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Updated: June 3, 2025
Down went man after man of the battle-worn defenders. Liot and Estein met sword to sword and face to face. The red shield was ripped from top to bottom by a sweep of the bairn-slayer's blade, and at the same moment Estein's descending sword was met by a Viking's battle-axe, and snapped at the hilt.
His enemy was evidently on the watch for such an opening, for the two bowstrings twanged together, and while Estein's shaft struck something with a soft thud, the other hit the Viking hard on the headpiece. Throwing up his arms, he reeled and fell flat upon his back. Yet, as he lay for all the world like a man struck dead, a smile stole over his face, and he quietly and gently drew his sword.
It seemed as if they were right. Estein's blows became less frequent, and Liot in turn attacked hotly. He made as little impression, however, as Estein, and then by mutual consent both men stopped for a minute's breathing-space. "You seem tired, Estein," said Liot. "Guard yourself," was the reply, and the fight began again. As before, Estein attacked hotly, Liot steadily giving ground.
He stood out clearly in the transparent dusk a tall, mail-clad figure, walking with a confident carriage. Estein waited till he was opposite him, and then sprang up, dagger in hand. "Who art thou?" he demanded. The man's hand went straight to his sword, but at the sound of Estein's voice it fell again. "Estein, my foster-brother!" he cried. "Helgi!"
He too spoke to me, and every time the purport of the message was the same." "What said the voice?" "A ship must cross the seas again." The old man repeated the last words low and slowly, and then, for a little, silence fell upon the pair. Vague and meagre though the message was, it accorded exactly with Estein's long-suppressed desires.
None of the men on Estein's ship had been in those seas more than two or three times at most, and the vaguest conjectures were rife when, as the light was slowly gaining, Ulf raised a cry of land ahead. "Land to the right!" cried Helgi, a moment later. "Land to the left!" exclaimed Estein; "and we are close on it, methinks."
Thorkel, leaning over the side of his vessel, told a tale of buffetings by night and day such as Estein and his crew had undergone. That morning he said they had descried Estein's ship just as the day broke, and almost immediately afterwards ten long ships were spied lying at anchor in an island bay. For a time they hoped to slip by them unseen. The fates, however, were against them.
The girls must be less fair now, or a gallant king will not stay single long." "I could name one fair maid," said Helgi, glancing at the king, but in Estein's eye he saw a warning look. "I have sterner things to think of, jarl," said Estein. "Five days from this I hope to be upon the sea." As he spoke, one of his hird-men came up to the high seat and stopped close beside him.
They came out of a house, and one, the taller of the two, went up to a group of men standing near, while the other, who looked like a peasant's wife, hung behind. The look of the first figure caught Estein's eye at once, and he felt his heart suddenly beat quickly.
She sprang to her feet as he finished, and said, "I, too, have the Norse blood in me; the sea calls me as it calls you; and if I were a man, I fear I should make a bad hermit. Yet" -and she held up a warning finger to stay the impetuous words on Estein's tongue "yet I know I should be wrong. What is this feeling but the hunger of wolves, and what are your gods but names for it?
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