Oh! what is it that I
see in your eyes? A new light, a strange light! Olaf, you are not one of
us. This time is not your time, nor this place your place. You travel to
the end by another road. Well, who knows? At that end we may meet again.
At least I love you."

Then he burst into a wild war song of blood and vengeance, and so
singing sank down and died.

Afterwards, with much labour, I and the men who were left roped
together our vessels, and to them those that we had captured, and when
a favouring wind arose, sailed back for Fladstrand. Here a multitude
awaited us, for a fishing-boat had brought tidings of the great sea
battle. Of the hundred and fifty men who had sailed in my father,
Thorvald's, ships sixty were dead and many others wounded, some of
them to death. Athalbrand's people had fared even worse, since those of
Thorvald had slain their wounded, only one of his vessels having escaped
back to Lesso, there to tell the people of that island and Iduna all
that had happened. Now it was a land of widows and orphans, so that no
man need go wooing there for long, and of Aar and the country round the
same song was sung. Indeed, for generations the folk of those parts
must have told of the battle of Lesso, when the chiefs, Thorvald and
Athalbrand, slew each other upon the seas at night because of a quarrel
about a woman who was known as Iduna the Fair.

On the sands of Fladstrand my mother, the lady Thora, waited with the
others, for she had moved thither before the sailing of the ships. When
mine, the first of them, was beached, I leapt from it, and running to
her, knelt down and kissed her hand.

"I see you, my son Olaf," she said, "but where are your father and
brother?"

"Yonder, mother," I answered, pointing to the ships, and could say no
more.

"Then why do they tarry, my son?"

"Alas! mother, because they sleep and will never wake again."

Now Thora wailed aloud and fell down senseless. Three days later she
died, for her heart, which was weak, could not bear this woe. Once only
did she speak before she died, and then it was to bless me and pray that
we might meet again, and to curse Iduna. Folk noted that of Steinar she
said nothing, either good or ill, although she knew that he lived and
was a prisoner.

Thus it came about that I, Olaf, was left alone in the world and
inherited the lordship of Aar and its subject lands. No one remained
save my dark-browed uncle, Leif, the priest of Odin, Freyd