Sigvaldi and Thorkell the High were there with the Earl their father in Skaney, and had been there all the winter. They were glad at their friends’ coming and Styrbiorn’s, and the days and weeks went by in good pleasure and contentment until spring.
When Styrbiorn came to Strut-Harald to bid him farewell, the Earl held him a long time by both hands and looked at him long time without word spoken. Then he began to say, “I would thou wert my son. For my sons, good though they be, I deem not good enough. Heming can steer a ship and can make good play with sword and spear, but methinks he will ever have that nature to follow still where another leadeth. Thorkell is a man of war, but he hath little wit. Sigvaldi is a fox. He will get him lordship and wealth and fame and a long life: many men will follow and obey him, but the best men will not praise him. And, true it is, unto few men is it fated to be great, and of fair fame, and long-lived. I think, Styrbiorn, that the first two of these will be thine. But I think thy life will be short.”
The Earl’s eyes were very blue and keen-glancing. It seemed to Styrbiorn that they rested not on himself when they looked at him, but on some matter afar off, unseen by other men. Styrbiorn said, “I reck not the number of my days, so they be good.”
“Fare thee well,” said the Earl. “I wish thou wert my son.”
From Skaney Styrbiorn sailed first south over the sea to Jomsburg. There sailed with him those sons of Strut-Harald, Sigvaldi namely and Thorkell, with many ships of theirs and a great following, and they abode certain days in Jomsburg. And thither came, some today and some tomorrow till they were all gathered thither, the other lords of Jomsburg, Palnatoki and Bui of Borgundholm and Sigurd his brother and many more, until the burg was filled with men and the harbour thick with long-ships, like a stagnant pool under sallows in the season of the year when the leaves do fall, and the leaves of the sallows lie so many on the face of the pool that hard it is to tell whether it be water there or firm land hid with the leaves.
Now they took counsel together, spring being come and the time now ended of Styrbiorn’s being abroad. Many were fain to have fared north with Styrbiorn into Sweden to see the King there and to see Styrbiorn received into kingdom. But Styrbiorn said he would not go home thither until summer’s end. “How is that?” said they. “Is not thy time come now that summer setteth in, and thou hast been abroad three winters?” He answered, “That may be, but I shall have mine own way in this.”
So Styrbiorn sailed a-harrying the fourth summer with Palnatoki and the host of the Jomsburgers. Biorn Asbrandson the Broadwicker’s Champion was his shipmate, and men thought they could see how day by day the love and friendship of those two waxed and strengthened. Biorn was with him when he and Bui fared north into Biarmaland and the unknown places of Kirialaland, being thither drawn by the many tales in men’s mouths concerning that land: how that in Kirialaland only. Finns and skin-changers do inhabit, such as be not alway of one shape nor alway in that same place where they do seem to be; moreover that they of Kirialaland do observe an idol of great note, Jomala by name, that weareth a silver belt about his middle, in a temple in the darkness of a wood that is fulfilled of trolls and evil wights so as a man shall be drove clean out of his wits for very fright sake if he durst adventure there save by favour of Jomala. Styrbiorn and his folk coming to that place found not indeed any troll nor skin-changer, but they sacked Jomala’s temple and took the belt of him, that was of a fashion that none yet had seen, wrought with nickers and other worms intertwisted, and took besides so great a spoil of silver and costly treasures as no man could ever remember to have seen taken in one place and in a single day.
Besides Biorn, Styrbiorn had now more than three score men who were his shipmates always and followed him as a picked bodyguard in every warlike enterprise he took in hand. The more part of these had been many years vikings in Jom, as Bessi Thorlakson, Thorolf Attercop, Howard the Hewer, and Alf Braggart: others, as Gunnstein Lowry, were of his first following out of Sweden before he came to Jomsburg: other some he had taken to in many lands, men who had first felt the might of him as their conqueror in battle and were now the closer bound to his love and service, lords and princes of the east, Valdimar, the great Prince’s son of Holmgarth; Ere-Skeggi, that was young brother to an earl in Estland; Olaf the Wend, and many more. And like as Palnatoki by the mastery of his mere presence kept peaceable all those overweening men of war as many as followed in those days the Lay of the Jomsburgers, so in
