‘And you want someone who can kick ass to get hold of what they need.’ Deliberately, she left out reference to herself. ‘Is that the implication?’

‘I want you on the mission, because’ – with a smile – ‘it’s the kind of job you were destined to do.’

Rhianna rubbed her head. Uncle Max could play these games better than anyone. She should have conceded defeat a lot earlier; but of course, he would have been disappointed.

‘What kind of speculative research?’ Her question was almost a sigh.

‘Reading the future,’ said Max.

Which made it clear: this really was the job she was destined for, that had to be hers alone.

The rest of the conversation involved her trying not to appear too determined to accept the mission, because Max would wonder why, and she really could not explain her thinking, not this time. But in the end, he assigned her officially, and all that remained were the details of briefing and logistics, because she was going to fly to Nulapeiron.

It was inevitable.

FIFTEEN

EARTH, 789 AD

A dozen years had passed since the death of Jarl at Fenrisulfr’s hand, in the days when he was simply Ulfr. The five most recent years were the emptiest, since courageous Brandr died in battle, the war-hound licking his master’s face even as the blood pumped through Fenrisulfr’s fingers, desperate to hold closed the wound while the heartless trio that was the Norns, in their desolate other-world, cackled and wove the threads of Fate so that dark-brown, loving eyes grew clouded with the opacity of death. The best of all creatures to walk the Middle World was gone.

Were it possible to go back and avoid that day, to let the rich travellers pass by unmolested, he would do it without hesitation. But the Norns set the rules, and the only way to dim the memory was with unremitting violence, to force his pain back upon everybody else.

Ah, the screams and blood he had waded in since then.

Twice in that time, lieutenants in his reaver band had left to form groups of their own, needing independence and far too wise to fight Fenrisulfr for leadership. It was a form of success and maturity that sometimes caused Fenrisulfr to think he might be a good man; but as he nodded now, signalling Brökkr the Cloven to commence the attack, the imminence of violence revealed the lie.

We fight because we can.

It was a shingle beach they streamed onto, his fighters, his lovely warriors; and then they were into the mêlée, cut and smash and rip amid the spurting blood, the confused stumbling of victims who could not summon their warrior’s spirit in time; then the reavers’ stomach-dropping disappointment that it was over too soon, the opposition too shallow; and the need to rein in the madness because the fight was done.

The surviving travellers were on their knees, some with arms behind them already lashed in place, heads bowed, awaiting whatever Fenrisulfr’s band decided: fast death or playful torture. The reavers took whatever pleasure they desired, made sweeter by struggles and screams, later selling their victims into thraldom, or – if they could not be bothered – perhaps letting the survivors go free, more than likely hobbled by tendon-cuts.

‘What of the boat, Chief?’ Brökkr gestured with his axe towards their victims’ beached vessel. ‘Burn it?’

After stripping it of valuables, that was understood. Then they turned, hearing an angry voice.

‘Enough of the evil eye, woman.’ One of their warriors, dread Ivarr, was pulling out his dagger. ‘In fact, I think I’ll have that eyeball.’

Lithe and unflinching, she stared up at him from her kneeling position, a woman of Fenrisulfr’s age, showing no fear.

Not you. Not here.

Memories tumbled. ‘Stop, good Ivarr. Not this one.’

‘Chief.’

Fenrisulfr went down on one knee before the woman.

‘Heithrún,’ he muttered. ‘No volva should suffer this.’

So many years.

‘They call you Fenrisulfr as well as Chief. I heard them.’ Her features were older, strong more than pretty. ‘You are ill-named, my lover, but it suits you.’

He called young Thollákr to fetch the crystal-headed spear.

‘I still bear your gift to me,’ said Fenrisulfr. ‘It served me a second time against troll-spirits. I’ve wondered, from time to time, how you might have possessed such a thing.’

The rest of the Middle World faded, the prisoners and his reavers, the beached boat and inland hills and the grey, cold waters: it was just him and Heithrún, seeress and priestess and so very briefly his lover. She was dangerous – any volva was – but by clasping his cloak’s brooch-pin, feeling its sharpness, Fenrisulfr believed he might prevent her from leading his spirit into dreamworld.

‘It came from the eastern ice wastes,’ said Heithrún, meaning the crystal that had once adorned her walking-staff. ‘Chief Gulbrandr journeyed far when he was young, and that was one of many gifts he brought back. They say it came from a sky-ship that was crushed by Thórr’s hammer, for thunder filled the air. Or perhaps by trolls, for they were around the smashed ship. So they told Gulbrandr, and he told Eydís.’

Her mentor, he remembered now.

‘And how did you know it would hurt that troll?’

So long ago, the day the two travelling parties met, hers and his, and it seemed that a troll reared from the earth to attack them, though later he would wonder whether its target had been the dark poet Stígr, journeying with Chief Gulbrandr’s party, his nature not yet obvious even to a volva like Heithrún.

‘Because of the rune that glowed within,’ she said. ‘Or you could say I guessed.’

‘And Chief Gulbrandr gave it to you as a gift?’

‘To Eydís, when she saved his wife’s life during labour, and delivered the child.’

Thollákr was keeping his distance, looking fascinated. Beyond him, stocky Ivarr was making a better pretence of disinterest, but listening anyway. None of the band knew much about Fenrisulfr’s life before he became their chief, rearing out of nowhere to slay Magnús.

‘As for your old clan,’ said Heithrún, ‘I have visited from time to time, and Folkvar still rules. These days it is Vermundr and Steinn who are his strength, along with . . . Ormr, is it?’

‘Ormr or Kormr?’

Faces and names came tumbling back across the years.

‘I’m not sure, Ulfr. I’m sorry.’

Of course she would call him by his old name.

So what will I do about her?

He looked out across the waves, at the greyness of dusk descending, then stood up, centring as if preparing to fight.

‘Guard them all,’ he commanded Ivarr and Thollákr. ‘In the morning I will decide.’

‘Chief.’

Pulling his cloak around him, he walked away alone.

So many years.

Such oceans of blood.

During his mist-cloaked sleep in the damp, uncomforting night, he conversed with crystalline figures who called him brother and begged him to return, to fight on their side in the twilight days to come, when the armies of dread would hear the call to Ragnarökkr and fall upon the Middle World, destroying everything unless they could – at some awful cost – be driven back. Of course he refused yet again.

That night he dreamed of making love to Heithrún as he had long ago. It seemed so very real, though it happened in dreamworld and he did not waken.

My wolf, she said as he slipped out of her, and then she was gone and simple restfulness remained.

In the morning, Njörthr was humping a dead woman in the bushes – Fenrisulfr pretended not to see – while down at the beach, beside the abandoned boat, Ivarr and Thollákr stood with hands on weapon-hilts as though alert, in contrast to their unfocused eyes. There was bare shingle next to the wooden hull where there should have been a group of prisoners, tied up and waiting to learn what Fenrisulfr had decided to do with them.