text: The days passed but the winter held on and the sun, when it could be seen, never rose properly into the sky but hung low, pallid and cold. Shadows lay long across the snow and the air bit still, eking in through the unseen cracks high up in the old hall's timbers to ruffle the hangings lining the staves behind the benches. It had lamp flames dancing, throwing their shadow monsters across the walls of dead oak and working their shape-shifting seiðr on the faces of the living.
  
  The two hearths burnt day and night and Sigurd's crew were either huddled around them or else out hunting deer and squirrel or buying provisions from the folk who lived beyond the woods west of Hakon's hall. On the hillside overlooking the sea they had cut a swathe through the trees – which had been allowed to grow tall in Thengil Hakonarson's time – so that they would see ships when they came. They watched the land too where they could, in case their enemies tried to come unannounced, and the hall was so huge that they trained with sword, shield and spear beneath its ancient beams. Olaf reminded them that only a fool, and a soon-to-be-dead fool at that, thinks that he will still be fast and strong even though he has long sat on his arse by the fire.
  
  Olaf himself trained with Moldof often, the giant working with his one arm until the sweat poured off him and he could hardly lift his spear. Sigurd sparred mostly with Floki, who was Týr-blessed with weapons, and those two seemed like reflections of each other, their wool-wrapped blades a blur in the flame-licked gloom.
  
  The winter endured and they waited. And then one morning Runa threw open the great flame-singed door and ran up the hall's central aisle to where Sigurd and Olaf sat talking.
  
  'They are here!' she said, bent double, drawing smoky air into her lungs.
  
  'Who is here, sister?' Sigurd asked, though he had no need.
  
  'The king,' Runa said. 'Or his men anyway.'
  
  'How do you know it's Biflindi?' Olaf asked.
  
  She scowled at him. 'I know the ship, Uncle,' she said and Olaf nodded, for Runa had stood with Sigurd on the cliffs that day of the ship fight in the Karmsund Strait, when King Gorm had revealed his treachery by not coming to their father's aid against Jarl Randver.
  
  'How many ships?' Moldof asked before Sigurd could.
  
  'Just one,' Runa said.
  
  'Then he has not come to fight you, Haraldarson,' Moldof said, 'or he would have brought three crews at least.' A grin spread in that huge, unkempt beard of his. 'You are Óðin-touched, Sigurd. And the king loses sleep over it.'
  
  The rest had gathered up the thread of it and were arming themselves, shrugging into brynjur, tightening belts, huffing on to helmets and scrubbing them to a shine with their tunic sleeves or the legs of their breeks.
  
  'Hey, Sigurd, maybe King Gorm wants to join your crew too,' Bram called, tying a leather thong around a long braid of hair.
  
  'I would not have him in the bilge with a bailing bucket,' Sigurd said, making sure that he looked like a war god in his own gear. Over his brynja and helmet he wore the great wolf's pelt, the beast's lower jaw fixed on the helmet's spike, its teeth promising death to his enemies. He strapped the greaves on to his shins over the fur-lined boots and hitched his cloak over the pommel of the sword at his left hip. There was a scramasax sheathed above his groin and a hand axe tucked into his belt. Then he took up his spear and strode from the great hall and his hirðmen went with him.
  
  'Sigurd, wait a moment.' The voice was dry and old and he turned back to look at the witch who was in her dark corner of the hall where she could spend days unnoticed by anyone.
  
  'What do you have to say to me, seiðr-wife?' Sigurd asked, gesturing at the others to go on ahead. 'Be quick about it.'
  
  'I have a riddle for you.'
  
  'Now is not the time for riddles, old woman,' Sigurd said, yet he did not walk away.
  
  'Who are the two who ride to the ting?' she asked him anyway. 'Three eyes have they together, ten feet, and one tail: and thus they travel through the lands.'
  
  Sigurd could not help but smile. 'Óðin and Sleipnir his eight-legged steed, of course,' he said, because that was one of the first riddles every child learnt from their elders. 'You will have to do better than that,' he dared.
  
  'Óðin is the Wild Huntsman,' the witch said with a smile, a hand raised as if pointing at the god's flying, fleeting charge through the sky upon the snorting beast's back, 'and his passing raises such a rush and roar of the wind as will waft away the souls of the dead. And with it Haraldarson too,' she said, now pointing a finger at Sigurd.
  
  He blamed the shiver which ran up his spine on the cold air that was a shock to his body standing there half in the hall and half out of it.
  
  'Back to your sleep, witch, and next time set a riddle that I have not heard a hundred times before,' he said, ignoring the rest of what she had said, and with that he turned his back on her and walked out into the day.
  
  'The wild hunt! The raging host!' the witch called after him. 'You cannot escape it, Haraldarson. You cannot escape the wings of the storm!' She laughed then and the sound of it was like claws in Sigurd's back as he tramped through the snow, walking in the prints which the others had made.
  
  The king's ship did not come up to the jetty. Instead she lowered her sail and her crew took up the oars, rowing her to within a good arrow-shot from the shore. Her skipper dropped the anchor stone and two men climbed into a tender tethered off the stern.
  
  'It seems they do not trust us with their ship,' Bjarni said.
  
  'Be fools if they did,' Solmund said.
  
  Sigurd waited on the snow-covered jetty where they had met Moldof those weeks before. One man was rowing the tender while the other sat stiff-backed and proud, though even at a distance Sigurd could tell that it was not King Gorm. This was a much younger man, whose loose golden hair was probably getting caught in the rings of his brynja, though he looked vain enough not to care.
  
  'You were right, Moldof, the oath-breaker has a message for me,' Sigurd said.
  
  'The pretty one is called Freystein,' Moldof said, jutting his chin towards the man sitting facing the shore while the other rowed. 'Thinks he's good with a sword.'
  
  'Is he?' Sigurd asked, but the curl of Moldof's lip was answer enough.
  
  They watched the men climb up on to the planks and Sigurd left them standing there huffing into cold hands and striking their upper arms for warmth. The one who had rowed had a nestbaggin slung over his shoulder and eyes that jumped around like fleas on a fur.
  
  'Who are you?' Sigurd asked eventually. He aimed the question at the young warrior with hair as golden as his own, wanting to hear this Freystein introduce himself. The man nodded respectfully and came forward, until Olaf growled at him that if he took another step he would be dead.
  
  The man stopped.
  
  'I am Freystein who men call Quick-Sword,' he said, as though it was a name which ought to impress.
  
  'Did your woman give you that name?' Olaf asked and the others chuckled at that.
  
  'Why don't you find out?' Freystein said to Olaf, which showed just how vain he was, for he could have had the quickest sword in the world but he would still be a dead man if Sigurd gave the word.
  
  'Let us first hear what the oath-breaker has sent his dog to bark at us,' Olaf replied, a smile bending his lips.
  
  Freystein nodded and looked at Sigurd. 'Sigurd Haraldarson?' he said, wanting it confirmed. Sigurd dipped his head and with it the wolf's head impaled on his helmet.
  
  Freystein regarded him for a long moment. 'My lord is willing to bury the issue of your attacking Jarl Randver and killing him. Even though you surely knew that by making war on the jarl you were making war on the king.' He looked beyond Sigurd and must have seen Moldof then for his brows arched and there was a glint of teeth in his fair beard, though he said nothing about it.
  
  'The oath-breaker betrayed my father,' Sigurd said. 'King Gorm and the worm Randver between them killed my brothers and my mother and many of our kinsfolk. They plotted their treachery well, buying off jarls far and wide to ensure there would be nothing to take the shine off their new alliance.' He threw both arms out as if to accept a great silver hoard which he had been offered. 'But now he is willing to overlook my killing of the worm?' He smiled. 'How generous of him.'
  
  Freystein nodded, running a hand through his long golden hair. 'As I said, he'll bury it.'
  
  'But I don't want the thing buried for I have not finished with it yet,' Sigurd said. 'Your king and Jarl Randver wove their own wyrds.' Freystein frowned, not liking what he was hearing. 'Randver has paid the price,' Sigurd said. 'The sheep's dropping who sits on the high seat at Avaldsnes who you call king will pay next.'
  
  Freystein held up a finger. 'You have not heard the rest of it, Haraldarson,' he said. 'King Gorm is not only willing to be merciful. He would be generous too, even to you. He strives to build peace these days, at least with those within five days' sailing of Avaldsnes, and he would have peace between you and him.'
  
  'Because he knows I am Óðin-favoured,' Sigurd said.
  
  'Because war is expensive,' Freystein countered, as though he were giving away information he should not be, though Sigurd knew he was merely changing tack to steer off the whole god-favoured business. 'If you will swear an oath to my king he will give you lands and silver. He will even give you another ship so that you can go raiding properly in the spring.'
  
  'Do I look like I have the crew for two ships, Freystein?' Sigurd asked.
  
  'The king will lend you men and arms. The ship will be yours to keep. You will raid the Danes and keep two thirds of the plunder. The rest you will give to Biflindi.'
  
  'Would he make me jarl in Hinderå and give me Randver's high seat?' Sigurd asked him.
  
  'Aye, it's not as if the worm has any use for it now,' Olaf rumbled.
  
  Freystein shook his head. 'King Gorm cannot give you what is not his to give. Randver's son Hrani sits in his father's seat now. He has already sent silver to the king and the king will support his claim.' Sigurd was about to speak but Freystein raised a hand. 'You will keep this hall if you want it,' he said, looking up the hillside to the tree line which hid Jarl Hakon's hall. 'I have heard it is twice the size of the king's.' He shrugged. 'Or perhaps you may build another where your father's was at Skudeneshavn. A hall even greater than Eik-hjálmr was.'
  
  'I could,' Sigurd agreed. 'But I would rather kill your king.'
  
  Freystein took that in good part, smiling broadly though his companion did not seem so comfortable. There was a man who looked as if he would rather jump into the tender and row back to his ship faster than a mackerel could swim it.
  
  'Come now, Sigurd,' Freystein said, 'this is not an opportunity to turn your back on. Not if you want to live as long as your father did.' He reached an arm out to his companion who nodded and took the nestbaggin from his shoulder. He gave it to Freystein who loosened the draw string and plunged a hand inside. When he pulled it out again there was a murmur from those around Sigurd.
  
  Sigurd himself felt as if Thór had swung the hammer Mjöllnir into his chest.
  
  'Óðin's arse,' Olaf growled.
  
  'That is a sight to rouse the blood,' Svein said.
  
  Freystein held up a great neck ring of twisted silver thicker than a man's thumb and glinting like a fish's scales. The last time its lustre had winked in Sigurd's eyes had been in the wet woods near Avaldsnes when it had been round his father's neck. Harald had fought like a champion from some saga tale that day, but in the end he had been cut down and someone, perhaps King Gorm himself, must have pulled that silver torc from the jarl's corpse. And now here it was again, within Sigurd's reach, whispering to him to take it back for the sake of his father and his brothers, for his mother and even for Runa who stood wrapped in furs on the rocks nearby.
  
  'My king sends this, your father's torc, as a gift and a sign of his respect.'
  
  'I would like to see that round your neck, Sigurd,' Svein said.
  
  'Aye, it's a foul thing to see it in this nithing's hand,' Olaf said, and far from seeming offended by this Freystein held the torc out, though it was clear that if Sigurd wanted it he would have to go and get it.
  
  'Do you think I should take it, Uncle?' Sigurd asked.
  
  'I think it's yours, Sigurd,' he said. Then he edged closer, leaning in to Sigurd's right ear. 'I think men like to see silver at the neck of the man they've sworn oaths to.' Sigurd recognized the truth in this. Such a torc around a man's neck could draw new men too, like cold hands to the hearth, because a man who owns silver is one who can also give it.
  
  'What do the gods tell you?' Sigurd called to Asgot.
  
  His stick-thin body wrapped tightly in skins and grey furs, the godi looked like one of the silver birch trees amongst which he stood. 'They watch,' Asgot said, giving no more answer than that.
  
  Sigurd nodded. He considered asking the seiðr-witch if she had foreseen this meeting with King Gorm's man. Did she already know what the outcome would be? Would he lay his hands on his father's neck ring and shine its lustre upon his own reputation?
  
  He looked over his shoulder at the witch and she grinned inside her catskin hood.
  
  'Are you a fighting man, Freystein?' he asked. 'Or just the king's tongue thrall, earning your meat and mead with words while other men pay in sweat and blood?'
  
  This ruffled the preening cock's feathers and his hand fell to his sword's hilt. 'I am a hirðman,' he said, clearly thinking this was answer enough. And it was too. For all that King Gorm made his silver from taxes these days more than from raiding, this Freystein would not have got the two silver rings on his arms without at least once or twice staining his shoes with the slaughter's dew.
  
  'Good.' Sigurd nodded. 'Then you will know that now is the time to pull your sword from its scabbard.'
  
  Freystein flicked his loose golden hair back over his shoulders. 'I am my king's hearthman,' he said, 'but today I am here to talk, Haraldarson, not fight.' He looked suddenly nervous and well he might.
  
  'Unless your words can deflect steel and iron, unless your tongue can slice flesh and bone, you would be better off drawing your sword, Freystein,' Sigurd said.
  
  'Sigurd?' Olaf said, but Sigurd was already walking towards Freystein and pulling his own sword, Troll-Tickler, from its scabbard as he went.
  
  'Hold, man!' Freystein blurted, even as his sword hissed into the bleak, grey day.
  
  'No more talking, kingsman,' Sigurd said and his first swing would have cleaved Freystein's head in half had the man not got his own blade in the way. Yet he staggered back under the blow, his feet slipping on the brittle snow and ice sheathing the jetty's planks. He glanced back to his ship anchored out there in the bay, but those aboard her could not help him now. His companion stepped back, shaking his head and throwing up his arms to show that he wanted no part of it. Another step would put him in the sea.
  
  Freystein parried again and this time swung his sword, but there was not enough muscle behind it and Troll-Tickler turned it aside easily.
  
  'This is dishonourable, Sigurd! The king will spit fury if you kill me!' Freystein managed, eyes bulging. His face, which had no doubt brought women to his bed, was fear-warped and ugly now.
  
  'The king can spit lightning and fart thunder for all I care,' Sigurd said. 'That slithering prick has no right to offer me what is already mine. I will take these things back when I choose.' With that he strode forward again and swung Troll-Tickler high, but as Freystein brought his own sword up to block, Sigurd twisted, stepping back on to his left foot, and brought Troll-Tickler down across his own body before scything it up into Freystein's belly above his right hip. The blade tore up through the rings of the man's brynja and he screeched with the shock of it as a dozen broken rings fell on to the jetty.
  
  Sigurd hauled the blade free and took a step back. Freystein stood there still as a rock, as though waiting to see if he had been dealt a death wound, for there was not yet blood in the torn flesh.
  
  'Sometimes happens like that on a cold day,' Bram rumbled from somewhere behind as Sigurd walked up to Freystein and took hold of his shoulder, turning the stunned man around so that he faced out to sea. So that the men in King Gorm's ship had eyes full of it. Then, gripping Freystein's left shoulder he put Troll-Tickler's point against the small of the man's back and forced the blade in, grimacing as it broke through mail and wool, leather, linen, skin and flesh. The steel scraped off bone, held for a heartbeat, then broke through the last resistance and erupted from Freystein's belly, and Sigurd held him close, his mouth against the man's ear so that to those on Biflindi's ship it must look as if Freystein was being savaged by a wolf. The king's man was mewing.
  
  'This is the answer I give to your king,' Sigurd roared across the water, as Freystein's high-pitched cry ended in a soft sigh and his legs gave way so that he fell to his knees. Sigurd hauled his blade free and stood looking at the ship in the bay, ignoring Gorm's other man who was pissing down his own leg, the liquid steaming in the cold air.
  
  To his credit Freystein still gripped his sword. He had dropped the jarl torc, though, and Sigurd bent to pick it out of the snow. He opened the ring wider and put it around Freystein's neck as the man knelt, coming to terms with his own death. But before Sigurd had finished squeezing the two bulging ends together, Freystein pitched forward into the snow, his golden hair splayed across the icy crust.
  
  'That is that then,' Olaf said.
  
  They stood there for a moment. Just looking. 'Svein, help this piss-soaked huglausi get Freystein into the boat,' Olaf said, glaring at Freystein's companion, who was corpse-pale himself and trembling like an old dog.
  
  'Take this worthless pile of pig shit back to your king,' Sigurd said. 'Tell the oath-breaker that Sigurd Haraldarson says there will be no peace between us. Tell the maggot-arsed nithing to start digging his own burial mound for he will need it soon enough.' The man nodded, as Svein and Bram took hold of Freystein and lifted him, and still there was no blood to be seen, not a drop staining the snow. 'And leave the torc where it is,' Sigurd warned the Avaldsnes man. 'Tell your king that he may keep my father's torc a little longer yet. Until such time as I decide to take it back.' He bored his eyes into the man. 'But I will have it back.'
  
  'I will tell him . . . lord,' the man said, hoping his flattery would be well received.
  
  Sigurd looked over at Runa. Her eyes betrayed no fear or horror at what they had just seen. But her jaw was tight and her cold-reddened hands were knots at her sides and Sigurd knew that his killing of Freystein must have shocked her. He wanted to tell her that all would be well, that he knew what he was doing. But just as no blood had come to Freystein's torn flesh, so no reassuring words would come to Sigurd's lips. In truth he did not know what he was doing, only that he had followed where instinct led. That would do for now.
  
  Of the others on that shoreline watching Gorm's man clamber into his boat beside the bloodless corpse, most had granite-hard faces and cold eyes. They knew now, if they had not already known, that there could be no peace, and that they were up to their knees in this blood feud until the end. Valgerd and Aslak, Crow-Song and old Solmund and the others. They would sail into this storm together.
  
  Asgot caught Sigurd's eye and gave a slight nod. Sigurd had once again proved himself worthy of the Allfather's one-eyed gaze. Black Floki was grinning like a wolf. Olaf was frowning, though even he would not say that Sigurd had been wrong to decline the king's offer, so Sigurd bent and picked up a handful of snow, running it along his blade to remove any bit of Freystein that might be caught on it, and watching the king's men out there in the bay who were yelling curses, threats and insults at him. Bjarni and Bram hurled their own insults back, calling the Avaldsnes men cowards and inviting them to come ashore and fight. But the yard was already being hauled up the mast and the oars were clunking into their ports and there would be no more fighting today. Freystein's piss-wet friend rowed the little boat back to his ship and Sigurd watched him go.
  
  And in Valhöll the roof beams shook with the gods' laughter.
  
  'He said what?' Gorm knew he was yelling. He knew his thralls were scuttling away like crabs off a rock, suddenly seeking outside jobs because freezing was preferable to being near his blazing rage. 'The insolent, swaggering shit! The strutting, cocksure, lording puddle of rancid pus!'
  
  Groa flinched as a gobbet of Gorm's spittle struck his lip.
  
  'I'll rip his throat out!' No. A better idea. 'I'll cut the runt. I'll open him up and pull out his gut rope. Feed it to my pigs and make him watch as they gobble it up.' Gorm backhanded a cup off the table and it bounced in the rushes by the hearth. His hound was whining, sad to see its master agitated. Gorm closed his eyes and took a breath. 'Who does that haughty son of a nobody jarl think he is?'
  
  'He's an animal, lord,' Groa said, putting a hand to his lip. 'They all are.'
  
  In that deep, slow breath Gorm caught the tang of stale piss. It was coming from Groa. He felt his lip curl at the thought that the man might have pissed himself with fear in front of Haraldarson and his crew. Mouse piss in the floor rushes, he told himself, preferring that explanation.
  
  'I should have cut him down there and then, lord,' Groa said. 'I nearly did.' He put a hand to the hilt of the sword at his left hip. 'But then we would never have brought Freystein's body home.' Groa looked around, peering through the smoke, relieved that no one who had been on the ship watching Freystein die was in the hall to hear the lies spilling like goat turds from his mouth.
  
  Gorm looked down at Freystein's body. At Jarl Harald's torc which was still round his blue-white neck. Even that was a big thing. All that silver. Harald had been too self-important. Doubtless that's where his runt got it from.
  
  'He didn't bleed?' the king asked. You could not miss Freystein's death wound, but his breeks, tunic and mail were clean.
  
  'It was cold,' Groa said with a shrug.
  
  'Arse,' Gorm muttered, wishing Freystein were alive to know how disappointed his king was with him. He looked back to Groa. What did you do then, he thought, glaring at Groa, disgusted by the sight of him. What did you do when Haraldarson was opening Freystein up from hip to chest? When he was putting that rope of twisted silver round Freystein's neck? Other than piss yourself.
  
  'He said there will be no peace between you, lord. That you should dig your burial mound,' Groa said, filling the silence, using words like a shield to deflect the king's obvious revulsion.
  
  'My burial mound?' The rage came again and Gorm turned to look at the hearth flames, drawing the sweet birch smoke deep into his lungs. 'Hmm . . .' He swallowed another clutch of curses and listened to the fuel cracking and popping. Outside, Kadlin was yelling at a thrall. As if getting the stain out of a kyrtill hem was important.
  
  'And Moldof?' Gorm said. He watched the flames still. He did not want to see Groa's annoying face. He could almost hear the man squirming.
  
  'He was there, lord,' Groa said.
  
  'I know he was there,' Gorm said. 'He didn't give you a sign of any sort?'
  
  'A sign, lord?'
  
  Gorm turned round and fixed the man with his eyes. This spineless toad sits at my table, he thought. 'Moldof went up to Osøyro to put a sword in Haraldarson. Yet there he was on that jetty, standing with those treacherous dogs watching Haraldarson kill my hearthman. Listening to Haraldarson pile insults upon me.' This was perhaps the worst part of all. Worse than Freystein being split open anyway. Quick-Sword. Ha! Not quick enough. 'Perhaps Moldof gave you some secret sign that he still intends to do what he promised.'
  
  'I saw no sign, lord,' Groa said. 'He watched Freystein die and did nothing. Together we might have killed a handful of them.' His hand went towards his sword grip again then he thought better of it and scratched his side instead. 'Maybe Moldof has joined them because he cannot face the shame of what he is nowadays.'
  
  The smell of piss was stronger now. The heat from the hearth getting into the weave of Groa's breeks.
  
  'Get this out of my sight,' Gorm said, waving a hand at the bloodless corpse in the rushes. 'But give me that first.' By 'that' he meant the torc, which Groa bent and prised off Freystein's neck, no doubt relieved that Quick-Sword's eyes were closed, and gave to his king.
  
  I offer this to the man and he turns it down? Well, he will regret that.
  
  'Fetch Fionn,' he told Groa.
  
  'Fionn? That little pale man who looks like a stoat?'
  
  'Bring him to me.'
  
  'Is he still here? If so I don't know where,' Groa said. 'But I'll find him,' he added with a curt nod, having seen the rage flare in Gorm's eyes again.
  
  'You will,' Gorm said. Then he turned back to the hearth to watch the flames dance.
  
  'So you've changed your mind, lord,' the man said.
  
  Gorm grunted. He had not changed his mind. He had not made up his mind where this outlander was concerned. He had just sent for the man and there was nothing more to it than that. Yet.
  
  'I knew you would. Just a matter of waiting.' The man wasn't smug about it, simply matter of fact.
  
  Gorm winced as his stomach griped. He had woken that morning just in time to get to the latrine pit but his bowels were full of dark, stinking water again. He could feel it churning. 'Spiced ale?' he said.
  
  'Keeps the cold out,' the man said in his strange accent.
  
  Gorm gestured to a thrall who was stirring the pot hanging over the hearth. The thrall took two cups and dipped them into the steaming juniper ale.
  
  Groa was right, Fionn did look like a stoat. Or a pine marten perhaps. And he was as pale as poor Freystein too, ill-looking really, all sinew and vein and sunken eyes like piss holes in snow. To look at him Gorm did not know why he had sent for the man. Certainly Fionn did not look much of a warrior, even less so in the company of Hreidar and Alfgeir and his other hirðmen. Third or fourth rank in the shieldwall perhaps.
  
  But then again . ..
  
  There was something about him. Something in those dark eyes: to look at them was like peering into the fjord on a dark winter's day and hoping to see the fish on the bottom taking your hook. They showed nothing of what lay beneath, those eyes, and maybe that was a common trait in men from Alba in the west. Who could say?
  
  'What makes you think you can do it?' Gorm asked. 'He has friends. Not many of course. But good fighters.'
  
  'You want them all dead? Or just this Sigurd Haraldarson?'
  
  'Just him. For now.'
  
  Fionn nodded. 'Then I can do it.'
  
  'Others have tried. Others have failed. Most are dead,' Gorm said as the thrall gave them their cups and slipped away like a wraith.
  
  'I'll kill him,' Fionn said.
  
  Gorm lifted the cup to his nose and breathed in the fragrant brew. Fionn was confident. He'd give him that. But maybe he was deluded. Maybe he was mad without seeming it.
  
  Fionn's brow lifted a touch. 'If you have a rotten tooth that is hurting, you do not ask the smith to knock it out with his hammer. You use—' he mimed the action in the absence of the Norse word.
  
  'Pliers,' Gorm said, annoyed with himself for playing the game.
  
  Fionn nodded. 'You pull it out like a bent nail.'
  
  Gorm knew full well what the man meant by this but gave him more frown anyway.
  
  'Sigurd Haraldarson will be expecting the hammer. Not the pliers,' Fionn said, blowing into the steaming cup before slurping at the ale.
  
  'Still, you must reckon yourself a great fighter, Fionn of Alba,' Gorm said, trying to draw the man into a boast or two. Anything to suggest he was a warrior after all.
  
  Fionn shrugged. 'I fight when I need to. But you don't need to fight to kill.'
  
  Was the man talking about poison? Hemlock in Haraldarson's ale? Gorm didn't think so. He loves his blades, this little man. A good-looking sword at his hip. Not a big cleaver – he didn't have the muscle for it – but a well-made weapon if the hilt was anything to go by with its lobed pommel and grip inlaid with fine silver wire. A bone-handled scramasax hanging above his groin and another long knife scabbarded at his right hip. No brynja that Gorm had seen. Nor a helmet. Blades in the dark then. Or in the back, rather than a toe-to-toe fight. No honour in that. Not that Gorm cared where Harald's son was concerned. That golden puffed-up boy did not deserve a good death.
  
  'They say you are from Alba in the west,' Gorm said. Fionn nodded. 'Why are you not in Alba now?'
  
  'A man paid me to kill his king,' Fionn said.
  
  This was a brave thing to admit, Gorm thought.
  
  'And his king's wife too,' Fionn went on. 'She being with child.' His lip curled. 'Then the man decided he wanted his silver back and tried to have me killed.' He held the king's eye. 'That did not go well for him.'
  
  'And yet you had to flee the land of your birth? You wash up here on my shore,' Gorm said.
  
  'It became complicated,' Fionn said with a shrug.
  
  Gorm did not doubt it. 'If you do it—' he began.
  
  'When I do it, lord king,' Fionn interrupted. The stoaty little shit.
  
  'How much will it cost me?' Gorm asked, not that he cared. He drank, feeling the ale course down his throat to bloom hot in his empty belly. He had not eaten yet today with his guts being sour. Gods, what a feast he would give when Harald's runt was dead. When that thorn was out of his flesh.
  
  'Looking at that torc at your neck,' Fionn said, 'I think I will have the same weight in silver.'
  
  Gorm touched the twisted rope of gold at his neck. Thick as his forefinger, it was the kind of neck ring which skalds put in their songs of the ancient heroes, its dragon-head terminals facing each other across the hollow between his collar bones.
  
  'That is a lot of silver,' Gorm said.
  
  'You will give me silver for my journey, and food. I will keep Haraldarson's sword and any silver I find on him. Same goes for any of the others if it turns out I have to kill them too.'
  
  Gorm kept his face smooth as a sleeping sea. He would have given this stranger Storm-Bison, his favourite ship, in return for Haraldarson's head on a spear. He nodded at the cup in Fionn's hand. 'I'll fill that with hacksilver if you open Moldof's belly too,' he said. 'If it turns out that he is now Haraldarson's man.'
  
  Fionn shook his head. 'I would be doing that one-armed fool a favour and will kill him for nothing,' he said.
  
  Gorm studied him. What did he have to lose by sending him after Haraldarson? Nothing so long as he kept it to himself, in case the man made a mess of it and it reflected badly on him.
  
  'Tell no one,' he said, tilting his cup at the Alba man. 'As far as anyone else is concerned, you have moved on.'
  
  Fionn nodded. 'I do not hunger to live for ever in some fireside saga,' he said. 'Nor do I need Haraldarson's friends coming after me. No one will know it was me.'
  
  'Good,' Gorm said, frowning as his guts bubbled and he felt the pressure of their foul contents as a dull ache; for a terrifying moment he feared he might shit himself in front of this man. 'Now leave me,' he said. 'And do not return here until it is done.'
  
  Fionn nodded again, downing the rest of his ale in one go before putting the empty cup on the end of the long table and preparing to leave.
  
  'Wait,' Gorm said and Fionn turned back to face him. 'What happened to this king in Alba? You killed him?'
  
  'Yes,' Fionn said.
  
  'And his wife whose belly was full of child?'
  
  'Her too,' the man said.
  
  Gorm nodded. Fionn turned and walked away and Gorm watched him go, feeling the rush of cold air sweep into the hall as the Alba man opened the door and went out into the day.
  
  Gorm grunted at his clenching guts, finished his ale, then hurried off to the latrine pit, imagining the relief he would feel when Harald's son was no longer in the world.
  
  'We have the sea to ourselves and can there be a better feeling than that?' Solmund asked, gripping the loom of the tiller like the hand of a lover. His eyes, like Sigurd's own, were watery in the frigid air and his nose was red as a rowan berry. 'This is better than being stoppered up in Burner's old hall like stale beer in a flask, hey!' A drop quivered at the end of the helmsman's nose and his bones must have been as cold as icicles for he did not have much flesh over them these days, but rarely had Sigurd seen him so happy.
  
  'It's colder than Hel's arse cheeks,' Olaf said, clapping his hands as he stepped up to join them on the steering platform and watched the ragged coast slip by Reinen's steerboard side. 'There's a reason crews don't go raiding in winter. Why we trade the sea-road for the roaring hearth.'
  
  'Now who is the skald?' Hagal Crow-Song said through a grin.
  
  'It doesn't take much to be a better skald than you, Crow-Song,' Olaf replied, and Sigurd felt the cold air on his own teeth as Hagal muttered curses into his beard.
  
  In truth Olaf too was happy to be at sea again, even in this biting cold and with barely a fart's worth of wind playing on Reinen's sail to push them south into the Bjørnafjord. It was better than waiting for your enemies to turn up, like a shipwrecked man treading water before inevitably sinking to the sea bed, as Solmund himself had put it.
  
  'The king will come. Your insult will give him no choice,' Moldof had said. 'And he will come with four or five crews to make sure he stamps you out properly. He'll bring enough spears to beat you even were Týr and Óðin themselves stood in your shieldwall.'
  
  Sigurd had known this was the truth, that his refusal of Biflindi's offer and his killing of the messenger Freystein would be to the king's reputation as salt water is to a sword or brynja: it would eat away at it like iron rot. Gorm had no choice now but to kill Sigurd and have the world see him do it. Which was why they had hauled the snow-crusted skins from Reinen's thwarts, thumbed new tarred horsehair between some of the strakes, bailed out the seep water from the bilge, knocked open those oarhole covers which had frozen stuck and hefted their sea chests aboard. They had piled spears in the bow and stern, shields midships, water barrels in the small open hold, along with dry kindling, spare cloaks, tools, ropes and rivets, their brynjur and as much smoked meat and fish as they could get their hands on. But most of this space was taken up by bales of bear furs, wolf, fox and squirrel pelts, sheep skins, otter skins and even reindeer hides, which Thengil Hakonarson had hoarded up in the rafters of his hall. It had taken them half a day to bring all the bales down, and from the look of the bird shit and old nest material on the top bales, and the mice nests on the bottom furs, they must have been up there for years. And yet most of them were in fine condition and the whole lot was worth a good deal of silver.
  
  'Seems that fat toad Thengil was a raider in his way,' Olaf had said, when the others started to carry the bales down to the jetty, Svein making a show of taking one under each arm. 'If you had four legs and a hairy back you were as good as dead.'
  
  'Then it is just as well Bram was not born in these parts,' Bjarni said, nodding at Bram who was bynamed Bear because he was all beard and bluster and shared a good many similarities with that animal.
  
  'Ha!' Bram said, patting the top fur of the bale he was about to heft. 'And I was just about to ask you and your brother if either of you recognize this pelt, for the last time I saw it it was between your mother's legs.'
  
  The brothers appreciated the insult and grinned at one another as they lifted their own bales and followed Bram out of the dark smoky hall.
  
  'Thengil must have traded with the Sámi for the reindeer hides,' Sigurd said.
  
  'Unless they were left over from his father's time,' Olaf suggested. 'Old Hakon Burner used to collect tribute far and wide. Wouldn't surprise me if he raided in the wastelands to the east just for the damned mischief in it.'
  
  However they had got there, those pelts would have been better used lining the planks of Burner's old hall which was as big as Bilskírnir, Thór's own dwelling place, and draughty as Svein's backside, as Crow-Song had put it. Now the bales accounted for almost all of Sigurd's wealth. He could not pay his hirðmen with skins, but he could trade those skins for food or silver and seeing as he was crew-light, those bales were more than worth the space they took up aboard Reinen.
  
  'So where will we go?' Olaf had asked that night after they had watched King Gorm's man row the torc-wearing corpse back to the waiting ship, and that ship had turned its stern post on them and sailed away.
  
  'South,' Sigurd said, 'then east.' He shrugged.
  
  'Aye, so long as we sail beyond Biflindi's reach – Hrani Randversson's reach too come to that – it doesn't matter where we go.' Olaf had fixed those sea-grey eyes on Sigurd's own then and his next words were heavy things, like loom weights in Sigurd's ears. 'But you will need to give them silver,' he said.
  
  'I know my duties, Uncle,' Sigurd had replied, prickling under the older man's gaze, resentful of being reminded of his responsibilities. He had not forgotten that those warriors freezing in Reinen's thwarts, all but for Moldof, had sworn an oath to him, their lips touching the pommel of his sword, their words spoken over the blade. They would fight for him, had sworn sword and shield, flesh and bone, to not flee one step from the battle as long as the sun shines and the world endures, henceforth and for evermore. But an oath was weighed in the scales of honour and must be found to balance or else it was nothing more than chaff in the wind. To balance those scales Sigurd must give them meat, shelter and silver.
  
  There was not much in the way of shelter now, though, out there aboard Reinen.
  
  'Still, I am no jarl,' Sigurd said. 'And they are not like any húskarlar I have seen. We are all of us outlaws now.' He gestured at the ship beneath them and the fjord around them. 'Whoever wants more than this is free to jump overboard. I will not stop them.'
  
  Olaf raised an eyebrow at Solmund and Sigurd turned his back on them both to look out across the fjord, which was rippled and iron grey and cold as death.