text: Olaf did not like the way men looked at him these days. Not his own crew mates but Alrik's men. It was as though they expected him to get them all out of this mess with Jarl Guthrum, or else challenge Alrik for the leadership of the borg men. Alrik did not help matters in this regard, for as much as the man needed every able warrior he could get – and the Norsemen in particular, the way Olaf saw it – he nevertheless did a bad job of trying to hide his suspicions. Envy too, though Olaf couldn't say what the man was envious of.
  
  He knew that Alrik had not liked it when he had walked out of the place to talk with Jarl Guthrum. But that was the Svearman's problem not Olaf's. The trouble was that nearly every man in the borg had watched Olaf kill Guthrum's champion, Beigarth, and with such apparent ease too. They had been in awe of him ever since. They straightened their backs and squared their shoulders when they thought Olaf was looking, and perhaps they grew bigger balls in the fighting when he was beside them. No harm in that. Apart from when one young man, trying to impress him, had pulled down his breeks and bared his arse at Guthrum's men. That young fool was dying in agony because although they had pulled the arrow from his arse, the wound rot had come.
  
  Still, Olaf had no intention of challenging Alrik, not least because then the responsibility for the survival of every man in that fort would rest on his shoulders, and truth be told he did not have any schemes or strategies at all that might help them beat Jarl Guthrum's army or see them vanish one morning like dawn mist. All Olaf cared about was that Sigurd was Jarl Guthrum's prisoner. It gnawed at him like rats on a rope and every day that he and the rest of Sigurd's oath-sworn crew did nothing about it, his frustration grew.
  
  'The arrogant bloody fool,' he muttered now, looking south from the borg's ramparts over the tents of Guthrum's camp towards the trees beyond.
  
  'What's done is done,' Bram beside him said, and Olaf realized he'd spoken aloud.
  
  'It's Asgot's bloody fault,' Olaf went on. He might as well now. 'He's filled the lad's head with all this stuff about being Óðin-favoured. Sigurd thinks the Allfather walks next to him with a bloody great shield.'
  
  'Maybe he does,' Bram suggested with a shrug. 'The lad's still alive, or at least he was last time you saw him. Which he had no right being, seeing as Jarl Guthrum found him in his own tent ready to cut his throat like a prize bull.'
  
  Olaf gripped the hilt of the sword at his hip. 'This is what keeps Sigurd alive. What keeps any of us alive. The moment you start thinking you're some god's golden boy is the moment you trip over your own damned gut rope because some growling fuck has opened your belly with an axe.'
  
  'I say we put our shields together and walk out of here,' Svein said. He was looking south too, one arm resting on the head of his long-hafted axe. 'If those turds out there have the stomachs for a fight, so be it. But I am thinking that without their jarl here they are more likely to let us go on our way.'
  
  'And suffer Guthrum's wrath when he returns and finds out one hundred men let a half crew of Sword-Norse escape like a fart on the wind?' Olaf said. 'I don't think so, Red. And anyway, where would we go?'
  
  'Maybe the gods will tell Asgot where Guthrum has gone. Maybe they will speak to him through the runes,' Hagal said, getting in on it like a dog wanting a gnaw of the bone.
  
  Olaf grunted. 'If the gods are playing with us then they cannot be trusted and are as likely to tell Asgot that Guthrum is halfway across Bifröst when in reality the whoreson is taking a shit in the woods not five rôsts away.'
  
  'I have an idea,' Moldof said, which at least got Olaf's attention, because Moldof did not waste words and if he said he had an idea then chances were it was worth listening to. 'One or two of us go out there and grab one of Guthrum's men. One of those little sods who've been sneaking up at dusk to take pot shots.' He nodded towards a bowman who was sitting in the grass on the edge of the enemy camp fletching an arrow. 'We persuade the little prick to tell us where his jarl has gone.' He turned to Olaf. 'At least that part will no longer be a mystery.'
  
  But before Olaf could say that at least there was an idea worth a try, one of the borg men called to Knut that men were coming up the hill.
  
  They spilled from the tree line to the south and came under a banner which no one in the borg seemed to recognize: a black boar's head on a yellow cloth. Nor did Guthrum's men know these newcomers by the looks of it, for their camp burst into frenzied life as men shrugged into mail coats if they had them, and grabbed shields and weapons and tried to look like warriors.
  
  'Not friends of yours then?' Olaf said to Alrik who had come with Knut to see what was happening.
  
  'Wish they were,' Alrik said, a little too earnestly for Olaf's taste.
  
  There were some fifty warriors under that boar's head banner and they looked serious enough, though there was clearly a bit of cock swinging going on, as Bram put it, what with them trying to make an impression on those already gathered on and around that hill. Whoever was giving the orders made them stop just over a spear-throw short of the borg's gate, and Guthrum's men, who had done nothing to stop them, just stood there scratching their arses waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
  
  'It's us this new lot are interested in, then,' Knut said, as they watched one of Jarl Guthrum's warriors walk across and up the slope alone, his hands raised to the newcomers to show that he meant them no harm. Though what harm he thought he could do to those fifty men, even if he'd had a sword in each hand and a flaming firebrand sticking out of his arse, was a mystery.
  
  A big man in a helmet and mail greeted him, then pointed at the borg with his spear. They did not talk for long and after the time it takes a hungry man to empty a bowl of pottage the newcomer and one of his companions strode up to the wall, Jarl Guthrum's man following some ten paces behind.
  
  'Lord Alrik! I mean you no harm.' This was a good start at least, Olaf thought, as Alrik stepped up to the stakes and straightened his back.
  
  'I'm Alrik. Who are you?'
  
  'I am someone who wants no part in this dispute you have with Jarl Guthrum,' the mailed man said, and Svein murmured that here was another Norseman far from home. 'From what I have heard, this feud of yours is a ravenous bitch, eating men the way the ocean swallows them in a storm.'
  
  Alrik seemed to consider this, as if looking for the insult in it. But in the end he must have found only the truth. 'Then what do you want?' he asked. 'And why is my man standing at your shoulder when he is supposed to be here with the rest of us?'
  
  All eyes on the borg's ramparts flicked across to the second man.
  
  'Thór's hairy sack,' Svein growled.
  
  'Knew that dog would come back to bite us,' Aslak said.
  
  'Who is it?' Solmund hissed because his eyes were not what they had been.
  
  'Trouble, that's who,' Olaf said, for there was Kjartan Auðunarson who had slipped away before they'd had a chance to put a knife in him. He stood there looking quietly smug, with a face that just begged to be smacked and those two long beard ropes hanging from his chin.
  
  Kjartan nodded at Alrik. 'If I had stayed I'd be feeding the worms now, lord, and not because of Jarl Guthrum's men.'
  
  Alrik waved a hand as though wafting away a bad smell. He would not do that nithing Kjartan the honour of asking any more about it. Instead he looked back to the other man. 'So who are you? Or if you won't tell me that, what do you want?' He spread his arms wide. 'As you can see, I am busy not letting those goat-fuckers steal my iron and silver.'
  
  Olaf looked at the war band waiting in their skjaldborg across the hill. They were well armed, many of them wearing helmets and mail. At the centre of their line, standing beneath that boar's head banner, were five men who were adorned with war gear easily as fine as anything Sigurd's crew owned. There was a boy too, no more than twelve years old and even he was ring-coated, which was some expense to go to for a boy who would be grown out of that brynja in a summer or two.
  
  Olaf nodded towards those men. 'See the one with the pretty helmet?' he asked Bram, Svein and the others standing with him. 'That's a jarl's torc at his neck.'
  
  No one disagreed. Some growled curses.
  
  'There is a man fighting for you, Lord Alrik,' the mailed man – who Olaf now realized was merely this new jarl's voice – said. 'A young Norseman who thinks he is Óðin-favoured. I am not interested in the outlaws and dregs he has with him, but that strutting, golden-haired son of a flea-bitten whore will make himself known to me now.' He conferred with Kjartan and nodded. 'Wears the name Byrnjolf these days.'
  
  'An enemy of yours then by the sound of it,' Alrik said, to his credit not even glancing at Olaf or the other Norsemen. 'I cannot see why I would hand over one of my men just because you want him. Particularly a man whose courage and war-craft helped me take back this borg from Jarl Guthrum.'
  
  The Norseman looked across the hill at Jarl Guthrum's men who were still waiting patiently, spear blades pointing at the blue sky, probably sweating by now in their wool which was layered thick because most of them lacked for a brynja. 'You look like a man who does not need any more enemies,' the Norseman told Alrik.
  
  'And you sound like a man who is far from home,' Alrik said, which was true enough because he was a Norseman in a land of Spear-Svear. Then Alrik raised a hand. 'But let us not make trouble where there does not need to be any. The man you seek is not here.'
  
  'I have silver for you, Lord Alrik. A sackful of it.' The Norseman pointed back to the trees, meaning that as well as those in the shieldwall behind him, he most likely had friends waiting out of sight with the horses and silver and whatever else they had brought with them. 'Just give me this Byrnjolf and the silver is yours.'
  
  'I am not lying, Norseman. The man you want is not here.'
  
  'Then where is he?' the Norseman asked.
  
  'Jarl Guthrum has him. He's Guthrum's prisoner along with a shieldmaiden and another young man who is one of the best fighters I have ever seen.'
  
  Alrik shrugged. 'You tell me. The arse-welt disappeared days ago. Perhaps he has heard that his wife is swiving every stinking thrall in his hall. Or maybe he is just homesick.'
  
  'Do you have any of that silver for the man who tells you where Jarl Guthrum is?' This was from Guthrum's man who had followed the Norsemen like a dog waiting for scraps.
  
  The Norseman nodded. 'That information would be worth something, yes,' he said.
  
  Guthrum's man looked nervous then. Suddenly he was not sure he should be saying anything about it. 'And you will pay my jarl the silver you offered Alrik … if he agrees to sell you his prisoner, this Byrnjolf?'
  
  The Norseman nodded. 'Jarl Guthrum will have plenty to go around,' he said, which was the best way of putting it to an oath-sworn man such as this, who relied on his ring-giver.
  
  'Here we go,' Solmund gnarred.
  
  'My lord Guthrum has gone north to Uppland. To the temple at Ubsola.'
  
  A hiss escaped from Asgot at that, but Olaf was watching the Norseman, who cursed under his breath and glanced at Kjartan before turning back to Guthrum's man. 'Why?' he asked.
  
  'That is my jarl's business,' Guthrum's man said.
  
  'I'll tell you one thing, that doesn't bode well for Sigurd and the others,' young Thorbiorn said and Olaf looked at him because being the son of King Thorir at Skíringssalr the lad likely knew more about the Svear and the goings-on at Ubsola than Olaf or any of his westerners. But for Asgot perhaps. 'Men go there to appease the gods. Blood offerings and such,' Thorbiorn said. He looked almost amused but had the sense not to smile.
  
  The Norseman opened the purse on his belt and pulled out some hacksilver; half an arm ring, or just under half. He tossed it to Guthrum's man, who caught it, his face beneath the beard flushing red because he felt like a traitor, though not enough to turn the reward down.
  
  'Whose banner is that?' Knut asked, which was as well because Olaf had been about to ask the same question even if it meant drawing attention to himself. Not because he didn't know, but because he wanted to hear it said aloud.
  
  'Do not concern yourself with it, friend,' the Norseman said. 'As Lord Alrik pointed out, you are busy keeping hold of your silver and iron. Besides, we will be on our way and you will not likely see us again.'
  
  'I know whose banner it is,' Olaf said under his breath. 'It's bloody Hrani Randversson's.'
  
  'I told you I had seen that Kjartan Auðunarson at Örn-garð!' Crow-Song said, recalling one of his visits to Jarl Randver's hall when he had been a skald. Nowadays he was just a fighter like the rest of them.
  
  'What do you want, Crow-Song? An arm ring?' Olaf said. 'For knowing you had seen him before but not knowing where until it was too late to do anything about it?'
  
  'I told you the day before he sloped off,' Hagal protested, scowling.
  
  'Aye, you did,' Olaf admitted. 'Well, I would have saved us a lot of trouble if I'd cut Kjartan's throat that first day I smelt something off about him.'
  
  'Which is why you can't blame the man for slithering off the way he did,' Moldof rumbled. 'Knew he was dead if he stayed.'
  
  He had a point. But Kjartan had done more than vanish to save his own skin. Who knew why the man had left Hinderå in the first place and come east as far as the Baltic Sea? As one of Jarl Randver's hearthmen perhaps he was no friend of Randver's son Hrani, who now wore Randver's torc at his neck, and left of his own accord. Or perhaps he had offended Jarl Hrani in some way and got himself outlawed. Whatever the reason, rather than wake up dead with Sigurd or Olaf's knife in him, Kjartan had seen an opportunity. He had packed his sea chest and taken the news of Sigurd's whereabouts back to Örn-garð and what better way was there to fix things with the new young jarl than that?
  
  'We will be on our way then,' the Norseman said, but before he turned away he asked Alrik if there was any message he wanted delivered to Jarl Guthrum. He was barely able to keep the curl of a smile from his lips as he asked it.
  
  Alrik was twisting one strand of his drooping moustaches between his finger and thumb. 'Tell Jarl Guthrum that there is no point begging the gods for help, for they do not like to see jarls throw their men's lives away like he does. Tell him that the gods have already turned their backs on him.'
  
  The Norseman nodded and he and Kjartan turned and walked back towards where, if Olaf was right, Jarl Hrani Randversson waited in his pretty helmet under his new boar's head banner. Guthrum's man was already halfway back to his own camp, no doubt hoping his fellows had not seen the Norseman give him that piece of hacksilver.
  
  'Kjartan!' Olaf called, unable to stop himself, and both men turned back, their eyes on Olaf.
  
  'Tell your jarl that if he goes after Sigurd I swear by all the gods I will kill him.' The way Olaf saw it there was no reason to hide Sigurd's identity now. And there was every chance that Hrani had heard that threat with his own ears from where he stood with his warriors.
  
  'From here it does not look like you are in a good position to swear such things, Olaf of Skudeneshavn,' Kjartan called back.
  
  'Jarl Randver thought the same thing before Sigurd's scramasax opened his throat and we dumped him over the side,' Olaf shouted. 'I think he changed his mind about it as he sank to the sea bed and the fishes came to peck at him.' Perhaps it did not mean much, yelling threats and insults from behind a wall, but it felt good. 'If young Hrani wants to wear that torc for a few more years yet, he would be wise to piss off back to Norway.'
  
  The other Norseman growled something to Kjartan and turned away. And Kjartan went with him.
  
  'So I am not the only one with enemies,' Alrik said, grinning at Olaf.
  
  'That's the trouble,' Olaf said, watching that yellow war banner flap in the breeze. 'You kill one and another pops up like a damned toadstool. Take my advice, lads,' he said for the benefit of anyone within earshot. 'When choosing your enemies try to pick men who have no sons. It'll save you no end of misery.'
  
  Svein came up to Olaf, his forehead furrowed. 'So, Uncle, what do we do now?'
  
  Olaf was still watching the war band and their leader with the helmet that looked more gold than grey. Someone gave a command and the whole lot of them, some fifty very well-armed warriors, slung shields on their backs, turned and headed for the woods.
  
  'You know very well what we're going to do, Red,' Olaf said.
  
  They went over the wall on the borg's north side, one after another down the same rope until they all waited on the slope beneath the palisade, hearts hammering, ears straining for any sound which would warn them that they had been spotted by one of Jarl Guthrum's men.
  
  They had let three nights pass since Jarl Hrani had come, hoping for a night on which the moon was cloud-veiled because Olaf decided the risk of waiting was worth it for a better chance of slipping away unseen. At this time of year they could not hope for a pitch-black night, nor anything like proper darkness, but it was as dark as it was going to get and they had been ready. Now all they had to do was make it to the tree line, which would have been far easier had there not been a group of warriors camped round a fire halfway down the hill.
  
  Aside from the main camp there were such knots of men positioned all around the fort, each within shouting distance of another, so it was not as if Olaf really expected that they would be able to pass through the ring unnoticed, like ghosts leaving their burial mounds to walk amongst the living. Which was why he was not surprised when the first shout went up.
  
  'Suppose we'd better run then,' Solmund said with the sort of disgust you would expect. For no Norseman worth his sword enjoyed running from his enemies, but an old Norseman, whose knees ached with the rain and whose neck creaked like a rusty hinge, liked it even less.
  
  Olaf did not answer. He was already running.
  
  They didn't care about the noise of shields scraping on brynjur or thumping against helmets, or buckles jingling or even their own breathing, which sounded like a load of forge bellows all feeding the fire. They just ran, because that was hard enough given the war gear, furs, cloaks, ale skins and nestbaggins full of food weighing them down. They had also divided the silver hoard which Alrik had given to Sigurd between them and Olaf thought that these pieces of silver clinking together made the loudest sound of everything.
  
  'They're coming,' Thorbiorn called, risking a backwards glance which could easily see him trip on the uneven ground. Moths flew out of the long grass before them and now and then a ground-nesting bird clattered up hooting or squawking into the night.
  
  'Course they're bloody coming,' Bram said. 'Arseholes can hear our silver singing to them.'
  
  'Let's … put … a few down,' Svein managed, thinking that two or three dead Svearmen would discourage the rest. Or perhaps he just wanted to catch his breath.
  
  'And give the rest of them time to catch up?' Olaf said. Which was all the answer Svein was going to get because Olaf didn't have the breath to waste. No man did who tried running in mail.
  
  The shouts from behind them were getting louder. Guthrum's men were gaining, unencumbered as they were. An arrow streaked through the grey above Olaf's head. He thought he saw another from the corner of his eye but realized it was a bat, as the darker mass of the pine woods loomed before them, its sweet scent hanging on the air.
  
  Then they were amongst the trees, where it actually felt like night time, the strange half-light shafting through the woods only so far before it could penetrate no further. And at least there was a good enough reason to stop running, because running face first into a tree trunk was something no one wanted to have to live down.
  
  'They won't follow now. Not in here,' Olaf said. 'Not worth the risk.'
  
  So they waited a while, catching their breath and listening, but for Moldof who was panting like a netted fox and telling the others that they should try running with only one arm and see for themselves how much harder that was.
  
  'So that's that then,' Solmund said when he had got his own breath back and they were walking north through the woods, satisfied that Guthrum's men had given up and gone back to their fires and the easier task of surrounding men who had no intention of going anywhere.
  
  'That's that,' Olaf agreed. 'Alrik will have to manage without us.'
  
  It wasn't as though they had jumped over the wall and buggered off without telling Alrik or Knut. They would have done if it came to it, but in the event Alrik had asked to speak with Olaf shortly after Jarl Hrani had led his men off through these same woods.
  
  'You'll be wanting to go after your friend then, now you know where Guthrum has taken him,' Alrik said.
  
  Olaf had nodded. 'I will.'
  
  'I'd rather not lose you and your Norsemen,' Alrik said, 'for it will be much harder to hold this place without you. I am not too proud to admit it.' He glanced at Knut, who nodded, then he fixed his eyes on Olaf again. 'We would give you another silver hoard in return for your swords. And your oaths.'
  
  Olaf shook his head. 'Not going to happen,' he said.
  
  Alrik could not hide his disappointment, but he nodded. 'I understand these things. These bonds. What are we without them?'
  
  'Sigurd is kin,' Olaf said. 'Or as good as. And I am sworn to him. We all are.' All but for Moldof and Thorbiorn Thorirsson, that was, but there was no need to get into all of that.
  
  Knut raised an eyebrow. 'If you catch up with Jarl Guthrum, do us a favour and put a spear in his belly, hey. That would be helpful.'
  
  And perhaps that was why Alrik gave Olaf his blessing even though he was losing eleven of his best warriors. If the Norsemen killed Guthrum, the jarl's men who ringed Alrik's borg would most likely give up and go home, or else seek service with another warlord.
  
  Or perhaps Alrik was letting Olaf go because really he did not have a choice in it. It did not matter now anyway because they were out. The woods were empty. Or at least, wolf, bear, fox, boar and elk were keeping out of sight, and Olaf and the others could see their way well enough in the gloomy half-light.
  
  'Should make four or five rôsts before dawn,' Olaf said as a vole scampered across his path and into the shadow beneath a fallen old pine.
  
  'Well I am glad to be out of that place,' Svein said. 'Not for me, feeling trapped like a fish in a pool when the tide has gone out.'
  
  'You see,' Solmund said to Crow-Song, 'even Svein is more of a skald than you these days.'
  
  That got some chuckles, even from Hagal, which was a good sound in an unfamiliar forest at night. And they glimpsed enough of the stars through the pine canopy above to know that they were going north.
  
  To Ubsola.
  
  'That one is Thór's. That one is Óðin's,' a warrior named Asgrim said, pointing with his spear at two of the three great mounds which rose some thirty feet above them, dominating a landscape which was fairly flat, albeit that flatness was interrupted here and there by some hills and rocky outcrops. Good land, Olaf would have said. Rich soil, lush grazing for horses, cows, sheep and goats, and even a lake full of fish, and all of it looking as inviting as it ever would, cast in the warm evening sunlight. 'And in that one with all the yellow flowers lie the bones of Frey,' Asgrim went on, thrusting his spear towards the third and last mound. 'Frey who is the lord of rain and sunshine and peace, and who decides if a man will be rich or poor.'
  
  He had said the last bit more quietly, shooting a glance at Jarl Guthrum, who everybody knew was a poor jarl these days what with Alrik sitting on his silver and iron and having taken Guthrum's hill fort too. But Guthrum was busy combing his beard and checking the comb's fine bone teeth for lice and seemed to be somewhere else in his mind.
  
  There were countless other grass-covered humps all across the site, perhaps as many as three thousand in one massive grave meadow, but it was these three which had the hairs standing stiff on Sigurd's arms and on the back of his neck. It was as if the warm breeze was the breath of the gods. As if the faint scent of woodsmoke was a memory of their hero pyres which yet lingered after all those years.
  
  'See how they dug the earth out between the mounds to make them look even bigger,' Valgerd said, and even she, who had turned her back on the gods, seemed as much in awe of the place as Sigurd himself was.
  
  Jarl Guthrum had led them through a forest of fir and pine, then amongst sun-dappled woodland of birch, alder and the occasional oak, and it had been clear that every man felt the seiðr of Ubsola even before he had laid eyes on the parts of it those who have been to the place talk of.
  
  They touched amulets and rings and the pommels of their swords, muttering greetings to the gods and being less in love with the sound of their own voices than they had been previously.
  
  'If I did not fear to dishonour them,' Asgrim went on, meaning the gods buried in those mounds, 'I would like to come in the night and dig into the east grave to see what weapons lie there in the cold earth. Perhaps Thór's hammer Mjöllnir is just lying there waiting for a great warrior to come and claim it.'
  
  Asgrim was Jarl Guthrum's new champion and he made Beigarth look like Baldr the Beautiful. His mouth was warped like an old timber, his nose was all twisted gristle and his eyes bulged in their sockets, and all this did nothing to improve a head which was too big even for his muscle-bound body. It seemed to swell here and there, that head, so that there were bald patches amongst long strands of lank hair, and his two front teeth had been knocked out by someone, which never helps a man's appearance, as Valgerd pointed out.
  
  Floki had suggested that the reason Asgrim had not been Guthrum's champion before was because the jarl would not like to have to look at him all the time, for Guthrum was handsome and vain enough to baulk at a sight like Asgrim. And yet his new champion kept his brynja free of iron rot, his sword sharp and his helmet – which he had inherited from Guthrum's former champion – burnished so that it could blind a man when the sunlight was on it. Besides which, apart from his strong limbs, broad shoulders and bull's neck, anyone could see that Asgrim was a killer born and a warrior made.
  
  'Don't listen to him,' Jarl Guthrum said, coming to stand beside Sigurd while one of his men readied his banner and the others made sure they were looking their finest. 'Asgrim is a man who would believe that the sea is Freyja's tears and the clouds in the sky are the Æsir's sheep wandering in search of good grazing.' Guthrum shook his head at Asgrim, who may have been angry or may have cared not at all; it was hard to tell with that face of his.
  
  'There are no gods buried in those haugar,' Guthrum said, 'but there are kings. The first kings of the Svear.' He looked at Sigurd and it was clear that the jarl did not think these mounds any less important for their not holding the bones of the gods.
  
  'Kings Aun, Egil and Adils,' Sigurd said, not to impress Guthrum with his knowledge of the Yngling rulers, but because those ancient kings' names came unbidden to his lips with the bronze and copper-glow memories of fireside tales.
  
  Even so, Guthrum was impressed. He smiled, for a brief moment shrugging off the misery he had worn since deciding that the gods had forsaken him, and he turned back to his new champion whilst thumbing at Sigurd.
  
  'You see, Asgrim, even this Norseman knows more about the line of our kings than you do.'
  
  Asgrim made a deep hoom in his throat. 'If you'd wanted a know-it-all skald for your prow man you should have said so,' he rumbled, which had Guthrum's men chuckling into their beards and the jarl himself nodding in appreciation of the man's point.
  
  'It will be a shame killing him,' Floki murmured. About Asgrim not Guthrum. For the jarl's new champion had treated them well so far. He had even knocked a man called Halvdan on to his backside when Halvdan had cracked his spear's butt across Sigurd's head for no reason other than because he could.
  
  'They are Jarl Guthrum's prisoners not yours, Halvdan, you sheep's prick,' Asgrim had snarled down at the man who sat in the grass rubbing his chin. And Halvdan had not laid a finger or stave on Sigurd or the others since.
  
  It could have been his sense of honour which made Asgrim treat them fairly, but Sigurd suspected it was more likely that the man associated him and his Norse companions with his own rise. If Olaf had not killed Beigarth, Asgrim would still be a nobody, just another bone-sack in Jarl Guthrum's shieldwall. Now he would earn silver and fame as an ambitious lord's champion, and he owed that, in a roundabout way, to Sigurd.
  
  Not that Sigurd, unlike Floki it seemed, could see how they were going to get the chance to kill the man. Ever since they had learnt they were bound for Ubsola Sigurd had looked for the opportunity either to escape or to get a blade to Jarl Guthrum's throat and force the issue, but Asgrim knew his business and Guthrum had not become the warlord he was by being a fool. And if he was a fool, then what did that make Sigurd for getting himself caught by Guthrum like a wolf in a snare?
  
  'Being a prisoner gives a man too much thinking time,' Sigurd muttered to Valgerd while they waited in the gathering twilight. Because it was dusk and because Ubsola was even these days under the control of some or other Svear king, Guthrum had sent a man ahead to announce his arrival and ask permission to bring his thirty warriors along the processional way which led north-east past the three huge burial mounds to the hall beyond. That hall's shingle roof could be seen between the second and third hill, as could the plumes of several cook fires, the slate-grey smoke darker than the sky would get all that summer night. And the relief on the jarl's face was clear for all to see when the man returned, grinning from ear to ear, to say that Jarl Guthrum was welcome in Ubsola and would be met with honour in King Eysteinn's hall.
  
  'The king himself is not there. He's off fighting some karls in the north,' the man told his jarl, who was disappointed to hear that, though he pretended not to be.
  
  'What do I care whether King Eysteinn is at his hall, fighting farmers or fishing in some lake?' he announced after a moment. 'I have come to honour the gods.' He threw his arms wide in recognition of the place's spiritual richness, which none there could deny, and Halvdan felt brave enough to punch Floki in the back with his shield's boss as Guthrum ordered the party to walk on.
  
  The well-trodden path, its grass matted here and there with flattened sheep droppings, took them past the kings' burial mounds, and when they were almost past the first of them Floki hissed at Sigurd to look up. High above its summit, in a sky which was purple and dark blue but hemmed in the west with a band of rust, a golden eagle soared. Its wings outstretched, the magnificent bird searched for prey down amongst the long grass, and Sigurd knew what Floki was thinking, that perhaps Asgrim was right and Jarl Guthrum was wrong. That the Allfather's bones, nothing but ashes now, were buried in that mound from the time when he walked amongst men, for another of Óðin's names is Arnhöfði which means Eagle-Head.
  
  'So you are still watching me, Allfather,' Sigurd whispered to the eagle as it made its great sweeping circle in the dusky sky. And then the creature called back to him, a thin, high yelp which had Sigurd's guts rolling over themselves. Valgerd and Black Floki looked at him. He felt the weight of their gaze but did not take his eyes from the path ahead, and the hog-backed shingled roof of the hall that waited for them beyond the great mounds.