“Is my company unwelcome?” he asked.

“More welcome than my thoughts,” said Estein, taking his arm.

“Have the black thoughts returned?”

“Do what I will, they are with me again,” replied Estein.  “My father has died with Olaf unavenged, and now it is too late to keep my sacred word to him that I would ever follow up the feud.  King Hakon already sits in Valhalla, and knows his son for a dastard and a breaker of his oaths.  While he lived I always told myself that I would find some way even yet by which I might fulfil my promise, but now it is too late.  It is hard, Helgi, to lose at once both a father and a father’s regard.”

“King Hakon is with Odin,” said Helgi, “and knows what he has ordained.  Odin has not told you to cross the seas for naught, and doubtless King Hakon even now awaits the issue.  Never did man do much with a downcast mind; so first dismiss your thoughts, and then for the Viking path again.”

“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.