Hadding nodded. “That will be well. Bare is the back of the brotherless.”
As word went out that he stood behind Hunding, the Swedes became the more willing to take the young man for their new king. Hadding rode with him from Thing to Thing around the land and heard them hail him. Summer was far along when the Danes set homeward. They went laden with gifts, and as the years flowed by, the friendship between the two kings grew ever closer.
XXVI
For season after season, their lands lay at peace. Spring came with a shout of wind and rush of rain, sunlight smote through and was victorious, wet earth went everywhere suddenly green, frogs whooped in the marshes, the wanderbirds returned. Summer brooded huge over grain fields tawny or whitening and leaves more manifold than the stars; clouds loomed on worldrim halfway up the sky, swan-hued but shadowy blue in their depths; the sea shimmered and blinked. Fall turned the world red, yellow, bronze, until wind stripped the bits of color off and whirled them away on its song. Winter stretched snow about bare trees and empty meadows, under leaden skies; nights lengthened, days shrank to glimpses of a sun low and wan in the south; but when weather cleared, frost glittered under the moon and the wheeling Wain.
Folk followed their lives. The yeoman plowed, sowed, reaped, slaughtered, filled crib and pen and stable with the wealth of his acres. The craftsman hammered, cut, fitted together, saw his work grow beneath his hands and found it good. The fisher cast his nets, the trader fared with his cargoes, bold men sought farther abroad than ever before and brought home tales of wonders. Their wives cooked, spun, wove, sewed, and raised strong children. At fairs and offerings, weddings and grave-ales, voices rose from the crowds as merrily as the smoke from their fires.
In Denmark King Hadding warded and tended it all. From shire to shire he rode. Wherever there were dwellings, though they stand on the least of the islands, he set foot now and then. The greater burghs and thorps saw him often. He sat in the Things, and he gave ear to anyone who bespoke him as he passed. None were too lowly. His judgments were strict but fair, with no more heed paid to rank than the law called for. If someone needed help and was worthy of it, that help was forthcoming. Withal, under his eye the chieftains, sheriffs, and their warriors went ruthlessly after illdoers. They hunted down robbers, they scoured out nests of vikings, they did not let a man who had been outlawed go freely about still bullying his neighbors. At last a maiden could walk alone, mile after mile, without fear.
Thus freed from strife and danger, folk did whatever they did best, and Denmark waxed rich. Trouble came yet, sickness, murrain, blight, wounds by mishap, the weakness of age, all the olden griefs. Men quarreled as always, and sometimes the quarrels became murderous. But such was the human lot. On the whole, they called this the happiest time ever known in the kingdom.
So did fourteen years go by.
During them, Queen Ragnhild bore no more children. Nonetheless, at first she and Hadding lived blithely enough together. He did not even keep a leman at his side, only bedded other women on his wayfarings around the kingdom and then only if he found them comely and they were willing He and his wife watched their offspring grow. Both were being raised in other households, as was the wont among the highborn, but the parents visited these whenever they could, or had the families as their own guests.
In Frodi they, like his foster father Eirik Jarl, had gladness. The boy was handsome, stalwart, quick-witted. When he chose, he could delight anybody. However, a fierce heart beat in his breast. Early on he was eager at weapon-play and in the hunt. He talked much •of the wars he would wage after he reached manhood. Hadding smiled. “Yes, you will have your fights,” he said. “You may start by coming along with me on mine. I’ll surely get some more, wherever they may arise.”
Ragnhild bit her lip.
They saw less of Ulfhild, for she lived afar in Scania with Eyjolf. When they did, she was apt to stir up unease in them. Thin, keen-faced, hair fox-red, she seemed to have little womanliness. She hated the tasks she was set to learn, did them badly, and screamed at those who taught her. Likewise could she fly into rages at anyone else who overrode her will. That will was for ordering others about, for running off recklessly by herself over the hills and into the woods, for climbing trees and throwing stones and handling sharp things. Sometimes somebody coming on her unawares spied her torturing a bird or small beast she had caught. With Eyjolf’s hounds she got on well, and when she grew able to ride she was always pestering him to let her take off on a wild gallop.
“I wonder whence a soul like that came into her,” Ragnhild said low.
“Oh, she’s only mettlesome,” Hadding answered. “And bright. She’ll soon find out that misbehavior gets her nowhere. It’s no wonder if a youngster like her waxes restless.” He did not sound as if he altogether believed it.
Ragnhild gave him a long look. “You do yourself, don’t you?”
“Well, the days and years are becoming much the same, over and over. My housecarles begin to chafe. They have their lands to oversee, their gains to garner, but where can they win fame?”
“Must they make their names by killing, looting, and dying young? Are there no better ways?”
Now Hadding looked at her. “I think you also feel somewhat caged.”
“So you have seen that at last,” she sighed.
He frowned. “I’ve other things to deal with than moods and whims.”
Ragnhild bridled, and they spoke no further that day.
Afterward, though, she told him more. This was bit by bit. She herself did not
