Then came another long silence, after which Freydisa sighed thrice and awoke.  We went out of the temple, I bearing the lamp and she resting on my arm.  Near the door I turned and looked back, and it seemed to me that the image of the god glared upon me wrathfully.

“What has chanced?” asked Freydisa when we stood beneath the light of the friendly stars.  “I know nothing; my mind is a blackness.”

I told her word for word.  When I had finished she said,

“Give me the Wanderer’s sword.”

I gave it to her, and she held it against the sky by the naked blade.

“The hilt is a cross,” she said; “but how can a man worship a cross and preach it and conquer thereby?  I cannot interpret this rede, yet I do not doubt but that it shall all come true, and that you, Olaf, and I are doomed to be joined in the same fate, whatever it may be, and with us some other who has wronged you, Steinar perchance, or Iduna herself.  Well, of this at least I am glad, for if I have loved the father, I think that I love the son still more, though otherwise.”  And, leaning forward, she kissed me solemnly upon the brow.

After Freydisa and I had sought the oracle of Odin, three long ships of war sailed by the light of the moon from Fladstrand for Athalbrand’s Isle of Lesso.  I do not know when we sailed, but in my mind I can still see those ships creeping out to sea.  In command of the first was Thorvald, my father; of the second, Ragnar, my brother; and of the third myself, Olaf; and on each of these ships were fifty men, all of them stout fighters.

The parting with Thora, my mother, had been sad, for her heart foreboded ill of this war, and her face could not hide what her heart told her.  Indeed, she wept bitterly, and cursed the name of Iduna the Fair, who had brought this trouble on her House.  Freydisa was sad also.  Yet, watching her opportunity, she glided up to me just before I embarked and whispered to me,

“Be of good cheer, for you will return, whoever is left behind.”

“It will give me little comfort to return if certain others are left behind,” I answered.  “Oh, that the folk had hearkened to me and made peace!”

“Too late to talk of that now,” said Freydisa, and we parted.

This was our plan:  To sail for Lesso by the moonlight, and when the moon went down to creep silently towards the shores of the island.  Then, just at the first break of dawn, we proposed to beach the ships on a sandy strand we knew, and rush to attack Athalbrand’s hall, which we hoped to carry before men were well awake.  It was a bold scheme and one full of dangers, yet we trusted that its very boldness would cause it to succeed, especially as we had put it about that, owing to the unreadiness of our ships, no attack would be made until the coming of the next moon.