dbrog. Agard's country was neighbour to
the Frisians, and a sad, flat country of fog and fen it was. I was with
him for three years, to his death, always at his back, whether hunting
swamp wolves or drinking in the great hall where Elgiva, his young wife,
often sat among her women. I was with Agard in south foray with his
ships along what would be now the coast of France, and there I learned
that still south were warmer seasons and softer climes and women.

But we brought back Agard wounded to death and slow-dying. And we burned
his body on a great pyre, with Elgiva, in her golden corselet, beside him
singing. And there were household slaves in golden collars that burned
of a plenty there with her, and nine female thralls, and eight male
slaves of the Angles that were of gentle birth and battle-captured. And
there were live hawks so burned, and the two hawk-boys with their birds.

But I, the drink-boy, Ragnar Lodbrog, did not burn. I was eleven, and
unafraid, and had never worn woven cloth on my body. And as the flames
sprang up, and Elgiva sang her death-song, and the thralls and slaves
screeched their unwillingness to die, I tore away my fastenings, leaped,
and gained the fens, the gold collar of my slavehood still on my neck,
footing it with the hounds loosed to tear me down.

In the fens were wild men, masterless men, fled slaves, and outlaws, who
were hunted in sport as the wolves were hunted.

For three years I knew never roof nor fire, and I grew hard as the frost,
and would have stolen a woman from the Juts but that the Frisians by
mischance, in a two days' hunt, ran me down. By them I was looted of my
gold collar and traded for two wolf-hounds to Edwy, of the Saxons, who
put an iron collar on me, and later made of me and five other slaves a
present to Athel of the East Angles. I was thrall and fighting man,
until, lost in an unlucky raid far to the east beyond our marches, I was
sold among the Huns, and was a swineherd until I escaped south into the
great forests and was taken in as a freeman by the Teutons, who were
many, but who lived in small tribes and drifted southward before the Hun
advance.

And up from the south into the great forests came the Romans, fighting
men all, who pressed us back upon the Huns. It was a crushage of the
peoples for lack of room; and we taught the Romans what fighting was,
although in truth we were no less well taught by them.

But always I remembered the sun of t