XI
King Loker was riding about the hinterland. When he came back, Hadding was brought before him. The stronghold was wattle-and-daub hovels crowded together between the upright, sharpened logs of the stockade. Livestock herded in for safekeeping had been taken out again but left their dung and its stench everywhere within. The king and his men would be glad to go home on the morrow. He had stayed this long only to see how things stood with the folk hereabouts. This captive could well be the last matter he need deal with.
Rain was falling. Most of the Kurlanders must squat outside. Their leaders had no better shelter than these foul huts. It did not milden Loker’s mood. He sat on a chest among some of the warriors, a big, dark man, and glowered. Hadding stood bound in front of him, two Northmen guarding.
“Well,” said the king, “at least we have one of you alive.” He had learned the Northern tongue. “A nithing; no iron has marked you.” The Wends had stripped off Hadding’s helmet, byrnie, and weapons, leaving him only his clothes. Underbrush could well have torn them, and the bloodstains were hard to tell from caked mud. “You skulked off and hid, hoping to boast afterward of your heroic deeds. Tell me not that you did us no harm. You were ready to take your share of loot and rape your share of women, eh?” He turned to the keepers. “Hogtie him and throw him among his dead shipmates. Their fellow wolves will soon eat them. Maybe first the ravens will pick out his eyes.”
“Well spoken, lord,” spat a guardsman. The two in charge of Hadding led him away.
Outdoors, he opened his mouth. “It’s a longish walk ahead. Why get wet? Let’s wait here till the rain stops.”
“You’d hang onto your wretched life that while more?” scoffed one of them.
Hadding shrugged. “The noise yesterday scared the wolves off throughout last night. They’ll hardly come from the woods before this eventide, when living folk have stopped picking over the dead. Why soak yourselves as well as me? We can pass the time better.”
He had, indeed, already talked with these men after they were given the watch over him. It had not been unfriendly. To them he was a foe who should die, but otherwise a man like themselves. Besides, he brought word from home. Vigleik was a Cleat, Ketil a Dane of Scania. As steadily as Hadding bore his lot, they believed him when he told them he was no coward but had merely been lucky during the fight and had stayed in it till everyone else fled. Then he did take to the woods, but in the morning found he was back where he started.
“Why not?” Vigleik said. Ketil nodded. The three of them returned to the hut in which they had waited for the king to send for them. It was even smaller than most; the dwellers had been ordered elsewhere for this while. A peat fire smoldered on the dirt floor, its light barely picking out the stools, box, and cookware that were the few poor furnishings. Smoke mingled with dankness. Rain splashed beyond a narrow, open doorway.
Ketil doffed his cloak, shook what water he could off it, hung it over a beam, coughed and snuffled. “Faugh, what a weather!” he said. “You’re right, nothing to be out in needlessly. Bad enough here.”
Vigleik grinned. “We’ve something to keep us warm.” He pointed to a cask of mead they had brought in earlier. The king’s men helped themselves to whatever they found of suchlike goods. After all, they had saved the owners from the vikings.
“You might share it,” Hadding said.
“Why?” asked Vigleik.
“Leave my throat dry and I’ll speak no further word.”
“Oh, let him have some,” Ketil said. “It’s cheerless where he’s going.”
He stood by with drawn sword while his fellow untied the captive’s wrists and bound them again in front, to let the hands clasp a horn. He also lashed the ankles together and hitched that cord to a roofpost. Hadding was plainly strong. The guards were sore and weary after yesterday. They wanted no risk.
All sat down. They had one horn between them. Ketil filled it, drank, and passed it on to Vigleik, who in turn put it in Hadding’s grasp.
“Tell us about yourself,” Ketil bade him. “We’ll tell others, so you won’t be forgotten right away.”
Vigleik yawned. “Make it lively if you can. This has been a dull day.”
Hadding lifted the horn, drank, and gave it back. “I can tell you more than you maybe care to hear. You’ll take me for a liar.”
Ketil tugged his mustache. “A death-doomed man has no need to lie, does he? Nor would it help him afterward, I should think.”
“Right you are. Hark, then. I am the last living son of the Dane-king Gram. After he fell, a faithful man of his brought me to some giants he knew, and they raised me.”
Vigleik choked. Mead sputtered from his lips. “A tale indeed!”
“True or not, it’s something to listen to,” Ketil said happily.
Time passed. Rain hammered. The warriors sat enthralled. They lost track of how much they drank. When it came to him, Hadding held the horn tilted as long as they did, but the slightest of sips went past his teeth. The others marked this not.
He told them how he grew up, what the life was like, happenings both everyday and spooky When it touched Hard-greip, he found he did not wish to say anything. Rather, he went on, quite truthfully, “The jotuns have many sagas of their own. Theirs was the first of the races, you know, and while most of them are no doubt oafish blockheads, some are cunning and some are wise, with lore that goes back to the beginning. They remember things that men never knew and the gods have
