text: When there was enough wind they hauled Reinen's sail up the stout pine mast and when there was no wind they bent their backs to oars, rowing under the waning moon until the nights were dark as pitch again and the risk of tearing open the hull was too great. On those nights they snugged up to the coast, running mooring ropes from Reinen's bow to trees or rocks on the shore while keeping her off those rocks by dropping two anchor stones over the stern. They ate little in order to save what they had, though whoever was on watch would sit with a line and hook in the water, so there was almost always fresh fish the next day. They huddled under skins and furs and Crow-Song told them tales to help the long nights pass: stories of long-dead kings and heroes, of monsters and great hoards of silver, and more often than not these tales were about the few or the brave defeating their more powerful enemies.
  
  With the cold and damp burrowed deep into the marrow of their bones they would set off again into the dawn, long before the first pale light spread its wings over the eastern horizon.
  
  It was slow and arduous, wet, cold and miserable, but every wave they put between themselves and their enemies was to the good. On the fifth day after the encounter with Hrani's ships, Sigurd had them run Reinen up a secluded beach, the scrape of the keel on the shingle a welcome sound to all.
  
  The beach was short, the pebbles giving way to rocks that rose steeply to a thick wood, yet it was all but hidden by a gull-thronged outcrop which stretched out into the fjord and it was as good a place as any to light a fire and get a broth bubbling over it.
  
  'It's too late,' Bjarni said, rubbing his hands and staring at them, shaking his head. 'Cold as a frost giant's bollocks. I'll never get the feeling back in them.' He held them to the fire over which an iron cauldron full of herring, shellfish and garlic bubbled, its steam making Sigurd's mouth water. 'It is a pity for all the girls who will never again know the pleasure that these hands can give.'
  
  'I think I can hear them weeping,' Bram said, frowning, then scratched his bearded cheek and let out a raging fart. 'No, no. My mistake.'
  
  Bjarni stretched his neck to look over at Valgerd, who sat hugging her legs on the other side of the fire. 'Though I am willing to give them one last try, if you are interested, shieldmaiden,' he said, wiggling his fingers and grinning.
  
  'Why not try me?' Valgerd said, then winked at Runa beside her. 'For I was just thinking that this stew would be improved by some meat.'
  
  'It would only be kind to leave him one finger,' Runa said, 'so that he can still pick his nose.'
  
  'He can use this,' Valgerd said, pulling her wicked sharp scramasax from the sheath in the small of her back. It was the same knife with which she had taken off Loker's arm up in the Lysefjord.
  
  'It's funny but I think they are thawing after all,' Bjarni said, clenching his fists, still smiling.
  
  'Unlike some around here, hey brother,' Bjorn said, nodding towards Valgerd. This got some low chuckles from those around the flames, though the shieldmaiden did not seem to mind.
  
  Sigurd was relieved, if not a little surprised, by how readily the men had accepted Valgerd into the crew. They were all guilty of letting their eyes linger a little too long on her, none more than Sigurd himself, but no man had let lust get the better of him. Partly this was out of respect for Sigurd, he knew, but partly it was because Valgerd had earned her place amongst them. For all her beauty she was no less a warrior than any of them. She had fought and killed with them, and perhaps bonds forged in the blood-fray could be stronger than men's desires. Or perhaps they feared her, and if so they were wiser than they looked, for Valgerd was a killer.
  
  And yet Sigurd wanted her. If their eyes met he would look away more often than not, but now and then he held her gaze and on those times he would feel the blood rush to his groin and his breeks would seem to shrink.
  
  'Look away, Sigurd. No good can come of it, lad,' Olaf murmured by his ear now, leaning forward to feed more sticks into the fire.
  
  Sigurd felt the rush of heat in his cheeks but did not bother to deny it. Olaf had been around long enough to see such things without even looking. Still, Sigurd hoped it was not so obvious to the others as well.
  
  'I'll fetch more wood,' Sigurd said, climbing to his feet, avoiding Valgerd's eye as though his life depended on it. He walked back down the shingle to look for driftwood, knowing that whatever there was had already been gathered. Then he stood at the land's edge, where the sea lapped at the rocks and seethed down amongst the shingle after each gentle swell. Beside him Reinen loomed in the dark, her scent, of pitch and pine and foul bilge water, overpowering the tang of the salt-encrusted wrack which the sea had coughed up on to the beach. He felt the breeze on his right cheek and knew that the clouds were thin enough that they could have left the oars in their trees and sailed east by the light of the stars.
  
  Not tonight, he thought. Let them enjoy the fire and the hot food in their bellies. They deserve it. And in any case, Solmund and Olaf must have felt that breeze even before him, having ploughed the sea-road more often than he, and yet neither had mentioned it.
  
  'The fire reminds them of home,' a voice said. 'Of the past.'
  
  He turned and there was Valgerd standing there looking out across the dark water, her loose golden hair catching what little light there was. Sigurd wondered how he had not heard her walk across the small stones but put it down to the shieldmaiden's soft boots and the breathing of the sea.
  
  'I think Bjarni has his eye on you,' he said, cringing inwardly at his own words because he remembered that Valgerd's tastes lay elsewhere. Her last lover had been a woman, the völva from the sacred spring whom she had been sworn to protect.
  
  She raised an eyebrow, a half smile on her lips. 'Bjarni is more in love with his own right hand, I think,' she said, then nodded towards Reinen sitting beyond the sea's reach above the high-tide line. 'It is hard to sleep sometimes for the beat of his hand beneath the furs.'
  
  Sigurd had no answer to that.
  
  'His are not the only eyes I feel on me,' she said after a while. Sigurd wondered if the water lapping on to the beach was deep enough to drown himself in. 'Runa would like you to marry me, I think,' she said.
  
  'And what does Runa know of such things?' Sigurd managed.
  
  'Whereas you know all there is to know about such things,' she said.
  
  He did not bite on that hook. Besides, she was right. He had more experience of the blood-fray and the vagaries of the gods than he had of women.
  
  'I know that when I am jarl I will be expected to take a wife who brings an alliance as her dowry,' he said.
  
  'Is that what you want? A peace cow and a high seat in your own hall?'
  
  What he wanted was Valgerd but he did not say it.
  
  'I want to kill my enemies and avenge my kin,' he said. Which was also true. He shrugged, watching a far-off patch of sea which shimmered like molten iron beneath a gap in the cloud. 'If I end my days in a hall surrounded by sons and daughters and loyal hearthmen I will be surprised.'
  
  Valgerd said nothing to that and he looked at her. Gods she was beautiful: golden and strong like Runa, but different in every other way. Whereas Runa still had a girl's features, the rounded, slightly upturned nose, the full cheeks and the smooth high forehead, Valgerd's beauty had a fierceness about it. Her cheekbones were high and sharp as scramasax blades. Her nose was straight and strong and her eyes were like those of the big cats which dwelt in the forests and were beloved of the goddess Freyja.
  
  'Did you come down here alone to talk to the gods?' she asked. 'Because you are more likely to get answers from the fish.'
  
  'You are brave to mock the gods,' he said.
  
  She shrugged. 'They mock us.'
  
  He said nothing to that.
  
  'So, Sigurd Heppinn, where will we go?' she asked. 'Where will the threads of your wyrd lead us?'
  
  'Sigurd the Lucky?'
  
  'That is what they are calling you now,' she said. 'Since we wriggled through Hrani Randversson's net.'
  
  He thought about his family and all the blood through which he had waded since King Gorm had betrayed his father.
  
  'If I am lucky it does not say much for those who are unlucky,' he said.
  
  'You are free and you have a fine ship,' she said and chose not to argue the difference between being free and being a hunted outlaw.
  
  'We'll go south,' he said, returning to her earlier question. 'We'll follow the coast and try not to get killed by some Svear king. Perhaps we'll cross the sea to raid the Danes like my father used to. We need silver.' And they did, for with silver Sigurd could buy spears, warriors who were not already oath-tied to some other lord. Without silver, or at least the promise of it, he would be lucky to hold on to the half crew he had. 'So long as we are out of the oath-breaker's reach. Hrani Randversson's too.'
  
  Valgerd nodded. A movement on the stones caught Sigurd's eye and he watched a brown crab edging along the tideline. At the onset of winter most of the crabs retreated to warmer, deeper waters. Not this one apparently, and it was large enough to make good eating.
  
  'Why did you leave the fire?' he asked Valgerd.
  
  By way of answer she stepped down on to the shingle, dropped her breeks and squatted to piss on to the smooth stones. 'It was not so that I could talk to the gods,' she said. And Sigurd kept his gaze on the sea, smiling to himself. Thinking himself a fool.
  
  When she had finished she walked to the sea's edge where the stones glistened.
  
  'So we are going raiding,' she said, picking up the crab by its back legs. The creature had survived the winter but it would not survive the cook pot.
  
  Sigurd shrugged. 'No one will expect it at this time of year,' he said.
  
  And he hoped that was true.
  
  Hrani Randversson stood on the hill at Avaldsnes overlooking the channel of dark water and mumbled the foulest of curses. It was clear to everyone gathered there in the snow below King Gorm's hall that Estrith Left-Handed was as dead as a man could be. Worse, he was naked and blue as the veins in a woman's wrists as he lay there on that rock, pathetic and shamed, given up as the tide retreated. As if not even Rán, Mother of the Waves, who takes the drowned into her cold embrace, had wanted him.
  
  'Try not to look so sour about it, husband,' Herkja said. 'What's done is done.'
  
  'It should not have been done at all,' Hrani growled. 'Not like this. Not by him.'
  
  Herkja gave him a disapproving look and clapped her mittened hands together for warmth before rejoining the conversation she had been having with Queen Kadlin and a gaggle of Avaldsnes women, all of them far more interested in the talk of spring weddings than in the fate of some skipper from Hinderå.
  
  Hrani looked back at the flat rock and the body on it, thinking that at least Estrith was not being picked at by crabs as he would be were it summer.
  
  'Oh don't mind him,' Herkja told the queen, dismissing Hrani with a flutter of her ringed fingers. 'Some old wound. He is too proud to admit that it still pains him and so we must all suffer for it.' She shook her head. 'But you know what men are like.'
  
  'They are all the same in that regard,' Queen Kadlin said, 'but at least your husband is still a young man, my dear.' She leant in close to Herkja, though did not lower her voice. 'Imagine how many wounds my husband doesn't complain about,' she said and Herkja laughed.
  
  Hrani shook his head and cursed again. They had married at the Jól feast because Hrani had been keen to play the part of a jarl after his father's death, which meant having a good wife to run his hall and bear his cup. And whilst Herkja was a beauty, the daughter of a wealthy karl from Sandnessjøen on the island of Alsten south of Hinderå, her tongue was a little too free with her advice given how her neck could hardly have warmed the silver he had put around it. Furthermore, it was unseemly that she should be laughing now, while Estrith Left-Handed lay drowned on that flat rock for all to see.
  
  If it had been down to Hrani, which it should have been, Golden-Fire's skipper would have been punished. Certainly outlawed. Perhaps even killed, though not in such a foul way as this. For he had let Sigurd Haraldarson slip through the net. He had been close enough to that hag-ridden, murdering, hall-less fiend to put a spear in him and yet he had fallen for Sigurd's trick, believing him dead. Now who knew where Sigurd and the dregs of his crew might be, or where they were headed? Yes, Estrith had failed him and by doing so had brought this poor end upon himself. But it was down to Hrani as the man's jarl to punish him. King Gorm had had no business sending his men to Örn-garð to pull Estrith from his jarl's hall like a mussel from a shell.
  
  'He is doing it to make a point,' Hrani's brother Amleth had said as they feasted the king's hirðmen with meat and mead and Hrani had sat in the jarl's seat with Herkja on his left hissing at him to paint more smile and less grimace on his face.
  
  'I know why he is doing it, little brother,' Hrani had said. 'Our king wants to remind me who holds the power. Who has the longest claws. And he is using my hall as his scratching post to do it.'
  
  And now Hrani was supposed to stand there on that hill freezing his balls off and be reminded what happens to those who fail in their duty.
  
  'Well, Hrani, I hope the next skipper of Golden-Fire is not a man so easily fooled, hey!' King Gorm said, trudging across the slope and striking Hrani's fur-clad back with a big hand.
  
  'Your man Moldof must possess more Loki-cunning than anyone gave him credit for, lord,' Hrani said, unable to resist, 'for from what my men tell me it was he that spun the trick of it all, claiming that he had killed Sigurd himself.' The king's face darkened but Hrani pushed on. 'What punishment have you in mind for him, should you ever lay your hands on him?'
  
  The king removed his arm from Hrani's shoulder and Hrani knew that his mention of Moldof was like a flea in Gorm's ear. 'I am thinking that Moldof must be biding his time,' the king said, irritated. 'Like a smith who must judge the right time to strike the glowing iron.'
  
  'And yet when the opportunity came along to be rid of Sigurd and his half crew, your prow man turned his back on it. Strange,' Hrani said, shaking his head as though he could not fathom it. 'At Moldof's word Estrith and my men would have boarded Haraldarson's ship and cut the dogs down beside their own sea chests.'
  
  His eyes still on the drowned corpse out in the channel, the king shrugged broad shoulders, scratching his beard which was greyer than it had been the last time Hrani had seen him. 'Moldof was my prow man and champion for many years. He lost all that and an arm when he fought Jarl Harald in those woods,' he gestured to the south, 'but the man still has his pride. He left my hall to bring me Sigurd Haraldarson's head. He will do that or die trying. Moldof would not betray me. He is made like an ox but he has more wits in him than that.'
  
  This last was aimed like a spear at Hrani, who nodded, knowing he had nettled the king enough, though the sight of Estrith out there on that flat rock goaded him on. A big herring gull had swept down to the skerry and now stood perched on Estrith's blueish chest, its yellow bill wide open as it gave its loud laughing call.
  
  'A warrior can expect to be pecked by crows and ravens. But gulls?' Hrani shook his head.
  
  'A warrior would have killed Sigurd Haraldarson when he had the chance,' King Gorm said. 'Come, Jarl Hrani,' he said, turning away from the sea and walking back up the snow-covered slope towards his hall, at which point his attending warriors and the women gathered there did the same. 'Let us get by the fire and rinse our insides with some warm mead. Forget about your man. I never understood how he worked a tiller with his left hand anyway.'
  
  For a little while Hrani stood waiting to see if that gull would start picking at Estrith, or whether it was simply using him as a bench while it considered its coming meal of small fish or slick weed yielded up by the retreating tide. Then he turned and trudged up the hill after his king.
  
  The farmstead was a modest affair comprising a longhouse, grain store, byre, animal pens and several other small outbuildings, the whole lot enclosed by a decent enough fence that would keep out wolves till Ragnarök and a man with an axe till noon. Beyond that was grazing land cut by a stream, the line of it showing like a black vein across the mantle of brittle snow. But it was the byre which interested Sigurd and the five others who had followed him along the track leading from the shore up through the trees to the arable land beyond. They were hungry and it was the kind of hunger that fish can never truly satisfy.
  
  'If there's fresh meat for the taking we'd be fools to deny ourselves,' Svein had said when Bjorn and Bjarni had returned to the ship with news of what lay up on the high ground beyond sight of the sea. They had all seen the tarnish of smoke against the sky but Bjorn and Bjarni had been the first to volunteer to go ashore and investigate, their faces lit with the predatory lust which all raiding men recognize and all those who have been raided learn to fear.
  
  It was a cold but clear and dry day, a rare enough thing itself for that time of the year, and the sky was the brilliant, flawless blue of Freyja's eyes, which meant that any smoke against it was visible for as far as the eye could see.
  
  'See what's there and come straight back,' Sigurd had told the brothers.
  
  'That means you don't so much as drink a drop or sniff a skirt before getting your arses back here, understand?' Olaf had warned them, and to give them their due the pair did as they were told, though they had all but licked their lips at the telling of the byre within which the cattle lowed as if pleading to be eaten, as Bjorn had put it.
  
  'We could just buy a cow from this farmer,' Runa suggested now as they stood on the south side of the steading, looking across the hilly, snow-covered land and wondering how they could get what they wanted with the least amount of effort.
  
  'What is the point in having swords and axes if you still have to pay for everything?' Bjorn asked, which few of the others could argue with.
  
  'But why kill the man?' Runa asked, at which Bjorn looked at Sigurd with raised brows as if to say this is what you get when you bring your sister along.
  
  She had pleaded with Sigurd that she be allowed to come, saying that if she did not remind her legs what it felt like to stand on solid rock again she feared she would spend the rest of her life walking like Crow-Song after two horns of mead.
  
  'I may not have an endless capacity for mead, young Runa,' Hagal had put in, unable to let that slur slide by unanswered, 'but I do know when to stop and that is to my advantage. A man can neither observe the conspiracies of the mead hall clearly nor weave a fine tale if he is face down in his pottage.'
  
  'I am just teasing, Hagal,' Runa said, giving one of Hagal's braids a gentle tug which was all it took to wipe the frown off the skald's face.
  
  'You can come,' Sigurd had said, smiling to see his sister's eyes light up at something so simple as the prospect of going ashore for a short while. From the report of what awaited them Sigurd did not expect danger – though he insisted she wore brynja and helmet and carried a shield and spear.
  
  Runa had suffered as much as he and yet the world was not blighted for her. Her spirit was a flame which Sigurd had promised himself he would fan whenever he could. 'It will do us all good to stretch our legs,' he'd said in a low voice so as not to incite the jealousy of those who would remain with Reinen.
  
  'If they give us no trouble we won't hurt them,' Sigurd said now for the benefit of Bjorn, Svein, Floki and Aslak.
  
  'No point in taking the edge off a blade if it can be avoided easily enough,' Svein agreed, for he had always had a soft spot for Runa, which was the only possible explanation for him advocating peaceableness that Sigurd could see.
  
  'So what is the plan?' Aslak asked, huffing breath into his hands. 'It looks as if they are all snugged up by their hearth. No one is coming to invite us inside.' It was that kind of cold where if you were to leave an axe carelessly on the ground, it would freeze to it so completely that the haft would snap off at the head if you tried to lever it free. Anything left in mud, like a shoe or a loom weight, became a part of it until the thaw.
  
  Somewhere within the steading a dog was barking, which may or may not have been because it sensed strangers nearby. Some hooded crows were pecking amongst the snow at the stream's edge. Beyond the farmstead to the north and east, stands of birch and pine, looking troubled by their white burden, played host to a clamour of rooks whose raucous cawing rose into the sky.
  
  'Floki will go over the wall and open the gate,' Sigurd said. 'Then we will tell whoever lives here that we are taking a cow or maybe a bull and whatever else we like the look of.' He shrugged. 'We'll butcher the meat here, making sure no one runs off to their jarl, but we'll cook it on the shore in case we have to move on.'
  
  'Who is the jarl round here?' Aslak asked, but no one knew. Not that it mattered, for jarls did not stray far from their hearths in the winter and were more likely to stay wrapped in furs and bed slaves than come trudging out because of the theft of one cow and a cheese or two.
  
  Everyone nodded, happy with that plan, then they set off across the rolling snow-covered hills and toiled up the slope towards the farm, their war gear jangling and clumping and their breath clouding ghost-like. Theirs were the only tracks through the snow. Not that they could blame these folk for staying indoors if they had the supplies to see them through. If anything the clear sky had turned it even colder. The faraway white sun had all the heat of week-old hearth ash, so that ear rims tingled and burnt, noses glowed red and, inside his boots, Sigurd's toes would have curled right under his feet if they could.
  
  'Looks like we're not the only ones wanting inside this place,' Bjorn said, pointing his spear to the oval spoor of a big dog fox, the animal's single-file prints stitching the snow along the white-topped perimeter fence. Sigurd thought he caught the scent of the fox's urine on the morning air but he doubted the creature had found a way in to the hen coop.
  
  His shield slung over his back, Floki kicked his boots against the timbers to get the worst of the snow off them, then stepped into the stirrup of Svein's hands. Svein straightened and up Floki went, grabbing hold of the top of the fence so that he could haul himself over, which he did as nimbly as a squirrel before disappearing from view. They heard the crump of him landing in the drifts on the other side and Sigurd asked if there was any sign of the folk who lived there.
  
  'All quiet,' came the reply, though Floki was not referring to the dog which was barking continuously now – the poor creature having been left outside to stand guard – or to the cattle in the byre which were lowing.
  
  Floki opened the gate and the others passed through into the farmstead, standing a moment to familiarize themselves with the layout. Then, hefting spears and raising their shields, they tramped towards the longhouse from whose thatch smoke poured up in stark contrast to the clean sky. But no arrows streaked from between the outbuildings and neither did any blade-wielding men step out into the day to defend their home, and it was left to Sigurd to thump the butt of his spear against the longhouse door as though he were a cousin come to share a cup of ale and some news of the world beyond the wooden wall.
  
  They waited, stamping their feet and getting cold. Svein looked at Sigurd with watery eyes and a heavy frown. 'This is not how a raid is supposed to be,' he said.
  
  Before Sigurd could ask his friend what usually happened, seeing as Svein was such an old hand at this raiding life, they heard a muffled voice from within.
  
  'Who is it? We are not expecting guests.'
  
  'Open this door,' Sigurd said.
  
  'No,' came the reply.
  
  Bjorn mumbled a curse. Runa laughed.
  
  'I can't decide whether to burn this house and kill all of your cattle,' Sigurd said, 'or take just one animal and leave you to your hearth and furs. It is strange but I find I make better decisions when my feet are not freezing.'
  
  There was more muffled conversation on the other side of the door but then they heard the clump of the locking bar being removed and it swung ajar.
  
  A man's face appeared in the crack.
  
  'Who are you?' he said.
  
  Svein kicked the door open, sending the man flying on to the hay-strewn floor. They walked into the flame-lit house, coughing on the smoke which the open door drew, their eyes adjusting to the dark.
  
  'Who are you?' the man asked again, gathering up the hand axe he had dropped and climbing to his feet.
  
  'What does it matter?' Sigurd asked him, looking around the room. The people living there had pulled their beds up to surround the hearth. Three of those six beds had people in them, old folk, their terror-stricken faces the only parts of them showing beyond the piles of pelts beneath which they cowered from winter.
  
  'You've come to raid us?' a woman asked. She stood behind a roof post, but had it been three times as thick it would not have come close to hiding her. Sigurd looked beyond the hearth flames and saw the pale face of a boy up in the loft, peering down with round eyes.
  
  'We've come for meat,' Sigurd said. His eyes stung from the smoke which was so thick in the room that he thought should the woman drop dead there and then her flesh would still be good to eat in twenty years or more. 'Just meat,' he assured her.
  
  The man edged closer to his enormous wife, still holding that hand axe, though what he thought he was going to do with that against five battle-hardened men who were armed like war gods, Sigurd could not imagine.
  
  'The only raiding we've had has been from the wind, the rain and this damned cold,' the woman said, stepping out from behind the post and taking a key from the hook on her belt. 'This will get you in the byre,' she said. Sigurd nodded and took the key, giving it to Svein.
  
  'We'll find the fattest one,' Svein said through a grin, nodding at Aslak and Bjorn to go with him.
  
  'We've salt fish if you want?' the woman said.
  
  'We've got more than enough of that,' Sigurd said.
  
  'Cheese?' she offered. Sigurd nodded. 'Skyr?' she said. 'I made enough to last Fimbulvetr. My husband says it is the best batch I have made for years.'
  
  'I have not had good skyr for such a long time,' Runa said, and so Sigurd gestured for the woman to fetch some.
  
  'Strange time of year to be out raiding,' the woman's husband said, scratching his bearded chin with the blunt edge of his axe.
  
  'And yet look how easy it is,' Sigurd said. 'I am surprised everyone is not doing it.'
  
  The man had no answer to that, as Sigurd went over to join Floki who was already warming his hands above the hearth, those three in their beds – two old women and an ancient man by the looks, though it was hard to know for sure – staring at him as if he had fallen from the sky. Runa followed her brother towards the fireplace and the golden promise of its flames, leaning her spear against a post so that she could flex and make fists of her pink hands to get the blood gushing into them. 'Thank you for your hospitality,' she said to the farmer's wife who had returned with a large wooden bowl full of skyr.
  
  The woman nodded, giving the skyr to Runa who could not resist scooping three fingers' worth of the thick, curdled milk out of the bowl and into her mouth.
  
  'This is as good as our mother used to make,' Runa told her, which might have put a smile on those full lips had the woman's thought box not been full of how to get her family through this raid alive and with minimal loss to their livelihood.
  
  'You are welcome to it, girl,' the woman said, waving a hand at her husband that he should put that axe down before it caused someone offence. The man frowned and squatted, placing the axe on the floor behind the hearth stones as if he believed he might have got away without anyone seeing it.
  
  'You came by sea,' the man said, more of a statement than a question, which was a fair assumption on his part since he had not recognized any of his visitors and must suppose they had come some considerable way. 'Must be quiet as the grave out there.'
  
  'There are not many boats out,' Sigurd said, wondering how Svein and the others were getting on with the slaughtering and butchering. It would not be easy carrying so much meat back to the ship but at least the frigid air would keep the meat fresh on their continued journey and there would be no flies to bother it. Yes, this winter raiding had its benefits, he thought.
  
  'Who is the jarl here?' he asked the farmer.
  
  'Ebbi Eggilsson,' he said, glancing at his wife who was stuffing two cheeses into a sack for Runa.
  
  'And which king does Jarl Ebbi swear fealty to?' Sigurd asked. For though they had sailed far south to the arse end of Norway and were now following the coast eastward, they had yet to come into the Jutland Sea. Who knew if King Gorm's power reached as far south as this?
  
  The farmer frowned. 'King Svarin, I think,' he said, seeming far from sure and looking to the skull-faced old man in the bed nearest. But he got no help from him.
  
  'Not King Gorm?' Sigurd asked.
  
  'Maybe,' the man said. 'We have little to do with such things. We've no sons to send the jarl should he be dragged off to go fighting with the king.'
  
  Sigurd did not mention the boy peering down at him from the loft, who looked a good few years from fighting age anyway.
  
  'And where are you headed?' the farmer asked.
  
  'Birka,' Sigurd said. It was not as though this man would come after them, nor would his jarl. Not for the sake of one cow.
  
  'Been there twice,' the farmer said, 'and twice was one too many times. Folk crammed together like sheep in a pen. It's not for me.'
  
  The door opened again, drawing the hearth smoke and letting cold air into the room like another unwanted guest, and Sigurd gestured at Aslak to come in quickly and shut it behind him. The farmer and his wife had been good hosts up to now and the old folk in their beds looked frail enough that a cold blast could finish them off.
  
  'We are ready,' Aslak said. He had a handful of snow and was rubbing it against his other hand to get the blood off. He smiled at the farmer's wife. 'You keep your cattle well fed,' he said, 'and we thank you for it.'
  
  The woman did her best to smile back, as the old man in the bed muttered something about the indignity of being robbed by men barely into their beards and even a girl, and that he might as well die now that he had seen everything.
  
  'You only have to ask,' Floki told him, pulling his long knife from its sheath and letting the hearth flames dance along its polished length.
  
  'What are your men doing now?' the farmer asked. Sigurd frowned but a heartbeat later he heard what had got the man worried. It was the unmistakable sound of an axe hacking into timbers. 'Won't you leave us in peace now that you have what you want?'
  
  'Aslak?' Sigurd said. Aslak frowned and shook his head.
  
  The door thumped open again and this time it was Bjorn standing there and he had that look.
  
  'Visitors,' he said.
  
  'Jarl Ebbi?' Runa suggested. Her shield was slung across her back. She had given her spear to Floki to carry so that she could bring the sack with the cheeses and the skyr in it.
  
  'Why would the jarl ruin this man's gate?' Sigurd said. 'You have enemies?' he asked the farmer. The man shook his head and Sigurd cursed under his breath. He had been thinking this winter raiding was easy and that it was strange more men did not do it. It seemed more men did do it. He stepped outside and there stood Svein facing the gate, his long axe in his hands, the butchered meat in a pile on the snow beside him.
  
  'Seen anyone yet?' he called.
  
  'Not yet,' Svein replied over his shoulder, 'but they're making a mess of that gate.'
  
  The head of the axe doing the work was coming through the planks now and catching so that the man wielding it had to work hard to free the blade before pulling it out for another swing.
  
  'We could go over the back wall,' Aslak suggested, looking back past the longhouse between the grain store and the pig pen. 'Whoever it is, they've not come for us.'
  
  Aslak was right. These men, whoever they were, most likely wanted provisions: meat and grain, cheese and ale to stave off the cold in lean times. It was just this farmstead's bad luck that they were being raided twice in one day. This was not Sigurd's fight. They could take their meat and get out over the back wall before these others broke down the gate, though why these others hadn't simply climbed over to open it Sigurd could not say. Perhaps they were breaking the gate to keep warm or, more likely, just because they could.
  
  'Sigurd?' Svein said, still facing the gate, waiting for Sigurd to give some command.
  
  So what if these new men slaughtered another beast or two? So what if they slaughtered the farmer and his wife and the three hoary old folk in their beds? Sigurd had his own responsibilities. Then he thought of the boy up in the loft, imagined those blue eyes of his wide with fear as some growler took a fistful of his yellow hair and cut his throat.
  
  Maybe these raiders would not find the boy. And then what? It was a dark, foul thing to see your kin die, to watch bloodlines end, severed by steel. Such a thing could poison you. Or it could set you on a road of blood and vengeance. Fire and sword.
  
  Let the boy be a boy.
  
  'Shieldwall!' Sigurd called, tramping through the snow to stand with Svein. The others hurried to join them, and for a moment the axe man stopped his work and Sigurd saw men's faces through the holes, those peering men no doubt wondering what kind of farmer they had come across who had enough war-trained sons that they could present a skjaldborg. Then the axe was cutting again and soon it was joined by booted feet as the attackers kicked away the last splintered resistance. Then they poured in through the wreckage, all eyes and beard and done up like the fur bales Sigurd's men had stowed aboard Reinen.
  
  'Stay behind me, Runa,' Sigurd growled over his shoulder, then saw the farmer trudging towards him, his axe back in his hand and an old shield in the other. 'Get back inside and see to your family,' Sigurd said, and the man nodded, not needing to be told twice. But Sigurd was not being kind. A skjaldborg was only as strong as its weakest man and Sigurd did not want a man more practised at feeding cows than crows beside him if it came to a fight. Which it probably would looking at the thirteen men who stood facing them in a loose line a good spear-throw away.
  
  'Who are you?' one of them called, his breath pluming round his red-bearded face. The newcomers were armed mostly with axes and spears and all had shields. Who could say how many wore brynjur under all those furs, but the chances were that none of them did, seeing as none of them owned a helmet.
  
  'We are the men who got here before you,' Sigurd called back. 'Find another farm.'
  
  The man pointed his spear to the joints of meat lying in the snow beside Sigurd's shieldwall. 'It looks to me as if you have what you came for. More than enough to feed the six of you.' He was a handsome man but not a rich one by the looks of him and what little war gear was visible. In this situation most warriors would proudly display whatever fine gear they had for that could sometimes be enough to win the fight before it started. 'Why don't you fuck off and we'll just take our share?'
  
  Sigurd made a show of considering this offer. 'I think that if we walk away this time what is to say you will not beat us to the prize next time? And if we keep going like this, eventually these people will have nothing left worth stealing.' Sigurd shook his head. 'Better to kill you now and keep this farm going a little longer.' With that Svein lifted his massive axe and rolled his shoulders, loosening off in readiness. Really Svein was just showing these men the full extent of his size.
  
  The farmer's dog was once more barking continuously, straining at the end of its tether as it ran back and forth. And this gave one amongst the other raiding party an opportunity to show off. Armed with a bow he walked a few paces ahead of his companions, pulling an arrow from the quiver at his waist and nocking it. The next time Sigurd saw that arrow it was in the dog's eye and the dog was dead, which was no bad thing as far as he was concerned. But whilst it had shut the animal up, it also showed that the bowman was a very good shot.
  
  'Uncle's going to say we can't do one simple job without getting into a fight,' Bjorn rumbled, pushing his helmet down tight. Some of them had taken to calling Olaf Uncle because he was older than they and more experienced in women, war and the whale road, having been Sigurd's father's best friend. Olaf did not seem to mind.
  
  'So we are going to fight over this?' the leader of the other band asked.
  
  'Do not forget your sister is here,' Svein growled out of the corner of his mouth.
  
  Sigurd had not forgotten, but he did not know what to do about that now. 'You can turn round and walk back through the mess you made,' he called, pointing at the splintered planks lying in the gateway.
  
  But the other man shook his head. 'No, I don't think we will,' he shouted back, gesturing with his spear. 'Not now we have come all this way.'
  
  Sigurd nodded, as if he understood perfectly well. Both men knew there was pride at stake now. Knew too that men can be such fools when it comes to pride.
  
  Perhaps it is another test, Sigurd thought. Perhaps the Æsir have a hand in this. For was it not ill luck that another raiding party had turned up at the same farmstead at more or less the same time? And even if these other men walked away now, they would more than likely come back after Sigurd had gone, and take out their frustration on the farmer's family. They would make a slaughter of man and beast and then they would burn down the stead and warm themselves by the flames.
  
  Sigurd would not let that happen. And so there would have to be a fight.
  
  'Well then, let's get on with it for I am getting cold standing here like a fucking tree,' Svein said.
  
  'Come, then,' Sigurd invited the men strung out across the snow facing him.
  
  At their leader's command they drew together until their shields overlapped and they had made their own wall of wood and iron, their spears protruding over the tops of their shields.
  
  'Who has the horn?' Sigurd asked his men.
  
  'Here,' Aslak said.
  
  'Blow it, then,' Sigurd said and Aslak put the big horn to his lips. The note was deep and long and Aslak sounded the horn twice more so that those down at the shore with Reinen would hear it.
  
  'Do not tell me we have to wait for the others,' Svein said.
  
  But they could not wait even if they wanted to, for the other shieldwall was moving towards them now, those men perhaps fearing what that horn signal meant and wanting to kill the five men facing them before reinforcements arrived.
  
  'We're going to piss on your corpses,' a man yelled across the mostly smooth snow between them.
  
  'I can see that golden-haired bitch hiding behind you,' another warrior shouted at Sigurd. 'I'm going to split her open but not with my sword, hey!'
  
  'Come out, come out, my pretty!' a man with a long, black beard rope bellowed, all gap-toothed grin above the rim of his shield.
  
  'Arrow!' Bjorn called and two heartbeats later a shaft thunked into Svein's shield.
  
  'I feel like stretching my legs, Sigurd,' Floki said, and Sigurd nodded, knowing full well what the young man meant by that. Floki stepped out of the skjaldborg, not that you could really call it a shieldwall with only four men now standing in it.
  
  'Where in Frigg's cunny does he think he's going?' Bjorn asked, barely flinching as an arrow struck his shield, the point lifting a sliver from the inside of a limewood plank but not piercing it fully.
  
  'That is what those goat turds will be wondering,' Sigurd said, watching Floki, light-footed through the snow, as he walked round the opposing shieldwall's right flank, causing some of them to turn with him. Which gave Sigurd an idea.
  
  'Are you sure you want to die today?' their red-bearded leader asked, not needing to shout now because they were close enough to see the lice in each other's beards and smell the mustiness of the furs under which they were all buried.
  
  'Break,' Sigurd said to those standing with him. 'Runa, stay with me.' Bjorn and Aslak stalked out on his left and Svein tramped out on his right, leaving Sigurd in space with Runa at his back. Sigurd did not know if the thirteen men facing them were good fighters, but even if they were not, they would have wrapped their shieldwall round Sigurd's and even an unskilled spearman can kill a man from behind who is busy fighting another in front. Besides which, when Svein began swinging that big axe of his it was a good idea to be somewhere else.
  
  'You are a lucky man,' Sigurd said, smiling at the warrior who had halted his men, unsure what to do now that there was no longer a skjaldborg facing him.
  
  'And why is that?' he asked, buying time as his mind whirred.
  
  'Because before I am eating this farmer's meat on the shore beside my ship, you will be drinking mead with your ancestors.' Sigurd rolled his right shoulder in its socket, wondering if his muscles and bones would be too cold to obey him now. 'If you see my father and my brothers, tell them I look forward to joining them at Óðin's high table. But it will not be today.' With that he pulled his arm back and hurled the spear, which streaked like an iron lightning bolt and perhaps the man's shield was rotten, or perhaps it was weakened in some previous fight, but Sigurd's spear punched through the wood and into his chest, pinning the shield to him. He fell, the men beside him stepping away, looking at him with incredulity, expecting him to stand and cast the ruined shield aside. But dead men did not stand.
  
  And it was into this cauldron of shock that Svein poured chaos. He bellowed, cursing his enemies as he strode towards them, looping his long-hafted axe whose crescent blade promised cold death on that cold day. Those men backed away from him, instinct telling them that they must escape that smiting weapon, yet honour forcing them to stand their ground.
  
  Roaring their deaths, Svein brought the axe down in an overhead cut and it cleaved the shield raised against it, cut through the arm beneath and on into the fur-snugged head, only stopping its dreadful descent when it snagged in the cradle of its victim's hips. Svein ripped it free of the splintered bone, the two halves of the man falling apart in a flood of blood and glistening intestines, as that wicked-sharp blade flew up as fast as a grouse, looping back over the red-haired giant's head before scything in from the side to take another man's head off his shoulders before he could scramble out of range. That blade was a living thing in Svein's hands, never still now but soaring through the air around him, tracing invisible ship's knots, thirsting to drink more blood as the big man gave himself to the battle lust.
  
  Floki turned a spear jab aside with his own shaft, then slashed his spear blade across his opponent's throat before dancing out of the path of an arcing sword and stepping forward to thrust the spear through fur and skins into a warrior's belly. Aslak and Bjorn were moving fast, stabbing and slashing with their spears, whilst Sigurd faced the man with the long beard rope, taking a succession of heavy blows on his shield before sheathing Troll-Tickler in the man's gullet and drawing it out in a crimson spray which spattered the snow.
  
  This other raiding party had not begun their day expecting anything like this and had probably thought they would just need to growl a little to leave this farmstead with everything they had it in mind to steal. Now they were being butchered where they stood and the hard truth of it must have been a blow as savage as any from Svein's axe.
  
  'Fall back! Regroup!' one of them yelled, and that was a good plan, but it is hard to put plans into practice when you are busy being killed. Still, five of them closed together like a fist, trudging back through the snow to join the bowman who had kept his distance all along. Panting and wide-eyed, their shields raised but no longer overlapping, they backed away, and even if it had not yet sunk into their skulls that six of their friends would never drink with them again, they must nevertheless have seen the mess of those butchered men lying there before them.
  
  The one other raider still standing chose instead to run and Bjorn made a grab for him but fell in the snow, and Aslak hurled his spear, missing by a finger length, and the man's fear carried him like wings over the snow. Bjorn got to his feet, cursing.
  
  'Any luck and the others'll get him,' Svein said.
  
  'We have had enough,' another of those thunderstruck men told Sigurd. 'Let us walk away. Let us go and you can keep whatever plunder you find on our dead.'
  
  'Let you go?' Sigurd said. 'If I did that, my friends would not be happy.' He pointed his sword beyond them to the ruined gate. 'They have trudged up here through the snow to fight you and now you are done with fighting?' He shook his head. 'That is no way to behave.'
  
  Olaf, Bram and Moldof picked their way through the broken timbers, and Sigurd was glad that it was only those who had come, for as it had turned out this band of doomed men was not worth leaving Reinen unguarded for.
  
  'I see you did not wait for us,' Olaf yelled, his chest rising and falling heavily beneath his furs and ringmail. 'But at least we have not come all the way up here for nothing.' His breath fogged the air above his head and he rolled his shoulders, hefting his shield and spear as he walked towards the six men, Bram on his right and Moldof on his left.
  
  'Did you get the runner?' Aslak called to Olaf.
  
  'Did we bollocks! Ran like a scalded dog that one,' Olaf replied.
  
  'We yield!' a man from the other crew called, thrusting his spear into the snow.
  
  'That's up to you, lad,' Olaf said, not breaking stride. 'But if it were me I'd rather die with a weapon in my hands than on my knees in the ice.'
  
  The man knew beyond doubt then that the Norns, those three spinners who weave men's past, present and future, had cut the threads of his wyrd and all that was left to him now was to choose the manner of his death. He chose well, pulling the spear from the snow and thrusting it at Olaf who parried with his own spear and threw his weight behind his shield, slamming it into his opponent's and knocking him on to his arse in the snow.
  
  'Up you get,' Olaf said, as Moldof hammered his sword into another man's shield, splintering it with one blow before twisting to his left and lopping the man's spear in two. Then he thrust his sword into the man's chest and hauled it out, already turning to seek his next kill. 'Now's the time to pull that scramasax,' Olaf told his man, who was scrambling to his feet, puffing like forge bellows so that he had half disappeared in his own cloud. And perhaps he did not even see the blade that killed him, though he bled out with a good-looking long knife in his hand.
  
  Bram squared up to a man with a long loose beard who was a full head taller than him and perhaps as broad in the shoulder, but before they could fight each other the tall man grunted and fell face down in the snow, one of Floki's short axes lodged between his shoulder blades.
  
  'You selfish little runt,' Bram growled at Floki, who stood twenty paces away grinning like a wolf.
  
  Then the bowman ran. He plunged off through the crisp mantle and Bram remarked that it was not worth the effort of chasing him seeing as to be haring off like that he could not possibly be wearing a brynja or any silver worth getting out of breath for.
  
  Aslak, Bjorn and Svein made light work of the last two and set to pilfering the dead for rings, blades and anything of worth, while Sigurd surveyed the slaughteryard that had been made of the steading. Around each of the dead the snow was stained crimson. Pools of blood were melting the ice and spatters could be seen as far as ten paces from the body, prompting Aslak to observe that it was only in such conditions that you realized how far the battle-sweat could fly in a fight.
  
  'Who are you?' The farmer stood behind them in the open doorway of his longhouse, grey hearth smoke leaking out into the day around him. He stared at Sigurd as he might at a god who had come down from Asgard to Midgard.
  
  'We are the men who have killed one of your beasts and left you with eleven corpses to deal with,' he said.
  
  'But at least we did not smash your gate in,' Svein said, plunging his axe blade into the snow to clean it.
  
  'Who were this lot?' Olaf asked, coming to join Sigurd and Runa.
  
  Sigurd shrugged. 'Raiders,' he said, 'who would have been better off staying by their hearth this morning.'
  
  'Aye, well there's no sign of a ship out there so they must have come the hard way,' Olaf said, nodding inland towards the higher ground. And that was when they saw the plume of black smoke rising from the stone tower which stood on the ridge to the north of the farmstead.
  
  'You let this farmer send someone to light his beacon?' Olaf asked, for the stone tower clearly belonged to this steading.
  
  'I did not see anyone leave the place,' Runa said. 'Those old folk could not have done it, surely.'
  
  But Sigurd could see the small figure with the shock of yellow hair standing up there on the skyline beside the smoke-belching fire. It was the boy he had spotted up in the loft. The lad must have snuck out and run up the hill and perhaps the farmer had sent him or perhaps the man had not known he had gone, but none of that mattered now.
  
  'How long will it be before your neighbours put a war party together?' he asked the farmer, who looked more frightened now than he had before, perhaps expecting Sigurd to kill his family for lighting the beacon to summon help.
  
  'I hope they don't come, lord,' the man said, using that title as a sign of respect, and what he meant was that he knew that his fellow farmers would die unless they came in great numbers.
  
  'How long?' Sigurd asked again. It would be getting dark soon and Sigurd had it in mind to roast a share of that meat on the shore before sailing from this place.
  
  'They will gather before nightfall but they will want to wait for Jarl Ebbi and his men before they attack. He can bring thirty or more warriors if he chooses. As for the karls around here who are sworn to come to each other's aid,' he scratched his short beard, 'I would say there'll be forty men if they manage to drag all their sons along. But I will tell them you came here in peace. That I gave you a good hearth welcome and in return you killed these other men.'
  
  The man's wife pushed past him now, coming outside to get a look at the mess, but the farmer grabbed hold of her arm, warning her that the issue was not yet fully resolved. Whatever he said was enough to get her back inside and the door shut, leaving her husband standing there shivering beside his own log pile.
  
  Sigurd smiled. 'Your boy did well to get all the way up there so quickly.'
  
  For a moment the man seemed unsure how to answer that. Then he nodded. 'He's fast as the wind, lord,' he said.
  
  'We've lingered here long enough,' Olaf called. Svein told the farmer to find him some sacks for all the cuts of meat, and the others having pilfered what they could from the dead gathered their spears and shields and set off out of the steading. Sigurd stood for a moment, watching them go.
  
  'It is sad, don't you think?' Runa said, looking at the red-bearded man Sigurd had killed. Sigurd had retrieved his spear and Svein had stripped the man of his furs and tunic, looking for silver stashed against his skin, so that now the pale corpse made for a pathetic sight lying there half naked. He did not look handsome now. Just dead. 'These eleven men will not be returning to their wives and children. If they are from far away perhaps their kin will never know what became of them.'
  
  'They had the chance to walk away,' Sigurd said.
  
  'They would have taken it if they'd known who they were facing,' Runa said. And she was right. Sigurd might not have many warriors at his command, certainly not enough to take on a jarl let alone a king. But those warriors he had were killers. Each was worthy of his or her own saga for their skill and courage and for their arrogance too, for they seemed to think they were unbeatable. But together they were savage as winter. They were a wolfpack.
  
  'These men are dead but that family still lives,' Sigurd said, looking up at the boy who was still up there by the pillar of smoke which rose straight in the still air, tall as a roof beam in Valhöll. 'Come, sister, or they will feast on that meat without us.'
  
  Together they walked through the ruined gateway and followed the others back down the slope across the rolling snow-covered meadows. And neither of them saw the arrow until it had streaked past their heads.
  
  Sigurd spun, cursing himself for not having killed that bowman when he'd had the chance. And there he was, standing by the rock behind which he had hidden from the rest, nocking another arrow to his bow string. Clearly it was Sigurd he wanted.
  
  'Go, Runa,' Sigurd said, as the next arrow thumped into his shield which he had lifted to protect his face.
  
  'No,' she said, and Sigurd cursed again, striding towards the man to put distance between himself and Runa.
  
  'You're a dead man,' Sigurd told the archer, watching him over the rim of his shield, close enough to see the grimace of hatred on his face. The man took another arrow from the quiver on his belt, turned his head to spit into the snow, put the arrow to the string, drew, held, then loosed. Sigurd did not see this arrow fly but he felt it glance off his helmet with a tonk. A finger's breadth lower and he would have seen the arrow very well for it would have passed through his helmet's left eye guard on its way into his skull.
  
  He heard one of his men yell Runa's name and he looked over his shoulder to see them lumbering back through the snow towards Runa who was on her knees, clutching her face.
  
  'Runa!' he screamed, then shook the shield off his arm and cast his spear aside, turned back to the archer and ran at him. The man stood rooted to the spot for another three heartbeats; long enough to shoot another arrow, this one thumping into Sigurd's shoulder, but seeing that it did not even slow Sigurd, he turned and fled and Sigurd flew after him.
  
  Plunging through the deep snow, Sigurd threw off his helmet then fumbled at his belt until that too fell away with his scabbarded sword and was left behind. Still, the archer was even less cumbered, having no brynja, and he had a spear-throw's worth of head start. Moreover he ran with a swiftness born of fear, clutching his bow in one hand and his arrows in the other lest they fly out of the quiver with his plunging stride.
  
  It was true that fear could make a man fast on his feet. But so could rage, and Sigurd burnt with rage. It pumped blood into his limbs and pounded in his ears. It rasped in his throat like a hateful beast and it shut out the world so that all he could see was his prey in front of him, a desperate and pathetic creature that was too dim-witted to know there was no escape from death.
  
  The bowman ran for the trees, hoping he could lose his pursuer amongst them. He never made it. With six feet of ground between them, Sigurd threw himself at the man, grabbing hold of his furs and bringing him down with a grunt as the air was forced from their lungs. Then Sigurd was on him, clawing at the man's face, forcing his thumbs into the eye sockets so that the archer screamed. Then the thin bone at the back of the man's eyes gave way and Sigurd's thumbs plunged into the hot mush of his brain. The body jerked and convulsed beneath him and finally went still and Sigurd wiped his thumbs on the dead man's furs before standing, gasping for each scalding breath, his pulse in his ears like the beating of a sword on the inside of a shield.
  
  He did not bother to see if the dead man had anything worth taking.
  
  'Wander the afterlife blind, you nithing piece of troll shit,' he growled at the dead man, whose eyes were little wells of blood from which the crows would drink before nightfall. Then he turned and ran back along his own tracks.
  
  To Runa.