my earliest
recollections are toddling with the wine-filled skull of Guthlaf to the
head of the table where Tostig bellowed to the rafters. They were
madmen, all of madness, but it seemed the common way of life to me who
knew naught else. They were men of quick rages and quick battling. Their
thoughts were ferocious; so was their eating ferocious, and their
drinking. And I grew like them. How else could I grow, when I served
the drink to the bellowings of drunkards and to the skalds singing of
Hialli, and the bold Hogni, and of the Niflung's gold, and of Gudrun's
revenge on Atli when she gave him the hearts of his children and hers to
eat while battle swept the benches, tore down the hangings raped from
southern coasts, and, littered the feasting board with swift corpses.

Oh, I, too, had a rage, well tutored in such school. I was but eight
when I showed my teeth at a drinking between the men of Brunanbuhr and
the Juts who came as friends with the jarl Agard in his three long ships.
I stood at Tostig Lodbrog's shoulder, holding the skull of Guthlaf that
steamed and stank with the hot, spiced wine. And I waited while Tostig
should complete his ravings against the North Dane men. But still he
raved and still I waited, till he caught breath of fury to assail the
North Dane woman. Whereat I remembered my North Dane mother, and saw my
rage red in my eyes, and smote him with the skull of Guthlaf, so that he
was wine-drenched, and wine-blinded, and fire-burnt. And as he reeled
unseeing, smashing his great groping clutches through the air at me, I
was in and short-dirked him thrice in belly, thigh and buttock, than
which I could reach no higher up the mighty frame of him.

And the jarl Agard's steel was out, and his Juts joining him as he
shouted:

"A bear cub! A bear cub! By Odin, let the cub fight!"

And there, under that roaring roof of Brunanbuhr, the babbling drink-boy
of the North Danes fought with mighty Lodbrog. And when, with one
stroke, I was flung, dazed and breathless, half the length of that great
board, my flying body mowing down pots and tankards, Lodbrog cried out
command:

"Out with him! Fling him to the hounds!"

But the jarl would have it no, and clapped Lodbrog on the shoulder, and
asked me as a gift of friendship.

And south I went, when the ice passed out of the fjord, in Jarl Agard's
ships. I was made drink-boy and sword-bearer to him, and in lieu of
other name was called Ragnar Lo