It was slow going in the dark, but the sorrel picked up her feet, and the road was well known to Gunnar. He had not much time to think, but found little to regret except Halward's death. He had liked Halward, as he was ready to like most men. Nevertheless, he had now to admit that he had little esteem for Ogmund Dint.

"That was a dirty trick to serve a man who had done him no harm. And I took his bait down like a codling, and served his turn finely. A sharp practiser is Ogmund Dint, and gets by foul means what he dare not try for fairly." So he thought of it—and then he said to himself, justifying the man, "When all's said, a man must look after himself. Halward had many friends to avenge him; and if Ogmund had been caught red-handed he was done for. I am thinking King Olaf would have been cheated of his rope-work. Somebody or other would have hewn him down before news ever got to the Court. Yes, I don't see what else he could have done—and yet I would not have done it myself. Well, I am a fine cloak to the good, which I will keep in case I want it some day as testimony." He chuckled over his great gains, glad that he had brought it with him, though he had had another purpose in his mind when he packed it into his bag. "May be the Swedes will take me for a king's son." He knew nothing of the Swedes, believed to be a dark and savage people, a people of forests and swamps; but he must venture among them if he wished to save his neck. "Oh, yes, certainly I wish to save my neck."

He found himself to be passably happy, riding under the stars up the dales which grew ever narrower, and more intricate. There was little cantering ground, and the way difficult to find. Knowing the stars well, he steered by them. Besides that the season was still fair and it could never be called dark.

He rested not until the sun was warming the snow on the peaks above him, and then not for long. But he had to go very slowly now, up the bed of a water-course which he must cross and re-cross half-a-dozen times in the half-hour to get tolerable going ground. The sorrel stretched her neck and blew through her nose. She was tired and he knew it, and felt heavy at the thought that he and she must soon part. She was his dearest possession. He thought that he loved her as much as his brother. Both of them had served him well in this affair. "It was a generous thing of Sigurd, so near as he is to King Olaf, to come and warn me. He may get into trouble over it. All depends on the king's mood. If he is in a rage he may tie Sigurd up and keep him in bondage on my account. But no! I trust that king. He was good to me about his religion." He laughed over the memory of that, and looking up into the clear sky, which the sun was burning to whiteness, watching the soaring eagles, marking up the glittering snowfields the herds of deer stretched out in thin lines of travel like trees in file, he felt happy.

The time came when he must send the mare home. He freed her of saddle and bridle. He loaded himself with the pack-bag, cut himself a birch-sapling for staff, and stood ready. Then he kissed Sorrel's nose, and turned her face westward. "Home with thee, dear one," he said, "and keep thy counsel when thou art there. We shall meet again if the luck holds. Neigh at thy stable door and Sigurd will befriend thee. Farewell." He gave her a hearty smack on the buttock, then held his arms wide and said "Off." She looked round at him, prick-eared and close-eyed. She whinnied to him, then turned to nibble the grass. "What, thou wilt not? But I tell thee, go. One more kiss perhaps." He kissed her again, and whispered in her ear, "Home, my dear." She looked forward down the rocky vale she had climbed and then walked soberly down. Once or twice she stopped and looked round, and then she neighed after him. "Shoo, mare!" he said. "Shoo, girl!" and opened his arms. Sorrel went down the valley and he lost sight of her.

He turned to his way which asked him to cross a mountain shoulder deep in snow. That was heavy going, for it was soft in the sun. From the top he saw his work before him, fold within fold of snow, brown valley-bottoms, and over all the great ridge of white with pines like scars upon it, which was the boundary between Norway and Sweden. Heavens! What a job he had got. But he went on, nothing doubting, and kept a stout heart. "A lonely place to be hanged in, and few trees fit for it. But I doubt I should have a fight for it here."

I need not delay over his journey, which took him two days longer, and two nights. By the time he had climbed the great ridge he had come near the end of his strength and his provisions for it. Yet he must go on; for that was no place in which to spend the night, a waste of snow and a line of torn pines driven everlastingly by a cruel wind. When he saw what was now in front of him and below, his heart might sink, though it did not. So far as eye could range all was forest. It was like looking upon a dark sea, featureless except for the lines of light and shadow which ran over it when wind and sun played together. He saw no ways, no clearings; there rose no chimney-smoke anywhere. Not a bird sailed above, not a wolf grieved, not a fox stirred. "And is that Sweden then? And are there people dwelling in the dark beneath? There are two worlds there, and there might be dwellers in the tree-tops who know nothing of the inhabitants of the deep, and are themselves unknown. How am I to guide myself through that thicket, and who is going to feed me or give me drink?" Looking into it, he shivered in the wind. "Outlandish country, you must do better for me than this," he said. He had a traverse of a league of snow-slope before he could enter the forest. To that he addressed himself now, with a prayer to all the Gods in Valhall.

GUNNAR IN THE FOREST HEARS TELL OF FREY AND HIS WONDERS