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Updated: June 16, 2025
"You are Saxon by all seeming," said the leader, "yet you speak like a Dane. Whence are you, and how learned you our tongue so glibly?" "We are from Reedham in East Anglia, which is at peace with the Danish host," I said; "and I learnt the Danish speech from one who is my friend, Lodbrok the Dane, whom men call Jarl Lodbrok."
The bright arms and shields on the walls shone below the heads of deer and wolf and boar, and the gust of wind that came in with us flew round the wall, making a sort of ripple of changing colour run along the bright woven stuffs that covered them to more than a man's height from the floor. No one in all East Anglia had so well dight a hall as had Elfric, the rich Thane of Reedham.
We had been at Thetford for a month now, since I came home, and there was a talk that the king would go to the court of Ethelred at Winchester shortly, taking my father with him for his counsellor, and so we spoke of that for a while, and how I must order things at Reedham while he was away. "Lodbrok, our friend, will go back with you," he said.
I feared lest we were going to Reedham, for there my folk would certainly rise in arms to rescue me, and that would have made things hard for them; but we went on southward, riding very fast, until after many long miles we came to the little hill of the other Burgh that stands where Waveney parts in two streams, one eastward to the sea, and the other northward to join the Yare mouth.
All the lower end of the hall was filled with the people, and I saw my two serfs there, and many Reedham folk. Then the court was set, and with the earl were many men whom I knew by sight, honest thanes and franklins enough, and of that I was glad.
Now when the time came, my father having gone, we two, Lodbrok and I, went back to Reedham, while my mother and Eadgyth stayed yet at Thetford for the sake of Egfrid's new house building, for he would have it built to suit her who should rule it.
So longed I, grieving for the news he must hear when he came to Reedham, but yet thinking that he would be glad to find me at least living and waiting for him. Now, as the snow grew deeper and the cold strengthened, the wolves began to come at night into the village, and at last grew very daring.
Now I had thought that surely Halfden would have wished to sail back to Reedham at once, there to seek his father; but I knew not yet the power which draws a true viking ever onward to the west, and when I said that we would, if he chose, sail back with him on the next tide, he only laughed, saying: "Why so? My father is well and in good case.
Thormod, my comrade, lies in his mound in wild Strathclyde, slain fighting beside Halfden my brother, the king of Northumbria. Him I have seen once or twice, and ever does he look for peace that he may sail to Reedham and bide with us for a while. Well loved is Halfden, and he is English in every thought.
And at that remembrance the maiden shivered, and Halfden's face showed that he knew what the man's fate was like to have been at the great jarl's hands. "So, brother," he said, when I left off speaking, "had I gone to Reedham there would have been burnt houses in East Anglia." "In Reedham?" said I.
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