Gudorm shivered to hear. This man, he remembered, had been raised beyond the world of men.
Hadding knotted a short length of mooring line about the waist of his guard and hitched it to a thwart. Springing to and fro, they capsized the boat. Hadding slipped underneath and laid hold of the thwart himself. There was an air space under the planks. In darkness, in sea, the two hung waiting.
Tosti’s ship drew nigh. “Overturned,” he snarled.
“How might that be, in this calm?” wondered a sailor.
“Who knows?” said another. “A riptide, a skerry, a whale—a kraken, a drow—Let’s away.”
“Someday,” said Tosti, “I may catch a fish that ate Hadding, and eat it. How I wish I could know. Well, we can take this boat back with us.”
“That’d be troublesome,” warned a crewman, “and the thing might be unlucky by now”
The crew muttered agreement. “As you like,” snapped Tosti.
Under the boat, king and guardsman listened to the oars stride off.
When he deemed it safe, Hadding helped Gudorm squirm forth and clamber onto the upended bottom. They could not right the craft again, but Hadding fetched the oars. He had tied them down inboard so that it would look as though the capsizing had happened hours ago. Sitting astride, he and Gudorm paddled to land. Stumbling into the shelter of a thicket, they slept.
Thereafter it was to find a house the raiders had not reached, where they got food, drink, and more rest. The owner’s son ran off to the sheriff with word about them. Though the sheriff was sorely beset as Tosti’s band scoured around, he brought horses. And thus Hadding won home.
There he sent forth the war-arrow. With a full levy he sought out the foe and went to work. Few were the Jutes and Saxons who did not leave their bones on that field. Having recovered what loot he could, he went on vengefully into their homelands. Not soon did those folk think again about faring against Denmark.
But Tosti had gotten away.
XXVIII
In the next summer, on his yearly ride through Scania, King Hadding stopped as always in Bralund. Eyjolf welcomed him with the same friendliness as ever. Yet it seemed to Hadding that a shadow lay over the household.
On the third day Eyjolf asked if they could speak under four eyes. They saddled horses and went forth. The steading dropped from sight behind them; only a thin twist of smoke lifted over a grove, and other homes lay dwindled by farness. Fields ripened, cows grazed in paddocks, wildflowers nodded blue and pink along the roadside, the miles round about faded hazily into sky. Bees buzzed in clover. Dust puffed up from hoofs, into windlessness, and fell slowly down.
“This warmth does an old man good,” said Hadding at length.
Eyjolf glanced at him. “You’re not yet old.”
“I’ve seen more winters than most men do. It’s time for me to think of those who’ll come after me.”
Eyjolf drew breath. “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”
“Ulfhild, not so?” asked Hadding softly.
“Yes.”
“She seems well enough behaved.”
“That’s because you’re here. Lord, she’s often a she-wolf. At best she does her tasks surlily. If crossed in any way, or for no reason we can guess, she screams, smashes things, lays about her with a switch or even a whip. The housefolk dare not say so, but plain it is how they hate and fear her. She gallops off by herself, without a by-your-leave, and won’t say where she’s gone. Nonetheless she can bewitch when she chooses, with her beauty, quick wit, and sharp mirth. In that mood she flirts more than is seemly, not only with youths but with married men, yes, and lowly crofters.”
Eyjolf stopped. For a while only plop of hoofs and creak of leather sounded. “That was a hard thing to say,” he added. “I must, though, for I know not how much longer I can keep this trust you gave me.”
“Wildness runs in our blood,” Hadding sighed. “My daughter Svanhvit, by my leman Gyda, has no liking for women’s work either, and talks of becoming a shield maiden.”
“We hear tell of such, but how many have there ever really been? Well, at least Svanhvit’s no threat to anyone but herself, is she?”
“Not yet. Ulfhild, though, stems from kings on both spear and distaff side. I’d thought of wedding her to a king, but now I wonder. She might stir up hungers in him. I don’t want Denmark torn by war, Frodi fighting for his rights, after I’m gone.”
“Well, she’s of an age for a husband—sixteen winters, if I’ve reckoned aright.”
“I’ll take her home with me,” said Hadding, “and we shall see.”
Eyjolf’s head lifted, as if a burden had been taken off his shoulders.
At first the young woman was blissful. She skipped over the grounds, she hugged her horse almost as if it were her man to be, she chattered like a brook in between fits of laughter. “I’m going away, I’m going away, I’m going away!” she sang. “Away from sour sameness, away from this pen, back to the world!”
“You might thank your fosterers for their kindness,” growled Hadding.
She gave him a narrow look and said no more. When they left she did indeed speak well to Eyjolf and his wife. “I know you had much to bear with,” she told them, “but I’ll never forget what I learned from you.”
Afterward Hadding thought that that could have two meanings. But on the trek to Zealand she was the best of way-mates, blithe and lively.
When he settled her in the hall at Haven, she was likewise delighted and delightful. The roominess, the wealth, the comings and goings, strange goods and stranger tales from abroad, the skalds and their lays, everything was new and bright to her eyes. “So should a queen live!” she cried more than once. Hadding held back from
