At first the way was easy and quick, south down the broad green dale, among ripening grainfields and meadows full of grazing livestock, past farmsteads and hamlets where folk dropped their work to stare at these warriors hurrying by. Then the land began to climb, steeper and steeper. Woods became mostly birch, with settlement sparse. The riders passed clearings where stood oily charred wreckage and bones lay strewn in the grass.
Thorfinn led them onto a narrow track that twisted off westward and upward. The woods thinned out until they fated amidst tussocks, bearberry, moss, and lichen. Streamlets clinked through wastes of scree. Wind whittered chill. Blue-gray bulks, streaked with snow, shouldered into heaven. Soon there was no more trail. Thorfinn took his bearings from the peaks he saw.
At the end of four days and nights, he raised an arm and drew rein. “I think this is as far as the others had better go,” he told Hadding. “If they stay in yonder cleft, fireless, they should be unseen. You and I have about half a day ahead of us on foot.”
“I like this not,” growled Gunnar, “cowering like a marmot while my lord fares to battle.”
“You knew beforehand you must wait,” Hadding answered, “and I know that can be the hardest of tasks.”
“If you fall, no housecarle of yours will rest till we’ve avenged you.”
“Well, some should go home to help the next king of Denmark. They’ll find fighting aplenty. But settle that among yourselves. Now let me rest.”
Hadding lay down and slept. His men kept wakeful, holding a stockade of spears around him.
At dawn he and Thorfinn left them. The Norseman was a good waymate, big, a full ruddy beard reaching nearly to his broad chest, withal long-legged and nimble as a goat.
The faring was harder yet, but they reached the Troll’s Hood a little before noon. The peak reared stark, overlooking crags, cliffs, ridges, rock-strewn slopes, stretches of ice, and snow, all lifeless but for mottling lichen, moss in clumps where stones gave shelter, starveling grass tufts here and there. Nowhere was it flat, though the top was broad enough to hold a few great boulders. Today it also held a mound of split wood, higher than a man’s head. Wind went bleak through an empty heaven. The men felt short of breath.
“I see why the thurs chose this for the tryst,” Hadding said. “Not only could no troop catch him unawares, they’d lack footing and room to fight.”
“How then shall one man?” wondered ‘Thorfinn.
“We’ve been over that. Let’s make my lair.”
They had thought about this, using Thorfinn’s memories of the two or three times he had come here. That was years ago, he a boy, his father a hunter and trapper. The search for wild reindeer, wolverine, fox, and birds often took them from one ground to another across these heights. Then it was a mettlesome thing for him to scamper off and scramble onto the Troll’s Hood. It showed him fearless of the beings said to haunt it. Something like that stayed in one’s head.
Two outsize boulders leaned against one another at the rim of a downslope. Only a crack was between them where they faced the peak, while behind lay a kind of three-cornered room some four feet long, with a three-foot opening onto the mountainside. A man could sit there hidden, unless his foe climbed up from straight beneath, and scree would hinder that.
Hadding and Thorfinn set about making it a little better. The king might have to lurk a while. They took lengths of wood from the heap and wedged them overhead where they wouldn’t show. To this they tied a leather cloak for a roof of sorts. A second such cloak covered the damp stones below. The men chinked the inward opening with pebbles and bits of turf, taking care that it was nothing anybody would likely mark, lest a straight-on glance or a stray sun-flash off iron give Hadding away. They brought in a skin of water, dry food, and blankets they had carried hither.
As they worked, they spied a stirring and a gleam afar, winding over the high waste from the north. Soon Hadding’s keen eyes told him it was half a dozen folk. “We’re none too early,” he said. Thorfinn had taken a roundabout way through the mountains, not to leave spoor for others to see. “Make haste, and keep clear of the skyline.” His hopes hung on utter surprise.
They ended their task in time. “Begone,” Hadding bade. “Thank you. You shall have the honors you’ve earned.”
“More honor would be for me to fight beside you,” the Norseman said.
Hadding sighed. “This too we’ve been over and over. No more than one man can crouch here, nor does any man but me know what to do. Get well away. You can find a cranny for yourself within earshot, if not sight.” He grinned. “Earshot will be a goodly walk! Afterward I’ll want your help. Or, if I fall, your service will be to tell that I fought the fight I said I would.”
Softly Thorfinn voiced the words of old.
Kine die, kinfolk die,
And so at last oneself.
This I know that never dies:
How dead men’s deeds are deemed.
“True,” said Hadding. “You’ll see to that, good friend. Now farewell for a time.”
Thorfinn gulped. “Fare you ever well, lord.” He turned and went downhill fast, on the slope away from the oncoming band.
Hadding had already donned his byrnie and whatever else belonged with it, except for the helmet. He crept around the boulders into the room, wrapped blankets about himself against the cold, and squatted in shadow. It was almost like one of those stone chambers said to have been built by giants in the morning of the world. Folk shunned them. Nothing haunted this one but his thudding heart.
After a while the newcomers climbed into his sight. They seemed to be all men, most of them heavily laden. Then as Hadding peered he saw among them, dressed like them,
