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 him. We lay perhaps three hundred paces from the shore, and there was no sight to fray them now.