Chapter I: Stiklestad

I woke to tastes of mud and blood, and throbbing pain. But gentle hands were wiping clean my wounded head. As mists cleared from my sight, a woman’s face swam into view. Her eyes were blue and kind, though lined with grief. She was the loveliest sight that I could hope to see: I had survived. Beside her lay a basin filled with water, cloth torn into strips for binding wounds. Around the shed in which I lay, a score of other wounded men stood, lay or sat. The sun was back, as bright at dusk as if it had not fled when Olaf fell at noon. It lit the door through which had filed these men who fought at Stiklestad, some for their king but some for their rebellious, heathen jarl.

Beside the door I saw the skald called Thormod Coalbrows, an Icelander like me. I had seen him last beside the king, under the banner that rallied the royal men, inside the wall of shields held by the loyal housecarls. Now Thormod’s face was pale and bloodless, his lips blue as those of a child swimming in an icy fjord, his eyes staring from under his beetling black brows at some remembered scene.

The healing woman called to him. “You there, by the door. Go and fetch more wood from the pile outside. The fire is dying. I must warm more water to clean these warriors’ wounds, and make some soup.” Into one of the kettles she threw a handful of leeks, which I knew had a use beyond flavor. The onion smell would tell her if a man was wounded in the gut and had scant chance to survive.

Thormod got up and went out the door, his sword still in his hand. He nearly bumped into a man about my age. "I came out because of all the howling and screaming,” I heard the young man say. “It may be the king's men fought bravely today, but they bear their wounds badly."

“Were you in the battle, too?” Thormod asked.

"I was with the freeholders, which was the best side," the young man said.

"And are you wounded?" asked Thormod.

"A little," said the young man. "Were you in it?"

"I was with them who had the best," Thormod replied.

"Are you wounded?"

"Not much to signify."

Framed in the doorway of the hut, the young man glanced down at the gold ring on Thormod’s arm. “The freeholders will kill you if the see that ring, which marks you as a king’s man. Give it to me for safekeeping.”

"Take it if you can,” Thormod said. “I have already lost what is worth much more."

The man stretched out his hand for the ring, but Thormod swung his sword up and cut off his hand. The young man howled and screamed as loud as any king’s man.

Thormod calmly picked up an armload of wood, took it inside and threw it down beside the fire.

The healer woman looked at his face. “Why are you so pale?” she asked. “Are you wounded? Why did you not call for our help? Let me see your wound, and I will bind it.”

Thormod sat down and took off his shirt[?] The woman felt the wound. “There is a piece of iron in here,” she said.

“It is an arrow,” Thormod said. “I broke off the shaft so I could walk.”

She turned to the fire, dipped a bowl into the kettle of soup and handed it to him. “Here,” she said. “Drink this.”

“Take it away,” Thormod said. “I have no appetite for any broth.”

Then she took a pair of tongs, grasped the stub of the arrow shaft and tried to pull out the iron. But the wound had swollen, and it would not come.

“Cut in deep enough to get at the iron, and then hand me the tongs,” Thormod said. She took a knife and did as he said.

Thormod took the gold ring from his arm and handed it to the nurse. “Do with it as you wish,” he said. “It is a good man’s gift. King Olaf gave it to me this morning.”

Then Thormod took the tongs and pulled the iron arrowhead out. But it was barbed at the tip, and bits of flesh clung to it, some red and some white.

“See how well the king has fed us?” Thormod said. “I am fat down to the roots of my heart.” And he leaned back and died.

Chapter II: The narrator meets Harald and treks with him over what the Vikings called the keel of the mountains into Sweden, and then on into Kievan Russia.