III
“BY THE BEARD OF BRAGE”
The hall of the Jomsvikings was wild with riotous mirth, although it was a funeral feast for the father of Earl Sigvalde. With ale and wassail and boar’s-head, they had gathered together to comfort the earl for the death of his parent, whose funeral cortège had been, that evening at twilight, placed on the burning ship and set adrift far down the Oder. Jarl Sigvalde, the chief, sat at the head of the table, while the men drank and ate heartily. He took his long bronze drinking-horn, which hung around his neck by a chain, and filled it full of mead.
“A toast! A toast to Brage!” the earl cried, rising from his seat. The vikings grew silent in a second. Something warlike was to follow. Some stirring adventure promised, when the toast to Brage was called; for he was the deity to whom the vows of war and combat were pledged. Earl Sigvalde’s voice thundered on the silence: “I swear, by the Beard of Brage, that the snows of three winters shall not see Jarl Haakon the overlord of Norway.”
A great cheer shook the oaken ceiling. “A wassail to Jarl Sigvalde!”
