XIII

That year the fields throughout Denmark bore overflowingly, kine grew fat, and fishermen filled their nets. The Danes thought this was because they had a rightful king again. They flocked about Hadding wherever he went, wanting him to set everything else to rights for them also. Nevertheless he must make sure of their chieftains, some of whom had fared well under Svipdag and might not be overly glad to have a Skjoldung back. He must reward men who had staunchly stood by him, and give to the most trustworthy such power as he believed they could handle. At the same time, he should not do injustice to those of whom he felt wary, if they had not yet done him any harm. In all these matters and more, he strove to learn the skills of kingcraft, from good counsel and from his own watchfulness.

Thus he had no time even to think about taking a wife, but merely bedded whomever was offered him—ofttimes by herself—as he fared around the land. Nor could he give heed to what went on abroad. He knew only that Svipdag’s son Asmund was now king in Uppsala and had vowed revenge. It was hardly a surprise. The question was merely how real the threat might be.

The answer to that came toward spring, as Hadding sat in the great hall near Haven that his grandfather had built. Up from the nearby Sound came a band of men on horses they had brought across, into the stronghold, and so to the king’s house. It was a gloomy day, skies heavy above croplands still bare and trees still leafless.

But when the newcomers came indoors, warmth, light, and cheer met them. Fires crackled high, hardwood sweetened with herbs. Lamps laid their glow to the leaping brightness and to whatever straggled in through the gutskins stretched across the windows. Shadows made the gods, heroes, and beasts graven on the pillars or woven into the hangings seem to breathe and stir. Well-born women kept filled the drinking horns of the men who sat on the platform benches along either wall. Well-trained hounds lolled at the men’s feet. The king’s guests and his household warriors were clad in brocaded, fur-trimmed tunics, breeks dyed with woad or weld or madder, belts and footgear of the finest leather and workmanship. Hadding in his high seat was more splendid yet, a silver brooch set with a garnet at his throat, gold rings on his fingers and coiling up his arms. His hair and close-trimmed beard shone the same yellow. His eyes gleamed sea blue in the jutting Skjoldung face.