It seemed as though Tosti the Wicked was done for. Hadding had broken his following on the battlefield, killed most, scattered the rest, and brought home a good booty. Thereafter the Dane-king went around quelling the lands from which his foes had dared come. He rode through Jutland to the cromlech stronghold, slew what fighting men were there on watch, and razed it. Naught should have been left for Tosti but to skulk with every hand against him, living like a wolf on what he could steal until he found himself with nowhere to flee and died like a wolf.

Yet he kept a ship, a crew, his cunning, and his hatred. For a year they laired in deep fjords of Norway, rowing forth to fall on lonely hamlets or fisher boats, slipping off before avengers could track them down. During this while he lost some men, and others quit; but at the end he still had enough to seek Jutland again.

Lying offshore, he went word inland to lurking places he knew. No few outlaws heeded the call, and likewise men who were wretchedly poor or homeless. They had little to lose, and Tosti had in his way been powerful. He might win back to that and more. No one could foreknow what the Norns had laid down for him.

Not all in his gang were poor. Some who got away from Hadding had been well off at home. The Dane-king had burned those houses and made the Jutes and Saxons outlaw the owners. But they had brought along golden arm-rings, purses full of outland coins, costly weapons and clothes.

“We’ll get friends overseas,” Tosti told them in the second year. “We’ll come back ready to strip the shores of Denmark, till Hadding pays us ransom for his kingdom. After that we’ll build our strength further. You’ll end your days on broad acres, sleeping under down quilts with whatever maidens you want.”

So they set forth for England.

The ship was crowded. Cheek by jowl, men easily grew angry at each other. Hard words crackled. When a fist thudded, Tosti was there before the one struck could draw his knife “Easy,” he bade. “Easy. have no bloodshed here. We’ll settle these things on land.” But he did not try to make anything but a patchwork peace.

England seethed with newcomers. Vikings denned on the islands and in the bays. Land-hungry tribes from overseas hammered the Britons back and back. War-bands roved and ravened. Smoke smeared heaven, women wept hopelessly beside the ashes of dwellings, birds picked out the eyes of the unburied dead. Withal, where Anglians, Saxons, Jutes, or Danes were clustered there rang the noise of axes, hammers, adzes, laughter, and heroic verse, as they built a new world for themselves.