of our rivalries when they could.

Asbiorn came to me as I stood and watched the king coming out of
the camp. His face was white and drawn, but he was calm enough.

"Who was the tall, young chief on the red horse?" he asked me.

"Dalfin of Maghera, whom you let go with me," I answered.

"So I thought. Now, I think that he has avenged that doing on the
Caithness shore for you. It is not likely that my father has not
fallen; he was the leader of the wedge. There is no feud now
between you and me."

"There is not," I answered. "I do not know that I had ever thought
of one as possible."

"There would have been had Hakon slain Heidrek," he said.

The old law of the blood feud had its full meaning to him.

"If Heidrek had stayed his men to meet us, Hakon would have given
him terms rather than that this should have been the end," I said.

"I know it, for I heard him say so. But there was a touch of the
berserk in my father since his troubles came. This is not the first
time he has tried to fall fighting against odds. He would not have
listened to Hakon."

He sighed heavily, and then shook himself, so that his mail
rattled. I took his sword from the bottom of a boat on deck in
which I had set it, and gave it back to him, and he girt it on.

"So that is the end," he said. "And now I am my own man. Well, it
was a better end than might have been had Hakon waited to see if we
came raiding to Norway, as we most certainly should. Now I can
follow Hakon with a light heart, and maybe come to be known as an
honest man once more."

He said no other word, but turned and went forward. Bertric looked
after him and smiled.

"Hakon has a good follower there," he said. "I will see that he is
not overlooked. Heidrek was the son of a king in Jutland, and the
good blood will show itself at last."

"You know Hakon well," I said, having seen that the greeting
between those two was not of an every day sort, or as between
prince and follower merely.

"We two were long together in Athelstane's court," he answered. "I
also am Athelstane's foster son. He has many, according to our
custom."

There was a rush made for the entrance to the village by the Irish
who yet loitered on the shore staring at us. Some of them had
carried away the wounded from off the green already, and now they
left nothing to be seen of the track of the Danes across it. The
king was coming, and Hakon sent word to the cabin that the ladies
should come and see