text: It had been a good morning until Dunston found the corpse.
  
  When he'd left the hut, there had been nothing to suggest the grisly secret that was hiding deep within the forest. The weather was fine. A misty haze lingered in the folds of the land and along the winding course of the River Frama. There was a crisp bite to the air, but Dunston knew from the experience of many years that the mist would burn off as the sun climbed into the summer sky.
  
  Sparrows scattered, bursting forth from the bracken as Odin, Dunston's rangy merle hound, sped off into the undergrowth. To see the dog run always lifted Dunston's spirits. The dog was close to seven years old, but seemed to think it was still a pup, such was its vigour and energy.
  
  Dunston stretched his right leg and grimaced. Straightening, he winced as his back popped and cracked. He wished he could forget that he was no longer a young man, but his body would allow him no such fantasy. He'd suffered too many injuries, pushed his frame to the limits of endurance too many times for his muscles and joints not to protest. He ran his thick fingers through his beard and sighed. Sometimes he almost forgot the passing of the years. Each day was similar to the countless days before. But then he would catch a glimpse of himself in the polished plate that Eawynn had hung on the wall of his home and he would see that where his beard had once been as black as a winter's night, now it was streaked with silver frost. And the hair that had grown so thick and wavy was now thinning, receding back from his weather-lined brow.
  
  Still, he was yet hale and strong and he strode off along the path, listening absently to the muffled crackle of Odin's passage through the leaf litter and undergrowth. After a few moments, silence fell on the forest and Dunston wondered whether the dog had picked up the scent of a deer. More than likely he would be rolling in some unspeakable dung. By God, if that dog returned covered in shit as he so often did, the stupid animal would be taking a dip in the river before heading home. And he'd be sleeping outside the hut until the stench abated. Christ alone knew what pleasure the hound took in lathering himself in excrement. Perhaps his instincts told him that in that way he would find it easier to stalk prey. Dunston thought it would be hard for any wild animal not to smell the dog's approach after he'd smeared himself liberally with manure. And yet, no matter how often he rebuked the beast, it never stopped him.
  
  Dunston pursed his lips, meaning to whistle for Odin, but he paused before making a sound. Something was amiss.
  
  He halted in a small glade, shaded beneath the surrounding trees and listened. He had lived with nobody but Odin for company for long enough to know better than to ignore his feelings. Breathing silently through his opened mouth, he noted his steaming breath billowing momentarily. There was no wind. He listened to the forest, straining to hear any indication of what might have unsettled him.
  
  Silence. As absolute as a tomb.
  
  Gone was the sound of Odin's bounding gait through the wood. No trees rustled their leaves. The birds, usually filling the forest with their twittering songs, had all hushed. The stillness was disquieting.
  
  Alert now, Dunston moved stealthily into the brush beside the trail. With barely a glance he made out where Odin had passed. The fresh white wood of a broken twig. A bent fern. There, in the muddy earth between the boles of two gnarled oaks, a fresh paw print, claws dug in deeply where the dog had been running fast.
  
  With scarcely a sound, the aches in his knee and back forgotten, Dunston followed Odin's trail. He stepped lithely and as quietly as a shade. He did not hurry, for to do so would be to make noise when he knew that the surprise of silence would serve him well against man and beast.
  
  There were creatures that dwelt in these lands that it would do well to respect. He sometimes saw the spoor of bears and at times in winter, wolves would cause him trouble, ripping the flesh from the animals he snared. But he was not unduly concerned about bears or wolves. He was more worried that Odin might have stumbled upon one of the old boars that roamed the woodland. To face one openly could well spell death for a dog, no matter how strong. The larger boars had great, dagger-like tusks and he had seen hounds and once even an unlucky man, disembowelled by the furious wild pigs.
  
  Dunston placed his hand on the large seax that was scabbarded at his belt. He had no spear, and if he was charged by a big boar, he knew the knife would do him little good. But the touch of its antler hilt reassured him. Barely breathing, he stalked forward, as silent as any woodland animal. He paused again, listening and sniffing the air. There was no sound. Surely if Odin had stumbled upon a boar, there would have been a cacophony of grunts and growls as the animals fought. Even the largest boar would not slay Odin without a fight. And yet, there was just the unnerving hush.
  
  Light sliced through the leafy canopy, dappling the loam and leaf mould. Dunston dropped to one knee, the joint letting out a sharp report. He winced at the sudden sound, loud in the unnatural stillness. He peered at the ground, unsure for a moment what it was he saw. And then, the shapes of the trampled leaves and the scuffed mark on the moss-covered rock by the root of a linden tree all made sense in an instant of clarity. Odin had passed this way, but so too had several men. Large, heavy men, to judge from their tracks. Three of them. No, four. They had been travelling northward. Dunston examined the tracks closely. They were fresh. He did not recognise them. These were not the prints left by any of the men who came to the wood from Briuuetone. He would never mistake the tracks of the charcoal burners, the woodsmen or the swineherd leading his pigs in search of mast under the trees. No, these were strangers, he was sure of it. But what would four men be doing creeping around in his forest? Perhaps they were wolf-heads; men outside of the law, whose oaths were worthless. Such men could be dangerous. They had nothing to lose.
  
  He pushed himself up and before setting off once more after Odin, he listened again. There was a whisper of a sound and an instant later, the grey, white and black hound loped into the lancing sunlight.
  
  Odin, tongue lolling, panted. His chest heaved.
  
  "Where have you been, boy?" asked Dunston in a hushed hiss. His heart soared at the animal's safe return and he let out a pent up breath, surprised at his own worry for the hound. He reached out a hand and Odin nudged it with his snout, licking his fingers. The dog's nose was wet and cool. Dunston rubbed absently at the dog's ear and was surprised to see a smudge of crimson on the beast's fur.
  
  Blood.
  
  He looked down at his hand and saw that it was slick with the stuff. Pushing Odin's head to one side so that it caught a ray of sunlight, he saw that the hound's mouth and muzzle were drenched in gore.
  
  By Christ's bones, what had Odin discovered? Had he perhaps brought down a fawn? Odin was a good hunter and would often chase and slay animals. But somehow Dunston knew that this blood did not belong to any animal. The fresh prints of the men told him that much. That, and the unnerving quiet of the wood.
  
  For the merest of instants Dunston considered turning away and walking back to his hut. A small voice whispered to him that he wanted no part of whatever it was Odin had found.
  
  Later, on more than one occasion, he would regret not listening to that voice.
  
  Yet as surely as he knew he wanted nothing to do with the strangers that were in his forest, nor to discover where the blood had come from, so he understood that it was not in his nature to walk away.
  
  He sighed, blowing out air slowly so that his breath billowed about him for a moment in the early morning cool.
  
  "Stay close, boy," he whispered. "Show me what you've found."
  
  Odin looked up at him, its one eye dark and thoughtful, bearded mouth red and straggled. And then the dog spun around and padded silently back into the undergrowth. Dunston hurried behind, less concerned now with remaining silent as with finding the source of that blood.
  
  It was closer than he had imagined. A few heartbeats later, Odin led him into a clearing surrounded by densely leafed linden trees. In the centre of the glade lay a corpse. He did not need to approach the body to know the man was dead.
  
  The clearing was awash with blood. The man had been slain atop a fallen oak, the wood long dead and crumbling. The tree trunk was slimed with gore. The delicate white flowers of the dog rose that grew along the edge of the rotting tree were splattered with crimson. The moss that clung to the wood glistened darkly. Blood had spattered and smeared much of the clearing's green carpet of snakeweed and ivy. The corpse had been stripped to the waist. Where his skin was not daubed with his lifeblood, it was pallid; the blue-tinge of death. Dunston could not see the dead man's face. He had been left face down on the log. His greying hair dangled down, lank and blood-streaked, brushing the earth beneath his hanging head.
  
  Dunston had seen death before. But the savagery of this man's slaughter made his breath catch in his throat. This was more than a murder, or a robbery of an unlucky traveller. There was evil here.
  
  Dunston shuddered.
  
  Odin padded forward into the glade.
  
  "Stay," Dunston ordered, his voice harsh; a knife cut in the stillness of the forest.
  
  The dog whimpered, but halted and sat on its haunches. Absently, Dunston reached out and placed a hand on the hound's head. The dog's warmth was comforting.
  
  Dunston stroked the soft, warm fur behind Odin's ears, but all the while, his gaze remained fixed on the scene of slaughter before him.
  
  The slain man's back had been split open. His ribs had been pried apart and his offal pulled from his flesh and splayed upon his back. Dunston did not need to get any closer to know that the bloody mess either side of the great wound in the centre of his back was made up of the man's lungs. They had been draped like crude, blood-drenched wings on the man's shoulder blades.
  
  Dunston had heard of such things, but he had thought them the tales of scops to frighten children. Though why they felt the need to make the Norsemen any more terrifying than they were, he had never understood. In his experience, the men who came from the sea aboard the beast-prowed sea-dragons, oars beating as the wings of some giant bird, were fearsome enough. There was no need to invent stories of human sacrifice and ritual killings in the name of their one-eyed god.
  
  Could it be that the tales were true? Had raiders landed nearby in their sleek ships, on the Frama perhaps? Surely the river was not large enough here to carry fighting ships? Were Norsemen even now creeping through the forest in search of prey?
  
  And yet he had only seen the tracks of four men. And it was not the way of those heathen Norse to sneak around murdering men in the dark of the woodland. The people of the coast lived in constant fear of the coming of the dragon ships, he knew, but here? And why so few of them?
  
  Whatever the truth of it, the remains of the poor man told him one thing. Danger was close.
  
  Dunston dragged his gaze from the gory spectacle and cast around the clearing. Clothing was strewn about. A tawny-coloured cape. A ripped kirtle, tattered and flecked with dark stains. A single leather shoe. Dunston flicked his gaze back to the dead man and noted his left foot was bare.
  
  An unusual shadow caught his attention. There was something large just beyond the clearing. He took a couple of steps towards it. His hand rested on his seax handle and once again he was moving with the silent stealth of a woodland hunter. Two more steps and he was able to discern what the object was. A handcart. A simple, two-wheeled affair that could be pulled by one person. Walking to the cart, he tugged back the greased leather that covered its contents. He was surprised to find several sacks, a wooden box and a couple of small iron-hooped kegs, nestling safely and seemingly untouched beneath the cover. Teasing open one of the sacks he found long white goose feathers inside. A second, smaller bag held leather pouches. Each of the pouches was tightly tied, but they were not sealed well enough to disguise the heady aroma of pepper, cinnamon and mace. Dunston's head swam with the powerful scents of the spices. These were not the things that would bring Norse warriors battle-fame and have their names sung of in the halls of their northern lands, but the stuff was valuable enough. Pulling the leather back over the cart, he looked about him.
  
  A light wind rustled the leaves high above. The summer sun was warming the land. Somewhere far off a wood pigeon called. The forest was returning to normal, breathing once again after the sudden violence that had happened within its depths.
  
  Dunston sighed. When he had awoken that morning, he had meant to check his snares, and then return to his hut and the forge. The knife he was making for Oswold, the leatherworker from Briuuetone, was taking shape and it would easily have been finished by midsummer's eve. But now that would have to wait. He could not leave the man here. The easiest thing would be to bury him and just keep what was on the cart. He could sell the items over time, and some of the things might be of use to him.
  
  Shaking his head, he returned to the clearing. He knew he would do no such thing. He was no thief, and besides, there were killers on the loose. Perhaps even Norsemen. No, he would take the cart and the man down to Briuuetone. Let Rothulf decide what must be done. Perhaps the reeve would know who the corpse was. Maybe the dead man had kin.
  
  Dunston took in a deep breath and spat, readying himself for the task of wrestling the man's gore-slick remains onto the small cart. He once more searched the ground, as much to put off the task as anything else.
  
  The same four men. They had all been here. He could clearly see where they had confronted the man with the cart and then dragged him to the fallen oak. The spray of the man's blood showed Dunston where they had first tortured him and then, with a great gouting fountain of dark arterial blood, they had taken his life. Dunston reached out to touch a bramble, pulling a small red woollen thread from a thorn. His hand shook. He could almost hear the screams of the dying man, the laughter and shouts of the men who had butchered him. Dunston was no stranger to death and he was accustomed to slaughtering, gutting and skinning animals small and large. But this torn tragedy, a mass of ripped flesh and offal, this was no way for a man to die.
  
  Twisting the piece of wool between his forefinger and thumb, Dunston steeled himself for what he needed to do. But just as he pushed himself up, he noticed the slightest of prints in the soft earth in the shade of the dog rose. This was something else. No, someone else. Judging from the size and depth of the track, this belonged to a child or perhaps a woman. Had the four men taken her?
  
  Dunston's heart pounded. Was there even now a defenceless child at the mercy of the brutes who had committed this act of savagery? He searched frantically about the glade for more sign, but the area was trampled. Flies and insects droned and hummed now about the corpse, gorging themselves on its blood and cooling flesh.
  
  He could find no more tracks. Perhaps he should follow the clear trail of the killers in order to see whether they had carried the child off with them. He did not like the prospect. There were four of them and he wanted nothing to do with men capable of such atrocities. And yet, without a backward glance, he hitched up his belt and walked into the forest after them. He would have to come back for the poor man's body later.
  
  Just as he stepped into the gloom beneath the linden trees, Odin let out a piercing bark. By the rood and all the saints, the stupid dog would get him killed. Dunston hissed at the hound for silence, but Odin ignored him, raising his snout as if scenting something on the breeze, and then bounding off into the undergrowth in the opposite direction to the killers' tracks.
  
  Unsure for a moment, Dunston hesitated. Then, with a curse, he turned and ran after the dog.