“We will send out the war-arrow,” he said. “To every land we control. To turn out with full force or feel our retribution.
“You know what else worries me?” he went on. “Think of this table as the Scandinavian lands, Denmark here, Norway here, Sweden here.” With flasks and mugs he began to trace a primitive map on the table. “Look at the way he’s been traveling round. Here in the south, where we met his fleet at sea. Then up at Hedeby. Then off to Kaupang. Then up to the far North. And then he reappears where no-one would expect him, on the other side of the Keel mountains. He’s making a circle. Or should I say a circuit?”
The circuit was the road the king rode on, to collect his taxes, expose himself to challenge, impose his authority. The Eiriksgata in Sweden was one. Shef’s road could be seen as a greater one, a circuit of all the circuits.
“Well,” said Halvdan, looking at the pattern of the mugs. “He has one step yet to take before he has completed the circuit. Or the circle. And that is here, at the Braethraborg.”
Very far away, four others met in conclave. Not three brothers this time, but three brothers and their father. If he was their father, if they were really brothers. Such things become uncertain among the gods.
They stood at the Hlithskjalf, the lookout place of Asgarth, stronghold of the gods. To their eyes nothing was invisible, nothing at least on Middle-earth, centermost of the nine worlds. They saw the fleets crawling across the sea, the fish swarming beneath it, saw the corn growing and the seed springing.
“I have held him in my hand,” said Othin All-father, “and let him go. And he has denied me, refused me sacrifice, slain my followers. I sent the snow and the Finns to kill him, and he escaped me. And what saved him? A troll, a iötunn, one of the brood of Loki the accursed.”
The others exchanged looks. Heimdall, watchman of the gods, his great horn slung round his neck, ready to blow on the day that the iötnar should rise to bring Ragnarök to gods and men, spoke carefully. “One of the Huldu-folk saved him, All-Father. We do not know that such are the brood of Loki. But something stirred up the whales, the killers who obey nothing but their sport and their hunger. It was not I, it was not you. If it was the Chained One, as I believe, then he is the Chained One’s enemy. And the enemy of our enemy is our friend.”
“He burned the great oak. He burned the temple. He released those dedicated to me and to your brother Frey. Even now he sails with Christians at his side.”
This time Thor tried his skills of persuasion, never very great. “The ones dedicated to you were a poor lot. He sent you others—your own priests. They were a poor lot too, but it was a fair exchange. He has Christians with him, but he has done more to weaken them than any of your favorites. What did Hermoth do against them, or Ivar whom this man killed? Kill a few, I dare say, but that only encourages the rest. This one has taken kingdoms away from them. They fear him more than you do.”
A careless word, and the glare of Othin’s one eye shot like a dagger at the red-bearded god, who looked down and fingered his hammer awkwardly.
“Not fear, of course,” he went on. “He is a smith, though, and a friend of smiths. He is that first and last. I am for him.”
“If what you say is true,” said Othin eventually, “then maybe I could find a place for him in my army at Valhalla, place him among the Einheriar. Is that not reward and honor enough for any mortal?”
Only for the crazy ones, thought the god who had not spoken. Heimdall looked at him in warning, for Heimdall could hear the thoughts in a man’s head, or a god’s. It was true, though. Only the crazy ones saw reward in fighting to the death every day and then coming to life to talk it over every evening.