Fenja and Menja had ground forth, he raged off. In part for the sake of Hrok's mother, Hroar's sister Signy, and in part for fear of uproar, the king did not want to cast him out of his seat. But Scania was no longer held in a way that Hroar could fully trust.

Furthermore, an undertaking of his had gone awry and he knew there would be war elsewhere.

His uncle Frodhi, whom he had helped burn, had had a son Ingjald by his first wife, Borghild of Saxland. He had sent the child off to be reared by the grandfather, a strong king who lived where the Elbe meets the sea. Now Ingjald was getting along in life; but he was a powerful chieftain and likely to become king after his present kinsman on the high seat. And he was lately widowed. Hroar thought such an ally would make safe his flank to the southwest; it would not matter any more that a Swedish jarl sat on the island of Als and had the ear of the king in Slesvik. Hroar would gain a firm peace which would leave him free to build up his realm.

He hoped to marry his daughter Freyvar to her cousin Ingjald.

Messengers went back and forth, and at first everything looked promising. But it happened that Starkadh was at the Saxon burg.

About him goes a long saga. He was of Jötun descent, they say, and born with six hands. Thor ripped off four of them, yet always hated him for his kindred. When Odin, who fostered him, said he should have three men's lifespans, Thor said he must do a nithing deed in each of them. Odin gave him the best of weapons; Thor ordered that never would he own any land. Odin said he would always have money; Thor said he would never have enough. Odin gave him victory in every fray, Thor that he should always be wounded. Odin made him the foremost of skalds; Thor made him forget his staves once he had spoken them. Huge, harsh, and unhappy, Starkadh walks like a storm through that hundred-year, and ever his coming means trouble.

At the wedding feast of Ingjald and Freyvar he stood forth, upbraided the groom for thus linking with the get of the man who murdered his father, and roared forth verses which brought blood to seething. Danes and Saxons alike remembered what they had suffered from each other. It came to blows and deaths. Ingjald thrust Freyvar from him and sent her home bearing word that he himself, for his honor, would bring a brand to set Hart afire.

Thus Hroar could not have the warriors of Svithjodh on his back.

That Yule Eve, Hrolf the son of Helgi passed his twelfth year and could be reckoned a man. When the boar was passed around for the making of vows, he laid hand upon it and swore: "Never will I flee from fire or iron!"

Men shouted he was indeed his father's son. Still, some thought he did more than favor his uncle: that in his quietness and dreaminess he might become one of the sluggard Skjoldungs. After all, his had been a strange birth, and he had a sister who was more eldritch than that.

The doubters changed their minds in the following summer. When the Saxons came across the Little Belt, the Danes met them on the shores of Fyn and a battle took place which brought wolves and ravens from wide around. Hrolf lacked his full growth, which would never be great, and of course he needed the help of older men. Nonetheless he went forward so doughtily and, for his age, so skillfully that he won the goodwill of every warrior.

In clang and clash, shout and shriek, maiming and manslaughter, the Danes rolled back the Saxons and crushed them utterly. There fell Ingjald, the son of Frodhi.

There too fell Hrodhmund, eldest son of Hroar.

In sorrow the Dane-King went home. From then on, his only care was to have peace. This may well have been because his younger son Hrörik, though a year ahead of Hrolf, had made a poor showing.

And the next few years made plain that it was in Hrörik, not Hrolf, that the bad blood ran. Hrörik was lazy, cowardly, and greedy. About him clustered a gang of bully boys and toadies, and he soon learned how to flatter this headman, bribe that one, and threaten yonder.

His swiftly aging father turned more and more to the nephew Hrolf.

Queen Valthjona died.

A cookfire broke loose and Hart burned down.

Hrörik and his father were on a ship to Scania, where the king would lead the rites of Harvest, reminding the folk there of himself, overawing and—he hoped—befriending Hrok Sævilsson. The journey over the Sound is short, and those aboard were clad in their best. Upon Hroar's arm gleamed the serpent ring.

"You should give me that," said Hrörik. He was quite drunk.

"I had it from my brother," said Hroar, "and I will bear it till I die."

"Well, let me see it, anyhow," his son urged him. "It's supposed to be the top treasure we have, now your hall is gone, but never have I gotten a real look at it."

Hroar took the ring off and handed it over. Hrörik turned it between his fingers. The eyes of the snake which girdles the world glittered red. "Well," said the youth, "best might be that neither of us has it." And he cast the ring overboard.

The coxswain's chant broke and the oars sprattled wildly. A moan went down the length of the hull. This was the worst of signs.

Hroar drew a fold of his cloak over his gray head.

He died that winter.

Hrörik had readied himself, though he hardly needed to. Hrolf would not stand against the son of the man who had been like a father to him. Therefore the Danes hailed Hrörik their king.

Almost at once, those lands which Helgi had laid under him began to fall away. More than olden pride brought that about. The headmen had no faith in an overlord known for his sloth and miserliness. When he made only the feeblest of tries to get them back, they felt they had weighed him rightly. "Not being fools," they said, "henceforward we look to ourselves."

The heaviest loss came when the jarl at Odense—Odin's Lake—said he would be king as his father had been.

Here was a town as big as Roskilde and far older, the holiest stead in Denmark. Soon the island of Fyn had everywhere forsworn Leidhra.

Robbers fared forth, vikings harried the coats, Jute and Saxon and Wend raided with ease and laid plans for all-out war.

Then the Zealand chieftains got together and rose up. Hrolf told them he would not fight his kinsman. They told him that they would, whatever he said, and afterward take him for their lord.

Raging, Hrörik sent men to the house where Hrolf lived. Barely did the atheling escape alive. Thereafter he had no way out of unsheathing his sword against the son of his uncle and aunt, whom he had loved.

Hrörik fell in battle. Warriors and yeomen swarmed about the Thingstone to roar that Hrolf, son of Helgi, was now their king. In sorrow he clasped the oath-rings and took over the lordship of a land breaking asunder.

Meanwhile Adhils in Svithjodh had waxed rich and mighty, till men reckoned it a high honor to serve him.

II

West of the lowlands which Uppsala overlooks, the mountains of Svithjodh rise high, steep, and thickly wooded: a land of eagle and bear, rushing streams and deep dales. There dwelt a yeoman named Svip. His garth stood far from others, yet was of goodly size and housed many folk, for he was well-to-do. In youth he had been a bold warrior and fared widely about. He was wiser than he looked—a burly, squinting, grizzled man with a broken nose—and made his own judgments of everything. Though no wizard, he was thought by some to have the farsight, and sure it was that he often got warning dreams.

He had three sons, Hvitserk, Beigadh, and Svipdag. All were strong, able, and handsome. In spite of being the youngest, Svipdag overtopped his brothers in both height and might.

When he was eighteen winters old, he sought out his father one day and said forth what he had long been brooding on: "This is a dreary life, sitting up here among the fells and never even visiting others or seeing them here with us. We should go join King Adhils and his warriors, if he'll take us in."

Svip the yeoman frowned and answered, "I don't think that would be wise, I know King Adhils of old. His words can be foul as well as fair, however great his promises. And his men are bold enough, but an ill-behaved crew." He sighed in his foreknowledge and added, "However, King Adhils is both strong and famous."

Svipdag raised a fist. "Something must be risked to win something, and none may know before it's happened how his luck will twist around. This I do know, that here I will sit no longer, whatever may lie before me."

The yeoman gazed upon his son a while. Tall, wide-shouldered, raw-boned, the yellow beard already thick on his ruddy craggy face, Svipdag stood with mane held aloft to shine beneath the sun, against green pines and blue heaven. Hay harvest was just past and the steading full of that sweet smell of peace. "Well-a-day," said Svip, "I have myself been young."

Hvitserk and Beigadh decided to follow their parents' wish and stay home at least a while longer. For the out-faring one, Svip brought forth goodly gifts: a horse big enough that the rider's feet would not dangle to the ground, the full gear of a fighting man, and a long ax, darkly gleaming and sharp. He offered many such redes as: "Never thrust yourself on others, and never brag; that wins naught save a bad name. But if anyone presses on you, then guard yourself, for the way of a skilled man is to speak softly, but in danger to go strongly forward." He had no fears for Svipdag in a fray. Himself their teacher, the brothers had spent hour upon battering hour, almost every day of their lives, training in the use of weapons.

So Svipdag hugged his kindred, his best friends among the garth-folk, and whatever girl he had lately been lying with, and rode off. For a while his song floated back to them. At last it was gone in the noise of a waterfall.

Not seeming especially safe to attack, he met no trouble.

His cheerfulness brightened houses where he Stayed overnight. Asking his way, he learned that King Adhils and Queen Yrsa were not in Uppsala, but at a place they owned on the shore of Lake Malar. She spent much time there, each summer, and he was making his royal rounds.

Svipdag arrived on an eventide. Woods and grainfields rolled broadly down to a vast sheet of water, the glow of level sunbeams across it broken by the upthrusts of islands. The air was cool, damp, very still save for shouts and clatters from the dwelling, sounds which echoed about before they lost themselves in the sky. Svipdag reined in at a gate of bars set in a stockade around hall and outbuildings. It was latched on the inside, and nobody warded it. Men swarmed about the courtyard beyond, either playing or watching a swift game of handball. Svipdag called to be let in. The few who heard merely glanced his way and went on with their sport.

He reared back his horse. Hoofs smote, the latch cracked over, the gate groaned wide and Svipdag clattered into the yard.

King Adhils sat outside the hall, splendidly clad, in a gilded chair. His twelve berserkers stood or squatted around, shaggy, filthy, surly, as foul to see as to sniff. They growled and glared through the hush which had fallen on the crowd. Adhils's words dropped slow: "That man goes heedlessly ahead. The like has never been dared before. He must think well of himself."

Svipdag halted, dismounted, and beamed. "Greeting, King Adhils, my lord," he said, "for surely so finely arrayed a man must be you. I hight Svipdag, son of Svip Arnulfsson, who dwells off in the land of the Westmen but was known to you aforetime."

"You come here more rashly than your father might have counselled," said Adhils.

"No, lord. I asked to be let in, and wasn't. Such loutishness among your men dishonors you, and I hoped you'd call it well done of me to give them a lesson in manners." .. "What?" rumbled Ketil, foremost of the berserkers. "Why, I'll step on you like the cockroach you are—"

He lumbered forward. Svipdag, always smiling, touched the ax at his saddlebow. "Hold!" ordered Adhils. "We'll talk first. I remember Svip. He fought stalwartly for me against Aali, that day on the ice. What does his son want from us?"

"I would much like to enter your service, lord," Svipdag said.

Adhils bade him be seated. He found a log by the chair and watched the ball game after it had started anew, while he and the king talked in friendly wise. The berserkers liked this ill, glowered and muttered. When the call to eat was heard and the king led the way inside amidst these dozen guards, Ketil told him: "We're going to challenge that wolf-head and cut him down before he makes more trouble."

Adhils picked his nose. "I don't think he'll be easy to handle," he answered softly. "Still, hm, hm, yes, I would like to find out if he's as stout a fellow as he seems."

Ketil grinned over his whole warty face. While men were moving to their seats he left the king, pushed his way to the youth, grabbed him by the cloak below the throat, and snorted, "Well, do you think you're as good a warrior as us berserkers, brashly as you bear yourself?"

Svipdag flushed in the fluttering torchlight. He struck the bulky man's hand aside and spoke for the hall to hear: "Aye, I'm as good as any of you."

A bellow lifted from the twelve. They moved to close in on Svipdag. Nobody bore arms indoors, and he had left helmet and bymie in the foreroom. Belike a dozen could pluck one apart. Men got out of their way, trying not to make that look like a scramble for safety.

"Hold! Hold, I tell you!" cried Adhils from his high seat. "Be at ease. I'll have no fighting in here, nor any time this night."

The berserkers bayed. Ketil spat at Svipdag's feet. "Dare you fight us tomorrow?" he roared. "Then you'd have to use something besides big words and overbearingness, and we'd find out how much stuff is in you."

Svipdag flung back, "I'll take you one a time. Thus we'll see who's better."

Adhils nodded. He liked the idea of a testing, for in the course of peaceful years it had become hard to know how useful any fighter really was.

A clear voice said: "That man shall be welcome here."

Svipdag looked through shadows and fire-flicker to her who had spoken. She sat by the king, no closer than she must: a woman not tall but proud of bearing, simply clad and marked by sorrow, yet her gray eyes alight and her hair a red-brown shiningness. She must be Queen Yrsa.

Ketil hunched his shoulders and grated at her, "We've long known you wish us in hell. But we're not such weaklings we'll fall before mere words and ill will."

She turned to her husband and said, "You'll get no good if you see this through, you who feel a need of using scum like these."

Blue with rage, Ketil howled, "I blow at you and your stiffness! We're not afraid to meet him!"

Adhils signed the women to bring drink in haste. The evening passed peacefully if not quietly. The berserkers sulked; the rest of the household were cheerier. Yrsa's look kept straying to Svipdag, where he sat near an end of the hall, talking, drinking, feasting, the blithest man beneath that roof.

In the morning the holmgang took place.

This is a usage among the heathen, when men wish to fight out a challenge. They go onto a holm, a small island, where few or none can watch them and maybe get to brawling. Four willow wands mark off a field, and he who is driven beyond them is deemed to have lost. Otherwise the blows go by turns. The business can be until first blood, or yielding, or death.

Today there were more watchers than common. Adhils had had himself rowed out together with the twelve and sat among them, on a stump, peering across the staked-off meadow. Under the trees on its far side, iron gleamed around a slight figure in a blue cloak. Yrsa had come too, and a score of those warriors who attended her and felt bound to her more than to the king.

Svipdag stood tall in kirtie and trews. Save for his helmet, he had left off mail, because he would not be reckoned unfair toward his foes in this proof of his mettle. Nor had he a shield, his ax being a two-handed weapon. Yrsa bit her lip when she saw this; her head drooped.

Ketil glimpsed that, and leered at her before he trod forth into the long grass. He began swaying, working himself up into the rage of his kind. Slaver ran down his beard. His cheeks puffed and purpled. He gnawed his shield-rim, waved his sword, and made beast noises.

Svipdag yawned. "I'd not have said you could have the first blow," he called, "did I know how weary a while you'd take to lift up that mare's heart of yours."

Ketil shrieked and charged. His sword whirled on high and whistled down. Svipdag's ax met it midway, in a clang and a shower of sparks. Then the heavy head flew back, and forward again, to crash on shield and send the berserker staggering.

Yrsa clasped fists to breasts and breathed swiftly,

Ketil recovered. He hewed and hewed—no more thought of taking turns—and mighty were those blows. Ever Svipdag halted them, and ever he battered the shield of his foeman. His ax was gripped by hands, driven by wrists and shoulders, which had logged trees and rolled rocks across mountains. The thunder sent flocks of birds crying aloft.

Of a sudden the ax smote full on Ketil’s helmet. Half stunned, the guardsman let drop his shield. Svipdag's edge went into his ribs with a meaty thwack. Ketil yammered and sank to one knee. His neck was bent. Svipdag sheared it through. Ketil sprawled and gaped at himself.

"Svipdag, Svipdag, oh, Svipdag!" Yrsa laughed and wept.

"By my balls," hooted another berserker, "I'll cut yours from you for that, before you die!" And he sped out after revenge.

Svipdag, though sweat-soaked and panting, flashed a grin and strode to meet him. Reckless, this man was easier game. Svipdag got back breath while playing him as, on his father's homestead, he used to play bulls for fun. At the right time, he laid his enemy's belly open. Blood foamed forth.

Maddened, a third berserker sprang from the king. He gained speed as he charged across the meadow, his own ax swinging overhead. Svipdag sidestepped and thrust out a long shank. The monster tripped. Svipdag's weapon came down across his backbone.

Aghast. Adhils yelled to his men to stay where they were. A fourth did not heed. Svipdag spun on his heel barely in time to meet that attack from behind. The berserker leaped, trying to overrun him and knock him to earth. Svipdag's ax flew so that blood made a tail behind it. He went down under the other man's shield, indeed; but he had smashed a kneecap. He freed himself in a heave, rolled clear, grabbed the ax and sprang to his feet. The madman felt no pain, belike did not know he was crippled. Yet he could not rise, and in his raving he made a poor one-legged defense. Svipdag was quickly past his guard. Again the ax bit. Four dead men lay in the daisies, the flies already thick around. Yrsa cheered and cheered.

Svipdag, red-splashed, bearing flesh wounds, clothes sodden and hair lank with sweat, heaved after air. Wild in rage, King Adhils rose to shout, "Great harm have you done me, and now you'll pay for it! Men—all of you together—slay him!"

"Never while we live!" Yrsa cried, and ran forward. Her guards dashed past her to form a shield-burg around Svipdag as she bade.

The eight berserkers who were left circled around, growled, mewed, spat oaths and taunts, made as if to rush. The queen's men stood firm, spears and swords aloft. Behind them, their archers strung bows and twanged these, a deep sound as if angry wasps were on the way. It was no use trying to overcome that many.

Yrsa went to her husband, where he shuddered and croaked, stood before him and said, "Call off your dogs. My men are going to defend Svipdag till you give him peace."

"Oh, you're happy today, aren't you, Yrsa-bitch?" Adhils answered. He made as if to strike her. She clenched fists, gave him look for look, and said:

"This fight was none of his asking. He came in good faith to offer us his service. They set on him, those trolls. Well, see what he's shown them to be worth! Glad should you be to get that blubber out of your battle-line. Make peace, I say! You'll win more honor with this one man than with all the berserkers who ever befouled the earth."

"What care you for my honor, Yrsa?"

"Little enough, in truth; yet more than you, it seems."

Thereupon Yrsa spoke soothingly. The years had given her a ready tongue for showing where wisdom lay. In the end she did make peace between Adhils and Svipdag. When the newcomer returned to the mainland and the household learned what had happened, they swarmed about him and avowed that never before had such a wight come to be their brother in arms.

Nonetheless the queen found a chance to whisper to him, "Be wary. Those eight will not long abide by the oath they gave you."

He nodded. Yestereven, down at his end of the hall, he had heard in full about the slaying of King Helgi nine years before. He thought in youthful hotness that that had been the worst of nithing deeds; and today, this woman who suffered most from it had saved his life.

"Yes, I think I've done them less scathe thus far than I ought to, lady," he told her.

Her eyes widened in fright. "What do you mean? No, Svipdag! Beware! Never be alone!" Then other folk drew nigh and there could be no more frankness between them.

At the queen's urging, Adhils gave Svipdag the seat of honor opposite him that evening, and courtesy and praise as long as men drank together. The berserkers were not on hand. Adhils had already talked to them, out of everybody else's earshot. He said later that he had been calming them. Svipdag had marked how they slouched off seeming grimly pleased. The yeoman's son had acted as if he awaited nothing untoward, and as if he spent the afternoon whetting his ax merely because any good workman would do so. When the king said he should not sleep on a bench tonight, rather in a guesthouse across the courtyard, Svipdag had thanked him . . . then quietly, under cover of dusk, borne mail and weapon in a bundle of underpadding, not to that house, but to a corner of the hall's foreroom.

Much drink went down. It was late when Adhils bade him goodnight. Outside lay drizzly gloom. The forechamber was like a well of pitch. Svipdag was glad of that. He could don helm and ring-byrnie by feel, unseen and thus not warning anybody.

On firm legs—he had drunk far less than he pretended —he crossed the yard. Near the guesthouse, that happened which he awaited. The eight berserkers came from shadow and fell upon him.

He laughed, got back to wall, and let them come. In the murk it was hard to see. He, alone, was free to strike anywhere, and he was iron-clad.

He had killed one when the racket of what should have been a quick and silent murder brought men stumbling out of the hall. They hastily stopped the fight, and raged at the shame that this had brought on them.

Adhils could do naught else than say likewise, and tell the berserkers they lied in claiming that he had egged them on. He outlawed them on the spot. They left under scorn and jeers, storming off into the rainy night, vowing to come back and harry the whole of Svithjodh.

"I give that threat no worth," said Adhils, indoors again. "You've shown how there's nothing to those loons."

"I'm not so sure, lord," answered Svipdag. Now that he dared, he drained a mighty stoup of mead.

"Well, you must become what they were supposed to be, and give me no less guarding than the twelve of them did," said the king with his narrow smile. His glance flicked across Yrsa, whose eyes shone upon Svipdag like suns. "The more so," he added slowly, "since the queen wants you to take their place."

"Will you?" she breathed. "May a good Norn give that you will!"

Svipdag was still for a bit. He no longer really cared to serve this Adhils. However, having today won a high name, he might hope for even more of the honor, as well as the wealth, which he had come for. And Yrsa beseeched.. ..

"Yes," said Svipdag. "I do thank you, my lady."

III

Hrolf Helgisson had but sixteen winters when the chieftains made him king of a shattered Denmark. Though they meant well in the guidance they gave him, none was a Regin or a Sævil. He must grope his way forward into the craft of masterdom. No matter how apt, he was bound to make blunders. He was too mild with his guardsmen, who thus became a wild and overbearing lot; and many folk misliked it when he followed the way of Adhils and, one by one, took a dozen berserkers into his service.

Patiently he explained to those who spoke against this: "I am more like my uncle Hroar than my father Helgi. I would rather build than burn. However, Hroar could not have been what he was nor done what he did, without his brother for sword and shield. I am alone, these are hard times, and before we can hope for peace, we must put down violence. To that end, I use what means come to hand."

He had inherited great treasures and gave them out freely. No king's men were better housed, feasted, clothed, armed, and ring-bedecked than his. Rough they were, but they loved him. Had he wanted, he could have led them in storming Asgard. (Some said it in just those words, because Hrolf, like his forebears, was no very eager worshipper of the gods.) He found plenty for them to do. And all the while he was learning.

In four years, he scoured robbers out of the Zealand woods and vikings from the coasts. Hrok Jarl made an uprising in Scania; Hrolf fared across the water and won a battle wherein Hrok fell; for the sake of Signy the mother, Hrolf gave his foe a lavish burial, but he also made sure of getting a man in that part whom he could trust. He regained Mön, Langeland, and some lesser islands. Once more safe, Roskilde nourished. Likewise did the little fishing port on the Sound, drawing traders until they began to call it Cheaping-Haven. In between his warfarings, Hrolf went about among the shire-Things, or sat in his hall in Leidhra, heard men out, gave judgments, and strove to make them agree to better laws.

"I would see you get back what you had under Frodhi the Peace-Good and Hroar the Wise," he told them, "in a kingdom so big and strongly timbered that it will not crumble again around you."

Meanwhile his half-sister Skuld was growing.

After Ingjald the Saxon sent Freyvar Hroarsdottir home, she was wedded to Ulf Asgeirsson, a mighty headman in the north of Zealand. Hrolf raised him from sheriff to jarl and gave Skuld into his keeping. Ulf steered his district well, so that the busy king had scant reason to see him. But at the end of those four years, he sent to Leidhra and invited his overlord to come visit after the Harvest offerings. The messenger added in Hrolf s ear; "He says it's a heavy matter; he did not tell me why."

Hrolf looked hard at him. "Can you yourself guess?" he asked. The man grew unhappy. Hrolf smiled, albeit with small mirth. "Well, I'll not squeeze you," he said. "I'll merely come."

He made a brave sight when he rode into Ulf’s garth. Hrolf did not tower as his father had done; he was no taller than most, and of spare build. Still, he moved like a wildcat, winning fights with much bigger men by sheer speed and skill. Amidst wings of reddish-yellow hair, his face was high in the cheekbones, wide between the large gray eyes under their darkly arching brows, the nose straight and a little tilted, mouth full in the lips and quick to bend upward. But under a soft, close-cropped amber beard jutted the Skjoldung chin. His voice was light, usually rather slow and seldom loud.

He was also akin to the wildcat in cleanliness. If a bathhouse was anywhere near, he went into its steam, scrubbed and doused himself, daily. Men laughed that King Hrolf was hospitable to all the world aside from fleas. He liked good clothes. Today he wore a white linen shirt, red kirtle stitched with gold thread, belt of tooled leather with a broad silver buckle, blue breeks with white cross-gaiters, sealskin shoes, gilt spurs, saffron-dyed cloak trimmed with marten and held by a garnet-studded brooch, gold around head and arms and fingers and scabbard.

He had only a score of guardsmen along. North Zealand being a poor and sparsely settled land, he did not want to lay a burden on its chief. However, these young man were in iron that shone and jingled, and in colorful cloaks. As they neared their goal, they each winded a horn and broke into a gallop. It was a storm, noisy and full of rainbows, that gusted into the garth.

Ulf and Freyvar made them welcome. Nonetheless, plainly they were a troubled pair. Hrolf said he would like to see the grounds during the afternoon, and his host and hostess grabbed at the chance.

They went afoot from the hall, a few men following out of hearing. This was a chilly fall day. Wind boomed across stubblefields and the gray heath beyond them. Clouds hastened through an ice-pale sky where a flight of storks was outward bound, high and high above. Closer down, some ravens flanped black and grukking. Off on one side lifted a wood, leaves ablaze in red, russet, brass, bronze, ripped loose and whirled away by the blast. Afar northward, a steel glimmer bespoke the sea.

"What did you want to talk about?" asked Hrolf.

"Your sister Skuld," said Freyvar. She was a slender woman; her husband was short and stocky. "She makes us fear for our own children, what she may lead them into."

"I'm wary of what she may bring on the whole land," said Ulf. He waved around. "Here is a stern earth at best, full of secret places and uncanny beings. There are fens from which many a man or child or beast has never come back. There are barrows where heatless fires and walking shapes are seen after dark. Often have I myself heard hoof-beats and hound-howlings go through the night air. Wise folk give such things a wide berth. I fear Skuld does not."

"She was always a strange child," sighed Freyvar. "She hardly ever wept, even when little, or showed love or seemed to want it. Mostly she went about by herself. She was willful, given to screaming rages, scorning woman's work, most fain to climb trees, swim—oh, she swims like an otter—range the wilds, later on hunt and fish and, yes, for a task, sharpen knives—"

"I've heard somewhat about that, of course," said Hrolf, 'Well, if her soul seems too much a man's, think who her father was."

"I think more who her mother was," growled Ulf. "Boyish girls I've seen before. Mostly they change after their breasts have budded. Skuld—she's quieted, though she's no less stubborn and sharp-tongued. The servants dread her, so spitefully does she treat them. What frets me most is how she's taken to what looks like spellcraft. Not just a rune cut on a fingernail for luck; no, I've heard her mutter and seen her make passes in ways unknown to me, who've dealt with many different kinds of folk. She's been glimpsed off on the heath, squatted before a dolmen, on her hands the blood of a bird she'd torn apart. She runs into yonder woods, heedless alike of wolves, outlaws, and trolls. Then she's gone long at a time, and won't say where she was or what she did. But when her cloak slipped aside, we've seen that she carried a shoulderblade with signs carved on it. I don't know where she got such a thing"

Hrolf winced. "I don't care for this myself," he said. "She could be only playing, however, maybe teasing you. How old is she now—twelve? Let me see if I can't win her trust and sound her out."

That evening he asked Skuld to sit and drink beside him in the high seat which Ulf had turned over to the king. She came readily.

By bright firelight, in a room warm and full of the smells of woodsmoke, roast meat, rushes on the floor, where flames crackled and talk and laughter rang, Skuld did not seem like any being of darkness. She was very beautiful. The slimness of her age was on her, but not its awkwardness; she flowed rather than walked. The unbound locks of a maiden tumbled straight and black over a simple white gown, down to her waist. That was blackness which shone, as shines a starlit lake. Her face was narrow and thinly chiseled, skin swan-white, lips start-lingly red. But mostly one saw the eyes, large and long-lashed, a changeable green which could shift from almost blue to almost golden, like sea-waves. Her voice was husky, though in anger it grew shrill and saw-edged.

Tonight she smiled and raised a goblet to clink upon her brother's horn. "Skaal," she said, "Welcome. I've seen too little of you."

"We must do something about that," Hrolf answered.

"When?" She was at once aquiver. "Here I sit in this wretched frog-pond, yawning and moldering, while you —Take me back with you!"

"In time, in time," said Hrolf. "You have yet to learn what beseems a wife."

"A wife!" she fleered. 'To cook, brew, wash, sweep, oversee, and wait on a pack of drunken oafs—to be swived whenever it pleases that one of them who calls me his, and each year set my life at stake, in blood and anguish, to farrow—No!"

"You'll have a high standing, Skuld. But you must be worthy of it, and that means doing its work. Do you think I'd not liefer be off chasing deer than sit and listen to the dreary squabbles of dullards and search for a judgment that'll quiet them down? Do you think a war or a robber-hunt has no long treks through rain, no camps in the mud, no hunger or thirst or vermin or runny guts? Do you—"

"Have done! You dwell in great halls, you make merry with friends and lemans, you fare across lands and seas, you meet new men and hear new tales, skalds chant your praises, you play draughts across whole kingdoms with men for pieces, and when you're dead they'll remember you, you won't rot forgotten. ... Do you think your father's daughter, born undersea to an elven woman, will not seek for the same?"

"Well . . . well, we must weigh the matter—" In unease, Hrolf recalled what ill things had been foretold of this girl. "Tell me, have you any memory of your first years?"

She calmed, her moods being always quick to shift; she stared before her and murmured: "I am not sure.

What does anybody remember? Sometimes it seems to me there was ... a huge green coolness, where shapes flitted and the tides pulsed like music. , . . Songs, plucked strings and shivering silver pipes, or was it only sea-birds, or a dream? My dreams are not the same as those of other folk."

"They say you skip off by yourself. That's not safe, you know." "For me it is." "Where do you go?"

Skuld laughed, a sweet sound. "No, brother mine, here comes my time. Tell me about the world outside, Leidhra, Roskilde, everything splendid. Oh, do!"

Wanting to gain her friendship, he obeyed. She listened bewitchingly, head cocked, gaze bright upon him, questions clever and eager. He thought maybe their father had misunderstood and no doom was in her after all.

But the moon was full tonight, and Ulf had told how Skuld fared abroad now and again after sunset. Before the company went to sleep, Hrolf drew a couple of his best men aside and ordered: "Find yourselves a hiding place where you can watch the yard. Stay awake by turns. If you see my sister go forth, come at once and awaken me."

"Waken the king, lord?" asked one of them doubtfully. "You could be having a dream—"

"Which could be meaningful for the land," Hrolf broke him off. "I know. Well, what my sister is about is maybe graver than that. So while we're here, I set that law aside. You will call me—by stealth, that nobody else may know."

For the same reason he refused Ulf’s offer of a thrall woman and entered the shut-bed alone. He left his clothes on. His thought was rewarded when, in thick gloom, the panel slid back and a hand shook him by the shoulder.

He followed the man outdoors, where he buckled on his sword. "She went off yonder," said the warrior, pointing toward the wildwood.

"Well done," said the king. "Wait here for me."

"You're not going alone, my lord!"

"Yes, I am, and I've no time to jaw about it." Hrolf hastened from the garth.

The moon was high and small, yet so bright that most stars were drowned. The air lay moveless, cracklingly cold. Rime covered the stubble and the heather beyond. He could barely make out the shape, in a blowing pale gown, which flitted ahead of him. She did not look behind her. He reckoned that if she did, he could stay unseen through this tricky light.

When she had gone into the woods, it grew harder to follow. Brush clawed, dry leaves rustled, twigs snapped. The moon-glow did naught but dapple blackness. Skuld fared more swiftly and softly than Hrolf had awaited.

Of a sudden he stumbled out onto a meadow. He stopped short and drew a whetted breath.

Trees lowered hoary-headed around the sere grass, whose frost glimmered beneath the moon. In the middle of it stood a high bauta stone, a lichenous slab raised long ago by a folk unknown to a god unknown. The howl of a wolf came, distance-dwindled to little save a shiver, as if the chill gnawing inward through his flesh had begun to speak.

Before the stone stood a woman. Tall and full-formed, in sheening dress and cloak, she was ringed around by awe. Hair more nightful than the sky streamed past a face which recalled his sister's. Mainly he saw her eyes. Even in the wan moonshine, they shone hawk-golden. Her upward-turned hands bore a naked sword.

"Wayfarer, halt," she sang more than said, "and wander no further, ere in the end you must."

"Am I in a dream and all unawakened?" he asked. His voice seemed as far off as the wolfs, and he as far from himself. "Did my man do my bidding?"

"Sleep you or wake you, say what you hunt here, Hrolf son of Helgi King."

"My sister I follow."

"Seek her no longer. Search would find sorrow only. Grief soon enough is given to men; never foreknow your weird. Go home again, King, take hold of the rudder, strengthfully steering forward. Mightily raise what men will remember."

"Who is this hailing Hrolf?"

"Ask me not that, for only the death-doomed need to bear names for crying."

"How are you here, and why do you warn me, lady of loveliness? Have you below your heart ever borne her, the girl who brings grief on me?"

"A word may not change when once it is uttered. Not even Norns can that. Hear me, though, son of Helgi my darling: weal do I wish for you. Let the girl go, and live out your lifespan. Deep may you drink of sunlight, live every day in love and in gladness, dreading no dark to come; at last may you stand and laugh at the Norns, so winning the war you lost.

"See what I bear, this sword that hight Skofnung. Dearly from dwarves I got it. Wield the blade well, and wide may its fame go, high as of Hrolf himself. Strike down the illdoer, stand for the folk, O Hrolf, son of him I loved."

He knelt to take it from her; and she was gone; and he went back.

With Gram, which Sigurdh bore against Fafnir, and with Tyrfing the accursed, and with Lövi of which more later, Skofnung was one of the magical swords, that never rusted and always bit. Goodly it was to see, long and broad, shimmering now brown and now blue. The haft was of a black, hard, unknown wood, gold-entwined, and on the pommel was a many-faced stone, clear white but splintering light into fiery hues. Runes were graven in the crossguard which none could read.

Hrolf tried no more to find out what Skuld did in the wildwood.

IV

Svipdag must attend King Adhils on his rounds and later at Uppsala. But when Queen Yrsa returned to the head burg, the young man was often at her side. The king was displeased. He could do nothing much about it, though, for nothing untoward happened. When those two were together, it was always in sight of others. If they were not always in hearing, such of their talk as got heard was harmless. Svipdag spoke mostly of what had gone on and what was told around his father's lonely steading, she of the wider world she knew, adding many wise redes for him.

As their friendship waxed, he came more and more to tell her his hopes and dreams, while she more and more remembered aloud for him her days with King Helgi. They did their best not to let this be overheard. Still, it could not altogether be hidden from Adhils how the wind blew.

He kept his own counsel and stayed smooth toward Svipdag. Indeed he had gain from this new guardsman. Svipdag was the strongest and ablest in the whole troop, ever the winner at most sports and games. Nonetheless, being fair-minded, polite, willing to listen when others spoke, withal merry, he kept their liking.

Thus the year passed, and spring came again, when Svipdag and Yrsa walked under blossoms, and summer's great greenness.

Then the king got war-word. The berserkers he had cast out were come home to Svithjodh. In the Baltic islands and along the shores of Finland and Wendland, they had found ships, they had gathered crews of ruffians, and now they were on Lake Malar, looting, killing, and burning everywhere around.

Adhils blinked at Svipdag. "This is somewhat because of you, my friend," he said in his mildest tone. "Let you, therefore, go against them. You shall have as many men as you need."

The youth flushed. "I'm hardly ready to lead a host—" he began.

"And stand in its van to be killed!" said Yrsa hotly.

"No, no, here's your chance to prove yourself," smiled Adhils. "You shall be the leader."

Svipdag thought a while before he answered, "Then I want from you my own following of twelve men, whom I pick myself."

Adhils made a wry mouth. He could not well say other than: "That you shall have."

"Any of mine," offered Yrsa. Svipdag grew a deeper red as he thanked her.

He chose his dozen carefully, both from among those who favored the queen and those who unquestioningly upheld the king. All were strong warriors and glad to take him as their head below Adhils. With them he swore brotherhood, in the temple on the bracelet of three thick gold rings after it was dipped in the blood of a bullock, calling to witness Frey of the earth, Njord of the sea, and Thor of the heavens. Thereafter he and his captains led forth a host. The king stayed home.

Well had Svipdag hearkened to older men during the past year. When he set up his swine-array and standards, he knew many tricks of war, such as laying down caltrops in the long grass.

The vikings charged. The fighting grew stiff. They were driven back, and those who got in among the caltrops fared ill. One berserker died, and a heap of rovers. The rest fled to their ships and hurried off.

Svipdag bore this news to Uppsala. The king thanked him much. Queen Yrsa said before the packed hall: "In truth, better men are housed here when one man like Svipdag sits among us, than when your berserkers did."

Sourly, the king agreed. He gave a feast and gifts to the warriors. It was as nothing to what the queen gave a week later.

The year wore away. Svipdag became marshal of the guard, which brought him a herd of duties. He was likewise often out hunting, fishing, boating, swimming, visiting as well as being visited. In his house, besides servants, he kept a lively wench or two. Yet he found ever more excuses to see Yrsa. Her husband glowered.

Meanwhile the berserkers who were left brooded on their hatred. They gathered a larger gang than before, and early next summer sailed back to Svithjodh. It seemed to them they had made a mistake earlier in landing near Uppsala, where the king's crack fighters were on hand.

This time they left their ships well north, on the Gulf of Bothnia, and trekked overland to the mountains, thence southward till they reached the country of the Westmen. From there they meant to strike swiftly at Uppsala. Along the way they plundered, slew, tortured, raped, laid waste, and drew into their band every kind of outlaw and evildoer.

Word reached Adhils. Again he bade Svipdag go against them. This time he would have fewer folk than erstwhile —a third fewer than the wolf pack—for the berserkers had also chosen their season craftily. Able-bodied men were scattered far and wide getting in the crops.

'I’ll take a different way with the household troops," said Adhils, "more roundabout, that the foe be unaware. We can arrive at the same time as you, who'll be kept to the pace of older yeomen and untrained lads among those we can summon. Meet the foe head-on. When he has thought for none save you, I'll fall on him from behind."

Svipdag scowled. "Lord, it won't be easy, keeping track not just of the vikings but of each other."

"We'll use scouts and runners," said Adhils loftily, and would hear no more.

Yrsa found a chance to walk with Svipdag, down by the gleaming river, none but an old deaf tirewoman to watch them. "I fear for you," she said in woe. "I feel in my marrow, Adhils thinks it'll do no harm if you lose and bite the hillside. Then those madmen can be talked into supposing their honor is avenged. They can be bought off cheaply, or even—" a crawling went over her—"taken back among us."

He looked down at the bent head and answered low, "All men must dree their weirds. Yet what you fear shall not happen while blood remains in me, my lady."

She cast him a look he had seen before, in the eyes of a netted swan.

Awkward though their hastily gathered levy was, Svipdag and his captains arrived sooner than the berserkers had awaited. In a dale of steep red walls and rushing waters, under greenwood and across flowery meadows, a hard fight began.

The berserkers had whipped their unruly followers into a team. Back and back they drove the raw, outnumbered Swedes. Never a sign was there of the king or his trained household troops.

Now it is to be told of Svip the yeoman, that he awakened from sleep, sighed deeply and said to Hvitserk and Beigadh: "Sore is the need of Svipdag, your brother, for he's in battle not far hence and has great odds against him. He's lost an eye and gotten many wounds besides. Three berserkers has he felled; three are left."

Swiftly they armed themselves and what men they could get, and hastened to where their father had told them. When they reached the dale, strife was still going on in the light night. By then, the vikings had twice as many as Svipdag. Mightily had he fought, but he reeled from his hurts and his men lay slain in windrows. And still the king had not come to help him.

Yet the foe were also worn down. It is no slight thing to wield iron hour after hour; and they too had suffered wounds and losses aplenty. The fray had broken into knots of men who lurched about, battering with weapons blunted into clubs, or crept away and struggled for breath. Upon this burst a band small but fresh, well-led, bearing newly whetted steel, and wild for revenge.

The brothers went straight to where the berserkers were, and the swapping of blows ended in the deaths of the latter. It needed only a few more killings for fear to sweep through the outlaw gang. Svipdag's men rallied and joined a charge on them. They broke. Those who asked for their lives gave themselves over to the brothers. A huge booty fell likewise to these.

Because they wanted to go home, and anyhow no garth hereabouts could feed them all, the Swedes returned straight to Uppsala. Svipdag went along on a litter, in the care of his brothers. He had swooned and they were unsure whether he would live.

Reaching the burg and royal hall, they found Adhils already there. He thanked them aloud for this work of manhood, lamenting that he had lost touch with the levy and been unable to find it in time. But erelong word leaked out that the king had been near the spot and forbidden his troop to go further.

Svipdag bore grievous hurts. Worst were two gashes on his arms and one in his head, which must be sewn up. And his left eye was gone. Sickness came into his flesh. Long he lay in a coalbed of fever, muttering or raving or heavily adrowse. Queen Yrsa tended him. She paid no heed to pus and stink, she washed and soothed him as if he had been her own child or her own man, and when he began to mend, she brought him milk and broth and spent as many hours at his bedside as he could stay awake.

Healing at last, gaunt and slow-moving, he went between his brothers to stand before Adhils, at eventide in the hall. "How good to see you back," said the king, not as if he meant it. "What would you of me?"

"Leave to go." said Svipdag. He kept his gaze from Yrsa, who gasped and brought a hand to her lips. "I'll seek a lord who shows me more honor than you. Ill have you paid me for warding this land and for the victories I must win on your behalf."

"Well, I have said it was only bad luck which kept me from joining you. Stay, you three brothers, and I will do well by you. None shall stand higher."

Svipdag held himself from telling the king he lied; and as for Adhils, he did not really urge them to abide. His eyes kept shifting aglitter toward Yrsa. She sat dumb. Soon Adhils asked whither they meant to fare.

"We've not decided that yet," Svipdag admitted. "I do want to learn the ways of other folk and other kings, and not grow old here in Svithjodh."

"Well," said Adhils happily, "to show I've no hard feelings, I promise you safe conduct should you ever come visit us."

Svipdag looked at Yrsa. "I will," he said.

In the morning the brothers busked themselves to go. When they were ready, Svipdag sought the queen in her bower. The room where she and her maidens were stood open to sight of trees, whose rustling blew in on a green-smelling wind, and to a heaven where clouds wandered white. She stared long at him, his face scarred and aged, bones jutting under sallow skin, a black patch where an eye had been. Silence grew.

"I would . . . thank you . . . my lady," he said at length, very softly, "for the honor you have shown me."

"Little enough," she answered, herself scarcely to be heard beneath the wind outside. "Now Helgi sleeps well. And I, I need no more see his murderers daily about me." The distaff fell from her hands. She reached out. "Oh, why must you go?"

"This is no longer good for either of us," wrenched from him. "I've freed you of something, maybe, but— I've marked how I'm become a drawn sword between you and the king."

"There was never much else between us," said Yrsa as if her girls were not around her.

"I would only make your sorrows worse, my lady," said Svipdag. "In the end, through me you could even come into danger of your life."

She nodded. Bleakness fell upon her. "More likely, I would bring about your downfall. You're right, here is no longer a place for you. Go, then, and luck and gladness ride at your side." Her shield broke. "Will I ever see you again?"

"If that is my weird, as truly it is my will, I swear so." They spoke only a few words more ere Svipdag left the room. She heard hoofbeats dwindle hollowly away.

V

The brothers went to their parents, where Svipdag spent the next several months getting back his strength and learning how to land his blows one-eyed. He was less blithe than formerly.

Yet he was young, and the world reached before him. Eagerness waxed as his health did. Hvitserk and Beigadh were no less fain to be off. They asked Svip where they might best betake themselves.

"Well, the highest honor, the biggest chance for gold and renown, is with King Hrolf in Denmark and his warriors," the yeoman told them. "I've heard said for sooth that thither are flocking the best fighters in the Northlands."

"Where do you think they will seat me?" Svipdag wanted to know.

His father shrugged and said, "That may in some wise depend on you. But I hear of King Hrolf that his like is not to be found. Never does he spare gold and other dear things for whoever will take them of him. He's skimpy of size, I hear, but great in his thinking and knowledge, a handsome man, haughty toward those who're not mild, but easy-going and friendly toward small folk and any who don't set themselves athwart him. A poor man has no more trouble meeting him and getting a fair word than does a wealthy one. At the same time, he's making his neighbor kings into underlings. Some freely give him their oath, for under him are peace and just laws. Aye, his name will be unforgotten while the world stands."

Svipdag nodded. He had heard the same at Uppsala. "After what you've told," he said, while his brothers added quick yesses, "I think we should seek King Hrolf, if he'll take us in."

"You must see to that yourselves," answered the yeoman. Sadly: "Me, liefest would I that you stayed home with us."

They would not hear of this, as he had foreknown. Erelong they bade their father and mother goodbye. Afterward she smote her hands together and said: "She who's hatched eagles and can't fly. . . . Well, we have our daughters and grandchildren."

Of the faring south is naught to tell. At the Sound the brothers bought ship-passage for themselves and their horses, and from Cheaping-Haven rode across Zealand to Leidhra.

Roskilde had drawn off most of those who once lived there. Hrolf, like Helgi before him, thought it best to keep his brawling guardsmen away from the town. Moreover, Leidhra was the olden seat of the Dane-Kings, founded by Dan himself, hallowed by memories of Skjold the Sheaf-Child. And it was no mere stronghold. The stockade ringed big houses as well as the royal hall, lesser dwellings, sheds, bathhouses, barns, stables, mews, kennels, workshops which made clangorous the daylit air. Even so, many who had to do with the king's household spilled forth in homes strewn across that land of farms and woodlots which rolled richly green from Leidhra to world-edge.

North, south, east, west, four well-kept highroads ran to the gates of the burg. Traffic went thick upon them, wheels, hoofs, feet. Outside the walls were always booths or tents which traders raised, for a few days of dickering before going on elsewhere: a swirl of bright garb, a hubbub of talk and laughter, maybe a roar when two men put on a fight between their stallions. Hearthsmoke made the air bittersweet, above a ripeness of roasting and hay and pitch and dung and sweat and pine planks under a summer sun. Here trundled an oxcart, there clattered a warrior, yonder a smith banged hammer on forge, a carpenter's saw went ret-ret, naked children tumbled amidst yapping dogs in the dust between buildings, a woman drew water from a well which tapped the nearby stream, a maiden fluttered her lashes at the three tall newcomers. "This is less in size than Uppsala," said Hvitserk.

"Well, yes, seeing as how most of the trade is elsewhere," said Beigadh. "Here's a town for chieftains."

"I was about to finish, it seems greater in heart."

"And surely in its hall," said Svipdag, pointing. For last year, the seventh of his reign, Hrolf had built a new one, as grand in every way as had been his uncle's. Only did he leave off gilt antlers, lest they bring the same bad luck; but cunning carvings swarmed over every gable and beam-end.

"After that gloomy cave where Adhils squats . . . how bright in here!" said Svipdag as they entered.

The king was on hand, playing a board game against an older man. When the brothers greeted him, he leaned back on the bench, smiled, and asked their names. They told him, and added that Svipdag had been a while with King Adhils.

Hrolf’s brow darkened. He spoke calmly enough:

"Then why did you come here? Between Adhils and me is no close friendship."

"I know that, lord," said Svipdag. "Nonetheless I would much like to become your man if it can be done, and my brothers too, though you can see they're little used to this kind of thing."

"Wait." King Hrolf sat straight. "Svipdag . . . why, yes, I've heard of you, if you're the one—how you three slew Adhils's berserkers and did other mighty deeds."

"We are those, lord," said Svipdag; and less boldly: "Your mother Queen Yrsa was a friend to me."

Hrolf brightened. He bade them sit down and shouted for drink. They talked long and long. That evening the king had them stand by his high seat, and after the guardsmen had come in, he uttered forth who they were. "I had not thought I would make any who have served King Adhils into comrades of mine," he said. "But since they've sought me I'll take them in and believe it'll pay us well, for I see that these are doughty fellows."

"Where shall we sit?" asked Svipdag a bit stiffly.

Hrolf pointed rightward, where a stretch of bench stood empty before one saw the first of the row of warriors. "By that man who hight Starulf; but leave room for twelve."

It was a fairly honorable seat. After all, the brothers had yet to prove themselves here. When he sat down, Svipdag asked why a dozen places should stand unused. Starulf told him that those belonged to the king's berserkers, who were away at war. Svipdag frowned.

Hrolf was unwed, because thus far he saw no house to which he felt sure he wanted to tie himself that firmly. However, by two daughters of yeomen he had girls of his own, Drifa and Skur. They were quite young, though old enough to serve in the hall, both pretty, both taken with the brothers from Svithjodh, and showed these goodwill.

Likewise did the other guardsmen as friendships ripened. Next year, they said, the king would take the field himself, not just have a few shipsful out. Then he would be ready to win back Fyn, second of the Danish islands. Many a chance would there be for a warrior to gain renown. Meanwhile were ease, merriment, traveling about among the Thingsteads, hunting, feasting, sports, a hearty life under an unstinting lord. Svipdag, Hvitserk, and Beigadh agreed they had come well to harbor.

So time passed through the summer and to the fall, when the berserkers came home.

Svipdag bristled to see those hairy hulks tread in, armed as if for battle, so much like those that had troubled Yrsa. He had been warned of their custom. They went from man to man, and their leader asked each who sat whether he deemed himself as good as them. Not even the king was free of this. To keep the peace with those beast-men, who were of high use in war, he was wont to answer something like: "It's hard to say, for surely you're fearless, you who have won such honor in weaponstrife and bloodspilling among many folk both north and south." The rest of the troop did likewise, hitting on different words which would not sound like outright cringing. Still, it was easy to hear both fear and shame in their voices.

A bearded giant loomed over the eye-patched Swede and hawked the question. Svipdag sprang up. His sword hissed forth. (Hrolf let his men bear arms in the hall, saying he would not dishonor them by mistrust.) "In no way am I less than every one of you!" he shouted.

Shock brought stillness along the snapping, fluttering fires. The berserkers gaped, until their leader shook himself and challenged: "Hew at my helmet!"

Svipdag did. Metal rang. His edge would not bite, either on the helmet or on the mail which this band wore in spite of their name. The berserker bawled and drew blade. They squared off to fight. Hvitserk and Beigadh snatched their own weapons out.

King Hrolf came on the run. He sprang between them, nearly getting cut down. "You must not do this!" he cried. "We've foemen enough without squandering each other's blood. Hereafter, Agnar, Svipdag, you'll be reckoned alike, and both good friends of mine."

The men snarled and glared. But their king stood in their way and spoke words both stern and mild. Too many brawls had there been in this troop, he said. He would have no more of it. Strong they all were, and he would hate to lose any of them. Nonetheless, whoever picked a fight with a brother in arms, be it these three from Svithjodh who had slain the twelve of Adhils—at that the berserkers grew thoughtful, insofar as they were able—or somebody longer here and highly honored: that man would be sent away forever, outlawed in Denmark. Let them make peace!

In the end, Hrolf had his will. Thereafter the one-eyed newcomer was looked upon in awe.

VI

When springtime came around again, the Dane-King gathered a host and fared off to Langeland. Thence they overran Turd and afterward the whole southern half of Fyn. They had victory wherever they came. All the kings whom Hrolf overwhelmed, he made to swear him troth and pay him scot. His following swelled as the weeks went by, for men swarmed to join him, who was known to be more fair-minded and openhanded than other lords. He could pick and choose whom he would take into his household troops.

One failure did he have. Svipdag reminded him of those treasures King Helgi his father had gotten from King Adhils. The latter had sat on them ever since Helgi fell. "But they are rightfully yours," Svipdag said. "It's not to your honor that you don't claim them. Besides, the way you break rings, you have need of as many as you can clap hands on."

Hrolf chuckled, but soon did send men to his mother Queen Yrsa and asked her for the hoard.

She answered that her duty was to see to this if she could, but it lay not in her unaided might. "King Adhils is too greedy; nor does he willingly do anything that might gladden me. Tell my son that if he himself comes here to fetch the goods, I'll help him with redes and however else I can." The messengers thought she whispered, "And I will see again, Hrolf;" however, they were not sure.

They bore the word back to him where he was camped. Having so much else to do, he decided he must put off that quest.

He was then in the midst of weighty dealings. The old king at Odense, who had broken loose from Leidhra, was dead. Hjördvardh his son had taken the place, but was rather a weakling. Though he could raise more men near home than Hrolf could ferry across the Belt, he offered to talk peace. Hrolf received him well and they bargained back and forth. The Danes were ready to quit warfare for this year, anyway. By the time they got a firm grip on what they had already won, raising up trusty jarls and sheriffs, harvest season would be nigh.

Hrolf would not let go his demand that Hjördvardh become his underling, though the latter stalled and spoke of alliance instead. Was not Hrolf’s sister Skuld of marriageable age? In the end, they parted in seeming friendly wise, and Hrolf invited Hjördvardh to come visit him next year.

This the Odense king did, with a following who made a grand show. Hrolf guested him in all honor. Skuld was there at Leidhra. She was now seventeen.

When Hjördvardh first saw her, he gaped. Blood rose in his cheeks. He was a ruddy young man, snub-nosed, his brown hair getting thin while his belly was thickening. On the whole, he looked good, for he kept beard and nails well trimmed and wore none but the finest clothes. "I, I had heard you were fair to behold, my lady," he stammered. "I did not understand . . . you are more than fair."

"Swart, then?" Skuld smiled teasingly and ran fingers down her midnight tresses. It showed forth the better how clear and white her skin was, how storm-green her eyes. The last childishness was gone from that narrow face. The body, in a rich gown, was slender but wholly a woman's, save that she moved in a soundless, rippling way that disquieted some.

Other men might have wooed her erenow, had it not been for the uneasiness which hung about her. She had learned to be smooth-tongued, to seem to yield while really getting whatever she wanted. But she stayed harsh toward humble folk, given to shrieking fits, grasping for gold and chary of giving it out. Everybody knew she wrought witchcraft; nobody knew how deeply she was into it and what she did when she went off alone.

Folk were astonished that she, who had hitherto scoffed at talk of wedding, was suddenly sweet to a man whom she knew had hopes of winning her, "I could wish myself fair for you, King Hjördvardh," she murmured, and took him by the hand.

"I would, would, would wish you no otherwise . . . than what you are," he said.

"Come, let us sit and drink together," she offered. Each evening thereafter those two were side by side, so eagerly holding speech that they hardly heeded anyone else.

Svipdag drawled to his brothers: "From what I know of her, she's after becoming a queen. And not the wife of a scot-king, either. I daresay she'll stiffen Hjördvardh against giving oath to Hrolf—"

"How will she stiffen him?" asked Hvitserk, and guffawed.

"If Hjördvardh doesn't knuckle under, it'll be war," said Beigadh, "for along of him goes the whole half of Fyn that's left. Hrolfs bent on regaining eveirything his forebears had."

"And if these kings part unfriends," Hvitserk wondered, "how shall Skuld be wedded?" For, her father being dead, her brother ruled over who should get her and on what terms. Among the heathen, a woman may choose second and later husbands for herself, if widowed or divorced; and as for first marriage, her kinsmen seldom gainsay her wishes. Wherefore Svipdag answered:

"I'd not put it beyond her to run off with Hjördvardh. But somehow I don't look for that. Our Hrolf s a deep one, and he's working on some plan."

What that was, broke upon the world several days later. The two kings had gone hunting at the head of a big troop. Merrily blew the horns and belled the hounds, down the long leafy halls of the greenwood; deer bounded away, their rusty coats flecked by gold spots of sunlight, till they fell before twanging bows; a wild boar turned and charged, earth shuddering as he met the spear; when the band stopped to rest in a glade, everyone was happy and at ease.

Hrolf, standing, unbuckled his sword belt. "Will you hold this?" he asked Hjördvardh. The Fyndweller nodded and took the hilt. Somehow the sheath withdrew, and Skofnung gleamed bare in his grasp. Hrolf smiled. "That's all right," he said while lowering his trews. "It handles well, no?"

"Wonderful!" Hjördvardh cried, and brandished it before returning it to the scabbard Hrolf had reached him.

Having let his water, the Dane-King took back his weapon, fastened it on, and said loud and clear: "This we both know, that whosoever holds the sword of a man while that man takes the belt off his breeches, he shall be the underling ever afterward. And now you shall be my under-king, and do my bidding like others."

A shocked hush fell. Hjördvardh sputtered that this was meaningless: that, yes, in plighting troth one did take the sword of the chief in hand, but not like this, and he'd sworn nothing, and— Softly, sometimes even smiling and clapping him on the shoulder, Hrolf spoke of his wish to stay friends, to spare both lands a costly war, to make them one. As scot-king, he said, Hjördvardh should have more renown and wealth, within a realm waxing rich and mighty, than ever before, the more so because Skuld was his sister. .. .

Haggling went on for days, often in sharp words, and men kept their arms by them. But the end of it was that Hjördvardh owned himself Hrolf's man, and wedded Skuld in a feast of overflowing splendor.

"I think our lord played no prank, that day in the glade," Svipdag told his brothers. "He must already have made plain to Hjördvardh that he could overwhelm him.

Yet it'd have meant heavy losses for us. This way, Hjördvardh can save his pride by saying he was tricked; and, to be sure, he gets the woman he wants."

"He seems to bear a grudge, even so," Hvitserk said.

"I think Skuld bears more of one," said Beighadh.

Svipdag nodded. "Aye. He'd be no danger by himself, that sluggard. Given her, though—we've not seen the tail of this beast."

Skuld and her husband went to his hall in Odense, paid scot to her brother, sent warriors at his behest, steered their land after his laws. Rather, she did, for she soon ruled Hjördvardh in every way. A hard life she led him, too, and she was barren as well. Yet he never dared lie beside anyone else, nor forbid her to bring in Finnish wizards and fare off whenever and wherever she chose.

A fisherman whispered how once he had been blown from his home waters, till at last he and his sons got their boat ashore on the lonely strand along Hindsholm. He left them to keep it while he went off looking for fresh water, theirs being gone after stormful days. At dusk, spying some one on a high bluff over the sea, black across flying iron clouds, he hefted his ax and went to see if it might be a helpful soul. From behind a gnarly brake he saw Queen Skuld—yes, surely her, he had seen her before when he sought Odin's Lake to offer for luck— standing at the edge of that headland. Wildly streamed her gown and unbound locks. She had raised a pole whereon was a horse's skull, the worst kind of ill-wishing, and pointed the empty eyes east toward Zealand. That way too did she shake her fist and yell forth curses, while she wept for sheer wrath.

THE TALE OF BJARKI

I

West of the Westmen in Svithjodh, the mountains of the Keel rise ever higher and steeper, until a wayfarer reaches the Uplands of Norway. Here formerly the king was named Hring. Only one of his sons lived, called Björn. While this was a promising lad, folk did not want to risk the Thor-descended royal house perishing with him. So when the queen died, they as well as the king thought that was great scathe. Everyone urged him to marry again. Though he was getting somewhat old, at length he agreed. He sent men southward to find him a worthy wife. At their head was a captain of guards who hight Ivar the Lean.

They rode down the dales to the Oslofjord, where they took three ships and steered for Jutland. Hardly were they in the Skagerrak when a frightful storm arose. Bailing, rowing, seeking naught but to claw off that lee shore, they rounded the end of Norway. Still the gale raged. The crews could only run before it, north along the coast. Each time they thought the weather had slackened and turned their bows, they got first heavy headwinds, then more gales out of the watery vastness beyond Ireland.

Two ships went down. The horny skin wore off the hands of Ivar's men; raw palms and fingers, arms from which the strength had drained, could no longer wield oars. He must raise sail and keep it poled well out, to stay clear of reefs and cliffs where he heard surf bawl through the sleety wind.

After days and nights he won in among islands, to a fjord which stabbed far into ice-helmeted mountains, and beached his craft. It leaked at every seam; he dared no longer trust the tackle; broaching waves had reaved or ruined most of the foodstuffs aboard; the season was well along and foul winds kept on yowling through murky skies. He saw no help for it but to lay over that winter, hunt and salt down meat, make leather and bast rope for repairs. "Maybe we can trade with the Finns, if we can find any," he said. "We're surely in their lands." He cackled laughter. "Maybe a wizard will sell us fair winds, tied up in a sack."

His crew huddled shuddering in their cloaks. Mists blew around them, the steeps gloomed overhead, they were cold and wet and wretchedly hungry.

Once camp was made, Ivar took half a dozen men and struck inland to scout around. They climbed stony heights till they came to a pinewood where soft brown duff whispered underfoot and between the trunks they spied the gleam off a glacier. Toward dusk they found a log house, small but stoutly made. Reindeer stood in a paddock. A hound came to meet them, coal-swart and glowing-eyed, looking as huge as Garm who will devour the moon. It neither barked nor growled, but they felt something eldritch here and knocked most carefully on the door.

A serving-maid let them in. Two more women sat at the hearthstone. One was well clad and not ill to see, for all the years upon her. Ivar's band had eyes only for her companion. Like the others, she was plainly Finnish: short, richly curved of body, with high cheekbones, golden hair, slanty blue eyes; never had they heard of a face more lovely. She smiled and bade them welcome in the Norse tongue as if three women alone had nothing to fear from armed men. Ivar thought this was indeed so. Along the walls he saw runic wands and bones, flint knives, bags of odd-smelling dusts, an overly big cauldron, things that bespoke witchcraft.

Yet he and his were kindly received, given food and drink and good redes about where to hunt for what they needed. Ivar told of their errand and tarings, then asked the women why they lived this lonely, as fine and fair as they were.

The oldest said into the flickering dark: "Everything has its reason, fellows. The ground for our being here is that a mighty king wooed my daughter, but she would not have him. He threatened to come and take her by force. Her father is long away at war. I thought best to hide her here."

"Who is her father?" Ivar asked.

"She is the daughter of the Finn-King by me, a leman."

"May I know your names?" For Finns often mislike giving these to strangers, lest a foe use them in spells.

"I hight Ingebjorg, and Hvit my daughter."

Ivar had his doubts, those names being Norse. However, men of that kind were already in his day making trips to Finland, trading, raiding, squeezing scot of hides and furs out of those tribes; and northward-pushing settlements were slowly driving the wanderers back. There were half-breeds, and enough other folk, who knew both tongues.

The maid here did not, but Ingebjorg was good at Norse and Hvit better still, the few times that she did more than faintly smile. Ivar slept well that night on the rushes of the floor.

In the months which followed, he was often a guest at the house, bringing gifts of meat and, at last, gold. Talking much with Ingebjorg and as much as might be with Hvit, he satisfied himself that the latter was in truth the child of a strong headman if not of one whom an Uplander would call a real king. And surely she was fair; he could lie awake lusting for her. She was not learned in what becomes a queen, but she seemed quick-minded. Anyway, the Uplands were no Danish or Swedish or Göta kingdom. Theirs were a folk who would not have understood lofty manners. It might be well to have a Finnish tie, Ivar thought. Home lay far south; still, northbound traders sailed out of Oslofjord taking Uplander men along—

He did not like everything about her. Surely she was witchy. Where did she and her mother go at Yuletide? How could they fare about over the snows? True, they had skis, like all Striding Finns. Ivar wondered, though, and could not find out, why no tracks showed anywhere around. Might they have gone well inland, to those three tall rocks that overlook a river to which the Finns make offering? The rocks stand just at that place where, northward, the sun may be seen all day at midsummer and never at midwinter. Norse travelers swore that the wizards did not welcome and bless the sun, but cursed it and drove it away.

This might not be true. And Hvit was very fair; and Ivar was weary and homesick, carrying no wish to sail forth again this year.

Early in spring, when his ship was about ready, he asked her if she would like to come along and marry King Hring.

She dropped her gaze to her lap. After a long while she whispered, "Let my mother decide."

Ingebjorg frowned before she said, "As the old saw goes, one must make the best out of the bad. I think it wrong that her father not be asked first. Your kind has never dealt well with ours. . . . However, I'll dare this, to make safe her morrow."

Ivar thought something was amiss here, the more so when the mother stayed behind. They should either have said an outright no or given him a gladder yes. But the leaves were budding, and he yearned to be off, and Hvit was very fair.

So she sailed. They had the best of passages to Oslofjord. Thence they rode to the hall of Hring and made known the woman to him. "Do you want her?" asked Ivar. "Or shall we take her back the same way?"

The king was a big man. grown gaunt and grizzled, and had himself spent a sorrowful winter. He soon fell hard in love with Hvit and married her, against the wish of some of his councillors. No matter that she was not rich, he said. She was beautiful.

But he—he was getting old. The new queen soon marked this.

II

Not far off dwelt a yeoman called Gunnar. In his youth he had long lain out in warfare, to win much renown and booty. Now, settled down with a wife, he had but one living child, Bera, a girl. As a bairn of her own age, the atheling Björn found his way over the few miles of woods, steeps, and icy fords, and became her friend. For years they played small games together and were mightily glad of each other. Later they roamed through greenwood and pinewood, scrambled panting and laughing above timberline to meadows blossom-starred between snow-peaks, lay outdoors in light summer nights which were like a lingering dream of day or stood in ringing winter chill and watched the northlights flare across half heaven.

Then once when they were undressing to steam themselves in a bathhouse, Bera suddenly reddened, and her hands fluttered across her body. Björn turned his eyes away, more flushed and awkward than she. After that they were still closer knit. Their parents smiled and nodded and began talking quietly about a betrothal some years hence.

Meanwhile the children turned into youth and maiden, both tall and handsome, he fair-haired and good at every feat of strength and skill, she brown-haired and sweet though stubborn about whatever really mattered to her. Meanwhile, also, Björn's father took his second wife.

There was much warring to be done against wild men and neighbor kings. Thus Hring often spent many weeks away from home. Then Queen Hvit would steer the land. She was not liked, being vain, cold, and overbearing toward everyone save Björn. Luckily, most Uplanders dwelt in far-strewn steadings and little thorps, so they need not look to her for much.

A time came when King Hring was making ready for such a faring. Björn was wild to go. It would be his first taste of battle. The queen, alone with her husband, said his son ought to stay behind and help her. He soon agreed. She had made this mighty man into a fish hooked on her line. Björn raved when he heard; but toward him Hring could still be stern. In the end, the atheling watched the host fare off without him.

Struggling not to weep, he sought the bed in the loft-room that was his. He had lain a while, staring and brooding, when the door opened, shut again and latched. Queen Hvit had entered. Her garb was a wanton's and her locks floated loose. She came to him, stroked his forehead, and crooned, "Poor Björn. Poor dear Björn. Don't sorrow like this. Your grief is a grief to me."

"Well, why did you work to hold me here?" he croaked.

She smiled and fluttered her lashes. "I've seen you wrestle, race, practice weapon-use, meet boar and elk. You've no need to doubt your manhood in war. In kingcraft, though, and in . . . other things . . . you've a world to learn. Here's your chance, out of your father's shadow. Now be glad, let me gladden you, my own pet bear." For "Björn" means "bear."

He sat up. "Go away!" he shouted. "Get out!" She left, unangered. In the next few days she sought him over and over. At last she whispered to him to come to her in her bower before sunrise, secretly, for she had something great to tell. Unwilling, he did.

No women of hers were in that twilit room. She cast herself upon him, moaning of her love, striving to drag him to her bed. "Behold me, my bear, me, young and alive, bound to a dry stick like Hring! Oh, come and I'll show you the wholeness of life, I'll bring you alive!"

Too shocked to move, he stood dumb for a bit. Then rage burst forth. His palm cracked on her cheek, sent her staggering back. "You foul slut," he yelled, "haven't I told you to keep away from me?"

She breathed hard before she spoke in a voice like an adder's: "That was foolish of you. I am not used to being struck and driven off. You think it's better, Björn, to throw your arms around a yeoman's daughter than have love and goodwill from me. Well, as you will. For your hard heart and . . . and your cloddishness . . . take your reward!"

Snatching a wolfskin glove, she smote him across the face with it. "Like a bear have you treated me, Björn; no more than a bear are you, nor ever shall be. No, you shall become a bear in truth, a grim and raging bear that lives off no other food than your father's kine. You shall kill more of those than was ever heard of erenow; and never shall you be free of this shape-changing; and the knowing of it shall be the worst of all for you."

He shrieked, that strong-thewed youth, whirled and fled. Already as he crossed the yard, he shambled. Hvit's cat-shrill laughter followed him into the dawn.

What she did next is not known. Nor did anyone know where Björn had gone, what had become of him. Some feared he might have been taken by a huge gray bear which began harrying the king's herds. Cattle it slew as a weasel slays in a henyard, yet it was spied only from afar by frightened men. Hunters went to search. Their numbers were few in wartime. Wilier than was right, the bear lay in wait, attacked from behind, slew and maimed and sent the rest of them in flight. They saw nothing could be done till the king and his warriors returned.

Bera wept for her sweetheart.

Summer waned. One day late in it she was out to gather berries. On her way back, in a cold wind beneath a hastening dull sky, she stopped in mid-path, dropped her basket and wailed. For out of the brush trod that great iron-hued beast.

Wildly she looked around for help, a tree to climb, anything. But the bear only stood where he was, some yards off. She heard him make a sound more like purring than growling. Step by slow step, waiting between steps as if afraid, he neared. It came upon her that here was a wonder. She braced herself and stood fast. The bear reached her. She held forth a shivering hand. He licked it. She looked into his eyes and thought, in a wave of dizziness, that she knew the eyes of Björn the king's son.

The bear turned and trotted off. She groped after. High they went on the mountainside, to where scrub oak grew gnarly amidst wan grasses and the eye swooped over a blue-shadowed dale to snowpeaks that seemed afloat in heaven. This eventide she saw just a chill, whistling dusk, a cave near a spring, a shape at its mouth. The bear reared . .. was it really a bear? She ran to the arms of Björn.

After a while he said he must get on some clothes. Laughing, sobbing, hiccoughing, she clutched him and said she would keep him warm. When he went into the cave, she followed. On its sandy floor glowed a banked bed of coals. He started to feed it wood. She chattered that that was her task. As the flames bloomed, she saw a heap of hay and hides for sleeping, and drew very near to him,

"You must go," he stammered. "This is not seemly. You can't stay. I'm a man only at night. Each dawn I turn into a beast."

"So much . . . the more ... is it right for me to abide here ... O my darling," she cried softly.

For weeks she dwelt there. When he arrived near sundown, she cleansed his dripping jaws, cooked the torn-off ribs or haunch he had borne home, and waited for him to become Björn again. In the mornings she brushed the harshness that was his coat, kissed the terrible head, and waved farewell as long as she could see him lumber down the slope. The rest of the time she was alone with sun, clouds, rain, wind, hawks. She would sleep, gather sticks and nuts against winter, try to make the cave houselike, now and then weep a little but oftener sing.

Afterward she told no more than that of her life on the heights. It may well be that the bear did not always go ravening among men. Did she ride gleeful on his back, like the lassie she had been not many summers ago? Did he raid the bees to bring her honeycomb as overflowing as his love, and did she weave wreaths to hang around his neck?

Did he take her along when he sought out the elven folk? For surely, in light of what happened later, he knew them. Half outside the world of men, he was half into the Half-World. The spell must also have touched Bera, in however ghostly a way. Did she giggle at the antics of a niss, or flee when a nicor gruesomely broke the surface of a moonlit lake? Did she sit at the feet of a dwarf, old and twisty and tough as her oak trees, to hear his riddles and remembrances? Did she run in fear from the earthquake stride of a troll? Did she hear the Asgard's Ride of the dead halloo through the night sky, did she see the one-eyed spearman on an eight-legged horse who led them in their hunt?

Did she meet the elves? Tall and grave they are, though sometimes a wicked mirth ripples through them; they come from their hidden high-roofed halls, or from the gods whom they may serve, to dance by moonlight in rings of bauta stones raised ages ago; awful and beautiful are they, and weirdly do they work on the world. One woman among them spoke long to Björn of what had been and would be, far off in a land called Denmark. Afterward he needed from Bera what cheer she could give.

She held him close against the hateful dawn.

In fall King Hring came back from his warfare and men told him what had gone on, or what they thought had. When he learned that his son was lost, belike killed and eaten by that beast which was ruining his herds more than anyone else's, he covered his eyes. Long he sat before he went off by himself. Later the queen urged him most strongly to gather enough men and hounds to track that monster down and get rid of it. He stared sideways at her and said there was no haste about that.

To everyone he acted as if the bear did not matter much. Still Hvit kept after him, as did his friend Gunnar whose only child was likewise missing, and the kinfolk of those who had lost dear ones to the beast, and all who dreaded it. At last Hvit taunted him: "Is your manhood small where it comes to keeping the land safe also? Then I must betake myself elsewhere, for bad harvests will come from such a king till he's hanged on high to the gods."

Hring groaned aloud and turned from her. Next morning he sent word out for hunters to meet from far around.

Some nights later, the bed rustled beneath Björn as he woke from sleep, turned and drew Bera to him. She lay by the knocking of his heart, smelling the hay and skins and his own beloved warmth. In darkness and wind she heard him say:

'My dream has come. Tomorrow will be the day of my bane. They are bound hither to get me killed."

She cried out. He stopped her with a kiss and went on in that heavy whisper: "Well, I myself have little gladness any more, save when we two are together, and now that must end.

"Hush. I give you the ring under my left arm. Tomorrow when I'm dead, go to the king and ask him to give you what's below the left shoulder of the beast. He will. Belike the queen will guess what you've been about and offer you bearflesh to eat. You must not—"

"I could not!"

"You are with child, you know. You will have three boys; and that food would harm them sorely, for the queen is the foulest of witches.

"No, go home to your father and mother, and there birth our children. You will come to love one of them the most, though hard will they all be to cope with. When you can do that no longer, then take them back to this cave. Here you will find a chest with three locks. The runes on it will tell you what each of them should have. There will be three weapons as well, driven into the mountain, and each lad shall get the one which I, fore-sighted, have willed to him."

He tried to kiss away her tears. "Bestow good names on our sons—Frodhi the first, Thori the second, Bjarki the third—for long will they he remembered." She clung to him and thought she heard a fading faintness: "Yet the sign of the beast will be unon each of them. Even he who seems unmarked will at the end—" He broke off and comforted her as best he might.

At sunrise the bear shape came over him. He went outside and she followed, into dim daylight. Peering toward a noise which lifted, she saw a hundred men headed up the mountainside. Before them bayed and leaped whole packs of hounds.

The bear licked her hand, once, and charged.

Hounds and hunters went at him. That was a long and hard fight. He slew nigh every dog—ripped it open, broke its back, snapped it in bloody twain—and hurt no few men. Yet spears and arrows sank into him until he was no longer gray but red. The warriors ringed him in. He rushed about. Everywhere were shields and whetted metal. He began to stumble on the shafts and guts that hung from his belly. No way was left to slip free. He turned toward the king, struck that man who stood next by and ripped him asunder.

But then the bear was so worn and empty that he cast himself on the earth. His breath rattled with blood. Spears plunged, axes rose and fell, the men swarmed over him and slew him.

While they stood back, cheering and boasting, Bera came to King Hring. Her mouth was firm and her gait was steady. He knew her and said, "Why, Bera, my dear, where ever have you been—?"

"That's no matter, lord," she answered. "For old times' sake, will you let me have what's under the shoulder of your prey?"

He looked at her a while before he nodded his whitening head and spoke loud enough to be sure men heard: "Of course. You must be starved, after wandering lost this long. There can't be anything here, save such as I might as well let you have."

Like a carven figure, Bera watched them flay and butcher the carcass, until she could go to the formless thing and reach underneath. None saw her draw forth a golden ring and tuck it between her breasts.

Whooping, the band fared back to the king's garth. It would have seemed strange if a girl newly returned from wilderness did not come along, and did not go into the half for merrymaking like everyone else.

Queen Hvit went about, very blithe, bidding them welcome and ordering the bear's flesh cooked for a feast. When she saw Bera, hunched unhappily in a corner, she halted. Her fingers crooked. She wheeled and left in a whirl of skirts. Well before anybody might have awaited it—men had just begun their real drinking—she carried in a trencher of spit-roasted meat.

Straight to Bera she went and said for none to mistake: "How good to know you're alive! Poor darling, you mustn't go hungry one wink longer. Here, eat."

The girl shrank back on the bench. "No," she begged.

Hvit drew herself straight. Frightening did she look, in a ghost-white gown which glimmered amidst shadows like her eyes and her teeth. "Why, this is unheard of," she said, "that you spurn food which the queen herself does you the honor to bring. Take it at once, or you'll get what is worse!"

She drew her knife, stabbed a chunk of meat, and thrust it at Bera's hps. Worn out, numbed by grief, terrified for her unborn children, the girl knew not what to do. Men were beginning to stare. If they knew the truth, what might they do? She clenched shut her eyes and hands. The gobbet pushed hot at her mouth. Its smell of scorched blood roared in her head. She swallowed it whole.

The queen laughed, "Well, that wasn't too bad, was it, little Bera?"—and pushed another bite at her.

It got onto her tongue. Bera won back a wavelet's worth of strength. She spat it out, leaped to her feet, and shrieked, "No, no more, not though you torture or kill me!"

Again Hvit laughed. "Could be that that morsel does something anyway." She lifted a third.

Bera sprang past her and fled out of the hall. The queen herself could ill afford to start folk wondering. "Well, well, how thin-skinned for a yeoman's wench," she said. "I was only trying to brighten her mood."

Bera went home to her father and mother; and heavy was the burden she bore. To them alone did she tell what had happened.

III

Hvit did not seek to do the girl further harm. Either she dared not, or she felt she had enough to gloat over. For at her lying in, Bera brought forth first a horribly misshapen child. Above he was human, but from the navel down he was an elk. When Gunnar the yeoman would have taken the being out to squall on a hillside till it died or a wolf found it, she said through her sweat and pain, "No. That's Björn's son. He wanted him named . . . Frodhi."

Now she birthed another boy whose feet were the feet of a dog, though in all else he was goodly to see; him she called Thori.

Yet a third boy had she. In him was no flaw. This was Bjarki, whom she came to love the most.

Of the years which followed is little to say. At first folk must have shunned that house of bad luck. However, Gunnar was wealthy and well-liked; he had built a halidom to Thor, where he often made offerings; his crops and kine throve. He and his could not be under the wrath of the gods or the landwights. And after all, freaks were not unknown, though usually they were set out. Erelong life was going on as before, save that there was no more close friendship between Gunnar and King Hring. The queen's ever more evil temper had caused most men to steer as clear of that hall as might be.

Gunnar and his wife thought it wise to keep still about who the father was of their grandchildren. Bera told the world they were the by-blow of a wanderer she had met while lost in the high country. That sort of thing was common enough, Being comely and sturdy and sure to bring a big dowry, she had suitors, but took none.

The boys grew like grass. Elk-Frodhi on his long hairy legs, hoofs click-clicking, swayed back and forth and must needs go slow when he walked. Leaned over to run, he outpaced everyone save his loping, padding brother Thori Hound's-Foot. As he got his growth, nobody could withstand him when he wrestled or smote with wooden practice weapons.

Huge and ugly he was, uncouth and surly. He got along well only with his brothers. These were the best-looking of lads, hardly to be told apart aside from their feet. The older of them was oftener snarly than the younger. Bjarki was of a sunny heart.

Nonetheless, since he always fared in company with the other two, their ways worked on him. The bigger they grew, the louder and more unruly they became. When playing with neighborhood boys they were heartless and willful; many a one had a hard time at their hands.

Worst was Elk-Frodhi. At the age of twelve, he was broad and heavy as any full-grown man, and would have been as tall did his legs not make him slouch. He began to seek the king's garth and challenge the royal guardsmen to bouts. Several he threw around so badly that they were crippled. When the rage came upon him, he would slash out a sharp hoof or bring down a fist like a hammer. Some men died.

This cost Gunnar stiff weregilds and led to hard words between grandfather and grandson.

At last Frodhi hulked and clicked his way to Bera and said he wanted to leave. "I wish naught to do with folk hereabouts," he growled. "They're weaklings, who get hurt if you come near them."

She sighed, and knew in guilt that it was from a kind of happiness. "That would be best," she said. "First come and get what your father left you."

They went together, up onto the mountain. She had not been there since Björn was flayed. Nodding sunlit grasses, blowing flowers, soughing trees, a hawk aloft amid clouds which seemed to have broken off the snows yonder, a thrush which trilled and hare which bolted, none of these remembered him. When she and her son entered the cave, they found a triple-locked chest of bronze, lovely to see though its moldings told no human story. She had spent time learning how to read runes. Now those upon the box spoke to her. When she touched the locks, they sprang open. Inside lay bright suits of mail, fine clothes, gold rings and jewelry. The runes said Elk-Frodhi should have little of this.

"I'll take my own, then," he sneered, and tried to snatch out a helmet. His fingers slipped off. He could grasp nothing which was not his. "Well, I'll win my own, and Hel take you!" he bellowed. Did a few tears start forth?

Squinting toward shadows at the back of the cave, he saw steel glimmer and went for a close look. Driven into the granite which made a rear wall for the softer stone around, were three weapons: a longsword, mighty and fair; a great war ax; and a curve-bladed shortsword. "Ha!" he cried, and grabbed the hilt of the first. Though he heaved till the sweat ran out, he could not rock it, nor afterward the ax.

Said Elk-Frodhi: "Maybe he who put these here wanted they should be dealt out the same as the other goods." He took the shortsword by the haft, and at once it slid free.

A while he stared at it before he said, "Unjust has he been who divided these treasures." In howling ire he chopped the blade two-handed against the mountain. He did not break it; no, it rang as it hewed into the granite.

A while more he stared. At last he said, "What matter if I fare about with this uncanny thing? Surely it can bite."

He turned, snatched up what else had been left him, and galloped away. He did not bid his mother farewell, nor did she ever see him again.

Word came after months. Elk-Frodhi had gone into the Keel, a wild part through which one road went. There he had built himself a hut and now lived as a robber. It took more than a few men to stand him off. Were the band small, he bore off their goods, and if they fought, he left dead and wounded behind him.

King Hring heard of this, and thought he could see what witchcraft lay beneath. However, he said merely that he did not think it was his work to keep safe a traders' road to Götaland.

When their brother was gone, Thori Hound's-Foot and Bjarki grew better behaved. Yet they were restless too, and after three years the former asked leave to go.

His mother took him to the cave and those things which were willed him. His was a bigger share. He too tried to draw the beautiful longsword, and failed. The ax came free in his hand, and a stout weapon it was. He busked himself, said goodbye to his mother and grandparents, and rode off eastward.

All the brothers were keen hunters. When Thori saw traces too faint for most eyes, leading off the Götaland road, he followed them. Atop a rocky bluff, in a murk of firs, he found a sod-roofed log house. He took the lone chair inside and pulled his hat low.

Toward evening was a huge clatter of hoofs, the earthen floor shivered beneath weight, and there stood Elk-Frodhi, seven feet tall and more than broad to match. He glared at the dimly seen newcomer, drew his sax, and chanted:

"Grinning the shortsword

goes from the sheath;

well he remembers

the work of Hild."

Hild is a Valkyrie and her work is war and manslaying. Frodhi chopped his blade down into a bench, frothed and snorted.

Quoth Thori:

"I can likewise

let my ax

sing for you

the selfsame stave."

And he hid his face no more. Frodhi was overjoyed in his gruff way to see him, having long lived wholly friendless. He bade him stay, and offered him half the hoard of loot.

Thori said he would not take this. He abode there a few days, then said he would be off again.

Elk-Frodhi sighed: "I'm no woman to keep you here, am I, nor more than part of a man. As you will, brother. Hear my rede, though ... for I get some news from those I waylay but spare the lives of. Go on to Götaland. On the shores of Lake Verier dwell the West Götar, who pay scot to the High King Bjovulf. Their own under-king has died and they've called a meeting at midsummer to choose a new one. This is how they do it. They set a chair in the middle of their Thingstead, such as two ordinary men could hardly fill; and he who can sit at ease by himself, leaving no proper room for another, shall be king. I think already you're that size." "An odd custom," said Thori.

Frodhi laughed. "It makes as much sense to me as whatever else men do. Either they get a giant who leads them to victory, or they get one too fat to start a war."

"Well, they do say Bjovulf is a good overlord. I thank you for doing this well by me."

"I wish ... I could do more—be off, if you must!" Frodhi turned his coarse head aside.

So Thori fared to the West Götar, where a jarl received him well. Folk admired his height and looks. When the Thing was held, its lawman deemed he fitted the seat best, and the yeomen roared the name of king upon him.

Many are the tales about King Thori Hound's-Foot. He grew rich in friends, among them the jarl, whose daughter he married, and his overlord. When Bjovulf later fell in strife against a dragon, trouble broke forth among the Götar. Thori stood fast by that Vigleik whom the old king had wanted to follow him, and in most battles had the victory.

Meanwhile Bjarki stayed home. Three more years passed by.

His mother was happy with him. He had grown altogether good-hearted, however bold in the hunt or in breakneck sport. Did he no longer wrestle, race, or otherwise playfully contend with his fellows, it was because none had a chance and everybody knew it. For he towered a head over the highest among them. So broad and thick was he that, from a ways off, he did not seem to be this tall; yet he ran down horses and deer while hardly breathing deep, and was supple as a withe. In face as well as size, be was from the same mold as his brother Thori: handsome in a heavy-browed, blunt-nosed, freckled way, his hair as red and his eyes as blue as living fire. But he did not lope like a dog, he strode like a man.

Merry at first, he began in time to brood. Bera watched him in growing trouble. She was not astonished when, at last, he bade her walk with him alone in the greenwood. There he asked her who his father was. He had gnawed his way through her tale and would no longer be fobbed off.

In a mingling of dread and joy, she told him about Björn and herself, and how his stepmother had undone her lover.

Bjarki smote fist in palm; birds fled from branches. "We've much to reward that she-troll for!" he cried.

"Beware her," his mother begged. And she told how she had been made to eat of the bear's flesh, "and that's seen on your brothers, Thori and Elk-Frodhi."

Bjarki said through his teeth: "I should think Frodhi has greater grounds to avenge our father and himself, than to win goods by robbing and slaying harmless men. And strange how Thori could fare away without giving that hag a keepsake."

"They did not know," Bera whispered.

"Well, then," and Bjarki grinned like a wolf, "best that I pay her off on behalf of us all."

She warned him about Hvit's witchcraft. He promised to take care, and spent some while making ready.

Grandfather Gunnar had become time-enfeebled. Bjarki and his mother went by themselves through the woods to the hall of King Hring. They found the garth ill-tended, paint peeling from walls, weeds rank in the yard, few folk around save slovenly guardsmen and servants. There was no bar to getting speech with the king in an offside room. He too was greatly aged. In him, unlike the yeoman, was no haughtiness left, and his hands always trembled.

Bera stood forth, her son sheer behind her, and told him what had happened. For proof she had the ring taken from beneath the slain bear.

The king turned it around in his chalky fingers, peered at it with his dim, watering eyes, and, "Yes, yes," he quavered, "yes, I know this well, I gave it myself to my Björn cub, and . . . and ... oh, I had my thoughts, I was not blind, not then, but I kept still because . . . because I care so much for her."

Bjarki's deep young voice rang under the rafters: "Let her now begone, or I will have revenge."

Shivering, though the day was summery bright, Hring pleaded. He would make it up with goods, he promised, gold, every kind of wealth, heaped as high as might be wished, if only Bjarki would let this matter rest in its grave. He would give his grandson a shire to steer, yes, the name of jarl at once, and the whole Uplands to be king over when he, Hring, was gone, which would be soon. Hvit had given him no children. But oh, let her live—

"No wish have I for that," said Bjarki, "before all. no wish to call that fiend my queen—and you, you're too snared by her to rule either your kingdom or your wits aright. Never shall my father's murderess do well in the Uplands!"

Hring cowered, seemed to crumble. He might have called his guardsmen. Did he know that Bjarki, who had overcome each one of them in games, would hew a road through any shield-burg they raised? Or did he fear they would stand aside from the queen they hated? Ruthless in his youth, Bjarki walked across the yard and tore open the door of the lady-bower.

Hvit's women shrieked and scattered. She crouched spitting before him. He had a glimpse of a haggard face, of a soul more starved than any flesh could be; then he had clapped a sealskin bag over her head and drawn the string of it chokingly tight.

Blinded, she could work no spells on him. She clawed, and he heard her voice muffled from within: "Ha, I know you, I know you, and I say the hour will come when another witch brings your bane—"

He cuffed her. The hooded head snapped to one side and she fell. "This for my father!" he shouted, hauling her back up. Blow after blow: "This for my mother! This for Elk-Frodhi! This for Thori Hound's-Foot!" When she was dead, he tied her by the ankles and dragged her around for everyone to see. Afterward, lest she walk again, he cut off her head and burned her.

In this wise died Hvit the Finn-King's daughter, far from her homeland in miles and years. Most in the royal household said her doom was not too harsh.

Later Bera showed Bjarki the cave. He took the rest of the treasures, which were the largest part; and for him the longsword came easily out of the stone.

The runes on its blade said it hight Lövi and was among the best of weapons, for it was not forged by hand of man. It must never be laid under one's head nor rested on the hilt; nor need it be honed more than thrice in an owner's lifetime. Whenever drawn, it would give a death, and no second blow would have to be landed. Following his mother's word—she remembered the elves —Bjarki made for it a sheath of birchbark.

Old King Hring did not long outlive his wife. When he sickened and died, men hailed Bjarki in his stead.

He ruled for three years, and did well at healing the harm that had come under the witch-queen. Yet he was restless as his brothers had been. The Uplands were no home for a young man like him. Here were tall mountains and good hunting, and very little else. Men grew stale on their wide-scattered homesteads. At best, they might fare abroad as traders or vikings. Why not seek something this country could never give?

First he saw to his mother's welfare. Valsleif Jarl was a widower, a man of standing whom Bera had come to like. Bjarki got them married, and himself helped lead groom to bride. Thereafter he called a Thing, told the folk he was leaving, and led them in choosing a new king.

Then at last he was free to ride off.

He had a horse of size to bear him, and no other company. Most gold and silver he left behind, though with weapons and clothes he was well outfitted.

Off he rode, and suddenly after this long time he could let his glee break loose. Far up in heaven, the larks heard him singing.

Of his trek naught is told until one day, like Thori before him, he came to the lair of Elk-Frodhi. He took his horse to the stall end of the house and settled down. He knew some of the things he saw in the piled hoard— they were akin to those he had taken from the elven chest—and felt he had a right here to whatever he might need.

Toward sundown Frodhi came home and glowered at the newcomer who sat in his chair, hat pulled down to mask face in shadow. Even to him, a guest was a guest, thus holy. He brought his own horse to the stall, and found it could not get along with the other.

Turning, he said: "Well, this a froward and worthless fellow, who dares sit himself down without leave."

Bjarki kept his hat low and did not answer.

Seeking to frighten him away, Frodhi drew shortsword from sheath so it screamed. Twice he did this; but Bjarki paid no heed.

The robber drew blade a third time and rushed in. Huge though Bjarki was, Elk-Frodhi overtopped and outweighed him. Still the guest sat calmly. Frodhi growled and slavered. "Would you like to wrestle?" he got out. His thought was that he could break the man's neck in that game and so become free to cast him out.

Bjarki laughed, sprang to his feet and seized Frodhi around the rough-haired waist. Mighty was that fight, wrenchings and tramplings till the walls shuddered.

Then the hat fell off. Frodhi knew his brother, let go, and rasped: "Welcome, kinsman! Why didn't you tell me? Too long have we fought."

"Oh, no need to end it yet," said Bjarki, albeit he breathed hard and sweat sucked his clothes to his skin.

Elk-Frodhi grew grave. "Scant luck would you have had, kinsman, if we really strove," he rumbled. "I can only be glad that I saw in time. . . . Come." He hugged his brother; the woodland smell of him filled Bjarki's nostrils. "Let's drink and eat and, oh, you must tell me everything!"

Bjarki stayed for some days, talking when they did not go hunting. Frodhi asked him to abide here and own half the wealth. Bjarki said no; he did not like killing folk in order to win his goods.

'Frodhi sighed in the firelit gloom: "I've given ruth to many when they were small and weak."

"I'm happy to hear that," Biarki answered. "Best would be if you let everyone go by in peace, whether or not you think you can win aught bv slaying them."

"I have gotten a doom that is heavy in all ways," said Elk-Frodhi.

After a while he added: "As for you, well, I know somewhat of the world, alone though I am here. Wayfarers and—and others—tell me things. If you want riches and renown, seek out King Hrolf in Denmark. The best warriors fare to him, for he's the most bold, wise, openhanded and splendid of kings in the Northlands."

More did he have to say, until Bjarki agreed.

Next morning Frodhi followed his brother a ways along the road, doing his clumsy best to talk. At last they must speak their goodbves. Bjarki dismounted to clasp hands on the same footing. Frodhi shoved hard at him, and he stumbled backward. A smile stole across the robber's ugly lips. "You don't seem as strong as you ought to be, kinsman," he said.

Drawing his knife, he gashed his own elk-thigh. "Drink of this blood," he said, pointing to what welled forth. Like one in a dream, Bjarki knelt and obeyed. "Rise," ordered Frodhi. When Bjarki did, he shoved him again. This time the man younger by an hour stayed in his tracks.

"I think you got good from that drink, kinsman," said Frodhi. "Now you should stand above most, as I heartily wish for you."

He chopped his foot into the bank beside him, through ferns and soil, down into rock till the hoof was lost therein. Withdrawing it, he said: "Daily will I come to this spoor and look. If you die of sickness, there'll be mold in it, and water if you drown at sea. But if you die by weapons, there'll be blood, and then will I come to avenge you ... dearest to me of all men."

And Elk-Frodhi fled away up the wilderness road.

Bjarki shook himself free of sorrow and rode on. Naught worth telling happened before he crossed the ranges to Lake Vener. King Thori Hound's-Foot was away, whether on war or hunt is not said. Folk wondered to see him come riding back by himself—for, shod and mounted, he looked just like Bjarki.

Unsure what was going on, the latter thought best to play along till he could learn. He let them bring him to the royal hall, serve him in the high seat, and at night lead him to bed by the queen.

When they were alone, Bjarki said to her, "I'll not lie under the same blanket." She was taken aback until he told her how matters stood. Thereafter she too thought it wisest to pretend; a witch or a Norn might be in this.

Things went so for a time. While they did not become lovers, Bjarki and the queen became friends.

When Thori did get home and found his brother, that was a meeting of embraces. Having heard the full tale, the king said there was no other man in the world whom he would have trusted to rest beside his wife. He wanted him to stay on and to share in everything.

Bjarki said that was not his wish. Thori offered him men instead, to follow him wherever he might go. This likewise Bjarki refused. "I'm bound for King Hrolf in Denmark," said he, "to learn if it's true what they tell me, that more can be won as a man of his than as a king anywhere else."

"That may be," said Thori; dryly: "Though I'll stay where I am." And earnestly: "Remember, those birds which wing highest are most likely to be struck down by the hawk."

"Better that than to be a mole," said Bjarki.

Thori started to answer, but curbed himself. At leave-taking he rode a ways with his brother. They parted in friendly wise, though keeping thoughts of their own.

Now once more is little to tell save that Bjarki got to the Sound, bought passage across, and at last had not far to go before he would reach Leidhra.

IV

The year had run on to fall, each day more short and chilly than the last. Toward the end of Bjarki's trek, rain fell from dawn till dusk and gave no sign of stopping to sleep. He had pushed on hard in his eagerness, and at nightfall found himself on a lonely stretch of heathland, soaked through. His horse was badly wearied under him. It slipped and plopped about in fetlock-deep mud. Still the downpour brawled, icy through an ever deeper blackness. At last he lost the road.

A bit later, his beast stumbled against what seemed like a mound. Bjarki got off, groped forward, and made out that this was a house, one of the poor little sort built from turf and peat over a pit dug into the earth. The smokehole was covered, but light glowed dull red through cracks around a door. Bjarki knocked.

A man half opened it. Grizzled and ragged, he carried a bill. The Norseman wondered what in the gloomy hole behind him might draw robbers. Even the wife was not much to look at, seen by a clay lamp over which she huddled for some warmth.

"Good evening," said Bjarki. "May I shelter here for the night?"

The crofter, who had gulped at the great size of him, now felt safe and said, "Aye, I'd not send you on in this foul weather and murk, outlander though I can hear you are." He helped unharness and tether the horse. It must wait outside, no room being within where his one cow was stabled. Bjarki got a shabby coat to wrap around himself after his drenched garments were off, a dish of roots and hardtack, a place to lay himself on the rushes in that smelly gloom. Everybody was soon asleep.

In the morning the wife, Gydha, gave Bjarki the same food for breakfast since they had no other. Meanwhile Eilif, the man, asked for news. In his turn Bjarki asked about King Hrolf and his warriors, and if it was far to reach them.

"No," said Eilif, "only a short way. Are you bound thither?"

"Yes," answered Bjarki, "that's my thought, to see if he'll take me into his household."

"It'd be fitting for you, aye, aye," nodded the crofter, "seeing how big and strong you are." He sounded oddly sad; and all at once, Gydha broke into tears.

"Why, what are you crying about, goodwife?" asked Bjarki.

She sobbed: "I and my man . . . had an only son . . . we called him Hott. Here was a lean enough living for him . . . and this past year none, after we lost our flock . . . Eilif and I can barely last on what's left. . . . Hott went to the king's burg to see if he could get work—and they made him a scullion but—" She must stop to master her grief. "The king's men make game of him. He has to help serve, and . . . when they sit and eat, as soon as they've gnawed the meat off a bone, they throw it at him . . . and if it hits him he's hurt, knows not if he'll live or die, though where else could he go?" She leaned forward in the dimness of the hut and said more steadily, "This reward do I ask for taking you in, that you cast small bones at him rather than big ones, if they've not already knocked him to hell."

"Gladly will I do as you wish," said Bjarki, "but I think it's unmanly to throw offal at anyone or deal badly with children and weaklings."

"Then you do well," said the woman, catching his hands in her own worn fingers, "for these look mighty to me, and my Hott could never stand before your blows."

Bjarki bade the old couple farewell and rode on according to the way they had told him. The rain was past, the sky dazzling, sunlight asparkle on puddles in the brown earth and on wet boughs where a few leaves still flamed. Starlings flocked, robins hopped in fields, curlews whistled merrily through a cool damp breeze. Bjarki paid scant heed. A scowl was on his brow. He had not looked to find king's men who behaved like trolls.

Heath and marsh gave way to richer country, where steadings stood plentiful and cattle drowsed rust-red behind fences. Here many folk went to and fro. Bjarki stopped to talk with some. Maidens smiled at the red-haired giant, but he was not in a mood for them today. The questions he asked in his thick Upland burr had to do with King Hrolf and the royal household.

Aye, said the yeomen, this was a good king, a wise and righteous king, withal strong to fend off rovers from abroad or ride down outlaws and hang them. . . . Well, yes, his troopers were an unruly lot; he really ought to curb them, but no doubt he had too much else on his mind. . . . He'd been away this summer. Year before last, he'd brought King Hjördvardh of Fyn under him and (ha!) his sister under Hjördvardh. With his rear thus made safe, all the islands in his grip, he was going after the Jutish realms. Once he had those likewise, an honest man could till his fields and never dread outside onslaught. Of course, first the king must spy out the Jutland shores. So he'd only taken a few shiploads of warriors along this season. The rest had stayed home in Leidhra and, aye, in their idleness gotten above themselves. . . . The king should be home any day, now when the fall storms were come. Maybe he already was. A yeoman wouldn't know about that. Yeomen had their work to do, butchering time and so forth. Let the great folk see to their own, hey?

Bjarki rode on along the stream. In the afternoon, Leidhra lifted before him.

At this time of year, when little traveling was done, the stronghold lay quiet within its stockade, gates open and unwatched. Women, children, thralls, craftsmen were much about, but few warriors. Bjarki supposed most of those were off hunting or whatever. He rode through muddy ways to the richly carved wooden cliffsides of the royal hall. Flagstones in the courtyard rang beneath his horse's hoofs. He dismounted at the stables. "Put mine in beside the king's best," he told a groom, "give him oats and water, curry him well, and stow my gear in a clean corner till I send for it." The man gaped after him.

In costly clothes, a knife and the sword Lövi at his waist, but wearing neither helmet nor mail, Bjarki strolled into the main chamber of the hall. However dim and smoky when he had trod straight in from beneath the sky, it was sunnier and airier than he had thought such a place could be. Bright shields, broad horns, fair skins, sconced rushlights, birch wainscoting lined the walls. The figures on panels and on the roof-pillars were of beasts, vines, and heroes; he saw no gods among them. The posts of the high seat bore Skjold and Gefion. A few workers moved over the juniper boughs on the floor, which lent their freshness to the air, and a few hounds lay about. Otherwise the reach of the room seemed empty. The Norseman sat down on a bench, near the door, and waited for whatever might happen.

Soon he heard a rattling in a farther corner. His eyes used to the inside, he could make out a heap of bones over there. A hand was just coming above the top. Bjarki rose and strode close. The hand, he saw, was nastily black. He wrinkled his nose at the stench of rotting shreds of meat. "Who's in here?" he called.

A youth's voice, thin and frightened, said, "I. . . I . . . I'm named Hott, wellborn lord."

"What are you doing?"

"I am m-m-making me a shield-burg, lord—"

"Woeful is your shield-burg." Bjarki reached in, got hold of an arm, and in a clatter hauled forth the one who had crouched behind the pile.

A skinny shape writhed, helpless in the big man's grasp. The voice yammered: "Now you'll slay me! Don't do that—not when I'd fixed it this well! You've pulled down my shield-burg—"

Bjarki peered. Hott was about fifteen, he guessed, tall but wretchedly thin. His locks were so tangled and greasy that one had trouble seeing they were yellow; his face seemed to be all sharp nose and huge eyes; he shook in his kirtle. "I was laying it high around me to keep off the bones you'll throw," he sobbed. "It was almost f-f-fin-ished."

"You'll need it no longer," said Bjarki. Hott shriveled. "Do you mean ... to slay me . . . right away, lord?"

"Don't whimper that loud," said Bjarki. He must give a cuff or two before the starveling quieted down. Then he picked up the form, gone limp from dread, and bore him outside. It was not far to the nearest stockade gates. A short ways beyond, he had seen how the stream widened to make a pool. Few paid him any heed.

Bjarki hauled the filthy tatters off the boy, pitched him into the pool, knelt and hand-scrubbed him till no boiled lobster could have been more clean or red. Rising, he jerked a thumb at the kirtle and said, "You wash that wipe-rag yourself."

Hott obeyed, and trotted dripping after him when he returned to the hall. Biarki took the same place on a bench as before. He pulled the lad down beside him. Hott could speak no two words. He shuddered in every limb and joint, though he saw through the haze of fear that the stranger wanted to help him.

Dusk fell. The king's warriors began to drift in. They spied the newcomer and hailed him well, for this household was proud of its hospitality. One asked Bjarki what he was here for. "I thought of joining your troop, if the king will have me," said the Norseman.

"Well, you're in luck," said the guard, "for he's come home this very evening. He's tired and dines in his own tower along of a few best friends. Tomorrow you can see him, and surely he'll take on as stout a fellow as you." He leered at the cowering Hott. "Kick that sniveler aside, though," he warned. "Over-bold are you to set him . . . it.. . among men."

Bjarki glowered. The guard looked up and down his bulk, decided not to press the matter, and swaggered off. Hott started to go. Bjarki clamped onto his wrist. "Stay," said the Norseman.

"B-b-but they'll kill me—for sure—when they get drunk ... if I dare sit here," blubbered the stripling. "I've g-g-got to work and—let me go build up my shield-burg again!"

"Stay," said Bjarki. He kept hold of the wrist. Hott might as well have tried to drag away a mountain.

The longfires were stoked, the trestle tables brought in, food heaped on trenchers and horns filled with drink. Bjarki and Hott sat alone. None of the men would have that butt of scorn for benchmate. The more they drank, the more they glared at him, as did the kitchen servants he was supposed to help.

At last the warriors began casting small bones his way. Bjarki acted as if he did not see. Hott was too frightened to take either meat or mead. Bjarki, who could now let go of him because he dared not move out into the open, ate and boused for two.

Loud grew the uproar of voices above the fire-crackle; dogs barked and growled in the smokiness. Suddenly light flickered red on a huge thighbone which flew through the air. That was a thing which could kill.

Bjarki hooked it in midflight, inches from the skull of shrieking Hott. Rising, he took aim at him who had thrown it, and cast it back. Straight to the head it went. There was a crack, and the guard toppled dead.

Horror yelled through the hall. Men snatched weapons and boiled toward Bjarki. He thrust Hott behind him. His sword Lövi he did not draw, but he rested hand on hilt, knocked over the first few attackers with his fist, and thundered that he wanted to see the king.

Word came to Hrolf in his tower room. That was a broad chamber, paneled in different woods, giving on a gallery which overlooked the courtyard, more simply furnished than might have been awaited from so rich a lord. He had eaten, and sat quietly drinking and talking with Svipdag, Hvitserk, Beigadh, a few others who had been along on this summer's faring.

A pair of troopers thudded up the ladder and panted their news: that a bear-sized warrior had come into the hall and killed one of their number. Should they cut him down out of hand?

Hrolf stroked his short coppery-gold beard. "Was the man slain without cause?" he asked.

"Yes ... yes, so to speak," said the talebearer.

In the same mild tone, King Hrolf wanted to know just what had happened. The whole truth came forth.

Then he sat straight on the bench, winter came into his eyes, and they remembered that this slight, soft-spoken man was the son of Helgi the Bold. "By no means will you get leave to slay him," he said; they flinched at each word. "Here you've given yourself back to that foul habit of casting bones at harmless folk. It's to my dishonor, and the worst of shames. Often have I scolded you, but you would not heed. By Mimir's hewn-off head, the time is overpast that you got a lesson. Bring the man before me!"

Amidst bristling steel, Bjarki entered. He seemed quite unruffled. "Greeting, my lord," he said proudly.

Hrolf looked at him for a while. "What is your name?" he asked.

"Your guardsmen call me Hott-fence," laughed the Norseman, "but I hight Bjarki, son of Björn who was son of the Upland king."

"What do you think you should give me for my follower whom you killed?"

"Nothing, lord. He fell on his own deed."

"M-m-m, I must deal with his kinfolk. . . . Well, will you become my man and take his place?"

"I'd not turn that down, lord. Not in itself. However, Hott and I must not be parted because of it, and we must both be seated closer to you than the other fellow was. Else we'll fare off."

The king frowned. "I see no gain to be gotten from Hott," he said. After looking anew into the face above him: "Still, he can always have food here."

Bjarki took oath at once on the sword Skofnung. No one thought to demean this by asking Hott to do the same. The Norseman went back to the hall, beckoned the youth to him, and looked for a place to sit. He did not choose the best; nor did he take the worst. Nearer to the high seat than was intended for him, he pitched three men sprawling off the bench, and put himself and Hott there. When angry words arose, he shrugged and said, "I've seen how good the manners are hereabouts." King Hrolf likewise told the men they could not gripe if they too were bullied.

Thus Bjarki and Hott abode for some weeks in the hall. None dared do anything against them, and slowly the boy put on weight and began to stop flinching. But none would be their friends either.

V

As it drew toward Yule, folk grew fearful. Bjarki asked Hott what this came from. Hott shivered: "The beast."

"Stop clapping your teeth and talk like a man," Bjarki said.

The tale stumbled forth. "For two winters, a great and horrible beast has come hither, this time of year, a winged and flying thing. Widely it harries, killing among herds and flocks; nobody can build byres for all they may own. That was what wrecked my parents' livelihood and sent me here."

"This hall is not as well manned as I thought, if a beast can freely work harm on the kingdom and the holdings of the king."

"The men have tried to kill it. Their weapons didn't bite, and some of the best of them never came home. It's no beast, really, we think. It's a troll." Hott glanced around and brought his lips to Bjarki's ear. "I've overheard Svipdag and his brothers wonder if it's not a sending of the witch-queen Skuld. They say she broods bitterly over being wed to a mere scot-king, there by Odin's Lake where thralls are drowned to honor the One-Eyed."

Afraid to speak further, he scurried away to work. He had become the Norseman's groom, scrubber, fetch-and-carry knave. Between tasks he got bruising training in the use of weapons, which he hated and tried vainly to beg off.

At Yule Eve the offerings were ill-attended, since none dared be out from under a roof after dark. The feast in the royal hall was glum. King Hrolf stood forth and said: "Hear me! My will is that everyone keep still and calm tonight. I forbid my men to go against that fiend. Let it do with the kine whatever luck may choose; but I do not want to lose any more of you."

"Aye, lord, aye, aye," said the relieved voices. Bjarki sat quiet, unheeded.

The fires guttered low. The king and the leman he then had went to his tower. The guardsmen stretched out on the benches, wrapped in blankets. They had been drinking hard to quell their fears, and soon the gloom was loud with snores.

Bjarki arose. He prodded Hott, who slept on the floor below him. "Follow me," he whispered.

He had marked where in the foreroom his battle gear was, and fetched this in the dark. Outside, the night stretched cold and silent, clear and starry, a crooked moon casting wanness over hoarfrost and the smoke of breath. Bjarki laid his mail and underpadding on the flagstones. "Help me into this," he bade.

Hott smothered a wail. "Master, you don't mean to—"

"I do mean to tie your backbone in a knot if you wake anybody. Stop that whining and give me a hand!"

By the time Bjarki was armored. Hott was too frightened to walk. "You, you, you'll lead me into danger of my life," he moaned.

"Oh, belike it'll go better than that," Bjarki said. "Move along." The youth could not. Bjarki picked him up, slung him over a shoulder, and strode from the garth. Getting a horse would have made too much noise. .

They heard racket enough shortly after they had gone out a gate of the burg. Cows bawled in terror, from one of the king's own meadows a mile thence. Bjarki broke into a hammering trot over the frozen ground, along the darkly sheening stream. Near the meadow, this broadened somewhat into a bog, where dead reeds poked stiffly out of ice.

Above the pen, a shadow blotted out stars. Through the cattle-clamor beat a leathery rustle and a rushing as of mighty winds. "The beast, the beast!" Hott shrieked. "It's coming to swallow me! O-o-o-oh—"

"Belay that yammer, you cur," Bjarki snapped. He peeled the clutching fingers loose from his ring-mail and pitched his burden into the bog. Hott crashed through the ice and huddled down to hide under the water and mud beneath.

The Norseman unslung his shield and went to meet the monster.

It saw him, swung on high and readied itself to stoop: a featherless thing of huge sickling wings, cruel claws and beak, tail like a lashing rudder, scaly crest above snaky eyes. Bjarki planted his feet and laid hand on sword hilt.

His weapon would not leave the sheath.

"Witchcraft!" he groaned. The monster hissed athwart the bleak-bright Bridge. Wings thrust air, and down it came.

"Elven sword—" Bjarki hauled on Lövi till the sheath creaked. Then it broke loose to flash under the stars.

The troll-being was almost upon him. A rank smell overwhelmed his lungs. He held his shield firm and struck from behind it. The heavy body smote, a thud and clang, a boom of air and a whistle out of grinning sharp-toothed jaws. Bjarki stumbled back. Any other man would have been flattened, broken-boned. His blade had already bitten. In it went between wing and leg, through hide and flesh and ribs to the heart.

The monster swerved and crashed. A while it threshed around. The earth quivered under the blows of its wings. When most of its cold blood had run out onto the rime, it lay dead.

Bjarki gusted a breath and went after Hott.

He must pluck the fear-blinded, shaking, whimpering wretch out of the bog, carry him over to where the beast lay still twitching, and set him down. Pointing to the wound, from which blood welled black, he said: "Drink of that."

"No, oh, no, I beg you," Hott blubbered.

"Drink, I said! Have I not told you what my brother Elk-Frodhi did for me? Whoever called this thing forth, out of whatever hell, wanted strength in it."

Hott crawled and sobbed. Bjarki clouted him and promised worse if he did not obey. The boy shut his eyes and put his mouth to that cup which the sword had made. However much he gagged, Biarki made him swallow two long draughts. Thereupon the Norseman cut the heart out of the beast, handed it over, and said, "Take a bite off this."

Hott did. He had stopped shaking. When he had chewed the meat, he bounded up. "Why—" He looked around in wonder. "Why, the world is beautiful."

"You feel better, eh?" said Bjarki as he settled the elven blade back in its birchbark sheath.

"I feel... as if I'd wakened from death."

Bjarki felt Hott's arms. "I knew there were good thews in you, since I got you rightly fed," he grunted. "What you needed was to tauten them." He unbuckled his sword belt. "Let's try you out."

Long they wrestled before Biarki got Hott to one knee, longer than he would have taken even for Svipdag. Raising the other, he panted gladly: "You've a bit of strength now. I don't think you need fear the guardsmen of King Hrolf any more."

Hott lifted hands to heaven and cried in young heat, "From this night, I'll never fear them—or you either, or anyone or anything!"

"That's well, Hott, my friend." said Biarki. "I think I've paid off a debt of mine." He grinned. He was no oldster himself. "Help me set up this carcass so they'll think it's alive."

Laughing like drunkards, they did. Thereafter they stole back to the hall, lay down, and acted as if nothing had happened.

In the morning the king asked whether aught had been marked of the fiend, whether it had shown itself during the night. He got the answer that livestock around the burg seemed unharmed. "Look further," he ordered.

The watchmen did. Erelong they came pounding back, to gasp that they had seen the beast and it was bound hither.

Men clattered to arms. The king bade them be brave and each do his best to get the life out of this thing. He took the lead in the dash to meet it. When they spied the great brown shape, propped on stiffened wings in the wintry dawn, they drew together in a shield-ring, and a hush fell over them.

After a while the king said slowly, "I don't think it's even moving. Who'll take a reward to go and see what it's about?"

Bjarki spoke aloud: "It'd indeed be something for a bold man to carry that out before witnesses." He clapped the back of the youth who had followed him. "Hott, my fellow!" he said. "Here's where you can wash off that slander they've put on you, that you've neither strength nor courage. Go slay yonder pest! You can see that none of the others are minded to."

Stares went to the fair-locked head which suddenly was borne so high. "Yes," said Hott, "I will."

The king lifted his brows. "I see not where you've gotten this boldness from, Hott," he said. "You must have changed in a very short while."

"I have no weapon of my own," was the answer. Pointing to one of the two swords which King Hrolf wore: "Give me that Goldhilt of yours, and I'll fell the beast or get my bane."

Hrolf looked at him for a time before he said, "It's not seemly that this sword be borne by any save a brave and trustworthy lad."

"You'll soon see that I am like that."

"Who knows if there's not been even more of a change in you than we thought we saw? It's as if you were altogether a different being. . . . Well, take the sword, then, and if you can do this deed, I'll find you worthy to own it afterward."

Few had followed these words. They were too aware of the hideousness before them. But all saw Hott bare the steel and run toward it. In a single blow, he knocked it flat.

"Look, lord," cried Bjarki, "what a mighty work he's done!"

Stunned at first, the men broke into cheers, brandished their weapons, clanged blade on shield, rushed to hug Hott and lift him on their shoulders. Hrolf stayed behind, as did Bjarki. The king said low: "Yes, he has become something else from what he was. Nevertheless, Hott alone has not slain the beast. Rather, you did."

The Norseman shrugged. "Could be that's so."

Hrolf nodded. "This I saw at once when you came here: that few could be like unto you. Yet I think your best work is that you've made a man out of this hitherto luckless Hott."

The troop were nearing. Hrolf raised his voice: "Now I want him no longer to be called by a thrallish name like Hott. Let him be named for the sword Goldhilt he has earned." Turning to the flushed young warrior, he said, "Henceforth you shall be Hjalti."

That means "Hilt," and the hilt he became of the king's household, as Bjarki was the blade and Svipdag the shield.

VI

From that day onward, Bjarki and his friend had the goodwill, or the outright worship of the guards. At first the lad was not seen much in the hall. After bringing goods to help his parents, he made up for lost time by mowing a swathe through all the women to be had for many miles around. Bjarki stayed graver. He won the close fellowship of the king, who made great gifts to him, and of eye-patched Svipdag. Together those three held long talks about how to widen and strengthen the kingdom and what might be done for its welfare.

Bjarki also began to see a good deal of Hrolf’s oldest daughter Drifa, who was becoming a handsome lady. And, being more among the warriors then was possible for the king—who must go to Things, hear out the troubles and quarrels of folk, give judgments, play host to visitors, watch over his own broad landholdings, and on and on—Bjarki strove to make the troop mend its ways.

Svipdag told him: "I think our twelve berserkers are the root of the ill behavior here. They browbeat most of the men, who then have to take it out on somebody weaker. I wish we could get rid of them, and I'm sure King Hrolf wishes likewise, useful though they can be in a fight. But they are his sworn followers and have given him no real cause to dismiss them."

"Where are they now?" the Norseman asked.

"They've been at the head of a band which harried about in Saxon lands. See you, the king doesn't want to bring those under him. They've too many ties further south. But they have been bothering us—egged on by the Swedish jarl of Als is my guess. And we can't well haul the Jutes into Denmark, as we hope to, till it's been pounded into the Saxons that they'd better leave us alone. Our raiders decided to winter there. They'll be back in spring."

Later Bjarki asked Hjalti what to await from these berserkers. The younger man told of the way they had on arrival of bracing everyone in the hall and asking if he reckoned himself as doughty as them. "They've learned to make this only a token as far as the king goes, or those three brothers from Svithjodh; but the rest must needs humble themselves."

Said Bjarki: "Small is the number of bold men here with King Hrolf, if they bear words of scorn from the berserkers."

Time flowed on. The evening came when, as the household was settling down to its meal, the door flew open and in came the twelve huge men, gray with iron, shining to look on like icefields.

Bjarki whispered to Hjalti, "Do you dare match yourself against any of them?"

"Any or all."

The dozen lumbered to the high seat and questioned King Hrolf in their wonted words. He answered in such wise as he found prideful while keeping the uneasy peace. Next they went along the benches. One by one, in hate-filled voices, the warriors called themselves the weaker.

Agnar, their headman, had seen Bjarki and thought this was not a little boy who had come. Nonetheless he hulked over the Norseman and growled, "Well, Redbeard, do you think you're as good as me?"

Bjarki smiled. "No," he purred, "I do not. I deem myself better than you, you filthy son of a mare."

He leaped to his feet, grabbed the berserker's belt, swung him on high and dashed him to the floor so that the crash resounded. Hjalti did likewise to the next.

Men shouted. The berserkers howled. Bjarki stood holding Agnar down under his foot, a knife in his hand. Hjalti had drawn the sword Goldhilt, and from behind it grinned at the half score who milled and mouthed before him.

Hrolf sprang out of the high scat and sped thither. "Hold off!" he cried to Bjarki. "Keep the peace!"

"Lord," said the Norseman, "this knave is going to lose his life unless he owns himself the lesser man."

The king gazed upon the pair who lay stunned beneath the two friends. "That's easily done," he said, not quite able to stay wholly earnest.

Agnar mumbled something and Bjarki let him get up, as Hjalti did for the other. Everybody took his seat, the berserkers theirs with heavy hearts.

Hrolf stood forth and talked sternly to his troopers. Tonight, he told them, they had seen how none was so bold, strong, or big that his like could not be found. "I forbid you to awaken more strife in my hall. No matter who breaks my ban, it shall cost him his life. Against my foes you can be as angry and raging as you wish, and so win honor and fame. Before as goodly a flock of warriors as you are, I need not keep still. I say to you, make yourselves worthy of yourselves!"

All praised the words of the king and swore friendship.

It was but skin deep on the part of the berserkers. They kept their hatred for Bjarki and Hjalti, losing no chance to backbite these and giving them never a word which was not surly. However, they dared not make real trouble. After they stopped pestering and humbling the rest of the men, the latter soon lost their own overweening ways toward others. In a while, not only hirelings but the very thralls said that King Hrolf’s garth was a happy place to be.

The warriors were much away from it, however, for in those days he was bringing the Jutes under him. Great were the deeds done on strands, hills, and heaths, in woods and dales; and wily, too, were the schemings which Hrolf set forth. The tale of his warfaring would get overly long, for it is only a tale of victories.

At home he dwelt in splendor. This is how he seated his men: On his right was Bjarki, acknowledged the foremost among them and therefore the marshal. They had come to call him Bodhvar-Bjarki, Battle-Bjarki, which fitted so well that today he is often spoken of as Bodhvar, as if that were the name his father bestowed on him. But Bjarki is right, and more than one lay calling men forth to fight is known as a Bjarkamaal. However terrible in war, he was a cheerful and openhanded soul, always spared the lives of foemen who yielded, never took a woman against her will, and loved to make small children laugh.

On his right in turn sat Hjalti the High-Minded. The king had given him that nickname. For every day he was among the guardsmen who had been so tough on him, and took no revenge even though he had now waxed far stronger than any of them, and though Hrolf would surely have found it forgiveable if he had handed out a few remembrances.

Beyond him sat several who were reckoned among the best: Hromund the Hard, the king's namesake Hrolf the Swift-Coming, Haaktang, Hard-Hrefill, Haaki the Bold, Hvatt the High-Born, and Starulf.

On the king's left were those who stood below none save Bjarki and Hjalti—Svipdag, Beigadh, and Hvitserk. To the left of these were the berserkers under Agnar. They were moody benchmates, but their strength earned them this honor. Anyhow, the brothers from Svithjodh were not very outgoing. Svipdag especially was apt to brood when in his cups, as if recalling someone from years agone.

Elsewhere, on both sides, the hall was full of picked fighting men, to the number of three long hundreds. A boisterous crew they were, a merry and breakneck lot; the burg roared with them, the whole surrounding countryside did.

There were still more household workers, and usually guests. As the fame, of King Hrolf heightened, and the Danish waters and highways were cleared of robbers, ships lay to at Roskilde, Cheaping-Haven, and other ports, with goods that might come from Finland or the Icy Sea, from Ireland or Russia or the deep heart of Saxland, or further yet. To trade, the Danes had fish and amber out of the waves, meat and butter and cheese and honey off their fat farms. But they themselves were laying ever more keels and turning ever more prows outward.

It was costly to live as King Hrolf did, the more so because he was the most lavish of gift-givers. However, the wealth that came in as the range of his peace broadened was enough and to spare. Besides getting payments from his under-kings, he was himself the owner of lush acres and widely faring seacraft. He did not need to lay heavy scot on fisheries, farms, and trade; nor, when his warfaring dwindled for lack of foes, did he miss the booty he used to win.

Harder was to hold his men at rest. Mostly he found ways. Each owned something, be it land or ships, that he must often see to. Each had a leman nearby to keep him snug, and many now slept in their own houses near the hall. The king got them to practice all kinds of games and crafts; and this they came to do ably and proudly.

Whatever they undertook, Bjarki was always the best at it. He became the dearest to the king, who in the course of time gave him twelve great farmsteads scattered around Denmark—and, at last, his daughter Drifa to wife. They were a happy pair, the redbeard and the stately fair-braided young woman; folk said they looked like Thor and Sif.

Hrolf himself stayed unwedded. Bjovulf being dead and Gotaland in upheaval, there was no real match for him anywhere in the Northlands—save maybe in Svithjodh, where King Adhils would hardly let him make an alliance. "Besides," he said once to Bjarki, "I've had too much to do for a woman to be more to me than a bed-mate." The marshal thought he heard wistfulness.

None of this came about overnight. It took five years from the time when Bjarki first rode through Leidhra gate; and hard was the swordplay. Toward the end, things went faster. The Jutish kinglets and headmen saw no hope of holding out. Moreover, they and those they led came to understand that whoever owned Hrolf Helgisson their overlord, got things which far outweighed what he asked of them.

They got peace. No longer might a neighbor chieftain take it into his head to come killing, burning, looting, raping, enslaving; and did outlanders seem like a threat, the High King in Leidhra could whistle up more warriors, more skilled and deadly, than anybody cared to meet. At first the crows gorged on hanged outlaws, the gulls on vikings washed ashore. Later these birds went hungry. The farmer and fisherman harvested free from dread; the merchant who had a venture in mind, the settler who wanted to clear new land, dared plan it.

The High King was just. The poorest old granny might speak to him as he rode around in the Denmark he had made, and be sure of a patient ear. The haughtiest under-king, jarl, or sheriff must answer for every wrongdoing. Yet Hrolf was no harsher than he must be. In judging a quarrel, he tried as far as he was able to bring men together. "If you give a little as well as gain a little," he would say, "it does not make you the less. Rather, it means that after you are dead, folk will be glad to remember your name and offer at your howe."

Trade spread like friendly wildfire. Any islander, Scanian, or Jute could fare to the markets and dicker for what the skippers were bringing in. This was more than goods; it was arts, crafts, skills hitherto unknown, it was news and sagas and staves and songs from abroad, to lift the soul out of the narrow paddocks of home.

Thus when Hrolf Helgisson had been thirty-five years upon the earth, he steered a kingdom second only to Svithjodh in size, and far more rich, happy, and outward-looking. Mighty as a summer sky, his peace roofed it in; and to none did he give grounds for weeping, save those few who were left that hated, and one afar in Uppsala who loved him.