Read Hrolf Kraki's Saga for Free Online Page B

other’s gowns and gauds, children tumbled in play, dogs yammered.
    Between their own rawness, and the blow that a stoup or three of beer can give to a hollow belly, the brothers more than carried out their aim of behaving like loons. They sprang around, somersaulted, cracked foolish jokes, stood on their heads, waved legs in air, and all in all made themselves out as silly and loud-mouthed. So folk merely looked down on them, or away from them.
    Day drew to a close. At this season, it was hardly more than a glimmer between two gaping darknesses. Guests streamed indoors. Frodhi required that weapons be left in the foreroom. His excuse was that on Yule Eve men always drank heavily; quarrels might well flare, and if edged metal was to hand, a blood feud could much too easily start. The truth was, he did not really trust them. To be sure, he must lay the same command on his own warriors; anything else would have been a deadly insult. But those who were armed only with eating kniveswould hardly attack household troops who, outnumbered or not, were highly skilled fighters.
    The foreroom thus grew crowded and agleam. Despite the longfires and many lesser flames, the chamber beyond seemed murky. Smokeholes were not drawing well and a blue haze thickened, stinging eyes and lungs.
    When they had pushed deep into the crowd, the boys suddenly stiffened. They could make out a man who sat near the seat of guest-honor that Sævil and Signy would share. Stout, gray, coarsely clad, he must have stayed within this whole while. “Regin!” Helgi cried in joy. “Old Fosterfather!”
    He started toward the sheriff. Hroar grabbed his cloak. “Hold back, you staggerpate,” the elder hissed. “Do you want to get us slain?”
    Helgi yielded. Still, he could not keep from leaping and dancing down the length of the hall. Hroar must needs pace his sibling. He cast a glance through reek and dimness and elbowing, chattering folk, toward the high seat. There sat his uncle and his mother. The king was leaned forward, in earnest talk with a beggarly-looking crone who bore a crooked staff. He would not mark what anybody else did. Across from him was Signy. Her husband had not yet joined her. The longfires roared high, red, blue, yellow, casting sparks and a surf of heat Among huge hunchbacked shadows glittered the gold on Signy’s arms, at her throat, in the coiled braids beneath her headdress. She was signing to her brothers.
    Hroar urged Helgi thither. They stood before her, their faces beclouded by the cowls. Hers was drawn taut. She beckoned them close and whispered wildly, just to be heard by them amidst the din: “Don’t stay here in the hall. Don’t! Your strength is so little.”
    Helgi started to answer. Hroar thrust him onward. It would not do for others to see the strand-jarl’s lady beseech two witlings. They sought the far end of the chamber and squatted down among the wanderers and dogs that waited for whatever the king would order given to them or the great men deign to throw their way.
    The feast came forth. Good and plentiful were both food and drink: trenchers heaped to overflowing with juicy meat, flatbread and loaves stacked beside tubs of butter and cheese, servants scurrying ceaselessly to keep horns full of beer or mead. Yet there was no mirth. Talk buzzed dull and low. Few youths invited maidens to come sit and drink at their sides. A skald chanted forth old lays, and new ones in praise of King Frodhi, but his tones seemed lost in the smoke. Only the row of fires was loud, brawling and spitting above white-hot coals.
    That downheartedness stemmed from the mood of the host. He sat withdrawn and curt-spoken, giving off chill like an iceberg. Sigridh his queen was wholly woeful; her fingers twisted and twisted together.
    At last the tables were cleared away. The king rose and made the sign of the Hammer above a great silver cup which he then drained. Next should have come the turn of the earth-god Frey. In his honor, a boar