text: As it happened, they had spent another three days in Birka, waiting for a good wind and keeping out of trouble while Knut rounded up the last of those other men whom he had convinced to sell their swords to his lord Alrik and sail north with him. Some of these were men from outlying farms who had endured a hard winter and would need to earn enough silver to get their families through the next one. Most were Svearmen but some were Geats who had come north to Birka to make a name for themselves in trade or war. Rumour was that one man was from far-off Alba across the whale's road, which had men intrigued, at least until they laid eyes on him, for word had it the man was not much to look at. But wherever they were from Knut promised them fame as men of Alrik's war band, his fellowship, and they had swallowed the hook whole, and perhaps they would earn fame in the sword-song. Still others were young men who would rather do anything than work the land like their fathers, or spend their days fishing, or turning wood, cutting peat to harvest bog iron, or felling trees in the forests. Few owned brynjur, helmets or swords, but most came with spears, short axes and heads full of fireside tales, and when they saw Sigurd and his crew they were round-eyed and as full of awe as men who have caught a glimpse of the world of the gods at the far end of Bifröst the shimmering bridge.
  
  'Either you served a generous king or else you killed a rich one,' Knut had said to Sigurd, for even he had been impressed by the sight of them in all their war glory the day they had set off from Birka. It was not that Sigurd expected trouble, but he wanted Knut to see them in their mail and helmets, their spear blades gleaming, sword scabbards and belts oiled and lustrous, axe heads polished, and each of them looking as rich as a jarl and dangerous as death.
  
  'No king gave us this war gear,' Sigurd had said, which was answer enough. Knut would know that he had brought battle-tested warriors to his lord's banner. He would also know better than to cheat them or waste them in some hopeless fight.
  
  So they had sailed north across Løgrinn in the wake of Knut's ship, a sleek karvi named Kráka, which had Solmund muttering that Crow was a strange name for a ship, but then these men were Svear, he said, which he supposed explained it. The crossing was easy enough, even when on the second day the wind died and they had to row, because although Løgrinn was not strictly a lake, for it drained into the Baltic Sea, it was as flat as a mead board. Terns, herring gulls, ducks and sandpipers thronged on the skerries. Now and then cormorants flew low over the water across Reinen's path, having returned to the north now that winter was over, which was a good thing to see, though young Thorbiorn was not so sure and would touch the Freyja pendant at his neck whenever he saw one. He believed that the birds were men who had been lost at sea, which had even Asgot muttering to himself. 'Those who drown but escape Rán's cold embrace end up on the island of Utrøst,' King Thorir's son told them. 'But the only way they can return to their homes to see their loved ones again is if they take the shape of cormorants.'
  
  'And where is this Utrøst?' Solmund asked him. 'For I have never heard of it.'
  
  Thorbiorn had shrugged and shot the helmsman a petulant look. 'You tell me, seeing as you are the one with salt water for blood and a beating sail for a heart,' he said. 'Besides, my mother told me the story when I was a boy and I cannot remember it all.'
  
  'You must have a bad memory then, lad,' Solmund gnarred, which was well said because Thorbiorn was still a boy in many ways.
  
  And when they came to the northern edge of Løgrinn, they followed Kráka east along the thickly forested shore until they arrived at the bay in which Alrik's other ships were moored. There were five of them in all: three knörrs, a big snekke as good for war as for riding the whale road, and another karvi similar to Crow, though to Sigurd's eyes none of them was as handsome as Reinen. The forest around the bay had been cleared, the timber having gone into several small buildings and the palisade of sharpened stakes which surrounded the settlement, enclosing it almost to the shore so that the ships at their moorings were protected. The rest of the place was a clutter of tents and animal pens, workshops and stores, and all of it roofed by a pall of smoke from the many fires around which men and women gathered. Though many of the men and women, at least fifty or sixty, came to the muddy shore to see Kráka and Reinen slide up to their moorings. They greeted Knut and those men they knew, exchanging news and hurling insults at one another the way men will when they are pleased to see that their friends are still in one piece.
  
  Some of the camp men asked Knut how he had managed to get so many young men drunk enough to join him. Others told those wide-eyed strangers that they should have stayed in Birka where there were plenty of women and less chance of being gutted by a spear or bitten to death by the midges which swarmed round Løgrinn's shore in the summer. Most, though, eyed the poorly armed new men the way a gull watches a ship which it knows has its prow turned towards a storm.
  
  'They've seen fighting, that lot,' Bram told Olaf, nodding towards a knot of men who, instead of clucking over the newcomers, were standing round a rack on which a wolf skin was stretched for scraping.
  
  His arms full of his sea chest, Olaf glanced over at the men and nodded. They wore their experience of the spear-song like the cloaks on their backs. It was pride but weariness. It was callous cruelty but the indifference of a dull blade. It was fellowship.
  
  'Take me to Alrik,' Sigurd told Knut when they had all disembarked and Knut had shown Reinen's crew to their sailcloth shelter near the shore's edge.
  
  'He is not here,' Knut said. 'But in a few days we will march north to Fornsigtuna. You will meet him then.'
  
  There was no room in any of the log houses for now, but that could change at any time, Knut assured them. Not that Sigurd minded sleeping under sailcloth, for he did not want to be far from Reinen until he had got a better idea about this war-leader Alrik and his people.
  
  'I don't think they have seen many shieldmaidens before,' Knut said to Valgerd, who must have felt the weight of men's eyes more than any of them. 'In truth I would have filled two of Asvith's cups just for you.' Even a grizzled, one-eared, finger-light warrior like Knut was not invulnerable to Valgerd's fierce beauty, though unlike Bjarni – or Sigurd himself, truth be told – he was not vain enough to believe that she might be attracted to him. 'Alrik will see it as a good omen that I've brought him you.'
  
  'His enemies will see it differently the first time they face her,' Sigurd said.
  
  Knut nodded, tearing his eyes from Valgerd back to Sigurd. 'I will make sure I am nearby to see it,' he said. 'So . . . which of you will help me train these wet-behind-the-ears lads so that they don't turn and run off the first time they hear a shield din?'
  
  'I'll help you,' Olaf said, coming back out of the tent. 'If one of them ends up beside me in the shieldwall I want to know he's not going to piss on my shoes.'
  
  'Aye, I'll come,' Bram said.
  
  'Me too,' Bjorn said, picking up his spear and shield.
  
  'Good,' Knut said, turning towards the others. 'The rest of you make yourselves comfortable and try not to start any fights. You'll be earning the silver I paid for you soon enough.'
  
  'Where will we find the ale?' Svein asked, throwing an arm over Bjarni's shoulder. 'If we are busy drinking then we are not busy fighting.'
  
  For a moment Knut looked dubious, then he pointed to a tent of red cloth across the far side of the camp beside a modest log-built longhouse whose thatch leaked so much smoke that presumably it let in the rain too. 'You need to speak to a man called Trygir. He will give you the two skins which is your crew's daily measure. You want more, you pay for it.'
  
  Svein and Bjarni seemed happy enough with that and off they went. The others continued lugging sea chests and war gear into the tent and making their nests with furs and fleeces, and Sigurd looked up to see a white-tailed eagle soaring high above the forest beyond the palisade.
  
  We will sharpen our own talons for this Alrik, he thought, and see where it leads us. There would be fighting and the gods would be watching. And Sigurd would fill his sea chest with silver because silver would buy him a war host.
  
  Fionn had begun to think he had lost the scent and yet he had never taken his eyes off the jetties and wharves, as though by imagining Haraldarson he could conjure the reality. Then one blustery day Reinen had slid up to her mooring and Fionn's quarry had been all but served up to him on a trencher. The farmer's wife had been telling the truth after all, which was worth knowing. Good to know his methods were effective, not that he'd ever really doubted them.
  
  Ever since that day, Fionn had watched Sigurd the way a hunter stalks a bull elk, looking for the perfect opportunity to strike. Waiting for his prey to make some mistake, to reveal his weakness. Just one vulnerable moment would be enough, was all the hunter needed. But Fionn had stalked enough men in his time to know that patience itself is to a killer as important as a well-honed blade. Four winters past he had shared hearth, hall and three full moons with a man he was being paid to kill. They had even become friends so that his quarry was as shocked as any victim could be when Fionn had put a knife in him while the man squatted behind the reed screen with his breeks round his ankles. Perhaps Fionn could have taken him before that, but there was something about the waiting which excited Fionn, which put a bone in his own breeks truth be told.
  
  And yet he did not have the luxury of time now. Having pledged himself to fight for Alrik the last thing he intended was actually doing so. Not for him the shieldwall and the chaos of battle. Nor death by some unseen arrow falling from the sky, or facing some thick-skulled giant waving a long axe around thinking he was the Thunder God. Not that anyone could call Fionn a coward, for it took balls to look into the eyes of a man you had shared a mead horn with and put your knife into his heart. A man needed iron in his spine to hunt and kill a man who was said to be god-kissed, favoured by Óðin whom these men around him now called Allfather, Spear-God, Battle-Wolf. But Fionn did not fear these northern gods. It was not that he doubted their existence, just that he did not think they cared one way or the other about mortals and their struggles. When Fionn's knife drank, men died. He had crossed the whale's road some five years ago now and no shining, spear-wielding god, no red-bearded or blaze-eyed Lord of Asgard had ever come down from the clouds to stop him cutting a throat.
  
  But people? People sometimes got in the way. The big growler who watched Sigurd like a proud father was one to start with. Olaf his name was, and Fionn might not have revelled in the spear din like some men but he knew a formidable warrior when he saw one. This Olaf had the war gear and the bearing of a champion, a man who fears no other, but more than this, he was older than most of Haraldarson's crew and wiser too.
  
  Yet, Olaf was not the only warrior between Fionn and Sigurd. There was a wolf-lean, black-haired young man who might as well have had 'raven-feeder' carved in runes on his head, for he was a killer and no mistake. Fionn had not caught this man's name but he and his hand axes were rarely far from Fionn's prey. And there was Moldof the one-armed, who used to be King Gorm's prow man and who might well recognize Fionn from his time at Avaldsnes.
  
  And so Fionn, hunter of men, killer of men's enemies, had watched and waited and now, on the third night since they had come ashore to Alrik's camp, he was beginning to smell an opportunity like the iron scent of blood in the air.
  
  Perhaps two skins of ale per day should have been enough for a half crew like them. But it was not. Svein, Moldof, Bjorn, Bjarni and Thorbiorn each drank two men's share. Bram drank three. And so long as they were not fighting or causing too much trouble Sigurd did not see the harm in keeping them well sluiced in the stuff. He was their leader, and whilst he could not be much of a ring giver yet, he could reward their loyalty with ale, which was just as good as far as most of them were concerned. Sigurd had done what he could to keep Alrik's ale flowing into their cups like meltwater off a cliff face, but they had run out again now, which was why he was walking through the camp in the pouring, freezing rain towards Trygir's red sailcloth tent. Men sat huddled in skins under what meagre shelter they could find, murmuring round hissing fires and looking miserable with it. Sigurd imagined that more than a few of the younger lads, who had followed Knut singing their own legends under their breath, were beginning to think they should have stayed in Birka where there was plenty of dry floor space and better ale than Trygir's to be had.
  
  'I could see the fear in their faces,' Valgerd said through a grin as they walked together. 'They were terrified that I would not be able to carry as much.'
  
  Sigurd laughed, slipping and sliding in the mud, his arms outstretched for balance. 'And yet not one of them was so terrified that he volunteered to go in your place,' he said, walking through a thick haze of smoke which leaked from a nearby shelter made of spears stuck in the mud with oiled skins for its roof.
  
  'Fetch a drop for us, won't you, lad?' a voice from the smoke said, though Sigurd could not see the body to whom it belonged amongst those who huddled steaming and stinking in that shelter.
  
  'You do look younger without your brynja and helmet and with your beard braided like that,' Valgerd said, amused by the man having addressed Sigurd as though he were some stripling running errands.
  
  'And yet no less handsome, hey?' Sigurd replied, made bold by the ale already inside him warming his blood.
  
  'Or vain,' Valgerd said, lifting an eyebrow then nodding through a gap between two tents because she had seen Trygir's place through the rain and the gloom.
  
  When Sigurd had told the others he was off to fetch more ale he had glanced at Valgerd in the hope that she might offer to go with him. It was childish really, he thought, and the rest of them, those still halfway sober, had probably seen clean through it. And yet he did not care because before Svein had slurred three words Valgerd had stood, pushed her wet hair off her forehead and said she could do with walking a cramp out of her legs. And now they were alone, which meant that Sigurd's less than cunning plan had somehow worked.
  
  It was dark inside Trygir's tent, the only light coming from two lamps which burnt foul-smelling fish oil, and the rain was pelting against the sailcloth which had been slathered in pine tar to keep Trygir and his barrels dry. In a corner of the tent a boy sat on a pile of furs carving a wooden sword. Trygir's son by the look of his reddish hair and upturned nose.
  
  'Reinen's crew, yes?' Trygir greeted them as they wiped the rain from their faces and shook water off their hands. A man like Trygir must come to know every new face in that camp, Sigurd thought. Sees them come, sees them go. 'Where's the big man with the red beard and his mouthy friend?' Trygir said. He was a big man himself, though a full head shorter than Svein.
  
  'We drew the short straw tonight,' Sigurd said. Even his beard rope was dripping.
  
  'Did you now?' Trygir asked, lifting his chin a little. He glanced at Valgerd and smiled. Unlike the man who had called to Sigurd outside, Trygir knew full well who led Reinen's crew, brynja or no brynja. He knew that Sigurd was standing in his tent now because he wanted to be standing there.
  
  'So what can I get you this fine night?' Trygir asked, putting both hands on the table before him and leaning towards his customers, ignoring the mud and water which they had traipsed across his reed-and grass-strewn floor. 'I'm hoping it's ale or else you've come to the wrong place.' Behind him were stacked two dozen barrels, with more partly visible beyond a hanging partition at the rear of the tent. Skin bags and wooden gourds hung from the central tent pole and a set of bronze scales hung over the table, suspended from the roof pole on thin chains. A collection of lead weights sat on the table along with Trygir's own cup and drinking horn, a cudgel to deter difficult customers, and a sharp-looking axe for those who needed a little more persuasion.
  
  'Mead?' Sigurd asked with a grin.
  
  'Ha! I wish,' Trygir said, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Readying himself to do business. 'I'll tell you what,' he said, his eyes smiling in the lamp glow, 'I'll do you a very good deal seeing as it's your first time in here.' He looked at Valgerd then. 'And because I don't often get beauties like you in here,' he added in a low voice, as if his wife might be behind that partition at the back of the tent.
  
  They bought four skins from Trygir, who warned them that he would have to sell them less from now on because at this rate he would run dry and men would start killing each other for the stuff and Alrik would return to find half his army dead and the other half drunk. 'And don't tell anyone what a good deal I gave you or they'll be in here demanding the same,' he warned them.
  
  Sigurd tied his two skins together and slung them over his shoulder. Valgerd did the same. 'We're off to find Alrik tomorrow anyway,' he said, at which Trygir nodded, understanding why the late-night visit, and wished them well. His merchant's mask almost hiding his disappointment to be losing his best customers, he then tried to sell Sigurd two more skins from what he alleged was Alrik's own stash.
  
  'Four is enough,' Sigurd said, 'given the walk we've got ahead of us tomorrow.'
  
  'We could try a little of Alrik's brew,' Valgerd suggested, moving further inside Trygir's big tent to avoid a stream of water which was pouring through a hole in the red cloth. She looked at Sigurd. 'Before we head back.'
  
  Sigurd's stomach rolled over itself. He nodded. 'We could,' he said, rummaging in the scrip on his belt for a thumb-sized piece of silver. He did not owe Trygir anything like that much but it was his guarantee that he would be back in the morning, hopefully when it was dry, with the pelts he owed the man.
  
  'You two looking for somewhere quiet?' Trygir asked. He looked from Sigurd to Valgerd and back to Sigurd. 'Some place to enjoy a drop of my best without your friends sticking their beaks in?'
  
  Sigurd felt the heat in his face. 'We should get back—'
  
  'Where do you suggest?' Valgerd asked Trygir. He had sent his boy into the back to fetch the good ale and now the lad handed Valgerd a leather flask and Sigurd two cups. Even the boy seemed taken with Valgerd, who pointed at the nearly finished sword tucked in his belt and said it was some of the finest work she had seen. The boy's teeth flashed in the gloom and he looked at his father with unbridled pride.
  
  'You'll give the lad ideas and I'll lose him to some blade smith,' Trygir said, shaking his head, though his eyes were smiling because the boy looked so proud. He looked back to Sigurd. 'So, you go next door, to the back entrance, and you ask for a man named Brodd-Helgi. Can't miss him, face like a goat and broken teeth,' he said, putting fingers to his own mouth, 'like he's been eating rocks. Say Trygir sent you, that I said to give you the loft.' He nodded at the small ale skin which Valgerd held by the neck. 'You'll be able to enjoy that all to yourselves up there.'
  
  'And what will that cost me?' Sigurd asked, thinking it would be worth any price to be alone with Valgerd. Just the two of them for once, without the rest of the crew around.
  
  Trygir did his best to look offended. 'Nothing,' he said. 'You've been a good customer, Byrnjolf Hálfdanarson. And I wish you and your crew well.'
  
  Sigurd nodded and shook the man's hand, then he and Valgerd turned and pulled their cloaks tight around their necks against the freezing rain which still hissed in the gloomy world beyond Trygir's tent.
  
  'You make a good-looking pair,' Trygir said as Sigurd lifted the flap and they stepped outside, and Sigurd hoped Valgerd had not heard the man, though the curl of her lips told him that she had.
  
  'There isn't enough of that good stuff to go round anyway,' Sigurd said quickly so that they would not have to deal with Trygir's parting words. The sly shit. 'So we might as well make the most of a dry spot while we drink it.' They stood there looking at the longhouse, whose thatch was shrouded in a thick haze, as if the whole place was steaming. The main door clunked open and two men stumbled out, one of them puking into the mud before he had made four paces. His companion fumbled at his breeks and began pissing on to the log pile under the eaves. Men's voices and a woman's shrill laughter leaked from the place before the door clumped shut again.
  
  Valgerd lifted the flask and studied it. 'I for one would like to know how Alrik's ale compares with what we mortals have been drinking,' she said, and with that she trudged off down the side of the longhouse looking for the other door. And Sigurd followed, thinking that Tygir was a sly, scheming son of a she-troll. He was also thinking that in the morning, when he brought the man the pelts he owed him, he would tell Trygir to keep the hacksilver.
  
  They waited beneath the dripping thatch, enjoying the last lungfuls of sweet, rain-cleansed air while the big-bellied man who had opened the door went off to find Brodd-Helgi, leaving another man blocking the threshold, swaying on a sea of ale.
  
  Eventually, Brodd-Helgi came and he did not look happy about being dragged away from his women and his cup to deal with two strangers standing at his door.
  
  He glared at Sigurd. 'Don't know your face,' he said, then lifted his chin. 'Fuck off.'
  
  'Trygir sent us,' Sigurd said. 'He told me to tell you to give us the loft.' Sigurd grinned and patted one of the plump ale skins slung over his shoulder. 'We need to try a little of this before sharing it with our crew.'
  
  Brodd-Helgi fixed his eyes on Valgerd. 'Wouldn't mind a taste of that myself,' he said, his stare lingering on the shieldmaiden. 'You friends of his, then?'
  
  Sigurd shrugged. 'We are good customers.'
  
  Brodd-Helgi's tongue poked out between the ragged remains of his teeth. 'I've seen you,' he said to Valgerd. 'You're the new crew that came in with Knut. Handsome ship you've got there. Too much ship for the crew as I recall.' He was not a big man but he was confident, which probably meant whoever had broken his teeth was most likely dead now. 'Shouldn't be here though,' he said, then threw an arm back towards the interior. 'Only men allowed in here are those who've been fighting for Alrik a season or more.'
  
  Behind Brodd-Helgi, partly cast in the glow of the hearth, mostly shrouded in shadow, but fogged by smoke, Sigurd could make out men and women drinking and rutting on beds and on the fur-strewn floor. They fumbled and groped in the fire-played shadow, knots of limbs and bare flesh, writhing beasts made of tits and arse, beards and balls.
  
  'Aye, I should be telling you to piss off and come back when you've broken a few skulls for Alrik.' Brodd-Helgi sniffed, leaning out of the door and peering up at the rain-filled gloom. Then he straightened and licked a drop of rain off his lip. 'But if Trygir vouches for you . . .'
  
  Sigurd's stomach rolled over and he made to remove his sword belt but Brodd-Helgi flashed a palm.
  
  'Keep it,' he said. 'No one starts trouble in here.' Then he turned to the man who had been guarding the door before. 'Kick that arse-leaf Stækar out of the loft. If he wants to swive that pretty thing of his without his wife knowing, he needs to pay for the privilege.'
  
  The man nodded and went off and Brodd-Helgi shut the door behind Sigurd and Valgerd and led them through the musky fug, picking a well-practised path through the gloom-shrouded drinking and rutting and sleeping folk. Along the sides of the room, stretching from roof post to roof post, hung screens of canvas or wool, creating separate cells and privacy for those who wanted it. Some of these hangings were plain, but for the smoke and drink stains, whilst others were embroidered with birds, falcons whose feathers Freyja goddess of lovers wore as a cloak.
  
  'It's just as well the others don't know about this place,' Valgerd said, stepping over the outstretched arm of a woman who held on to her ale cup despite being ridden like a fjord horse to a feast.
  
  Sigurd's heart was hammering in his chest and his palms were slick with sweat, and he felt as if he were walking into an ambush as they waited for an angry-looking Stækar to descend the ladder followed by a blushing beauty who somehow managed to avoid everyone's eye before slipping off into the crowd.
  
  'You miserable shit, Brodd-Helgi,' Stækar growled, raking his long fair hair back off his face. 'I was a cock's length from tupping her.'
  
  Brodd-Helgi grimaced. 'Take her back to your tent and tup her there,' he said. 'I'm sure Hildigunn won't mind. If you're quiet she may not even wake up.' He turned a palm over. 'Or pay me to use the loft.'
  
  'Prick,' Stækar growled, then shot Sigurd a filthy look and stormed off, calling to a friend to get him a drink.
  
  'Enjoy the ale,' Brodd-Helgi said to Valgerd. 'I'll want you out long before dawn. If someone pays me for the bed you'll be gone before that.'
  
  Sigurd wanted to tell the man they were only looking for somewhere to talk and drink, but Brodd-Helgi would not believe him and what did it matter anyway? Then he was following Valgerd up the ladder and into the dark where the smoke had gathered, though someone had gouged a hole between two of the logs in the wall to let at least some fresh air in. As it happened there was no bed up there, just a thick pile of furs, two chests for leaning against, someone's rolled-up cloak – Stækar's perhaps – and a heavy dished stone lamp whose flame was sputtering on its cotton-grass wick.
  
  'They'll worry about us,' Sigurd said, watching Valgerd bending over to shrug off her brynja. There was not enough room to stand and so Sigurd had crawled from the ladder on hands and knees towards the lamp glow.
  
  'Olaf will come looking for you,' she said, picking up the discarded cloak and using it to dry her brynja to keep the iron rot out of it.
  
  'Bram will come looking for the ale,' Sigurd said, removing his own sopping wet cloak and his sword belt. He held out the cups and watched Valgerd as she unstoppered the flask and poured the ale. The lamp only just caught her in its flickering bloom so that one side of her face was burnished gold and the other was cast in shadow. And Sigurd realized that this was Valgerd, half in the world and half . . . somewhere else. Lost. In the past perhaps.
  
  'You think of her often?' he asked, dropping that into the silence between them. Not even knowing why he had done it, especially now of all times when they were alone with a flask of strong ale and a pile of soft furs.
  
  She sipped from her cup and looked away, towards the glow and the clamour rising from the room below. 'Less than I did,' she said, seeming annoyed with him too for bringing it up. Then she turned her eyes on him, glacial blue even in this dim light, and a shiver ran down through Sigurd from head to arse.
  
  Sygrutha, the spae-wife whom Valgerd had been sworn to protect, had been dead a day or two when Sigurd found Valgerd living apart from other folk by the sacred spring in the Lysefjord. The völva had been nothing but skin and bone, a wisp of a corpse lying in a bed, but that bed was the only one in the cabin and Sigurd had known that Valgerd and Sygrutha had been lovers. And since the day she had joined his crew, Valgerd had mourned the völva and hated the gods.
  
  Valgerd shrugged and picked up the loose thread of it. 'Sygrutha knew she was dying. How could she not?' she said.
  
  'Because she had the gift?' Sigurd asked.
  
  'Because death stalked her,' Valgerd said. 'Because it worked on her like rot in the blade. And there was nothing we could do to fight it.' She drank again. Sigurd had not yet touched a drop. 'In the end she faded away. Like a dream.'
  
  'Was there pain?' Sigurd asked.
  
  'She tried to hide it from me. But yes. Eyes cannot lie about pain. Have you noticed that?'
  
  He nodded. 'And you cannot forgive the gods?'
  
  Valgerd shook her head. 'Nor Sygrutha,' she said. 'When she knew death was close, she told me she would come to me. After. She promised to come. She knew the ways, she said, to reach me through the birds or the wind. Or the waterfall.' For a moment Sigurd thought she would shed tears, but then those blue eyes sharpened. Valgerd had done all her crying unseen. 'She lied.'
  
  'Maybe not. Maybe she tried,' he suggested.
  
  'She lied,' Valgerd said. She drank again and this time Sigurd did too. 'Have your brothers come to you?' she asked him. 'Your mother? Your father?'
  
  Sigurd frowned at the question because he did not know how to answer it. There had been times. A whisper amidst the sword-song. A feeling in the shield din. All in his own head perhaps.
  
  'I don't know,' he said at last.
  
  Valgerd shrugged. 'I don't think of her when I am fighting.'
  
  Sigurd forced a smile. 'Then you have joined the right crew,' he said and with that lifted his cup and she did the same. 'Skál.'
  
  Valgerd lifted her own cup. 'This is better than that,' she said, nodding at the four ale skins which they had put to one side.
  
  Sigurd drank, then swept the back of his hand over his lips. 'Another reason it's a good thing we're leaving tomorrow,' he said, 'or else we'd be spending what little silver we have buying more of it.' The ale was rich and bitter, the flavours of the hops, juniper and bog myrtle combined in a fresh-tasting brew which hit Sigurd's stomach with a feeling not unlike the first thrill before a fight. Or maybe that was not the ale at all.
  
  'So now we will fight another man's battles for him?' she said. 'Instead of our own.'
  
  'You know we are not strong enough to face the oath-breaker,' Sigurd said, drinking again. 'By killing his messenger—' He frowned, searching for the man's name. Freystein. 'Freystein Quick-Sword.' Not quick enough, he thought. Gods but this ale was strong. 'Sending my father's jarl torc back to the oath-breaker around Freystein Quick-Sword's neck was all I could do to hurt Gorm. But we could not have stayed.'
  
  Valgerd lifted one eyebrow, her hawk's eyes fastened on his.
  
  'You think I should have accepted the oath-breaker's offer of land? I should have taken my father's torc as though it were the king's to give?'
  
  'No,' Valgerd said. She shrugged. 'But perhaps there was another way. Perhaps we could have gained his trust and bided our time. Then, two, three summers from now, we put a blade in him when he least expects it.'
  
  'Too late for that now,' Sigurd said, not even wanting to think that there might have been a cleverer way of doing things.
  
  'Yes, too late now,' Valgerd agreed, picking up the flask and refilling their cups.
  
  Neither said anything for a little while then. They sat in the near darkness, drinking and thinking, the sounds of men and women rutting louder now and then than the usual hum of the place.
  
  Valgerd closed her eyes and sank down against the side of one of the sea chests and Sigurd took the opportunity to look at her without her knowing it. Her tunic was damp and without her mail on he could clearly see the swell of her breasts and the shape of her thighs and he could imagine what lay between them. She was not a fierce shieldmaiden now. She was just a woman. A beautiful, proud woman who had the courage to hate the gods and yet lacked the courage to ignore them.
  
  He looked at her and wanted her. It really was like the battle thrill. There was a tremble in his legs and a fluttering in his chest like a bird up amongst the roof beams. His saliva was thick with ale and need, but it was need of her, not the wild joy of killing. He needed her and here she was. And would she have climbed up here with him if she had not known what was in his mind? No, she had led him up here. And what had he done? Talked! Because talking was like bailing, and if he stopped . ..
  
  'Do you think I am a fool,' he asked, 'to believe I can avenge my father and balance the scales with the oath-breaker?'
  
  Those piercing eyes opened, fixing on him again. 'You need silver and you need an army,' she said. 'But most of all, you need to believe that you can do it.' She leant over and picked up the flask. Sigurd had not realized her cup was empty again. He drained his own. 'Do you believe?' she asked.
  
  He thought about it.
  
  'Mostly,' he said.
  
  She shook her head. 'Mostly is not enough,' she said. 'Any doubts you have are like loose caulking between the strakes. Water will get in and we shall all sink.'
  
  He understood that, for those who had sworn an oath to follow him had done so because they saw something in him, a fire which burnt bright as a lightning flash. Perhaps he was Óðin-favoured as men said. As he told people himself. Or perhaps he was blinded by his own hatred for the man who had taken everything from him. Perhaps his crew mistook arrogance and audacity for something else. Something greater. Maybe they saw a destiny in him which was no more god-touched than any man's.
  
  He took the flask himself now and emptied it into their cups.
  
  'We kill his enemies and earn his silver,' Valgerd said. 'Then, when we are rich and Reinen's ballast is all treasure instead of rocks, we put together our own war host and we sail north again to make war on the oath-breaker. We will kill him.' She smiled. 'And balance the scales.'
  
  Sigurd nodded, grinning at her. 'So I am not a fool?' he said.
  
  She drank until the cup was empty. 'Yes, you are. But not for that,' she said.
  
  He finished his own cup, willing himself to do something but finding he was unable to move. He might as well have been a nail stuck in the floor boards.
  
  Valgerd had been facing him but now she moved in the half-darkness, coming to sit beside him so that he felt the warmth of her body. He smelt the wet wool of her tunic and breeks mixed with the sweet scent of her sweat, a concoction unique to her amongst the crew and one which had his loins stirring now. And still he sat frozen, as petrified as a new beard on the eve of his first ship fight.
  
  'So do you want to go back to the camp?' she asked him.
  
  'No,' he said, swallowing.
  
  'Do you want me?' she asked.
  
  'Yes,' he said. There was no going back now.
  
  She moved and he was suddenly more terrified than ever because he thought she was getting up to leave, but then she knelt and threw one leg over both of his so that she straddled him. Then her hands were in his hair, her fingers on the flesh of his neck and her thumbs in the short bristles of his beard. She pulled his face towards hers and their mouths came together and as he breathed her in he saw her eyes close.
  
  They were stripped of it all now, the two of them. Unburdened of past and future, of duty and vengeance and all that it was to be the shieldmaiden and the would-be-jarl. No more bailing. Let me sink now and worry after, he thought, tasting her tongue and the ale on her breath, his body thrumming like a bow string.
  
  Following Haraldarson and the shieldmaiden in the dusk and rain without them noticing him had been as easy as breathing. On such foul nights as this, folk did not tend to notice anything much, other than where to tread so as not to end up on their arses in the mud.
  
  There had been no question in Fionn's mind that he should follow them, even if it meant leaving the fire around which he and a group of Birka men had been sitting getting soaked to the skin. For it was the first time that Haraldarson had strayed more than twenty paces from the others since they had all sailed across Løgrinn, Sigurd in Reinen and Fionn in Crow, Knut's own ship. They were close as arrows in a sheath, that crew. Tight as a fish's arse, and Fionn had sat under oiled skins with seven strangers for company, had even managed to regale them with tales from Alba as the rain scourged sea and shore, though all the while he had an eye on the young golden-haired, gods-favoured man not a stone's throw away.
  
  And when Haraldarson had announced to his companions that he was heading off into the gloaming to fetch them more ale, Fionn had expected the giant with the red beard to go with him, or perhaps the broad, even more dangerous-looking one whom they called Bear. It had been a surprise when the shieldmaiden stood to go with him, but then, even through the rain-flayed gloom, Fionn had seen the flash of fire in Haraldarson's eyes and he understood completely. Haraldarson loved the woman. Or at the least he wanted her. And who could blame him, for she was something to behold in her brynja of polished rings, with her scramasax, sword and spear. She was beautiful, which was doubtless why she was rarely without her mail and never without her blades. He would be a fool who tried to force himself on her. He would also be a fool who thought that Haraldarson was as good as dead because a woman was all that stood between him and a knife in the heart.
  
  But Fionn was no fool. So he had followed them across the camp to the red tent in which Trygir sold his ale. He had stood in the deluge outside Trygir's place, an ear close to the stinking sailcloth, sifting the words spoken within from the rain seething without. He had moved a little distance off and lingered in the shadows by the grain store, watching as Haraldarson and the shieldmaiden talked their way into the log house, and when the door closed behind them he had waited a while longer, about the time it takes to put an edge on a blunt sax. Or the time it takes to get soaked to the bone marrow.
  
  Then Fionn had walked through the mud, following in his prey's tracks and pulling from his finger a silver ring which had once been worn by a Pictish king. He used the ring to buy his way into the log house, telling the fat man who had opened the door that it bought him entry as well as the man's silence, at which the man had grinned the way only a drunk man can, more than happy with the trade.
  
  Now, he moved in the dark and the smoke, his blood pulsing in his ears and his chest tight with the thrill of what he was about to do. Of all the lives he had snuffed out, this one promised to stand out above the rest. And not because Haraldarson was rich or powerful, because he wasn't. Nor because Fionn stood to be paid a hoard's worth of silver for it – he had been paid more for others. There was just something about this one, about killing a man whom these Northmen believed to be gods-favoured.
  
  He drew his scían, his hand relishing the feel of the stag-antler handle. It fitted his palm the way some men fitted some women. As if the two were always destined for each other.
  
  Where were the gods when the knife went in? Where were they when the blade drank?
  
  She was riding him, the hungry bitch, her arse grinding on his lap like a pestle in a mortar, her golden, sweat-drenched hair loose over her back and shoulders. Fionn drew a long, even breath, clenched his stomach muscles, breathed out and struck. Fast. Clamping his right hand over her mouth and pulling her head back, thrusting the long knife into her throat and forcing the blade out so there could be no scream. He shoved her aside and dropped his knees on to the naked groin and withering prick and his eyes locked with those of the man beneath him.
  
  Fionn growled under his breath and plunged the scían down, again and again into the flesh, his left hand muffling his victim's cries which, if they were heard at all, would be taken as the normal sounds of a good swiving. Five, six, seven times Fionn thrust the blade deep and pulled it free and already the blood was pooling in the creases and folds of the furs beneath them both.
  
  Then he ran the blade through a fistful of blanket and sheathed it, listening to the snoring and swiving and hushed, mumbled voices to ensure that no one was coming for him. He had to get out quickly, because the woman's bowels had disgorged their contents in death and the reek was filling the place, stinging his eyes with its sharpness. Others would smell it too, and if not that then the iron tang of fresh blood, and so Fionn had to go now before it was too late.
  
  He looked once more at the mess he had made, then he slipped away, making for the same door through which he had entered, trying not to rush or draw attention to himself, drifting off unnoticed, like smoke through the roof hole.
  
  Outside, he hauled the sweet, wet air into his lungs and plunged on through the mud, his mind reeling and his heartbeat thundering in his ears now. He had made a butcher's table in the dark. He had slaughtered the woman like a beast and he had let his long knife drink deep of her lover.
  
  Now he cursed in the night, growled the foulest of insults at the rain and the cloud-veiled sky. Because the throat-cut woman was not the shieldmaiden Valgerd. And the dead man lying in a lake of his own blood was not Sigurd Haraldarson.