“In those days I knew nobody with the wisdom to show me what was best. What wisdom I now have was dearly bought. I hoped it would not die with me.” Hadding sighed. “Well, if you’ve given a promise, honor binds you. Go. We’ll talk after you come home.”

He did not say the unlucky word “if.” And indeed Frodi had thus far won all his battles, which were not few.

From the beginning he had loved weapons and weapon-play above all else. He became a horseman, hunter, and sailor, but no more skillful than behooved a well-born man. With sword, spear, ax, bow he grew deadly. Even as a little boy, fighting others with sticks, he bloodied their heads so often that at last none would agree to the game. But by then he was learning the use of iron, forged for his size. Those things must be made bigger each year.

At the age of twelve, he could lawfully go in viking, though skippers hardly ever did take striplings. Frodi asked if he could join a crew busking for a raid on Friesland. Belike they would have let him, he being the king’s son. However, the king said flatly no. When Frodi raged at him, Hadding gave the lad a backhanded cuff that sprawled him on the ground. Frodi stormed off. Nobody saw him for days. He came back ragged”, dirty, scratched, and starving. He would not tell where he had been, but folk guessed at the woods. Nor did Hadding dwell on the matter.

When his father left his mother behind in Norway, Frodi took it hard. He did not ask about it, nobody did, but he brooded. His scowls and curtness helped stir unrest in the housecarles and other warlike men. To quiet them, Hadding took a small fleet across the Baltic and harried about in Wend-land and Gardariki. On that faring Frodi went along, now fifteen, tall as most men and daily getting stronger. He and his father fought side by side, sat together at their campfires, stood watch and watch at the steering oar when a gale nearly sank them, grew closer than ever before or afterward.

The next year Ragnhild returned to Denmark and died giving birth to a dead child. Her son Frodi was not there. He and a band of youths, off overseas to fight and plunder, were wintering in Frankland. From that he gained less than the outfitting had cost.

His wedding cheered him. The bride was comely, and she brought lands and riches with her. It happened Frodi was not on hand when Hadding rode into Tosti’s trap, but later he went in the forefront of the avenging host and reaped a red harvest.