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When I looked at it and it was a very good one, and had carved work where the hand grips the shaft, and a carved end I saw that the head was one of Jarl Ingvar's best spearheads, and asked Raud where he got it. "Why," he said, "a good ash shaft deserves a good head, and so I asked the jarl for one. And when he knew for whom it was, he gave me this, saying it was the best he had."
Now Thormod and I went back to the hall, and in the courtyard stood a black horse, foam covered, and with deeply-spurred sides. It was Ingvar's. And when we came to the porch, the axe still stuck in the timbers overhead, and the Jomsburg chief's body lay where I had cast him but in the doorway, thin and white as a ghost, stood Ingvar the king, looking on these things.
"Not on me with axe, I pray you," he answered laughing, and twisting his head on one side. "I mind me of Rorik." "Let us be going," I said, for I could not jest. So we trotted after the party, and when we were near, Raud left me and went to Ingvar's side, speaking to him of what I had said. Then the jarl turned round to me, speaking quietly enough, but in a strange voice.
So I asked: "What of Ingvar's moods? are they more fierce than his wont?" "Well, between us twain," he answered, looking at Cyneward, who sat apart from us across the king's chamber where we were, "Ingvar is not all himself lately, and all men fear him, so that he is no loss to the host." I knew somewhat, I thought, of the reason for this, and so did Cyneward, but passed that over.
Now when I told him what I feared of the coming of Ingvar's host he grew grave, and asked many things about it. "Ethelred the King is at Reading," he said; "let us go and speak to him of this matter." So we rode thither, and that ride through the pleasant Thames-side country was good for me. I told Ethelred the king of England all that I had learned, and he was troubled.
Surely never moved host so swiftly as Ingvar's, for even as I went, heavily enough, from Eadmund's presence, a man spurred into the town saying that Earl Ulfkytel faced the Danes with a fair levy gathered in haste, between us and Wisbech. They had crossed the fens where no man dreamed that they might come, and were upon us as if from the skies.
"Our help is in the name of the Lord, who hath made heaven and earth," answered Eadmund, lifting his eyes heavenwards so earnestly, that in spite of himself the wild heathen king followed their upward gaze for a moment. It was but for a moment, and that weakness, as he would deem it, was the spark to light Ingvar's wrath, that as yet he had kept under.
And as in a dream I heard him speak of care for me to the widow and her two sons to whom the farm belonged, and whom his men had taken unawares, so that they had not time to fly. Presently came the best leech from Ingvar's host and tended me carefully; and I needed it, for besides the spear wound, my right thigh was broken, by the trampling of the horse, as was most likely.
With him, too, was the great earl, and he begged my forgiveness for his doubt of me, though he was proud that his strange manner of finding truth was justified. Good friends were Ulfkytel and I after that, though he knew not that in my mind was the thought of Osritha, to whom he had, as it were, sent me. Now every day brought fear to me that Ingvar's host was on its way overseas to fall on us.
In a little while all Ingvar's following had come, and there were many chiefs whose faces I had seen of late as they came to plan the great raid that was to be when the season came. And the men with them were very many, far more than we could have gathered to a levy on so short notice; and all were well armed, and stood in good order as trained and hardened warriors.
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