The woman called herself Gro and said her husband was elsewhere. Those who remembered King Gram’s first wife were taken aback. However, the name was a common one, and this bearer of it clearly had nothing to do with the long-dead queen. Sparely clad and housed though she was, something about her made them ask no more. Rather, they went around the neighborhood buying their food, cooked it themselves, and did the work of the little farm.

Meanwhile she brewed herbs for the burning in Hadding’s wounds and body. The men heard her sing to him after dark, words they could not follow. After a night, a day, and a night, the fever broke and his mind steadied. He was so weak, though, that he stayed for days more.

It grew harder and harder for his friends to keep him abed. When at length Gro deemed him fit for the road, she warned him to fare easily.

“You shall have rich reward for this,” he said.

She smiled. “Send no messengers, for they’d not find me here,” she answered. “I need no pay. Once I had a greater reward than any you could give me, for a less lucky outcome to my leeching. Sometimes the token of it shines before dawn. Spoil not my work by heedlessness, and I’ll be content.”

Indeed the trek onward was slow. However much Hadding chafed, he could not sit a horse or walk for any long span; but must lie again on the litter. Still, each day he was stronger.

Thus they reached Ivar’s home. He ferried them out to the isles and their ship. “Say naught of this for now,” Hadding bade him. “If the news got out that I am sick in a strange land, Uffi and others would be swift to make trouble.”

“Surely King Haakon would take you in,” Ivar said.

“I want to come to him as a fellow king, not a sapless way-farer.”

“You would come as a hero, lord.”

“Still, it isn’t fitting. Worse, the truth about me would be bound to go abroad, and Denmark would suffer. If nothing else, 14ffi,could go reaving through Scania. It’s not worth that risk.”

Hadding sat thoughtful until he went on, “Ivar, you have been a friend to me. If you would be a brother, now help me mom See to it that any word of us that may have gotten out is hushed. See to it, also, that what we need in the way of food and other goods is quietly brought us here. Then sail again south. I’ll give you tokens so Eirik Jan l will know I sent you. Bring back treasure such as I will tell you of.”

The Norseman agreed, and they fell into close talk. Some days later his knorr stood out to sea. Hadding abode with the housecarles, working to build back his health. That went ever faster.