Lingaard
brought me. I was only hours old, wrapped naked in a salt-crusted
wolfskin. Now it happens, being prematurely born, that I was very small.

"Ho! ho!--a dwarf!" cried Tostig, lowering a pot of mead half-drained
from his lips to stare at me.

The day was bitter, but they say he swept me naked from the wolfskin, and
by my foot, between thumb and forefinger, dangled me to the bite of the
wind.

"A roach!" he ho-ho'd. "A shrimp! A sea-louse!" And he made to squash
me between huge forefinger and thumb, either of which, Lingaard avers,
was thicker than my leg or thigh.

But another whim was upon him.

"The youngling is a-thirst. Let him drink."

And therewith, head-downward, into the half-pot of mead he thrust me. And
might well have drowned in this drink of men--I who had never known a
mother's breast in the briefness of time I had lived--had it not been for
Lingaard. But when he plucked me forth from the brew, Tostig Lodbrog
struck him down in a rage. We rolled on the deck, and the great bear
hounds, captured in the fight with the North Danes just past, sprang upon
us.

"Ho! ho!" roared Tostig Lodbrog, as the old man and I and the wolfskin
were mauled and worried by the dogs.

But Lingaard gained his feet, saving me but losing the wolfskin to the
hounds.

Tostig Lodbrog finished the mead and regarded me, while Lingaard knew
better than to beg for mercy where was no mercy.

"Hop o' my thumb," quoth Tostig. "By Odin, the women of the North Danes
are a scurvy breed. They birth dwarfs, not men. Of what use is this
thing? He will never make a man. Listen you, Lingaard, grow him to be a
drink-boy at Brunanbuhr. And have an eye on the dogs lest they slobber
him down by mistake as a meat-crumb from the table."

I knew no woman. Old Lingaard was midwife and nurse, and for nursery
were reeling decks and the stamp and trample of men in battle or storm.
How I survived puling infancy, God knows. I must have been born iron in
a day of iron, for survive I did, to give the lie to Tostig's promise of
dwarf-hood. I outgrew all beakers and tankards, and not for long could
he half-drown me in his mead pot. This last was a favourite feat of his.
It was his raw humour, a sally esteemed by him delicious wit.

My first memories are of Tostig Lodbrog's beaked ships and fighting men,
and of the feast hall at Brunanbuhr when our boats lay beached beside the
frozen fjord. For I was made drink-boy, and amongst