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Einar spots you even before you begin to approach. One hand clasped in a firm handshake with a visitor (a successful trader by the look of his clothes), Einar curls the other to beckon you to him. He wishes to know where on earth you've been. It seems he is as full of intrigue as you are, yet his shrewdness forbids him from speaking first. He listens to your account with sharp attention, and then, when you are finished, he falls into deep thought. By that time you are both secured in your usual haunt, an abandoned hut hidden in a small cove, which you and Einar spent the better part of last spring repairing into a kind of hideaway. While Einar meditates upon the significance of your report, you duck outside to check on some fish you had caught days earlier and left hung out to dry.
There is no use trying to converse with Einar when he falls into one of these broods. His concentration is neither delicate nor superficial, but a product of training nearly intense as your own with the sword. It is why no one in the village, not even the adults, can defeat him in a game of tafl. It is also why his father, the Chieftain, regards him with as much wariness as with awe. Snjallr is only a stones throw from fálátr, as they say; cunning and conniving are bedfellows. Still, though Einar is something of a plotter, his schemes have all thus far been harmless and bereft of deception. Case in point: the little fishing skiff moored at the bank of the cove, which Einar had purchased in atrocious condition for a pittance and, together with you, had painstakingly restored to fighting form over a period of a year and a half. It is Einar's pride and joy and the envy of all boys in the village--or at least it was, till he had seen, last summer, a glorious langskip gliding across the sea towards open water. From then on all his powers were bent on that one vision. And not merely to sail upon a longship, but to sail its captain.
Just as the fish begin to release a mouthwatering scent in the procession of smoke, Einar awakens from his reverie. He answers in a word all the questions which had been mounting: a raid. It must be a raid, for there is nothing else for which the Jarl himself would come. And it must be a raid across the sea, to the distant lands, for nothing else explains the attendance of Redbeard. And finally, notes Einar, grimly, it must be a raid for which his father harbors reservations, for nothing else explains his gloom.
Having made this prophecy he turns to you with eyes of flame. He would go on this raid, come what may, and he would have you with him, if you will follow.
>You are delighted by the offer, it is what you have trained for and dreamed of all this time.
>You are hesitant to promise what may in the end prove only to be undeliverable fancies of imagination.
>You are sobered by the knowledge that his father will never allow him such a liberty and keep silent.
>Write-in
