. . .

There is too much of it.

He cannot possibly take all of it: not up the stairs to Hans’ pantry, not out the door, not across the realm of the svart-elves; certainly not up and past the army of the dead.

Vaenwode takes a few of the coins. He puts them in his coin-bag.

He wanders out and up.

He stares aimlessly around the horizon. He looks at the overhanging stalactites and the yawning farm. Then he makes his way to a rivulet and fills an little iron pot with water. He steals into the chicken-coop; grabs a sun-bird; smothers its startled flame in a treated sack.

These things he carries back down below to Hans’ sea of gold.

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