Some of the ships had towed boats, which lay on the strand beside them. Hadding chose the smallest, most easily rowed. “We’ll not be too handy at the oars, the way we are, if they chase us,” said the guardsman.
Hadding nodded. “No boat can outrace a ship. But we can see to these.”
Tools were always aboard a vessel. Hadding and his housecarle took up the planks laid in the bottoms, drilled holes, and put the planks back again. “That should slow them,” laughed the king.
Taking also a water cask and some dried food they found, they launched the boat and set forth. Once well offshore, they doffed their mail, shipped their oars, and drifted. They ached to their bones.
Slumped in the stern, Hadding looked at his follower. He saw a big man, fair-haired, blunt-nosed, too young for sorrow to have marked him much. “Forgive me,” said Hadding. “After this day, my head feels blurred. You are Gudorm Thorleifsson, are you not?”
The warrior nodded. “I joined your housecarles only a month or two, ago, lord, while your thoughts were mostly on the wedding. You don’t know me well yet.”
“I think I do now, Gudorm. That was the name of my brother. A good sign for us two? Tell me again as you did before—sleep is coming on me—whence you hail.”
“From Keldorgard west of the Isefjord, lord. It’s among the greatest holdings on Zealand.”
Hadding nodded. “Yes, I should have remembered. I will remember. But let us rest.”
He drowsed off. Gudorm sat a while gazing at him through the sunset light. It gave back a little gold to the king’s gray head.
When the battle was done, Tosti howled, “Who will ken Hadding?” Some of his troop had seen him in the past, and most had heard something about what so famous a man looked like. They grubbed through the fallen. As the search went by without gain, Tosti joined it, tossing bodies aside, grunting and snarling. He too found naught.
He straightened and glared. “Did he then get away?”
“I think not into the woods,” said Syfrid. “He led his men and was well-nigh out onto the strand when we attacked. Then he sprang from his horse and back to the fight. But the press was hard. Nobody could have hewed from there into the thick of it. The Danes who happened to be to the rear, they were the ones who had some opening for escape when they saw they were beaten.”
“Yet Hadding’s not here,” Tosti grated. “Unless he made off down the strand itself. Hr-r-r, if he slips from us, this day will not have seen our victory”
He asked about and cast about. A man or two recalled marking a pair who fled east along the water. Tosti bent low and scuttled around like a hound after spoor. “Ha!” he cried. “Footprints and bloodstains! After them!”
Men whooped. They pounded along for a few miles, topped the ridge, and saw their other ships, with three dead warriors lying under the prows. Tosti shaded his eyes and peered outward. The sun was nearly set, the dazzle off the water half blinded him, but it seemed that something yonder might be a boat. “Launch! There’s our whale! A pouchful of gold to the first who harpoons him!”
Hands gripped, backs bent, a ship rumbled down to the shallows and onward till she lay afloat. Men waded out and hauled themselves aboard. Oars rattled forth. The ship surged forward.
The sea welled up from below. It gurgled around the deck-boards, raised them, set them sloshing to and fro. The crew broke out buckets. They could not bail fast enough. Soon the craft wallowed awash.
Tosti shrieked his rage. There was nothing to do but creep back to shore. They found that all the hulls had been holed.
“We’ve more ships waiting!” Tosti shouted. “Be off!”
“If we run back all that way,” mumbled a Jute, “we’ll be dead tired.”
Tosti pulled Out his knife. “You’ll be dead now if you don’t come along,” he said. They trotted at his back as best they could.
Night fell. It was the light night of midsummer, dream blue, giving wide range to sight. A warm wind lulled.
Most of Tosti’s band had stayed behind, resting. He filled a ship from among these. Oars creaked, a bow wave purled, wake sheened, the vessel drove forward.
Gudorm saw it afar, a darkness in the dusk, and wakened Hadding. The king peered with a sailor’s eye. “Yes, they’re after us sooner than I’d hoped,” he said calmly.
Gudorm’s fist thudded on the rail. “We should have gone ashore and struck inland ere now.”
“I thought of that, but we’d have been close to where we set out, and too weary to cover our tracks. That takes time and care, I can tell you. Now, at least, we have some strength and wit again.”
“They’ll be on us before we can make shore.”
“Not unless they see us. As yet, to them we’re very low in the water, a blob, if they’ve spied us at all. Nor will they likely spy two swimmers, if we’re not noisy.”
Gudorm stared. “Do you mean, lord, we should go overboard?”
“Yes, before they’re sure what we are and what we do.”
The guardsman’s broad shoulders slumped. “I can’t swim,” he said. The boat rocked a little. Wavelets lapped and glimmered under the dim sky.
Hadding tugged his chin. “Hm. That’s a bother.”
Gudorm straightened. “Save yourself, my king,” he said, not altogether steadily. “I’ll put my mail back on, and when they find me, maybe I’ll take a few of them with me to the deeps.”
Hadding half smiled. “So must a housecarle speak,” he answered. “But it’s wrong. You would not die at my feet as you should, you’d die while I ran off.”
Gudorm stared at him. “What else could happen?”
Hadding laughed. “I’ve a trick or two left in me
