"Helgi hinn frode," said Estein, pressing his arm, "you are indeed a good counsellor. As soon as I can gather force enough we start."
"And now for a horn of ale, and then to bed," responded Helgi, cheerful as ever again.
Ever since the first wild Northmen, pushing westwards to the sea, had settled in the land of Sogn, its kings had been interred on a certain barren islet hard by the mouth of Hernersfiord, and on the morning of the fifth day after King Hakon's death they bore him out to his last resting-place by the surge of the northern ocean. His body, clad in full armour and decked in robes of state, was laid upon a bier on the poop of the long ship that had last carried him to battle. A picked crew of chiefs and highborn vassals rowed him slowly down the fiord, while in their wake a fleet of vessels followed. Estein, arrayed in the full panoply of war, as though he were sailing to meet his foes, stood out alone upon the poop like a graven figure, only the hand that held the tiller ever moving. When they reached the little holm looking out over the sea, they discovered the foundations of a mound already prepared, and great heaps of earth beside them, ready to be built upon the top. All the chiefs and greater men landed with a sufficient number of spademen to assist them with the work, while the others lay off in the ships and watched in silence. First, the vessel in which the dead king lay was drawn up and laid upon the mound; each chief who had taken an oar hung his shield in turn upon the bulwarks; the sail, gay with coloured cloths, was hoisted; the king's standard raised and set in the bows; and then Estein lit a torch and held it to a heap of fagots underneath. As the flames mounted higher and the smoke streamed out to sea the chiefs cast gifts aboard—rings and bracelets of gold and silver, sharp swords and inlaid axes—that the king in his far-off home among the gods of the North might think kindly of his friends on earth. One after another they wished his soul fair speed. Estein's words were few and unsteady with emotion, and those who heard them wondered at their meaning.
"Fare thee well, my father! I will yet keep my promise to thee!"
Loudest of all cried Earl Sigvald,—
"May Odin be as good a friend to thee as thou hast been to me! Keep me a place beside thee, Hakon. All through life I have been at thy side, in sunshine and frost, feast and battle-storm, and soon I hope to follow thee home!"
At last the flames died down and left but the blackened remnants of the ship and the ashes of its royal captain. The ashes they reverently gathered up and placed within a copper bowl, a lid they made of twelve shield bosses, the gifts were gathered and placed all round, and then the spademen heaped the mound above Hakon, King of Sogn.
With a quicker stroke and tongues unloosed the fleet returned to
Hakonstad.
"A noble funeral, Ketill," said one chief to the black-bearded
Viking.
"Ay," replied Ketill, "a burial worthy of King Estein, and a royal feast we shall have to follow it."