Hadding jarred to a halt. Words tore from him. “What fray is this?”

The woman stopped too. For the first time on their trek she looked again into his eyes. Her voice was low, a sigh like the wind at night. “These are the men who died by the sword, who here wage ever a shadow strife and fell each other, so that their deeds are a glimmer of what they wrought when they lived.”

She turned and went on. The fight was slow to fall away behind them. Meanwhile Hadding gave scant heed to the land around. It was a heath, utterly empty Light waned until they fared in dusk, chill, and stillness.

At last he began to make out something else. Drawing near, he saw it was a high stone wall. From end to end of sight it stretched across the rutted road. He spied no gateway, nor could he see over the top. On a boulder nearby perched a red cock. Otherwise there were only the whins and ling of the waste.

“We must try to get over this,” said the woman.

Hadding felt of the stones. They were smoothed and closely fitted, with neither handhold nor foothold. “I know not how,” he said.

“Some few have overleaped it,” said the woman.

She withdrew, crouched, and broke into a run. Arrow-swift she sped, and at the end gave a mighty spring. Her cloak and skirts flapped with the speed. Nonetheless she did not reach the top, but fell back, landing catlike on her feet.

Again she walked off. Her shape went misty. Renewed, she was small and light. Now she bounded higher still, but once more failed.

She made herself tall again. “No,” she said grimly, “this is not in your weird. Yet shall you ken something of what lies beyond.”

She went over to the cock and laid hold of him, wings and legs caught in her left hand. Her right closed on his neck. With one twist, she tore his head off.

Blood spattered, none of it on her. She swung the body around. Plumes streamed. She let it go and it soared over the wall. After it she cast the head.

From the other side, Hadding heard the cock crow.

All at once the woman seemed weary. “Enough,” she said, and started back the way they had come.

So did Hadding return to the world of the living. He passed up through the floor of Haakon’s hall and stood there before Ragnhild. She fell into his arms. Folk told him he had been gone for only a few breaths.

XXII