Epigraph

Se waes wreccena wide mearost
ofer wer-þeode, wigendra hleo,
ellen-daedum. . .

He was of exiles the most famous
World over, a man known among warriors
For deeds of valor.

~ Beowulf, 898-900

FORSEER

The beach is long and open under the dawn. Parallels of light lie along the easy waves, over the ribboning loops of foam, onto the strip of sand above high-tide; but the ship nosing in across them is clear down to the last smoothly curving plank, and the red and black roundels of her bow eyes show vivid as stings in the shadowless light. Easy to watch the dribble from shipped oar-blades, the wound her bow gores in the sand. Easy to number every water-drop from the leggings of passenger and shipper, as they settle accounts at the fringe of marram grass, before the one wades off up the bleakly lit sand-dunes, while the other tramps without a backward look down to his crew, already breaking their keel from this alien strand.

It is all the same, down to the least ripple or marram blade, never varying in the slightest detail, just as he has seen it so many times. The landfall of Rihannar’s most famous exile. Eygwyr’s coming home.

Not that he looks famous, plodding up the dunes, salt creased in his dirty homespun, baggage rolled in a sodden boat-cloak, ‘Stangar tucked like an old stick under one arm. Quite small, really. Somewhat bow-legged. Head down, the dark hair foxed with gray as well as rime. In looks as in motion, neat, inconspicuous. Until you catch that sheen of hammer-flecked gray steel between the whorled hilt and the old scabbard’s enameled rienthos flowers. Until the hot red pupils of the massive snake-ring peep in the shadow of his sleeve. Until he lifts his head, gauging the distance inland, and shows you what has been so many men’s last sight: the black abysms, stark, unwinking, that unfold in Eygwyr’s eyes.