Estein smiled for the first time since he had come on board.
"So long as it gives me a good fight with stout foes, and with you at my side, I care not what plan you propose."
"There speaks yourself again!" cried Helgi; "and I think that ere long you will meddle with my schemes. I will call Ketill and the Orkneyman, and we four will hold council here."
Ketill, the broad-beamed captain of the ship—the same whose path had been stopped by Atli—a man of few words and stout deeds, and Grim, the Orkneyman, came up to the poop. There they deliberated for long. Helgi was all for fire.
"Let us hear how the men of Liot will sing when they are warm."
Ketill gave a short laugh.
"I, too, am for burning," he said.
"We must catch them when they are drinking," said Grim. "When Liot's feasts are over many men go to sleep in outhouses round the hall, and we have not force enough here to surround them all at once."
"I will have no more burnings," said Estein.
"When had we our last?" asked Helgi. "You speak as though we had done naught but burn foes all our lives. We have never had a burning before, Estein, and it is better to begin as the burners than the burned."