Late in the afternoon, Edgil passed through the South Gate and returned to the muddy road running through Kinsford.  He carried his son's body in his arms.  The villagers gathered and murmured as they watched him falter now and then, gazing ahead with eyes widened as if he were fey and taking little heed of where he went.  Cuts crisscrossed the thegn's arms, and drops of blood flecked his kirtle and leather jerkin.  The body he held showed no sign of a wound.  Edgil's face bore a blank expression, but in the eyes of stout Guthere, who led his friend's horse as well as his own, tears gathered and ran down his cheeks into his grey-blond beard.  Behind them trudged all the men who had gone on the hunt save Oslaf and Imharr.  They looked down at the brown earth in silence while leading their horses.

On both sides of the muddy road the halls of the thegns of Kinsford and their households clustered.  Made of wood hewn from the Southweald and roofed with thatch or green turf in the manner of their ancestors, they were the dwellings of the warrior-farmers who were Earl Stigand's picked war troop.  Smoke curled out of the louvers of a few homes, and smithying punctuated the laughter of playing children.  But these noises ceased as word spread that the hunting party had returned.

As Edgil made his way with his burden, the hunters joined their families, who stood watching all wide-eyed.  Soon the words "elf-sleep" passed the lips of many.  With Guthere ten feet behind and a croud closing in, Edgil bore his son's limp body down the road, which ended in the North Gate not long after it went by a building rising above the others in the village: Stanflet, the high-gabled hall of Stigand, Earl of Kinsford.

Of Kinsford's halls, only Stanflet's high roof boasted curved slate shingles overlapping in long rows.  Proud and tall was the hail the earl's ancestors wrought long ago from towering trees in the place they settled.  On the building's western side above three stone steps waited a large porch.  Under the porch's roof and between its two carved columns of oak loomed doors more than twice the height of a tall man.  The ancestors of Kinsford's folk long ago hewed those doors from ancient oaks of the Southweald and carved upon them images of their old gods: Bolthar wrestling the bull, Sithfar hidden in his cloak and holding his staff, Syn and Logan striving with ice and fire, Halmar riding the whale, Dyna with a sheaf of wheat, lovely Glora with her flower garland, and Regnor and Hruga seated over all.

When Edgil and Guthere neared Stanflet's entrance, a slender young woman in a blue frock shot out of the crowd behind.  Ebba ran towards Edgil and wailed while clutching her braid.  From her eyes tears streamed, and her cheeks were flushed.  Before she reached Edgil, Guthere grabbed her by the arms and embraced her convulsing body, his broad face contorting as he stroked her head.

"Ebba, dear, you mustn't yet.  I'm sorry, my child."

"Father," she sobbed, "tell me what happened!  Let me go to him.!"

"You will, my dear - first give the father time with his son."

An older woman, Sigitha, joined her husband and daughter, and. they wept together as Edgil, alone with his grim burden, continued toward Earl Stigand's hall.