“Other was the meeting I had planned for you and me, Wulfric, my brother-in-arms.  Yet you are most welcome, for you at least are here to tell me of the days that are past.”

“It is an ill telling,” said Ingvar.

“That must needs be, seeing what is to be told,” Hubba said quickly.

But those wise words of Osritha’s had made things easier for me, for now Halfden knew that into the story of the jarl’s death, I and my doings must come, so Ingvar’s words meant little to him.

“You went not to Reedham?” I said, for now the men were at work again, and all was noise and bustle round us.

“I have come here first by Orkneys from Waterford, where we wintered,” he answered.  “And I have been over sure that no mishap might be in a long six months.”

“What of the voyage?—­let us speak of this hereafter,” said Hubba.

And Halfden, wearily, as one who had lost all interest in his own doings, told him that it had been good, and that Thormod would give him the full tale of plunder.

Then came a chief from the ship whose face I knew, though he was not of our crew.  It was that Rorik whose ship the Bosham bell had sunk, and who had been saved by Halfden’s boats.  He knew me, after scanning me idly for a moment, and greeted me, asking why I was not at Reedham to make that feast of which Halfden was ever speaking, and so passed on.

So we went up to the great hall in silence, sorely cast down; and that was Halfden’s homecoming.

Little joy was there on the high place at the feast that night, though at the lower tables the men of our crew (for so I must ever think of those whose leader I had been for a little while, with Halfden) held high revelling with their comrades.  Many were the tales they told, and when a tale of fight and victory was done, the scald would sing it in verse that should be kept and sung by the winter fire till new deeds brought new songs to take its place.

Presently Halfden rose up, after the welcome cup had gone round and feasting was done, and the ale and mead began to flow, and he beckoned me to come with 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.  One may not fight against the Norn maidens {xiv}.”

There I told him all my story, and he remembered how I had told him, laughing, of Beorn’s jealousy at first.  And when my tale was nearly done Osritha crept from her bower and came and sat beside Halfden, pushing her hand into his, and resting her head on his shoulder.

Then I ended quickly, saying that Ingvar had done justice on Beorn.  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.