One day during this visit, he went for a walk with his daughter, Ulfhild. Her foster father had told him that though she curbed herself better than erstwhile, beneath it she stayed as willful and flighty as ever. Hadding thought he might try getting to know her a little. She was Ragnhild’s daughter too.

The trail they took wound by a stubblefield. On its other side rose trees kept for a woodlot. The birches had already lost most of their leaves, which lay yellow and scrittled drily aside from feet. Elsewhere greenness lingered, but fading. Sunlight spilled through silent air that smelled of ‘earth. Geese trekked overhead. Their honking drifted faintly downward. Crows cawed, hopping bits of night, where they picked the cropland over for grain the gleaners had overlooked. Let wanderbirds go off into the unknown; the crows would abide.

“So now you will soon round out your twelfth winter,” Hadding said. “Good for you. Before long you’ll be a woman.”

The girl clenched her fists. “It’s too long for me.” Her voice was small and cold.

He laughed. “That’s because you are young. I draw nigh my fiftieth, and yet it feels like only yesterday I was a boy among the giants.”

She cast him a look. He did not seem old. The gold of hair and beard was going fallow; furrows trenched his cheeks and when he squinted the crinkles stood forth around his eyes; a skin once fair had gone to dry leather; he limped a bit more than formerly; but still he had most of his teeth, still he stood straight and broad-shouldered, still the sword at his hip. hung ready.

“We must start to think about your morrows,” he said. “I’ll be asking around about a husband for you. He’ll be a man whose strength we want at our side—but also a good man, dear, one you can be happy with.”

She tautened. “How happy has my mother been with you?” she screamed. “I’ve heard!” She turned from him and ran.

He did not follow, but stood watching her slight form speed away. That evening in Eyjolf’s hall he did not talk much. Next day he rode back to his ships.

Winter fell.

Its endless nights came to an end.

In spring Hadding sailed north. Old King Haakon had now died, but his son Knut had been hailed without any naysaying. Hadding gathered that Ragnhild had had something to do with that. Knut made the Dane-king unstintedly welcome, and from the first night Ragnhild shared his bed it was as if nothing had ever pushed in between them.

“I’ve missed you, oh, I’ve missed you,” she stammered in the warm blindness.

“And I you,” he said. “Come back with me.”

She was slow to answer. “We, were too stubborn, both of us. I think we always will be. Our souls are not the same. But surely we can meet halfway—often enough.”