“This is unheard of, that a king make war on his own folk!” cried Hunding. The others muttered and growled. But after talking at length they decided it was worth trying, for indeed nothing else had helped.
Summer came again, the sixth of Hadding’s strife with the house of Svipdag. He always sent men ahead to find out what might be waiting for him. Now as he sailed past Öland a small ship, swiftly rowed, came back to warn of a Swedish fleet hove to in the north. His craft were much fewer, and mostly broad-beamed knorrs, better fitted for sail than oars, for carrying men and horses than for getting about nimbly. After he had met with their skippers, he turned around and went back south of the island to a Geatish strand he knew. There he left a skeleton crew in each bottom and struck out northwesterly toward the Svithjod marches.
At first his troop moved fast. No foeman met them. No one did at all. They had been here earlier. Fire-blackened snags of farmsteads stood like runestones above scattered bones, among fields gone to grass and brambles. Poppies blazed, finches trilled, deer bolted off into shaws, geese flapped startled from fens, but the land lay eerily still. Nobody spoke loudly around the campfires at night, and looks kept shifting outward into the dark.
The way steepened. These parts were new to the Danes. They came on steadings and thorps that were unscarred, croplands that were ripening. Yet they seldom saw the dwellers. Those had fled: Smoke from hilltops afar showed how word of the raiders got about. “Strange that they don’t stand fast and fight,” Hadding murmured. “This was always a stouthearted folk. I should think they’d at least try slowing us, down. Have they lost heart altogether?” He laughed. “Well, the better for us.”
His men had eaten the food they brought from the ships. This many could not live off wild game. The yeomen had taken their herds and flocks with them, but it hampered their flight and soon they let most go. Since Hadding’s scouts found no hostile host anywhere near, his warriors could range rather freely in search of strayed kine. It was skimpy fare, but enough to keep them as they pushed on. Behind him smoldered the homesteads and storehouses they had gutted. They would return to the sea by another way.
Suddenly smoke was everywhere in sight. It rose above trees, it lay like mist over blackened fields, it blued and made. bitter the air men breathed. There were no more cows, pigs, or sheep. Hunters came only on carcasses where the maggots and ants were cleaning up what the wheeling, rasping crows had left.
“What1s this?” wondered Eyjolf Lysirsson. “Are they offering everything to the gods, in hopes we’ll be smitten?”
“I know not,” said Hadding, “but neither do I like it.” He thought. “We will seek back to our ships.”
By then they had trekked onward three more days, for they had not understood how thorough the burning and slaughter were. They were into uplands, thinly settled, thickly wooded, hard going even along the few roads. Hadding took heed of sun and stars. In his head he laid out a course that should swing him wide of these forbidding reaches.
But as the Danes found their way, they found no food. Everywhere the same earth-scorching dogged them. Now and then they spied horsemen in the offing. A few times they caught a dweller or two. These said they knew merely that the king’s men had bidden them lay bare the path of his foes, and widely around. Hadding nodded. “That’s plain to see,” was all he answered, and let the captives go.
When he ordered the killing of packhorses, nobody spoke against it, though it meant leaving loot behind. By then, bellies were growling too loudly. Worse was the loss of strength. With shouts the Danes squatted at their cookfires and drank the smell of roasting meat before they sank their teeth into it.
Yet they had not many horses with them. They could not do without those that bore spears, arrows, and other weaponry. Thus they got only a few bites each day. Some won a little more. Their noisy passage frightened game off, and they could not well stop to fish the streams they crossed. However, a man might climb a tree if he saw a bird’s nest and crunch the fledglings in his mouth. He might grub worms from a rotten log. Better, he might shoot down a forsaken dog. Still, this was a meager meal at best.
One man grew too weak to walk. His friends made a litter and carried him. After a day he died. That was likeliest from illness, for hunger had not brought down anyone else. They buried him when they Camped that evening. Afterward a whisper went around that during the night others dug him up and ate of his flesh before putting him under again. Nobody said who they might have been, and Hadding scoffed at the tale, but it was an ugly one and sickened everybody.
Back at last in the lowlands, they stopped at a lakeside. The one sign of man was a farm about a mile off, empty, its fields and buildings charred.
