They were asleep in a moment, knowing that I
would call them with the first sign of wind, if it came before my
watch was ended. It wanted about an hour to midnight at this time,
and the red glow of the sun in the sky was flooding the north.
Now for a long while I paced the deck, thinking of all that had
happened in these few days. Heavy things they were, but the
heaviest were those of the summer morning when Heidrek came, so
that beside those terrors what else had passed was as nothing. And
I passed through them all again, as it were, and hardened myself to
bear them.
I have said little or nothing of my folk, and I needed not to do
so. They were gone, and from henceforth I was alone. What had been
was no more for me. Even the little Norse village in Caithness,
which had been my home, was destroyed, so far as I was concerned,
for the Scots would have stepped into our place, if it was worth
having after the fire and sword had been there. I could never regain
it. Only, there were some things which I owed to my father, and no
man could take them from me while I lived. Skill in arms I had from
his teaching, and such seamanship as a man of two-and-twenty may
have learned in short cruises; woodcraft, too, and the many other
things which the son of a jarl should know.
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