‘Er . . .’

‘Then if you carried on riding, deep into Northanhymbra, you’d find yourself among strangers, maybe even Thyra’s people. And if you ended up staying there, you’d have to learn a new way of speaking, earn a living without killing, and all the rest.’

Thóllakr was swallowing, gripping Thyra’s hand hard.

‘In years past,’ Fenrisulfr went on, ‘our people ruled here, so they know us. But Erik Bloodaxe is dead these forty summers, and the current king is named Æthelred, one of Thyra’s folk.’

Hearing her king’s name and her own, the girl stared at him.

‘May the Norns treat you well.’ Fenrisulfr clasped Thóllakr’s shoulder. ‘And to Hel’s realm with them if they don’t.’

Finally, Thóllakr grinned.

‘Yes, chief. Thank you.’

Fenrisulfr walked away, pulling his cloak around him.

No looking back.

Brökkr was looking thoughtful when Fenrisulfr returned. Ivarr was with him, in addition to the four fighters from Brökkr’s band. Fenrisulfr gestured towards the causeway.

‘We’ll cross at low tide. Have you decided who’s to be left behind?’

‘I have,’ said Brökkr. ‘You want me to run through the names?’

Fenrisulfr shook his head.

‘I trust your judgement on this, as in everything else,’ he said. ‘But I would have private words with you, brave Brökkr. By the holy men’s fortress?’

‘Er, yes, chief.’

‘Come, then.’

Of course Brökkr was suspicious, but Fenrisulfr, not carrying his axes, spread his hands openly as they walked, keeping to Brökkr’s right side, and asked a question in an easy tone just before the pivotal moment, so that Brökkr’s mouth was open, his mind and tongue forming the reply – the estimated distance the raiding party could cover per day – when Fenrisulfr’s body slammed into his. Fenrisulfr grabbed Brökkr’s sword-hilt at the same time as whipping his head into the side of Brökkr’s jaw – a sideways head-butt, almost getting the knockout – and slamming his knee into Brökkr’s thigh – no point in trying for the groin because Brökkr was fast even when surprised – and pulling free, drawing his own blade left-handed, a reverse grip but never mind because he had two swords and Brökkr had none, and as Fenrisulfr swung both blades high Brökkr flinched and tried to duck beneath as Fenrisulfr had hoped and this time he drove the knee in with maximum force, smashing into Brökkr’s face, then swung his left hand thumb-first and still holding the snatched sword so its hard pommel drove into Brökkr’s temple and then he was down.

There was a water-skin nearby, and after giving Brökkr a few moments languishing in dreamworld, Fenrisulfr splashed the water over his bloodied face, and waited while Brökkr coughed himself awake, then glowered at Fenrisulfr.

‘You’re already a good leader,’ Fenrisulfr told him. ‘And capable of leading my men in addition to your own.’

He had both swords in normal grips now, his wrists and forearms loose and ready.

‘Huh.’ Brökkr pushed himself up to a sitting position, knowing better than to rise any further. ‘Not when I let sneaky bastards catch me like that.’

‘Thóllakr and his thrall are under my protection. Swear by Thórr you’ll leave them unharmed, and tell your men to do likewise.’

‘Huh? You only have to give the order and we’ll—’

‘Swear.’

Brökkr wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand, snorted, then spat a red gob of snot onto the grass. ‘I swear by Thórr’s balls that Thóllakr and his woman will go unharmed. Good enough, chief?’

Fenrisulfr shook his head.

‘I’m not your chief.’

‘You’re dissolving the alliance? There’s no—’

‘I’m making you chief of both our bands,’ said Fenrisulfr. ‘You’re more than good enough.’

With care, he placed Brökkr’s sword flat on the ground.

‘You’re not . . . You mean it, Fenrisulfr, don’t you?’

Fenrisulfr stared at the sea, so huge and uncaring of mortal affairs, and wondered how he could ever have thought his life was so important.

‘I’m not sure that’s my name any more,’ he said, more to the waves than to Brökkr.

Without looking back, he walked down to his longboat, beached among the others. He told the men on guard about Thóllakr, that he and his woman were not be harmed and had orders to groom and exercise the roan gelding, across the causeway if Thóllakr wished. There was no hint in his tone that this was a final order.

Then he fetched the crystal tipped spear from on board the longboat, slapped the dragon prow and went off to be by himself until night fell and he could slip away and – Norns permitting, and damn them if they did not – never be seen by his reavers again.

He was thirty-three summers old to the best of his reckoning, stronger and faster than ever, as ruthless as he had to be, with no idea how he wanted to live the rest of his life, except that when he found the opportunity that must be out there, no one would wrest it from him.

They could try, of course.

I’ll still need enemies.

What else gave meaning to existence?

From time to time Chief Vermundr thought back to the days when Folkvar ruled the clan, and that young whelp Ulfr had shown so much promise that some people thought he would be made chieftain on Folkvar’s death, except that Eira had died and Ulfr had grown crazed and that was that: another young man gone to travel far, and by now he might be dead or rich, whatever the Norns decreed.

‘She’s gone, Father.’ His son Vítharr put a hand on Vermundr’s shoulder. ‘My mother has passed.’

‘I know.’

They were in the men’s longhall, just the two of them, their words strange in the emptiness.

‘I know, my son,’ said Vermundr again, his heart hollow.

He stared at the youth, feeling both proud and worried, because Vítharr was taking his mother’s death calmly but there was a streak of darkness inside him, and it could surface in cruelty from time to time. And avarice, when wandering storytellers sang of plunder and glory, of warriors founding new domains in the East. Some day Vítharr would take it in his mind to go, and perhaps that would be best for the clan, hard though it was to think so.

In his mind’s eye now, Vermundr’s beloved Anya came back to him, her spirit reaching out from dreamworld before Hel’s dread ship Naglfar took her to the Helway, to suffer in Niflheim, Niflhel, for ever.

I love you.

And I you, always.

He had first caught sight of her on entering Chief Snorri’s village, as was – on the day Arne became chief unofficially, later to be confirmed ceremonially, for Snorri had been killed in the fighting and only Arne had stepped up to organise the survivors. No one ever raised the subject of how soon Vítharr was born: seven months after Vermundr and Anya began courting, which was two months after they had met. Nor did anyone ever talk about the one eyed poet who had sojourned in the village beforehand, and tricked them into bloody conflict.

There was a cough from the longhall entrance.

‘May I enter?’

It was custom for even a volva to ask permission, this being the men’s hall, and she was new to the village and therefore still careful, though Vermundr had met her many years back, when they had been travelling to the Thing, and several times years later when she rode with traders. But last winter she had entered the village on foot, leading a daughter who was three or four summers old, and asked whether they had a volva she could talk to.

But there had been no one in that position for a long time, and little by little she had made herself useful, healing and counselling, until Vermundr asked her to move in to the old volva’s hut, once occupied by Eira, and Nessa before her.

Now she was here to comfort Vermundr’s tortured spirit.

‘Come in, Heithrún,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

She came inside and bowed to Vermundr, and nodded care fully to Vítharr.