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,
