"I will lead this expedition."

Steel rang on steel as every armed warrior there clashed his
approval. By all the gods whose names he could remember Earl
Sigvald swore that the true Estein was come back, and King Hakon
exclaimed joyfully,--

"There speaks my son at last. Prepare yourself then, Estein. Ill
tidings have been changed to good."

"And you, Ketill," said Estein, turning to his former companion,
"will you come with me?"

"That will I," answered Ketill. "I want no braver leader. But the
gods curse me if we roast not a few score men this time, Estein."

For two days there was a turmoil of preparation round Hakonstad,
and on the third Estein's two warships sailed down the fiord. He
had with him Helgi, Ketill, and a picked force; and as he stood on
deck and watched the towering precipices slip by, and the white
clouds drift over their rough rim of pines, his heart beat high.
The message of the Runes was ringing in his mind, and the spirit
of roving and adventure boiling up again.

They sailed far up the coast, and then, leaving their ship in a
northern fiord, struck inland across the mountains. The country
they were going to lay among the lakes of North Sweden. Its people
were more barbarous than the Norwegians, and had long been in a
state of half-subjection to the Norse kings. There was not likely
to be hard fighting; for small as Estein's force was, the natives