his
should be a good axe, and were you not a Christian, I would bid you
hold your beginning, as its wielder, of good omen."

Then the thunder crashed, and there was no need for me to answer.
And in the end he taught me patiently, until, one day, he said:

"Now do you teach me to use your long spear. I can teach you no
more axe play than you know. Some day you will meet an axeman face
to face, and will find out what you know. Then, if I have taught
you ill, say naught; but if well, then say 'Jarl Lodbrok taught
me'."

Now I hold that the test of mastery of a weapon is that one wishes
for no other, and I knew that I had learned that much. But I could
not tell how much he had taught me, for axe play was new to me, and
I had not seen it before.

After I had learned well, as he said, the jarl tempered the axe
head, heating and cooling it many times, until it would take an
edge that would shear through iron without turning. And he also
wrought runes on it, hammering gold wire into clefts that he made.

"What say they?" I asked.

"Thus they read," he answered:

"Life for life. For Wulfric, Elfric's son, Lodbrok the seafarer,
made me!"

Thereat I wondered a little, for I knew not yet what he had taught
me. Yet when I asked why he wrote those first words, he only
laughed, saying, "That you will know some day, as I think."

Now if I were to write all that went on until August came, I should
speak of little but how the jarl and I were never apart; for though
he was so much older than myself, I grew to be his fast friend. And
many a long day did I spend with him in his boat, learning somewhat
of his skill in handling her, both on river, and broad, and sea.
Very pleasant those days were, and they went all too soon.

No ship came in that could help him homewards, and though the
Danish host was in Northumbria, he cared not to go there, for his
sons were gone home. And Eadmund would fain see more of him, so
that, although I would willingly have taken our ship across the
seas, for the first time, to his place, he would not suffer me to
do so; for he said that he was not so restless here with us, and
that his sons and Osritha, his daughter, had doubtless long thought
him dead.

Now in June the king had gone to Framlingham, and in August came
back to Thetford. Then he sent for my father, begging him to bring
Lodbrok with him, that together they might hunt over the great
heaths that stretch for many a mile north and west an