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Updated: May 8, 2025
I asked him, with a hope that Halfden had come home, for now I knew that we had indeed followed Lodbrok's track exactly. "How should it be other than Ingvar Lodbroksson? for we have held that Lodbrok, his father, is dead this many a long day." "Let me go to the jarl," I said, rising up.
But I looked at Ingvar, and said: "Short work have I made, Jarl." Whereat he laughed a grim laugh, only answering: "Aye, short enough. The gods are appeased." Then I went back to my place beside Halfden, and our men patted my back, praising me, roughly and heartily, for it is not a viking's way to blame a man for slaying a comrade in fair fight and for good reason.
But she answered not a word, and turned away, for his saying made her tears come afresh. "Now am I a blunderer," said Halfden. "If there is one thing that I fear it is a weeping maiden." And with that he went from the room, leaving me. Then I took upon me to comfort Osritha, nor was that a hard task.
As godar he must not pass by the dishonour to the gods, yet as the son of the man whom I had saved, how could he harm me? And Rorik, seeing this, cried: "I hold that this man should live no longer." "Why, what dishonour has he done the gods?" said Halfden. "If he had scoffed, or said aught against them that were a different thing. And what does Thor there care if one man pays no heed to him?
Hubba would have come also, but Ingvar held him back. "Let Wulfric have his say first," he growled; and I thanked him in my mind for his thought. So we went to the inner chamber, where Osritha would sit with her maidens, and Halfden said: "This matter is filling all my thoughts so that I am but a gloomy comrade at the board. Tell me all, and then what is done is done.
"If she be Norse," said Halfden, and his eyes shone, "we will fight her, and that will be a fight worth telling of by the crew that is left when we have done!" But she turned out to be Danish, and a boat came from her to us. She was on the same errand as ourselves, and, moreover, belonged to one Rorik, who was a friend of Lodbrok's, so that again I must go through all the story of his perils.
They spread a great awning, striped in blue and white like the sail, over the after deck, and there they set food and wine for us, and Halfden and I sat down together. And with us one other, an older man, tall and bushy bearded, with a square, grave face scarred with an old wound.
Then one of our men, who had stood next to me, spoke for me, as he thought. "I saw Wulfric sign Thor's hammer even now. What more does any man want from a Saxon?" Thereat Ingvar scowled, knowing, as I think, what this was. "You claim to be truth teller," he said; "did you sign Thor's hammer?" "I did not," I answered. Then Halfden came to my side. "Let Wulfric go his own way, brother.
At the time when Halfden and his followers seized Wareham Castle and Exeter, Alfred had been several years upon the throne, during which time these derelictions from duty took place, so far as they existed at all.
He opened the gates a little, and we three slipped out and stood for a moment together. The night was very dark, and the wind howled and sang through the stockading, and none seemed to be about the place. There Halfden took my hand and bade me farewell very sadly. "This is the best I may do for you, my brother.
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