When he told this in the house, Vagnhöfdi scowled and rumbled that that had been no lucky sign. The light elves were too friendly with the gods. The swart elves sometimes did jotuns’ bidding, but one must beware of them too. They were as safe to deal with as wolves.

He also disliked the dwarves. Miners and craftsmen who had wrought many wondrous things, they were greedy, short-tempered, and apt to lay curses that worked through lifetime after lifetime. Vagnhöfdi called it good that none dwelt underground hereabouts.

Monsters formerly laired in these wilds, nicors lurking under meres in wait for beasts or men, trolls that liked human flesh best, hagbirds, a dragon. During his hundreds of years he had killed most of them after they made trouble for him, but it was still wise to shun some hills and lakes.

Other beings he could not fight. He and his steered clear of them: night-gangers, land-wights, the unrestful dead. Yet this was not altogether so. Hadding learned that when he went with Hardgreip on a trek of three days that ended in the dark.

Haflidi had been plowing her field. For this she needed no horse or ox, but pushed the ard herself. She turned up a slab of rock into which runes had been chiseled. When she brought it home to her mate and daughter, who had knowledge of such things, they were disquieted and muttered to one another. Already they had seen forebodings elsewhere. A cow gave birth to a calf without a head. One day the earth shuddered and boomed underfoot. One night the full moon was the hue of clotting blood. “Seek word from the drow,” Vagnhöfdi told Hardgreip. “You are better at a graveside than I am.”

She hung back for a heartbeat or two, then her mouth stiffened and she agreed. Having packed food to take along, she set forth at dawn. Hadding had boasted he would go too, and she said low that she would be glad of any fellowship.

On open ground he could not keep up with her strides unless he ran, but later they went through trackless, tangled brush, thorn and withe and twisty boughs knitted together like ringmail, with fallen logs and scummy green pools in among them. Even more than he must she push, squirm, fight her way step by step. Fog swirled and dripped. Snakes slithered, frogs croaked, carrion crows jeered in the offing. Where shadows lay thickest, Hadding saw rotten wood glow blue. At night he lay close against the warm, breathing bulk of the giantess. They were too weary to speak much.

Toward sunset of the third day they came to a knoll on which stood a dolmen raised by folk unknown and long gone. The earth had fallen away from its great stones. Spotted with moss and lichen, they reared stark out of crowding willow scrub. “Keep well back of me,” Hardgreip warned Hadding. “Whatever happens, do not get close.”