“I am homesick,” she owned. “Denmark is a sweet land—but how flat, how tame! I live in high honor—but once I roved the mountains, wielded a bow, sped on ski, beheld boundlessness around me, almost as freely as a man. Yes, now I understand a little of what is in Ulfhild.”
Hadding gave thought. More was at stake here than her wishes. Her father King Haakon was aged, would surely die before long. Hadding wanted to keep whole his ties to the Niderings. To that end, he might well be wise to spend more time among them than hitherto.
“Things are in hand in this kingdom,” he said at length. “Should aught go awry, it’s not too many days by sea for me to come back. We could lodge yonder for months at a time.” He laughed. “I’d like some newness myself!”
She gasped. Fire leaped in her eyes, behind tears. She flung her arms about his neck. They being alone in a loft room, he could kiss her, and one thing led to another.
So did it come about that in the ninth year of the great peace they took ship for Norway. They had sent word ahead the year before, asking that a house be built for them in the wild uplands, though at a spot readily reachable. In Nidaros they got a welcome that went on for days. Already gladness shone from Ragnhild. Yet she yearned elsewhere, and for her sake Hadding left with her sooner than he really wanted to. He had been sounding out the men of weight, above all the sons of Haakon. One of them would be hailed king after the old man’s death. Hadding hoped to learn who among them would be best, and begin quietly lending that one what help he could. A kingdom torn by warfare between brothers would be of small use to him. Still, he went off with his wife and their housefolk.
The dwelling stood broad and tall, high on a ridge overlooking peaks, dales, hasty streams, and silver streaks of waterfall. Slopes strewn with boulders, their grass starred with gentian, tumbled down to where, not far below, birch and pine stood thickly mingled. An eagle hovered aloft, sunlight golden on his wings; lesser fowl sped to and fro, hares scuttered, marmots whistled; now and then a bear stumped by, and most nights wolves gave tongue across the wind. That wind blew cool, clean, the farthest mountain as clear to see through it as if one soared there oneself alongside the eagle.
“I am home again,” Ragnhild whispered. “Thank you.”
At first Hadding roamed happily about with her, hunting, fishing, or climbing cliffs that belike no human had ever dared before. It took him back to his boyhood. He wondered how Vagnhöfdi and Haflidi fared. He remembered Hardgreip, and uncouth though she had been, the thought of her stung more than he had awaited. He shied back from it, into the sport he shared with Ragnhild.
But as the days dragged into weeks, pleasure dwindled out of him. She blossomed; his answers to her mirth and her singing grew ever shorter. Here he sat, the lord of a few servants, doing nothing more heroic than chasing deer, his mind taken up with nothing more meaningful than next day’s outing, while beyond these hemming heights the world roared. He began to hate them. They held him back from his greatness, they barred him from the sea. In the end he wanted only to break loose from them.
Like most well brought up men, he had some skill in skald-craft. On a day when rain held everybody indoors, hunched in chill and gloom at stinking fires, the bitterness crashed forth as a stave. He prowled the length of the room, a shadow in which eyeballs and teeth caught flickers of what light there was, his footfalls heavy, and spoke what was in him.
Why must I dawdle, huddled in darkness,
Caught in a cleft of the barren mountains?
The freedom of faring on waves have I lost.
High through the night goes the howling of wolves;
Never their noise lets rife shut an eye.
Wildly they wail as they prowl the clouds;
Grimly the bears growl at their prey;
Lurking lynxes yell when they pounce.
Empty reaches and rocky wastes
Hold for heroes only horror.
Foul to them seem the rearing fells.
Ill it is to live in this land.
They long for the sea that lures them hence,
To plow the waves with the prows of ships,
Winning in war a deathless name,
Starkly striking from off the waters,
Bearing homeward an outland booty—
That is a handicraft fit for heroes,
Rather than squat by the scaur of a berg
Or build and bide in useless woods.
“Are you that weary of my homeland?” asked Ragnhild sharply through the twilight.
“Well, the time is overpast for me to get back where I belong,” he mumbled.
“Yes, doubtless we must,” she sighed. “Next Year we’ll return.”
He said nothing to that, but busied himself making ready to go. They did not speak much on the way to Nidaros, nor afterward when sailing to Denmark.
Sight of its low greenness, nestled in the sea like a woman in the arms of a lover, woke his mirth from its long and sullen drowse. He shouted, he slapped the backs of crewmen, swapped coarse japes with them, and laughed so that a flight of gulls sheered off. At Haven he gave a feast that filled hall and town to overflowing and went on for days and nights, while oxcart after oxcart groaned up laden with fresh casks, until the last guest lurched home clutching his head. Afterward there was much to do, things that had waited for the king’s word. He gave himself gleefully to them.
But as soon as might be, he moved away. The Sound, softly lapping on weed-strewn shingle, its tides mild as the breathing of a slumbrous bairn, was not the sea for which he had yearned.
