Nobody said anything about booty and battle lost or friends left dead. Such things happened. Nor did anyone talk of the wraiths they had seen. No one dared.

Dwelling in the wood, they won their way back toward strength and hope. No hurts of theirs were too grievous to deal with, using what means were to hand. Otherwise the sufferer could not have come this far. But it was not only good in itself, it was a heartening token that none got too badly inflamed. A weir in the stream they found caught fish, while Hadding and others brought in meat. Those who had lacked such skills learned from the king how to carry always a throwing stick and knock down whatever small game they spied. Although his limp slowed him somewhat, he himself was the best of the hunters. Going forth alone, he would stalk a deer, leaving it unawares, until he was close enough to grab hold and slay with a single blow of the knife.

Yet he longed for the sea. As soon as he deemed the warriors ready, he led them on.

That became a hard and ofttimes hungry faring. Surely Uffi had sent word far and wide, offering rich reward for their heads. They must not let themselves be seen where there was any number of folk, and best was if they were not seen at all, even by lonely outliers. Hence they swung clear of settlement as much as they could, groping through woods and over wastes unknown to them, crossing rivers elsewhere than at the fords, struggling through marshes and growth-choked glens, clambering on steep hillsides and in stony ravines. When they had to pass near farm or thorp, they went at night or through a rainstorm. On the move in wildwood, they could not help frightening game. Now the hunters seldom got anything bigger than hares or grouse. Sometimes they felt lucky when their traps took a few voles.

Still, they pushed on. Sheer fellowship helped them mightily. Camped at eventide, if weather let them sit around the fire they would swap memories, tales, verse, jokes, thoughts. Hadding awakened wonder by what he told of life and lore from his strange upbringing. Their homely words taught him more about men and women than he had fully known before.

After uncounted days they came out of a shaw onto open ground rolling gently downward. Tussocks of coarse grass mingled with heather, tossing in a salt breeze that murmured below an overcast where the sun lightened the gray to westward. When they saw the silvery gleam ahead, they whooped, danced, pounded one another on the back. “The sea!” they cried. “The sea!”

Hadding drank deep of that air. “Home to the Mother,” he whispered. They did not understand him. Maybe he did not either. But then he smiled and told them, “I think now we are safe”