“Well,” said the king, “at least we have one of you alive.” He had learned the Northern tongue. “A nithing; no iron has marked you.” The Wends had stripped off Hadding’s helmet, byrnie, and weapons, leaving him only his clothes. Underbrush could well have torn them, and the bloodstains were hard to tell from caked mud. “You skulked off and hid, hoping to boast afterward of your heroic deeds. Tell me not that you did us no harm. You were ready to take your share of loot and rape your share of women, eh?” He turned to the keepers. “Hogtie him and throw him among his dead shipmates. Their fellow wolves will soon eat them. Maybe first the ravens will pick out his eyes.”

“Well spoken, lord,” spat a guardsman. The two in charge of Hadding led him away.

Outdoors, he opened his mouth. “It’s a longish walk ahead. Why get wet? Let’s wait here till the rain stops.”

“You’d hang onto your wretched life that while more?” scoffed one of them.

Hadding shrugged. “The noise yesterday scared the wolves off throughout last night. They’ll hardly come from the woods before this eventide, when living folk have stopped picking over the dead. Why soak yourselves as well as me? We can pass the time better.”

He had, indeed, already talked with these men after they were given the watch over him. It had not been unfriendly. To them he was a foe who should die, but otherwise a man like themselves. Besides, he brought word from home. Vigleik was a Cleat, Ketil a Dane of Scania. As steadily as Hadding bore his lot, they believed him when he told them he was no coward but had merely been lucky during the fight and had stayed in it till everyone else fled. Then he did take to the woods, but in the morning found he was back where he started.

“Why not?” Vigleik said. Ketil nodded. The three of them returned to the hut in which they had waited for the king to send for them. It was even smaller than most; the dwellers had been ordered elsewhere for this while. A peat fire smoldered on the dirt floor, its light barely picking out the stools, box, and cookware that were the few poor furnishings. Smoke mingled with dankness. Rain splashed beyond a narrow, open doorway.

Ketil doffed his cloak, shook what water he could off it, hung it over a beam, coughed and snuffled. “Faugh, what a weather!” he said. “You’re right, nothing to be out in needlessly. Bad enough here.”

Vigleik grinned. “We’ve something to keep us warm.” He pointed to a cask of mead they had brought in earlier. The king’s men helped themselves to whatever they found of suchlike goods. After all, they had saved the owners from the vikings.

“You might share it,” Hadding said.

“Why?” asked Vigleik.