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Updated: June 23, 2025
Asbiorn might manage them though, and with Hakon's men they will learn manners." He spoke our own tongue of course, and the king asked what he said. Dalfin said that Hakon would take them away altogether if the clemency of the king would allow it. Whereon the king waved his hand, and said that they should be sent down with the oxen. Now, I did not think that this pleased the men of the court.
Hakon watched them go gravely, and then turned to Bertric and greeted him as an old and most welcome friend, and so Bertric made me known, and I also was well greeted. Then Hakon turned to Asbiorn, who stood by, watching all this quietly. "Who is this prisoner of yours, Malcolm?" he asked. "You have not taken his sword from him, as I see." "He is Asbiorn Heidreksson, King Hakon," I answered.
Then Asbiorn said: "Better that I am not seen unless wanted. I will go to the back of the hall and see that none get away thence. What shall you do if all goes well?" "Take Arnkel and send him back to Hakon in the ship," I answered. "That is the only thing possible. If he is foolish enough to fight well, he must take his chance."
There was a bale of canvas, plunder from our ship sheds, across the break of the deck, and I could not be seen by the men, while Asbiorn was alone at the helm. It was almost as light as day, with the strange shadowless brightness of our northern June, when the glow of the sunset never leaves the sky till it blends with that of sunrise.
One of the men who followed him broke in on that, "No use, Asbiorn. We cannot put into any Irish port in safety. And over there princes are thick as blackberries, and as poor as the brambles that bear them." "Aye, and as prickly," said Dalfin. "Have you learned that also?" The men laughed. One of them said that the Irishman's Danish speech was not bad, and that it was a pity
Asbiorn sat below the break of the foredeck, paying no heed to what went on. He had taken off his mail, and was drying it carefully with some cloths which Hakon's men had given him. I called down to him and told him what had happened. "Best thing my father could have done," he growled, without looking up. "He does not take foolish risks, as a rule."
Now, we liked Asbiorn well enough, for all the way in which we had met him, and the company whence he came to us. He was quiet and fearless, keeping himself to himself, but pleasant in his ways, troubling more over the thought of the ill repute of his father than need have been, perhaps, for none blamed him for that.
One of the youths who had risen when he sat down bent over him, and whispered in his ear, "Ah, Hereward, we know you. Do you not know us? We are the twins, the sons of your sister, Siward the White and Siward the Red, the orphans of Asbiorn Siwardsson, who fell at Dunsinane." Hereward sprang up, struck the harp again, and sang,
But the Irish kings were not slow to take advantage of our rivalries when they could. Asbiorn came to me as I stood and watched the king coming out of the camp. His face was white and drawn, but he was calm enough. "Who was the tall, young chief on the red horse?" he asked me. "Dalfin of Maghera, whom you let go with me," I answered. "So I thought.
I believe that so Hakon would have done, but that the chance never came. And that was the doing of Heidrek himself, or of his crew. What madness of despair fell on those pirates I cannot say, but Asbiorn has it that they went berserk as one man at the last, as the wilder Vikings will, when the worst has to be faced.
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