Hadding nodded, though the scowl did not leave his brow. “Enough. Let’s get the things and begone. Open up, Glum.”

The hoardkeeper lurched over to a chest, fumbled among the clothes in it, and took out the big key. Slowly, as if this called for skill, he put it in the lock and turned it. Hadding himself swung the door wide.

Then for a span he stood staring, unstirring. A hush fell upon the troopers. It spread from the few inside to the others outside. The sounds of everyday life seemed thin and far off.

“What is it?” mumbled Glum. He went to the platform where he had set down his wooden drinking cup and glugged from it. “Why are you so stiff?” he cried. “What doesn’t anybody say anything?”

Each word of Hadding’s fell like a stone. “Thieves have been here.”

“What? No, no, can’t be, I’ve been ever faithful, ever watchful—” Glum stumbled across the floor and caught the king’s arm. “I have!” he shrilled. “I am no thief!”

Hadding shook the hand loose. “Nevertheless,” he said, “much is missing.” He went into the storeroom.

Searching about in its gloom, he found much still there, weapons, furs, costly garments, amber necklaces, glassware, and boxes of coins from the Southlands. But his voice rang out, gone iron: “The gold chain that King Skjold wore when the Thing met. The silver goblet set with gems that his Queen Alfhild brought with her from Saxland. The gold-headed mace wherewith King Gram slew Sigtryg. The great silver bowl with bull’s-head handles that I brought back from Dynaborg. And I know not how many golden arm-rings. You should be able to tell me, Glum. You have the tally of everything in your head. Come reckon it out, hoardkeeper.”

“I know nothing,” the elder groaned. “I have not been in there since last you were.”

“You should have, from time to time,” said Hadding. Then he shouted: “Ha! Einar, Egil, Herjulf, come here and look at this!”

The warriors crowded in with him and peered. A hole in the floor yawned black amidst dirt piled around it. “Someone dug his way hither,” breathed Herjulf.

“Then the thief is indeed not Glum,” said Einar.

“Thieves,” the king answered. “One man alone cannot have done the work. Who’ll crawl down and find where the burrow ends?”

Egil was first, though he was the oldest in the troop. Hadding stepped out into the dwelling room. Glum cowered from him and blubbered, “You see, lord, I did keep faith—”

Looming over the wretch, Hadding said, “I call it not faith that you could never stir yourself to look in on what was entrusted to you, but instead drank yourself deaf to the noise of what was going on. Do you in truth know nothing of this?”

“Nothing, nothing, I swear by the gods and on my honor.”

“We may squeeze something else out of him,” said a guardsman starkly.