n such occasions there would follow a braggingmatch among the warriors,
for a recital of the past was meant as an augury for the future. The
time was towards the close of the Wicking-tide, and the world was
becoming hard for simple folk. There were endless bickerings with the
Tronds in the north and the men of More in the south, and a certain
Shockhead, an upsetting king in Norland, was making trouble with his
neighbours. Likewise there was one Kristni, a king of the Romans, who
sought to dispute with Odin himself. This Kristni was a magic-worker,
who clad his followers in white linen instead of byrnies, and gave them
runes in place of swords, and sprinkled them with witch water. Biorn did
not like what he heard of the warlock, and longed for the day when his
father Ironbeard would make an end of him.

Each year before the coming of spring there was a lean season in
Hightown. Fish were scarce in the ice-holes, the stock of meal in the
meal-ark grew low, and the deep snow made poor hunting in wood or on
fell-side. Belts were tightened, and there were hollow cheeks among the
thralls. And then one morning the wind would blow from the south, and
a strange smell come into the air. The dogs left their lair by the fire
and, led by the Garm the old blind patriarch, made a tour of inspection
among the outhouses to the edge of the birch woods. Presently would come
a rending of the ice on the firth, and patches of inky water would show
between the floes. The snow would slip from the fell-side, and leave
dripping rock and clammy bent, and the river would break its frosty
silence and pour a mighty grey-green flood to the sea. The swans and
geese began to fly northward, and the pipits woke among the birches. And
at last one day the world put on a new dress, all steel-blue and misty
green, and a thousand voices woke of flashing streams and nesting birds
and tossing pines, and the dwellers in Hightown knew that spring had
fairly come.

Then was Biorn the happy child. All through the long day, and through
much of that twilight which is the darkness of a Norland summer, he was
abroad on his own errands. With Grim the Hunter he adventured far up
on the fells and ate cheese and bannocks in the tents of the wandering
Skridfinns, or stalked the cailzie-cock with his arrows in the great
pine forest, which in his own mind he called Mirkwood and feared
exceedingly. Or he would go fishing with Egil the Fisherman, spearing
salmon in the tails of