This was in the north of Scania. The Swedes and Geats had not yet come far. Only a few farmsteads stained the blue with their burning. Otherwise that afternoon was sunny. Breezes went mild, full of birdsong and breaths of soil and growth. Hadding’s troops were passing through a broad bottomland flanked by low, wooded hills. On their left flowed and glittered the rivet Elsewhere spread open meadow with scattered groves of beech or ash. The yeomen hereabouts had herded their grazing kine away as they fled. The field lay open for battle.

When Hadding saw from afar the host moving toward his, he whistled softly. “That looks like about three to one against us,” he said. “I hadn’t reckoned on quite so much.” His laugh barked. “Each of us’ll have to do away with three of them.”

No few among his followers swallowed hard. But all walked onward. Lights flared off helmets and spearheads. Banners rippled aloft. Feet made a slow, dull drumbeat. Hadding dismounted. He slung his shield on his back and took a bill off a packhorse. Given the numbers he must meet, he wanted a weapon with a longer reach than a sword, to get at foemen behind the frontmost and thus loosen the sheer weight of them.

Soon, he knew, the fight would break up into knots, where the only way one could hope to stay by his fellows was to keep an eye on the banner of their chieftain. If it went down, strife would go wholly man-to-man, without shape or meaning.

On the Swedish side, riding at the head of his ‘folk, King Asmund laughed louder. “Now have you been as reckless as I hoped, Hadding!” he boomed. He was like his father in looks, big, heavyset, hooknosed, with dark hair and beard that were getting grizzled. To the youth on his right hand he said, “This day your namesake will smile in his howe.”

Henrik was slender and fair, barely of an age to take arms. Asmund had given him that Saxon name when he was born, in honor of him whom Gram slew in order to reave away Signy. She thus became the mother of Hadding, but it was to avenge her fallen bridegroom that the Saxons lent strength to Svipdag and so brought about the death of Hadding’s father. That young Henrik was here, where they would bring down the son of Gram, seemed wholly right to Asmund.

On either side flew the banners of his two older sons, Uffi and Hunding; but Henrik was his most beloved. Elsewhere went the followers of many Swedish and Geatish chieftains. When the riders among them drew rein and jumped down, a shout rang off the hills. Startled birds flew piping from their nests. Iron flared free. Bowstrings twanged, arrows hissed into flight.