“Leave my throat dry and I’ll speak no further word.”

“Oh, let him have some,” Ketil said. “It’s cheerless where he’s going.”

He stood by with drawn sword while his fellow untied the captive’s wrists and bound them again in front, to let the hands clasp a horn. He also lashed the ankles together and hitched that cord to a roofpost. Hadding was plainly strong. The guards were sore and weary after yesterday. They wanted no risk.

All sat down. They had one horn between them. Ketil filled it, drank, and passed it on to Vigleik, who in turn put it in Hadding’s grasp.

“Tell us about yourself,” Ketil bade him. “We’ll tell others, so you won’t be forgotten right away.”

Vigleik yawned. “Make it lively if you can. This has been a dull day.”

Hadding lifted the horn, drank, and gave it back. “I can tell you more than you maybe care to hear. You’ll take me for a liar.”

Ketil tugged his mustache. “A death-doomed man has no need to lie, does he? Nor would it help him afterward, I should think.”

“Right you are. Hark, then. I am the last living son of the Dane-king Gram. After he fell, a faithful man of his brought me to some giants he knew, and they raised me.”

Vigleik choked. Mead sputtered from his lips. “A tale indeed!”

“True or not, it’s something to listen to,” Ketil said happily.

Time passed. Rain hammered. The warriors sat enthralled. They lost track of how much they drank. When it came to him, Hadding held the horn tilted as long as they did, but the slightest of sips went past his teeth. The others marked this not.

He told them how he grew up, what the life was like, happenings both everyday and spooky When it touched Hard-greip, he found he did not wish to say anything. Rather, he went on, quite truthfully, “The jotuns have many sagas of their own. Theirs was the first of the races, you know, and while most of them are no doubt oafish blockheads, some are cunning and some are wise, with lore that goes back to the beginning. They remember things that men never knew and the gods have forgotten, or at least do not choose to tell of. Let me give you one such. A part of it you surely know, but only a part. Of course, I heard this from a giant. It may be that his folk say one thing about it, the gods another. But here is what he told me.”

Around and around went the mead as Hadding talked.