or other undertaking he has in mind. I’d be glad to give him counsel and help. Yet he, who brushed death at my side, tells me nothing.”

“He feels restless, unfulfilled. And I-harking back, I begin to ken how much you’ve cared for me and how little thankful I was. Oh, father, we’ve many things to talk about. Say you’ll come! Not with a troop of warriors and lords. We’d never have freedom from their nearness Nor could we house and feed them. Come so we can sit together at the hearth, be together, as kinfolk should.”

Hadding smiled. “Well, now, that’s sweet to hear. But I told you, I know not when it can be.”

“Before Yule, surely? You’ll be at Haven. You almost always make your midwinter offering there. And first you take your ease, after the year’s trekkings and strivings. Say you’ll come when we ask you. Promise me, father!”

She stood there before him in the morning light, his daughter who looked so much like his Ragnhild, and held out her arms to him. “It’s a good thought,” he said. “Yes, if nothing holds me that I can’t break loose from, I’ll come. And thank you, Ulfhild.”

“It’s we who must thank you,” she breathed.

He rode off, followed by his household. Once more, after the losses on Lolland, they were so many that their camp had overflowed a meadow. For a while he was merrier than they had seen him be in a long time. But lying idle until Tosti came by, he began again to brood. His slaying of the outlaw seemed only to lay a deeper darkness over him.

Afterward he went around in the kingdom as of yore, meetings his folk at their Things and in their homes, giving redes and judgments, calming those who were at odds, telling them it was better to build and trade than burn and rob. Men spoke among each other, sometimes with grins, of how the wild young rover had become the mild old grandfather. But some said, “It’s as though he’s bidding us farewell.”

In Scania he stayed a few days with Eyjolf. “I’d like to go on north to Uppsala and greet King Hunding,” he said on their last evening. “The road between friends should be trodden oftener than ours has been, these past years. But the season wears on. I’d best turn homeward.”

“You’ll surely meet again, you two,” the jarl answered, “and I’ve a feeling that that’s not far off.”

Hadding sighed. “One can hope.”

Back in Haven, he went to see Frodi and they had speech at the fen. He returned to his hall and the dream came to him. A week later he heard that his son had left Denmark.

—Soon after, Gudorm’s men arrived.