Palnatoki took him by the hand. “I will do this for thee, Styrbiorn,” he said. “And it is a thing I would not do for any other man, nor for myself neither. She shall come in. And now we must take rede for these greater matters.”
In such wise was Queen Thyri taken into Jomsburg. Twenty-two days they abode there fitting out their ships and mustering the Wendland levies and others from those eastern parts which Styrbiorn had of late laid under him, till there were well nigh six score ships, both great ships and small, all manned and armed in Jomsburg harbour. At dawn of the twenty-third day they went ashipboard. It was a grey and misty morning, windless, with a drizzle of rain in the air. Styrbiorn came down to the ships with Palnatoki and Sigvaldi. Sigvaldi was to bide in Jomsburg as captain there. Palnatoki had been sick of a sickness these four or five days past, but there was no holding him from faring with Styrbiorn.
Styrbiorn had bound raven’s wings on his helm. When Sigvaldi saw it, he said, “Some men would say thou wast fey, Styrbiorn, seeing thee commit so proud a blasphemy as bear raven’s wings on thy helm. For this is a thing befitteth no man, nor yet the lesser Gods neither, but the All-Father alone. If thou wilt be counseled by me, leave them off. For well I think they shall bring us ill luck.”
“They shall be taken off,” answered he, “when they shall be hewn off in battle before Upsala. Or when I sit King there. No other way.”
“I counsel thee,” said Sigvaldi, “out of my love and loyalty. A man might say, to look on thee, thou hadst now clapt up thy good luck in a cage of gold. But I feared thee less in thy mad melancholy discontents last winter.”
Styrbiorn laughed. “A doomed man’s ice-hole,” he said, “is never frozen. Have done with thy womanish fears.”
But now befell this misfortune, that Palnatoki going aboard of his ship slipped foot and fell and brake his leg there. Men thought this a strange ill hap. Spite of this, and his sickness yet heavy upon him, Palnatoki would not be left behind; till in the end Styrbiorn got his way with him, that he being unmeet for battle should stay this while in Jomsburg and let Sigvaldi fare in his stead with Styrbiorn into Sweden. There were men that laid their heads together, seeing in this thing an omen, and in the raven’s wings. But most of them trowed so much in their own might and main and in Styrbiorn that they were in no mind to quiddle upon such light matters as these. Sigvaldi held his peace, and busked him without more ado to sail in Palnatoki’s stead. But men who knew him thought they knew that his heart was not in that sailing.
Thyri came down with them to the ships. She was brave and jolly of mien. But Biorn bethought him now of her dream in Roiskeld two years since; and he thought he knew she was finding it hard to put on so blithe a face and press down her fears, seeing her lord now in very earnest about faring North with a great host of war.
They rowed out now from Jomsburg sea-gates in a windless calm. Styrbiorn stood on the poop of his great ship Ironbeak. She was both longer and taller of build than the other ships, so that every man else in that host must still be looking up at Styrbiorn and Styrbiorn down on them. Huge and dark was the spread of the raven’s wings above his head, fitter for a God than for a mortal man. The mist thinned and broke, and the sun looked over the land’s edge and beamed full on him with the fresh and clear brightness of morning.
Thyri stood there looking him farewell from the seawall of Jomsburg as the fleet steered west, and she was as a flower that is seen afar lonely on the sheer rock face of some wind-grieved mountain. The fog rolled up again and shut out Thyri and Jomsburg, leaving but a circle of sea about the ships and bright air and sunlight overhead. But as the ships passed out to sea under the outer headland they saw shadowy in the fog above them the shape of Moldi, gazing after them from the limit of the land.
So on the fourth day, being the thirtieth day appointed, came Styrbiorn back into the Dane-realm, and with him Sigvaldi and Biorn and other lords of the Jomsburgers, and they had five score and eleven ships of all sorts, fully manned. Near upon ten score ships of the Jomsburgers were already there in the Limfirth over against Alaburg, and some seven score of the King’s ships.
Styrbiorn came aland and went to see Harald the King straightway. The King said, “Wilt thou bridge the Limfirth with thy ships, Styrbiorn?” Styrbiorn said he would have the King call a Thing now forthright in Alaburg. So the King let call a Thing, and when that was done then Styrbiorn let them know what was in his mind to do. “And now,” he said, “I shall look for more than good words from you, father-in-law. There be here three hundred ships of us Jomsburgers ready to fare north with me. And I shall look to you for such furtherance as you may, both in men and ships.”
“That,” answered King Harald, “must give us a weighty cause to think upon. I seek no quarrel with the Swede-King. In west-viking we of the Dane-realm go our gate, whither we will. But that is an old saying, that the waves of the east sea do chant their songs to please the King of the Swedes.”
“This is not the answer that will content me,” said Styrbiorn.
The King said, “Thou hast still that trick, to fill
