Toward sunset of the third day they came to a knoll on which stood a dolmen raised by folk unknown and long gone. The earth had fallen away from its great stones. Spotted with moss and lichen, they reared stark out of crowding willow scrub. “Keep well back of me,” Hardgreip warned Hadding. “Whatever happens, do not get close.”
Thus he followed little of what she did in the twilight and heard merely snatches of what she sang. When full night had fallen, starless, moonless, and sightless, high flames shot up. He saw her black against their icy white. The dolmen groaned. Something trod out of it to stand before her. She cried her wish aloud. Hadding could barely make out that a horrible whisper answered.
The thing went back into its mold, the fire died away, and Hardgreip returned to him. “Let us be off,” she said in a thin voice. They pushed blind through thickets that lashed and tore at them, until they found a stream and a cleanly rushing waterfall. There they stopped, toppling into a sleep full of nightmares.
Afterward, on the way home, Hardgreip told him only, “I never awaited a good word from the drow, nor did I get any. I do not well understand what he did say, and do not think my father will either. But he spoke of dooms to come upon us.” She gave him a long look. “And he said you are not what you seem, Hadding, and your lot is still more strange. I know not what that means.”
Shaken, he kept silent.
Later, though, as they regained their own woods, the darkness lifted from their breasts. “Well, I knew already that no one, man or thurs or god, lives forever, nor the worlds themselves,” she said, “and whatever our weird may be, we shall not meet it this year.” For his part, when they reached his beloved lake he drew strength and cheer from the beholding, and wondered more keenly than ever when he could go find the sea.
These jotuns were, indeed, wonted to magic. They were not deeply learned in it, but they could cast spells of some power for help, harm, or the searching out of what was hidden. They tried to teach Hadding. He showed no gift for it, and what must be done was too often loathsome to him.
“As you wish.” Vagnhöfdi sighed, like a wind through tall pines. “The craft is tricky enough for those who have skill, so best if you leave it be. I will show you a bit, however. In time you’ll go from us, and we know now you’ll fare on wild ways. Let me give you the words that will bring me to your side, though you be halfway across Midgard. Use them in your direst need, for only once can I come to you thus.”
Aside from that, Hadding picked up no more than loose-floating scraps of witchy knowledge. He might cast runes for guidance or carve them for luck, he might take warning from a happenstance that struck others merely as odd, but he never became a warlock.
Maybe this was Braki’s doing. Faithful to the son of his dead king, the chieftain and a few yeomen went two or three times each year to the giants’ dwelling to spend days with Hadding. From him the boy heard about men and their ways, their whole world beyond these wilds, what had gone on in it aforetime and what was going on now. Braki told him about the gods and the uneasiness between them and the jotuns; Vagnhöfdi liked not to hear such talk. Braki said that the high runic magic was one thing but the seething of witch-brews and calling on the underworld was an ugly other.
First and foremost did Braki make clear to Hadding who he was, how he came to be here, what he had lost that was his by right of blood and what burden of revenge that blood laid upon him. The chieftain brought weapons along, gave them to Hadding, and drilled him ruthlessly in their use and in war-craft.
He knew no humans but these. Their guestings were seldom and short. Yet ever more as he neared manhood he yearned for the life that was theirs and his, home fires, farings, friendship, women, offspring, towns, riches, ships, and lands new to him lying across the sea, the sea.
He was the son of Gram. His father lay unavenged while he, who should be king of the Danes, hunkered in the house of a backwoods thurs, set snares for beaver, and raided birds’ nests for eggs. More and more he brooded on it, alone afar in the wilderness or under stormy skies on bare hillcrests. More and more of his time went to work with sword and shield, hewing at foes he raised up in his mind.
Then Braki brought woeful news. Gudorm, Hadding’s half brother whom he did not remember, was slain.
Men thought that belike Gudorm’s mother, Gro, had always secretly egged him on against her husband, Svipdag. Lately the tale went among them that after she died her ghost came and told him to take arms. Be that as it may, he did. Riding around Denmark from Thing to Thing, he got himself hailed king at those meetings and called warriors to follow him. But Svipdag was too quick. He brought a mighty host down from Svithjod, and Gudorm fell on the battlefield.
Hadding raged. Braki told him he could do nothing yet and must abide a while longer. When the chieftain had gone home, Hadding grew curt and sullen. Vagnhöfdi and Haflidi bore with it. Hardgreip tried to draw him out, failed, and watched him with a sorrow that slowly became something else.
In spring, after a hard winter, men rode again to the house. They did not linger and Braki was not among them.
