“We will talk of that,” Gest answered, watching his work.
“Why? You told me you were in search of me.”
“Yes, I was.” Gest drew breath. “Long and long had I been away, until at last memories of the North overwhelmed me and I must come back to see if the aspens still quivered in the light nights of midsummer.” He did not speak of a woman who died after he and she fared thirty years together over the vast plains of the East with her herder tribesfolk. “I had lost hope in my quest, I had stopped seeking—until as I walked through the woods and over the heaths of Jutland and the old tongue reawakened in me, not too much changed since I left, I began to hear about Starkadh. Him I must meet! I followed word of him to Hleidhra, where they said he had gone across the Sound to join King Harald and thence onward to war. I followed that trail to Bravellir, and reached it at sunset when the day’s slaughter had ended. In the morning I found men who had seen him go from it, and I took the way they pointed, and here we are, Starkadh.”
The huge man shifted about. “What would you of me?” he growled uneasily.
“First I would ask for the tale of your life. Some of the stories I heard were wild.”
“You’re a news-greedy one.”
“I have sought knowledge throughout the world. M-m-m … how shall a storyteller repay a night’s lodging or a skald make staves for chieftains, unless he have something word-worthy behind his teeth?”
Starkadh had unbuckled his sword, but dropped hand to knife. “Is this the beginning of witchcraft? Uncanny are you, Gest.”
The wanderer locked gaze with the warrior and answered, “I swear to cast no spell. What I am after is more strange than that.”
Starkadh quelled a shiver. As if charging at fear to trample it underfoot, he said in a rush: “What I have done is well known, though belike no man save me knows all of it. But sooth it is, wild and sometimes ugly tales have mushroomed over the years. I am not of Jotun birth. That’s old wives’ chatter. My father was a yeoman in the north of Zealand, my mother came of honest fisher folk, and they had other children who grew up, lived like anybody else, grew fold, and were laid in howe, those that battle or sickness or the sea had spared—also like anybody else.”
“How long have they lain in the earth?” Gest asked softly.
Starkadh ignored the question. “I was big and strong, as you see. From childhood I lacked wish to muck and plow the fields or haul nets full of stinking fish. Twelve years old, I went off in viking. Some neighborhood men had a ship in common. They met with other ships and harried a while along the Norse shores. When they went back for hay harvest, I stayed behind. I sought out a skipper who was going to stay the winter; and thereafter my fame waxed fast.
“Shall I tell you of battles, reavings, burnings, feasts, hunger, cold, shipmates, women, offerings to the gods, strife against storm and bad luck when the gods grew angry with us, kings we served and kings we overthrew? The years lie jumbled and awash in me like flotsam on a skerry.
“Frodhi, king at Hleidhra, took me in after I suffered shipwreck. He made me the head of his household troops, and I made him the greatest of lords in his day. But his son Ingjald proved a weakling, sluggard, glutton. I upbraided him and quit the land in disgust. Yet from time to time I have been back and wielded blade for worthier men of the Skjoldung house. Harald was the best of them, he became first among kings through all of Denmark and Gautland and well into Sweden; but now Harald is fallen, and his work broken, and I am alone again.”
He cleared his throat and spat. That may have been his way of not weeping.
“They told me Harald was aged,” Gest said. “He must ride to Bravellir in a wagon, and was well-nigh blind.”