Likewise did Hadding take his turns bending his back and tautening his thews to the oar stroke. He won to knowledge of knots and rigging, the care of a craft, the ways of doing things, the signs by which to set a course. There was time for this and more, because the crossing was not as short and easy as hoped. Clouds boiled up from the worldrim and over the sky; wind drove a lash of rain and spindrift; waves ran huge, gray and green and thunderous, beneath a storm-howl so loud that men could barely hear each other bellow and a cold that smote to the bone. Those who did not bail were at the oars, striving to keep the bow headed into the seas. Drenched, their hands blistered where calluses had worn away, skin cracked and stinging from salt, numb with weariness, they fought on.

Well northward were they driven, to claw off the lee shore of Gotland, before the storm waned. After that a fog rolled in. That dripping, silent blindness was in its way still more fearsome. When at last it lifted, the fleet was scattered.

Dauntless, Lysir spent days cruising to and fro in search. By ones and twos and threes he found the other ships. Mild weather cheered the crews. They raised masts to let the wind work for them. When it was not fair, they poled out the sails and tacked across it.

All these skills did Hadding gain, wonderfully fast. “It’s as though you recall what you were born knowing but had forgotten,” Lysir murmured, “and as if our woes came on us for you to do so the sooner.”

Hadding reddened with pride. The swing and throb under his feet, the reach of sight across restless mightiness, tang of salt and pitch and sunlight, whistling wind and rushing water, the ship like a living thing, like a woman clasping him, they were his; here he belonged.

The vikings had suffered no wreck, which seemed to them to bode well, but some hulls needed work and everyone needed quiet, uncrowded sleep. They sought back to Gotland and went ashore. Folk who saw them coming fled inland. Lysir’s men did not give chase, nor sack the steadings thereabouts. This island paid scot to the Swede-king, and though he was now Svipdag, that might change someday. Best not to make bitter foes needlessly. They contented themselves with rounding up what kine they found and holding a strand-hewing. The meat tasted good after nothing but stockfish and sodden flatbread. They filled their water casks, fixed their ships, dried themselves out, and put to sea anew.