Hadding nodded, though the scowl did not leave his brow. “Enough. Let’s get the things and begone. Open up, Glum.”
The hoardkeeper lurched over to a chest, fumbled among the clothes in it, and took out the big key. Slowly, as if this called for skill, he put it in the lock and turned it. Hadding himself swung the door wide.
Then for a span he stood staring, unstirring. A hush fell upon the troopers. It spread from the few inside to the others outside. The sounds of everyday life seemed thin and far off.
“What is it?” mumbled Glum. He went to the platform where he had set down his wooden drinking cup and glugged from it. “Why are you so stiff?” he cried. “What doesn’t anybody say anything?”
Each word of Hadding’s fell like a stone. “Thieves have been here.”
“What? No, no, can’t be, I’ve been ever faithful, ever watchful—” Glum stumbled across the floor and caught the king’s arm. “I have!” he shrilled. “I am no thief!”
Hadding shook the hand loose. “Nevertheless,” he said, “much is missing.” He went into the storeroom.
Searching about in its gloom, he found much still there, weapons, furs, costly garments, amber necklaces, glassware, and boxes of coins from the Southlands. But his voice rang out, gone iron: “The gold chain that King Skjold wore when the Thing met. The silver goblet set with gems that his Queen Alfhild brought with her from Saxland. The gold-headed mace wherewith King Gram slew Sigtryg. The great silver bowl with bull’s-head handles that I brought back from Dynaborg. And I know not how many golden arm-rings. You should be able to tell me, Glum. You have the tally of everything in your head. Come reckon it out, hoardkeeper.”
“I know nothing,” the elder groaned. “I have not been in there since last you were.”
“You should have, from time to time,” said Hadding. Then he shouted: “Ha! Einar, Egil, Herjulf, come here and look at this!”
The warriors crowded in with him and peered. A hole in the floor yawned black amidst dirt piled around it. “Someone dug his way hither,” breathed Herjulf.
“Then the thief is indeed not Glum,” said Einar.
“Thieves,” the king answered. “One man alone cannot have done the work. Who’ll crawl down and find where the burrow ends?”
Egil was first, though he was the oldest in the troop. Hadding stepped out into the dwelling room. Glum cowered from him and blubbered, “You see, lord, I did keep faith—”
Looming over the wretch, Hadding said, “I call it not faith that you could never stir yourself to look in on what was entrusted to you, but instead drank yourself deaf to the noise of what was going on. Do you in truth know nothing of this?”
“Nothing, nothing, I swear by the gods and on my honor.”
“We may squeeze something else out of him,” said a guardsman starkly.
Hadding shook his head. “No, I believe he speaks truth of a sort, and I will not torture a man who once followed my father to battle.”
“Thank you, lord, thank you,” gasped Glum.
“But speak not of your honor,” said Hadding. “That you have thrown away.”
Glum sagged down onto the floor and sat with his face sunken between his knees. Hadding went outside. He stood there among his men in the sunlight, waiting. Now and then a warrior cleared his throat or shifted his feet, but nobody spoke.
After a while the searchers came back, muddy and disheveled. “We followed the burrow beneath the stockade and on till it came up near an oak in yonder woods,” Egil told. “We found only heaped-up earth.”
“You’d hardly find more,” Hadding said. “The thieves were at their work a long while—mostly at night, I think, when they could steal out to it with nobody marking them. The winter nights are the long ones. I’ll go later and see. First I have a judgment to call for.”
He bade two men stay in the house and others spell them until it could be made more safe than formerly. The rest of his guards went back to the hall with him. Glum walked between two of them, leaning on their arms, head bowed low.
Now Hadding sent word around that on the morrow there would be a meeting to which all men of the neighborhood should come. Thereafter he had those who had passed through the burrow bring him to the end where they crawled forth. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll cast about, and don’t want any tracks trampled.”
They knew what woodcraft as well as seamanship was his, and obeyed. When he returned to them, he sighed, “No, it’s too late. Weather has blurred every spoor away. Yet from the look of the mound here, the thieves weren’t done digging till a month or two ago. Surely they’ve hidden their loot somewhere in the woods. Unless they’re utter fools, they’ll bide their time. Next year, when folk have half forgotten this and the warfaring is the big news, they’ll sneak out, pry loose the gems, melt down the metal, and trade for other wares when the merchants gather at Haven. Or they may make off to the Jutes or Angles or Saxons and set themselves up there.” His anger flashed, only for an eye blink but so cold that those hardy men quailed the least bit. “That they would dare! With ill shall ill be repaid.”
His face became a mask. Speaking no more, he led them back. Likewise was he withdrawn at eventide. His mood spread to his men, and that turned into a bleak meal. When he and his leman sought their shutbed he did not take her in his arms. She knew that he lay long awake beside her in the dark.
At sunrise, though, he got up calmly, if not merrily. At the time set, he walked forth to the meadow where folk met and sat down on the squared-off
