There were many things about her marriage with Thorstan which she did not understand at the time—Thorstan's urgency for it was one, a kind of feverish haste about getting through with preliminaries; and another was his opposition to living anywhere but at Brattalithe. He would not go to her father's house, nor to that which had been Thore's, and which was now hers for life. He put a reeve in each of them and took her to Brattalithe. Afterwards she understood everything, and was confounded by her former blindness; but it is the truth that Thorstan's love for her was of a sort to forbid thinking. She was carried off her feet and out of her common sense by his passion. He, so dumb and still a man, was by the touch of passion set on fire. And fire caught fire. The pair of them lived in each other, and the world seemed empty of all other men and women.

As for Thorstan himself, knowing what he knew, it is not wonderful that his love burned at white heat. Passion with him was in a trap and fighting for an hour of life. What is wonderful is, that he never betrayed in any other way that he had the end in sight from the beginning. It was "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" with him. But Gudrid did not see it. She was too happy to see it. Her doom was flooded out by sunlight, as it were.

He made songs for her from the time of Thore's death onwards, and in these his secret might have been revealed if she had been able to read below the surface. He sang her one night as she lay in his arms the terrible Song of Helgi and Sigrun. Certainly Death and Love embrace in that.

Helgi was a Wolfing, the son of Sigmund and Borghild. He was forecast a hero by the Norns, and at fifteen slew Hunding, who had slain his father. The sons of Hunding gathered themselves—Alf and Eywolf, Hiorward and Haward—and the hosts met in the plain under Lowfell. There was war in heaven while those armies made it on earth. Out of the lightning flare came the Valkyrs, daughters of Odin, choosers of the slain. They rode grey horses; they wore helms and coats of mail; their spear-heads gleamed like fire. Helgi sat by the Eagle Rock and cried out to them to stay. And one—it was Hogni's daughter, Sigrun—turned him her fire-hued face and answered: "Other business have we in hand than to pledge you in horns. My father has plight me to King Hodbrord, whom I hold no better than the son of a cat. Yet he will come for me soon unless you deliver me." Then love grew between them as they looked at each other; and Helgi said: "Fear not Hodbrord, for I will meet him unless I am dead."

King Hodbrord called up his levies and mustered a host. The ships flocked about Brandey, but still he waited, and warriors came to him, hundreds of them, from Hedinsey and other islands. Then said Helgi to Hiorleif, "Is the host called?" And Hiorleif nodded his head and pointed them out over sea, high-beaked ships, hemmed with shields, thick on the water like wild swans. They fought in a storm, and the waves played their part in the battle. The waters drank as much blood as the swords; from on high Sigrun the Valkyr guided the warriors of Helgi.

Now King Hodbrord stood in the gate of his house, hooded and helmed, his spear in his hands. He saw far off in the valley horsemen riding with speed, whose cloaks flew out in the wind they made. Who come here? Whose is the host? And Godmund, his housewife, told him of the sea-fight, and that the Wolfings were coming against his house. Then looking, he saw the helm-bright Valkyrs coursing the air, keeping pace with the horsemen below. They met in a crash by the Wolf rock; the swords flamed, the spears were like flying stars. Over the dead Hodbrord Sigrun the Valkyr cried in triumph, "Never for your arms is Sigrun of Sevafell," and as she spoke the arm of Helgi the hero held her fast.

Their love was fierce, but it was short. Helgi is dead of countless wounds, and laid in his barrow with his weapons beside him. Sigrun of Sevafell keeps the house; she sits by the fire; her eyes are hard. She says to herself—

"Now had been here
Had he been minded
Sigmund's son,
The hero Helgi,
Out of the halls of Odin;
But the eagles roost
On the high ash-boughs,
All the household
Falleth to dreams—
Faint is my hope of him now."

But her handmaid at the window sees a man riding in armour. He rides a grey horse, his face is pale and streaked with blood. She speaks to herself, and then to the dead—

"What wraith rideth?
Is Doomsday come?
Shall dead men ride,
Shall they drive spurs in?
Ho, pale rider,
Hast thou leave homeward to fare?"

It is Helgi who answers her as he rides by upon a noiseless horse—

"This is no wraith,
This is not World's Doom
Though a dead man rides,
Though he pricks with spurs,
Leave I have homeward to fare."

And then he cries aloud, so that Sigrun hears him, and looks up, listening—

"Ha, come thou forth, Sigrun of Sevafell!
Here is thy lord
If thou wouldst see him;
The cairn is open,
Helgi is here
With the sword-wounds bleeding—staunch thou the blood!

For I must ride soon
The reddening roads,
My good horse climb
The ways of the air;
West of the sky-bridge
Needs I must be
Before the grey cock cry to the sun."

Sigrun is up now, and at the door. She pants as she pulls at the bobbin of the latch. Her eyes are on fire with eagerness. But the maid cries to her—

"Go not, go not,
Sigrun of Sevafell,
Sister of kings,
Seek not the house of the dead!
For the night is abroad
When the dead are mighty;
Await bright dawn, thou shalt be stronger."

But Sigrun is out in the moonlight, and Helgi is upon his feet. Now she has him in her arms; now she holds his pale face between her hands and speaks to him close—

"The hawks of Odin
Greet not the Storm-lord,
Scenting the slain, their smoking quarry,
Not more eagerly
Cry they the dawn dew
Than I cry thee, dead King Helgi.

Now I kiss thee, dead King Helgi,
Ere thou castest
Thy blood-clutter'd mail-shirt.
Bloody the dew
On thy dauntless body,
Heavy the rime
On thy raven love-locks;
Cold are thy hands, Helgi, my king's son,
How shall I loose thee, lover and lord?"

But Helgi puts her hands away from his face and holds her apart—

"The death-dew is dank on me,
Sigrun of Sevafell,
This is thy doing, O sun-fraught lady,
Golden woman, the tears thou sheddest
Upon thy bed stay not beside thee;
Like blood they fall, cold and deathly,
Like sobs they stab me
Through the breast!"

Then, seeing her despair, he throws up his white face towards the moon and laughs without joy—

"Ho, let us drink
Deep draughts of joy,
We that have lost
Land and life!
Let no man keen us,
Let no man pity
The wounds shining upon my body."

He clasps her close in his arms, and speaks as it were between his teeth.

"Now is a queen,
Sigrun of Sevafell,
Now is a queen
Shut in the cairn,
Living and warm with the cold dead."

But she strains him to her and cries aloud—
"Helgi, Helgi, here is thy bed made,
Thou son of Wolfings, a warm bed, a gentle—
Fast in arms, Helgi, enfold me;
As when thou livedst
Clip me in death sleep."

And then the maid sees the cairn open, and Sigrun lying in it in the dead man's arms. Helgi lifts up his face to the moonlight, and sings—

"Never on Sevafell
A great marvel—
No more wondrous
That hill of magic—
For Hogni's white daughter
Lies with a dead man;
A king's daughter
Alive in the arms of the dead."

There is no more terrible song than that, nor one in which love is brought so close to death. When she remembered it after-wards Gudrid saw well that she had indeed been lying with a dead man when that song was sung to her. For if she could have had the wits she would have felt at the time the death-dew on his face. But love had then bereft her of all wits.

She called that year afterwards the Little Summer, as well because of the glory and promise of it as for the few days it held. By the end of June she knew herself with child. Thorstan gave a sort of sobbing gasp when she told him and pressed her to his heart. She felt the wet from his eyes upon her cheek, looked at him and saw tears. "You weep at my news?" "It is because I am happy, my love." She herself was softly elated by the gift she was to be enabled to make him, but not otherwise. All her love was centred in him just then.

But in July the ship came home from Wineland the Good without Thorwald, and with the heavy news. Eric, who had been ageing, was very much cast down by it. He wished Lief to go out and fetch back the body; but Lief did not seem inclined to move. He told Thorstan his reason. "If we can move out, house and homestead, gear and cattle, man, woman and child, well and good. It is a finer country than this. I will settle there gladly. But you see how it is with our father. He won't last long, and you will see he will refuse to move. This is his Settlement; he has made it for himself. He is king of all this country, and he feels it. Now if we go and leave him here, he will die—and what then? The end of Eric's kingdom. No, I shall stay here and take up the government after him. But I think that you should go—you and Gudrid."

Thorstan said: "I think so too. I will speak to Gudrid. But I shall wait till after harvest."

He told Gudrid what he thought. "They have buried him heathenwise, sitting with his weapons, looking out to sea, and heaped the stones over him. True, they have set up a cross atop. But he should have the rites. I must see to that. We will go, my love, if you are willing—but maybe we shall not come back."

She looked at him fondly. "I will go wherever you bid me. But we shall come back." It is wonderful that she did not remember what had been predicted of her; but she did not.

Thorstan did not meet her eyes. "We will go, then. But not till after harvest."

"Harvest!" said she. "You will not go in the winter?"

"No, no," he said. "The harvest will not be done." Then she knew that he did not speak of the corn-harvest, but of their own.

The year sped quickly, as happy years will do; the harvest of the earth was gathered, the winter fell, the clinging mists, the still and deadly cold. But they were a happy household at Brattalithe, for Gudrid was found to be a solvent of much domestic ferment. Her sweet manners drew even Theodhild to come in and out of the house, and hushed the storms which periodically swept over Freydis the Wild. At Yule there was a feast of many days, singing, eating and drinking, and games in the snow for the young men. Gudrid sat apart and watched it, Thorstan never far away from her. Still she didn't guess what lent such fervour to their loves. Foolish with happiness, she thought it was the first of many Yules—whether here in this frost-locked country or in the forests of Wineland mattered little to her. She saw them all in years to come as they were now and felt her heart high in her breast.

And then at the end of March, when men began to talk again of the ice breaking up, and the thawing of the passages, her child was born. It was a girl, and christened Walgerd. And now Thorstan looked about him at the still sheeted lands and knew that his hour was at hand. He told nobody, he never betrayed himself; but went to work silently and methodically.