him a troubled smile. "You'll never swerve Helgi," she warned. "So don't drive a wedge between the two of you. Stay quiet, wish him well, and give him as glad a send-off as you are able."

X

Adhils seldom left Uppsala. But as wide a realm as Svithjodh, holding many different tribes, under-kings, and lesser headmen, was bound to suffer uproar from time to time. If they did not seek to withhold his scot or break away altogether, they were likely to fall out with each other. To quell this, he kept a large household troop. Foremost were twelve berserkers.

That kind of men were so called because they often fought without mail, that is, in their bare sarks. They were huge and strong but ugly to behold, unkempt, unwashed, surly and bullying. In battle a madness came upon them; they howled, foamed at the mouth, grew swollen and purple in the face, gnawed the rims of their shields, and rushed forward like angry aurochs. Then their strength was such that no ordinary man could stand before them. It was said that iron would not bite on them, either. Truth was, the wounds they got, save for the deepest, hardly bled and closed up almost at once. After the rage was past, they were weak and shivery. By that time, however, most who had tried to fight them would be dead or fled.

Goodfolk loathed berserkers . . . and feared them. The dread they awoke went along with their might to help them plow through a battle line. While Adhils was not the first king who used this kind of men, it was reckoned against him. He cared little about that.

He did care when his twelve, and most of his other warriors, were away, and a scout galloped in to gasp that a score of ships had come up the channel from the Baltic Sea to Lake Malar, which even then they were crossing. Soon after, a boy brought a message from that fleet. It had lain to at the river mouth; upstream, escape might be barred. Its lord had gotten hold of the boy and given him a piece of silver to seek the royal hall and say: "Helgi the Dane-King comes in peace, to visit his ally and talk over what matters may lie between them."

Queen Yrsa was on hand. Adhils turned to her. "Well," he asked, half grinning, "how would you like me to receive him?"

She had stood wholly still, save that red and white flew across her brow and cheeks, down her throat and into her bosom. Now she must gulp, and her tone was less than steady: "You must settle that for yourself. But you know from aforetime ... the man is not found ... to whom I owe more than to him."

Adhils combed his whiskers, padded about, muttered to himself, before he said, "Well, then, we'll have him here as our guest. I'll send a man who can, hm, hm, make known without offending him—um-m—best he not bring his whole strength along."

Yrsa wheeled and walked quickly off.

Adhils did give that word. Thereafter he sought another trusty man in secret. "Hasten to where the berserkers and their following are," he bade. "Tell them to leave what they're at and come back as fast as may be. Near Uppsala, let them hide in the woods and let none but me know they are here. I'll tell them what to do next."

When Helgi got the hint in the Swede-King's invitation, he chuckled to his chief skipper: "Rightly do they call Adhils a stingy fellow! I wonder if those who stay to watch the ships won't eat better than we will who go to him."

The seaman scowled. "If treachery's afoot—" Helgi snorted. "I don't think him worth being careful about. Remember, we made sure his crack fighters are afar. He'll hardly risk his own dear hide against us." He swung away, quivering in eagerness. "Come, let's be off!"

He and his captains mounted horses they had brought. A hundred men tramped after them. They were a brave sight, there along the gliding, gleaming Fyris River, between the rich farmsteads of the lowlands on its far side and the high, greenwooded west bank. Helgi rode haughty, in gray ringmail, gilt helmet, scarlet cloak. Above him, borne by an also mounted youth, floated his banner, the black raven of his forebear Odin on a blood-red field. Behind the riders, a ripple ran over sunlit spearheads.

That night, though, housed by a wealthy yeoman, he slept little. He woke his band before dawn and made them keep a hard pace. At eventide they reached Uppsala.

Its stockade loomed above them, swart against a sallow heaven, as they climbed from the river road. The king's guardsmen came forth to meet them in flash and jingle of metal, lowing of lur horns; through sundown shadows, shields shone like moons. Within the gates men found a big, sprawling town, abustle with folk who dwelt in well-timbered houses that were mostly two floors high. Yet those walls cast the ways between into gloom at this hour, making burghers, women, children into blurs which buzzed and slipped from sight. There seemed to be uncommonly many swine about—the chosen beasts of Frey, who was the first Yngiing. They grunted, rooted in muck, shoved coarse-bristled flanks hard against legs.

On a height outside the burg lifted the mightiest temple in the North. It was made in the wonted way of a building raised to the gods, roof piled upon roof as if the whole were about to fly skywards. But these gables and monster-headed beam-ends stood clear against the shaw which lowered behind, being neither tarred nor painted but sheathed in gold. Inside were the images, wooden but tall and richly bedecked, of the twelve high gods—Odin with the Spear, Thor with the Hammer, Frey on his boar brandishing the huge sign of his maleness, Baldr whom Hel has taken to rule beside her over the dead, Tyr whose right hand the Fenris Wolf bit off, Ægir of the Sea whose wife Ran casts nets out for ships, Heimdal bearing the Gjallar Horn which he shall blow at the Weird of the World, and others of whom there go fewer tales. At holy times, most of the shire could crowd within. Then the foremost men slaughtered horses, caught the blood in bowls, sprinkled it off willow twigs onto the folk; in giant kettles seethed the meat, of which all partook. Otherwise women tended the temple, cleaned it, washed the gods in water from a holy spring.

But in the shaw both men and beasts were hanged up, speared, and left for the ravens. Thither Adhils was wont to go by himself, to make offerings and wizardries. "A wonderful sight," said Helgi's flagbearer. The Dane-King scowled. "We've more to do with men than gods, I hope," he answered.

Adhils's headquarters stood in the middle of Uppsala, a widespread square of buildings inside a stockade of its own. They were handsome, and at their middle a broad, flagged courtyard rang beneath hoofs and boots. Yet Helgi's frown deepened when he saw the hall. "Gloomy is that for Yrsa to dwell in," they heard him mutter.

Servants milled about through the dusk. A groom took his bridle. He swung down and strode toward the door which gaped for him like a cave mouth. Then he stopped dead, and it was for him as if nothing else was save that white-gowned one who came to meet him.

"Welcome, King Helgi," she said, and, faltering the least bit, "my kinsman."

"Oh. Yrsa—" He caught her hands in his. In the blue twilight he hardly saw her face; but sky-glow lingered in her eyes. Above her the evenstar blinked forth.

The chief guardsman said, "My lord awaits you." Yrsa said, "Aye, come," and led the way. Helgi followed, shoulders held stiff.

Adhils sat wrapped in furs upon his high seat. Gold shone around his brow, across his breast, wrists, and fingers, though somehow the longfires and rushlights left him in darkness. Maybe this was because much smoke drifted about, gray and stinging. "Be greeted, King Helgi my friend," he purred beneath the crackle of wood. "Glad I am that you have sought to me."

Unwilling, Helgi took the pudgy hand. Adhils talked on, in words which never quite said that the Skjoldung had come to acknowledge him his overlord. Yrsa broke in: "Let our guests be seated, let us drink in each other's honor before we dine."

She brought Helgi to the place across from his host's.

Throughout the evening she took him his ale and mead. At such times he let their fingers touch, caught her gaze and smiled a strangely shaky smile for so famous a warrior. In between, in chosen words, he and Adhils swapped news of their kingdoms. Their men mingled more cheerily. A skald chanted lays. Among them was one in praise of Helgi, for which the Dane-King gave him a whole arm-ring. His look across the floor, to Yrsa where she sat by her husband, said: You told him to make those staves, did you not?

A week went by. Adhils housed and fed his guests well, showed them around, had huntsmen take them forth on chases, spoke about trade and fisheries and such-like business—never about that for which he must know Helgi had really come. Nor did the Dane-King raise the question. He bit back his feelings and abided his chances to see Yrsa alone.

They came more than once. The first was a couple of days after he arrived. He had been out chasing wisent and rode into the courtyard near nightfall, still wet and mud-splashed, men at his back, bow slung at saddle. Dismounting, he took the weapon to unstring it. "My lord Adhils is away," said the groom. Helgi glanced upward. On the gallery of an offside sleeping-house stood Yrsa. So high aloft, she was still in sunlight, which shone tawny on her gown and struck fire-glints from deep within her hair. The sky behind her was an endless blue.

The bowstring rang.

She hailed him. "Welcome, kinsman!" Her tone drifted down clear and cool among the darting swifts. "Come have a stoup and a talk till King Adhils returns."

"Thank you, my lady," he called, and tried not to hasten through that door and up that ladder.

A serving-girl offered them mead. Reading the queen's look, she closed the door behind her. They stood on the gallery in full view of everyone; none could backbite them, but neither could anyone hear what they said. The royal garth reached below them, and the smoky shadowy town, and the grainfields beyond where the River Fyris ran until it lost itself in southward woods. There went a faint grumble of wheels, hoofs, feet, voices; a smith was beating iron somewhere, it sounded like bells; now and again a dog barked. But mostly quietness dwelt around Helgi and Yrsa. The breeze chilled him in his wet garments.

She raised her goblet of outland glass. "To your health," she said. He clashed his on hers and took a long, warming draught. They lowered them and stood a while before either could find words.

"It's good to see you," he said at last. "After seven years."

She had become altogether a woman. Slender above the thin bones, she moved more slowly—almost heavily— then erstwhile. Shadows lay under her cheekbones and around the big grey eyes. Lines had begun to show in her skin. Paler than of yore, it seemed to drink the level sunbeams. Their shiningness washed down over her breast until it picked out how her fingers strained on the goblet stem.

"They have marked you, those years," she said tonelessly. "You've grown gaunt. You're turning gray."

"I've missed you, my darling." Helgi stopped. "Likewise has your son," he added. "It would gladden you to see what a fine boy he is."

"Your son—ours—" She twisted her head away. "No. That's forever behind me."

"Must it be? I didn't come here about herrings or— you surely understand. I want to bring you home."

"No. I beg you, by everything we ever had, no, . . . Father."

Helgi's mouth writhed. He stared beyond her, to the temple on its hill and the darkling trees. "How is your life here?" he asked.

She did not answer, save in quickened breath.

"How does he treat you?" Helgi nearly shouted.

She cast a look at the courtyard, where household folk moved, and to the door behind which her maidens sat, eyes and ears, eyes and ears, tongues, tongues, tongues. "Hush," she begged. "You'd not have me speak ill of him I plighted my faith to."

"You gave me yours first," said Helgi.

She dropped her glass. It shattered. Mead pooled about her feet and dripped down between the gallery rails. Her hands wrestled. "We knew not what we did!"

"Did you know with Adhils?" he attacked.

She straightened. "Yes."

"And—?"

"It's been about as I awaited."

"He shows you your rightful honor, does he not?" She heard how much he hoped she would say no.

"Yes," she told him. "You've seen for yourself. I go about as first lady of a strong land. He . . . has not even other women." She stopped to wet lips and clear throat. "In truth, he doesn't often seek me. Which suits me well enough."

"How lonely you are," he said like a man with a spear in him.

"No, no, no. Things aren't that bad. I have my girls— you've seen them, they look on me as a kind of mother. I hear their woes and give them my redes and, and try to see they marry well. ... I have my duties, in the household, in the temple, in everything that becomes a queen. I can go sailing on the lake when I'm here. We have guests—"

"Many? I never heard Adhils called hospitable."

She flushed. He knew she was ashamed of her husband's niggardliness, and forbore to say he knew it. "Men who come to take service here," she said hastily. "Jarls. Chieftains. Skalds, merchants, outlanders. They bring news of a world beyond this. And I—I'm taken up in cookery." Her smile was forlorn. "You'd not believe how skillful I've grown about herbs. Also healing herbs, every kind of leech craft, why, I, I, I'm on my way to becoming a wise-woman."

He peered back at the temple. "Or a witch?" he growled.

"No!" Horror rode her voice. He thought of dead bodies rocking in the wind below yonder branches, and of Adhils on his witching stool, hunched by a kettle where nameless things boiled. "No, I’ve naught to do with that!" She turned on him, clenched her fists and said shakenly: "I won't do anything unbeseeming a Skjoldung. Not even ... return to you . .. oh, my dearest."

They could not speak much longer. She must go oversee the readying of the hall for her husband and the evening. Helgi was curt at that meal and drank hugely.

He and Yrsa spoke a few more times alone. The end was always the same. Oftener he talked to Adhils, of course, and did his best to sound out the Yngling. The latter stayed polite. "Yes, yes," he said, taking Helgi's arm as if he did not notice how the Dane winced, "I am glad you came, kinsman, glad we can reach understanding. Strife should never happen between kinsmen, as you and I well know, eh? And I think we two are bound closer than most—my wife, your daughter—that unluckiness of yours and hers which I may make bold to believe I've set aright, by giving her honorable marriage and by offering to the gods and, hm, hm, elsewhere."

More than one of his own men warned Helgi: "Something's wrong here, lord. I'm not friends with any of the Swedish captains, no. But I've drunk and gone fishing or hunting or played games with a few who're at their call —yes, ha, played games with a girl or two—and something's afoot. They've told me how their chiefs go warily about and mutter in comers. Mark them, lord, you who nightly sit amongst them, and see if their manner don't strike you the same."

He, his heart full of Yrsa, would give back: "Oh, belike that trouble northward, which has most of the household warriors away from here. They'd take it unkindly if I pried."

After a week, the secret came to Adhils that his troopers had swiftly fared back at his behest and lay in the woods for his orders. He made an excuse and hurried off. To the head berserker, a hairy, warty, slouching hulk named Ketil, he told what had happened and bade him and his band lie in ambush, to fall upon King Helgi while the Danes were returning to their ships. "I'll send a number from the burg to help you," he promised. "They'll attack at the rear and put our foes in a pinch. For those are our foes. I'll set everything at stake to see Helgi does not escape. Well have I marked, he bears such love for my queen that I'll never be safe while he's alive."

Meanwhile Helgi and Yrsa had a last talk which could not be overheard. "Since you won't come away," he said, "I'll take my leave."

"Live gladly," she whispered, "my darling."

"You bear up well," he said. "I can do no less. But I wish—" He smote hands together and left her. She gaze i after him, long beyond the time when he was gone from her sight.

To Adhils, Helgi said he would be starting home. Queen Yrsa told her lord, not loudly, yet to be heard by everyone in the hall: "I think, because our guest sought us himself to bind our houses in friendship, it behooves us to send him off with gifts that will show how much this means to us."

"Why, indeed, indeed," said Adhils at once.

"He does not even blench," mumbled a drunken man of his. "What's got into the fat miser?" Everyone else was too happy at so good an ending to pay any heed. Even Helgi brightened somewhat. None could now say he had fared for naught.

And in the morning, in sight of the many who were gathered, Adhils ordered forth a wagon drawn by six while Southland horses. "This and these I give you, kinsman," he smiled, "and a bit more besides." Cheers arose as carls brought the things out of his storehouses: heavy golden rings and brooches, silver caskets full of coins from Romaborg, shimmering axes and swords, cunningly carved ivory of walrus and narwhal, jewel-crusted goblets, garments of costly weave and dye, amber, furs, oddly wrought goods from none knew where, until the axles groaned.

Helgi reddened and had trouble finding the right words for his thanks. He could not tell whether this smirking smooth-talking young man did mock him or seek to buy him off. Then his glance fell on Yrsa, and he saw such yearning that he thought it must all be because of her.

The king and the queen of the Swedes took horse to follow him part of the way. Adhils chatted glibly; Held and Yrsa were still. After a while the Yngling reined in.

"Well, kinsman," he said, "I fear we must bid you goodbye, looking forward to when next we are together."

"Come be our guests," said Helgi hoarsely. "Both of you."

"We can send word about that," said Adhils. "Meanwhile, fare speedily, King Helgi, to the place where you are bound."

He turned his steed. Helgi took Yrsa's hands. "Live well," he whispered in haste. "Always I'll love you. Someday—"

"Someday," she gave him back, wheeled her beast and trotted off after her lord and his men.

Helgi rode on at the head of his own troop. The river murmured and blinked in sunlight. Tree shadows dappled it. A kingfisher darted, blue as the hovering dragonflies. Hoofs plopped, leather squeaked, metal clinked. The air was thick and hot; men sweated and swatted at bugs. Westward above the leaves was piling a violet wall of clouds, and thunder rolled across miles.

Suddenly clangor awoke. Scrambling from the brush to take stance across the ruts came a host of armed men. Among them were a dozen giants, most byrnieless, who snarled and slavered and chewed their shield-rims.

Helgi reared his horse. "What in Loki's name?" he cried.

His chief skipper said: "I think King Adhils does not mean for you to keep what he gave."

"No—no, Yrsa—" Helgi half turned, as if to retreat for the first time in his life.

At his rear, around a bend in the road, came more men. They must have taken a side-way out of Uppsala— even this far off and past the noseguards on their helmets, Helgi knew some—and lurked till he had gone by them.

Helgi got down to earth, unslung his shield from the horse's crupper and took it by the handgrip. Tall he loomed among his men; only his banner, flapping in a heavily rising breeze, overtopped him. "Well, we're between the stone and the hammer," he said. "But they may find us tougher metal than they reckoned on."

River and steep, overgrown bank gave no room for the swine-array, a wedge-shaped line of mailed men with archers and slingers behind. Crowded together, death hailing from fore and aft, the Danes raised war-shout and charged ahead as best they could. In their van ran King Helgi. His sword hissed out of its sheath, blazed and screamed.

It sped against the first of the Swedes, himself big in a bright chain-coat. His shield took the blow, but he must lurch. Helgi pressed in, yelling. His blade leaped, up, down, around, dinning on helm and shield-rim, ever driving the man backward, in among his fellows. The Swede thought he saw a chance to chop at Helgi's thigh. He tried, and his sword-arm spurted blood. He swayed and sank under trampling feet.

An ax boomed on Helgi's own shield. That weapon, wielded two-handed, by its weight can smash through most men's guard. Helgi sprang in. Sheer strength warded off those blows. He got his blade beneath the ax-haft and cut a leg from under his foeman.

A spear-thrust took him in the calf. He hardly marked it. "Forward, forward!" He knew how to fling a cry from the depths of his lungs, so it soared above every shout, grunt, thud, rattle, and death-moan. "Hew past them! Win free!" For he saw, above the swaying helmets and twisted faces, that if his folk could break through those who confronted them, there would be none at their backs. Turning, they could hold the road against onslaught while they withdrew, and most of them might yet win to their ships.

That could be a long running battle. He moved against a berserker. Hemmed in, he could not get up speed. The monster swung an ax aloft and brought it down in a doomsday crash. Helgi's shield splintered. His left arm nearly did. He staggered back. He would have attacked the berserker afresh, but too many roiled in the way.

Men of his fought stubbornly at his side. One by one, outnumbered, they were slain. Spears pierced him where he was not helmed or byrnied; his blood and sweat squelched in his shoes; the blows upon his metal might go through, but made bruises down to the bone. Still he fought. His blade raved and reaped.

A berserker won to his standard bearer. That youth had no hope. Brains spattered, he toppled, and the flag went into the dust. Thereafter the Danes had nothing to tell them where they should stand. The Golden Boar waved on high. The Swedes pressed in.

Clouds drew blue-black over heaven, wind arose cold, the light turned a weird brass-yellow.

Helgi, cut off from the last of his men, backed up, fighting one-handed with a sword whose edge was dinted and blunted. The dead and the hurt marked his path. Still the foe came after him. He waded out into the river, which his blood reddened. Ketil, foremost berserker, met him there, howling, yowling, hurling blow after blow like the hailstones that now began to fall, yet never seeming to feel any that the king landed upon him.

Men heard Helgi croak, "Garm breaks loose. He has swallowed the moon—" He fell, and the river bore seaward what little was left of his blood.

Together with him died all who had gone ashore. The rest got word from scouts and fled back to Denmark. Yrsa wept. Here ends the tale of King Helgi.

THE TALE OF SVIPDAG

I

Yrsa wept.

She had not known what Adhils had ordered until the thing was done. Upon him she wished every kind of ill, that his ship not sail though the wind be fair, that his horse not run though he would flee his killers, that his sword never bite till it sang about his own head—"not that you are one for ship or horse or sword, you womanish spell-cooker, you crow feeding on corpses!"

Adhils waited out her wrath in that watchful calm which frightened men. When she was only crying, he said easily: "I could not behave otherwise. Well you know Helgi would at last—and not very far from today, either —have sought to overthrow and kill me, and bear you off to a life of shame that you yourself had run from."

Yrsa swallowed her tears, met his gaze so the clang could almost be heard, and told him: "It is not seemly for you to preen yourself over having betrayed that man to whom I owed the most and whom I loved the most, and for this sake I will never be true to you when you have to deal with King Helgi's men. And I will see about having your berserkers that slew him done away with, as soon as I can find lads bold enough to do it for me and their own renown."

"You rant, Yrsa, and it's empty, and well you know that," Adhils said. "Supposing I let you go, where would you seek to? Bring no threats against me or my berserkers, for this you will have no gain of. But I will make good with rich gifts the slaying of your father, with treasure and the best of lands, if you like."

The queen departed, to return in a while and stonily accept his offer. Some wondered why she did not, instead, try to reach King Hroar in Denmark. Their fellows thought belike she had a threefold reason. She, daughter and bride of King Helgi, would not flee like an outlaw and come like a beggar. Nor would she forego the washing and laying out of him, the closing of his eyes, the binding of hell-shoes onto his feet, with her own hands, and seeing that he and his followers got a burial worthy of them and that honors would ever after be paid at the howe. Nor would she give up hope of revenge; already it was plain that Hroar would not take any.

None saw the queen glad thereafter. The unfriendliness in the hall was worse than before. After trying once, Adhils no longer shared a bed with her. As often as she saw a chance to do so, she went straight against his will. Doubtless he kept her only because of her kindred, her Swedish following, and her dowry.

Meanwhile the ships had brought the news to Denmark. Hrolf Helgisson was not alone in crying for war. "That lies beyond our might," said his uncle; "but do not think I lack grief for my brother." And he went away, hood drawn over his head, to mourn alone.

Later a craft from Svithjodh made landfall. The chieftain aboard spoke for Adhils. Though Helgi had fallen on his own deeds, said the message, in that he schemed against the lord in Uppsala, yet the latter was willing to make a settlement which would keep peace between the two kingdoms.

Hroar took weregild for Helgi and gave oath to bear no spear on account of the slaying.

Adhils had looked for this. Else he might never have dared strike. Through his spies and, maybe, his sorceries, he knew well how things stood for the Skjoldung house just then. The truth was, Hroar had such troubles that he could not afford strife with Svithjodh.

His brother-in-law Sævil, Jarl of Scania, had lately died. Saevil's son Hrok was a surly and greedy young man who felt he was owed much because of the help his father had given Hroar and Helgi. When refused the great ring which