Down he went. Black shapes became hazy. As steep as the ground was, he misunderstood why. He believed he was only in a thicket where the leaves overhead blocked off even more light than before.

The wood opened. He burst out into heavy fog. It billowed soundless around him, moonful but blotting up sight. A few trees and bushes stood blurred, everything else was a wan nothingness.

“Hoy,” he muttered, “we’d better turn back.” He looked after Hardgreip. He saw her not. The fog swirled and dripped.

Dismay smote him. She must have blundered from him in their blindness. But she could not be far off. “Hardgreip!” he howled. “Stay where you are. Call and I’ll seek you. Hard-greip!”

A shriek went saw-toothed.

Something snarled. Wings beat on high. Feet bounded. Brush foamed and snapped. There went noises of ripping and breaking. The woman screamed. Over and over she screamed.

Hadding drew his sword. “Stand fast, Hardgreip!” he called. “Fight! I’m coming!”

He plunged about, high and low, right and left. The fog smoked thicker. The wildwood scratched and snagged. The racket’ seemed to be from everywhere and nowhere. After a while it lessened. He heard growls and thought he heard bones crunch between jaws. Then he was alone in utter stillness.

Not until after sunrise did he find the blood-soaked earth, the blood-smeared leaves, and the blood-red scraps. He buried what he could.

IX

Now Hadding wandered friendless through days and nights that he lost track of. Sometimes he slept in a yeoman’s house, saying little about himself and taking leave early in the morning. Oftener he laired in the wilds and lived off what he could catch. Mostly he bore south, though he knew it brought him ever nearer his foes and he with not one man to stand beside him. This was the way he had said he would take, and he cared naught what might lie at the end of it.

Yet he was young. Slowly the horror and grief went from him and hope awakened. He became altogether healed when he reached the shore and for the first time beheld the sea.

Woods decked the downward-rolling land almost to the water’s edge. Close by they thinned out until only scattered evergreens, dwarfed and wind-gnarled, grew amidst harsh grass. The strand was shingle, round gray rocks where kelp lay strewn in ropes and yellow-brown heaps. The day was bright and windy. No great surf arises along the Baltic Sea, but waves ran high, scud blowing off white manes, green and gray out to a blue worldrim. They rushed and crashed and shouted in their strength. Gulls flew like snow. Their mewing called him outward. The air tasted and smelled of salt. He drank deep of its keenness and laughed aloud.