text: The next day, jarl guthrum attacked the borg with his whole army at his back. They fell upon the east wall in one great mass, taking ladders, hooks and ropes, and even riding their horses up to the palisade and standing on the animals' backs to reach high enough to pull themselves up. Again, Guthrum himself was in the heart of the blood-fray, his best warriors gathered round him as they attacked the gates with axes, hacking at the timbers while others held shields over them.
  
  But before the first insults were hurled, before the war cries and the first blood was spilled, Guthrum had taken Sigurd, Valgerd and Floki up the slope to within a spear-throw of the borg so that the defenders could see that they had failed in their attempt to kill the jarl. To his credit, and to Sigurd's surprise, Alrik offered Guthrum five of his iron bars for Sigurd's freedom. But Guthrum sent his reply in the form of another spear over the palisade, in this way claiming every man in the borg for Óðin.
  
  'Should have told me!' Olaf called to Sigurd, his face hard as a cliff face. The others did not look any happier. Svein would not even look at Sigurd, which said how he felt about being left behind.
  
  'You would have stopped us,' Valgerd called back.
  
  'Aye, and you'd be on this side of the wall instead of that side,' Olaf said.
  
  And that was the end of the talking because it was time for the killing to begin.
  
  Sigurd did not hear what Jarl Guthrum had said to his men that morning but they fought as though they felt the gods at their shoulders, Óðin and Thór, Týr and Vidar, mail-clad and eyes blazing. They threw themselves at the borg as though the scent of the winners' feast was in their noses and the silver lustre of plunder lit the day. Up the ladders and ropes they went, yelling their throats out and thrusting their spears up at the borg men.
  
  Yet, that gods-fevered army broke on Alrik's walls like a wave smashing against a rock. Sigurd saw it all, how Alrik's men speared those coming up the ladders, then used their spears to lever those ladders off the palisade and throw them back. Saw how they let the grappling hooks bite then waited for men to climb before cutting the ropes so that Guthrum's men fell, tumbling back down the bank.
  
  He watched Olaf and Bram, Svein and Moldof slaughtering anyone foolish enough to climb the gates, and he saw Alrik and Knut rallying their men in a desperate and stubborn defence, splitting skulls, staving faces and knocking the attackers off the walls like mussels knocked off a jetty pile.
  
  'This will be a feast for the crows,' Floki said, looking like a crow himself with that black hair, and he was right. The whole thing did not take long. After the time needed to put a keen edge on a blade which is not blunt to begin with, it was over.
  
  They watched as Beigarth had to haul his jarl away from the splintered hole they had managed to make in the gates with their axes. That hole was Guthrum's own work as much as anyone's and by the time his axe had broken through he was beyond all reason, his usual composure replaced with a mad rage. Sigurd saw him drag one of Alrik's men out through that breach and turn him to pulp with the butt of his axe's haft. But even as he was pummelling that man, his own warriors were dying all around him, falling to the spears, rocks and arrows raining down from the ramparts, and had Beigarth not dragged him off, his shield raised over the jarl, Guthrum would have died by that hole he'd made.
  
  The cheer that rose from the borg as Guthrum's men fell back knowing they were beaten must have been a hard thing for the jarl to hear. He did not seem to care that the six shafts sprouting from Beigarth's shield meant there was a good chance he would have been dead if not for his champion.
  
  'He will come over here and cut our throats just because he can,' Valgerd said. But Sigurd did not think Guthrum would do that. It seemed to Sigurd that the jarl was already getting a grip on his rage. He had shrugged Beigarth off and was standing tall again, taking long, deep breaths as he watched his men help their wounded companions down the hill away from the borg; from those walls which had once protected them but against which they had now thrown all their weight and failed.
  
  And yet Alrik had lost his share of men too, warriors he could ill afford to be without, and that night their pyres sent a thick black plume into the wan sky, tainting the air with the smell of burnt flesh. From what Sigurd could see before Guthrum's men led them away, it seemed that his own little crew had survived. He knew that Olaf would have steered them through that fight, not letting them risk themselves unnecessarily, but that did not take the edge off the guilt Sigurd felt for having not been there fighting beside them. In his arrogance he had thought he could do what Alrik had so far failed to do: kill Jarl Guthrum and put an end to this war between them. He had thought that one thrust of his scramasax in the night would make him rich and prove that he was still Óðin-favoured. Instead he had walked into Guthrum's trap like a bear shambling into a pit of sharpened stakes. As if he did not have enough enemies in the world, he was now at the mercy of a new one, a man who owed him a bad death at the very least.
  
  Perhaps the gods were playing with him. Perhaps, as Asgot believed, he had drawn Loki's gaze now as well as the Allfather's, meaning nothing was certain from here on – not that it ever had been.
  
  He cursed as Guthrum's men tied him and Floki and Valgerd to stakes in the ground and left them there as night fell.
  
  Because he had failed.
  
  Through the open door Runa could see that the light was fading. It was not high summer yet and dusk was laying its shroud over Fugløy as the day retreated into the west. And still the woman's child was not born, much to the disappointment of those who had gathered round, drawn to the magic of birthing the way men are drawn to a fight.
  
  'She's never going to spit this bairn out,' Sibbe said with a curl of her lip. If Runa had an enemy on Fugløy, Sibbe was it, though they had not fought with anything other than wooden practice swords since the night the Wise Mother had returned and Runa had knocked Sibbe unconscious. After that they had avoided each other as far as was possible on a spit of an island like Fugløy.
  
  'Why don't we push on her belly?' Drífa suggested, her hands wrapped round the cup of ale which the Wise Mother had told her to fetch. Runa still gripped the tongs she had borrowed from Ingel, though neither she nor the prophetess had put them to use yet because the woman did not seem to want their help after all. 'If we push in the right place it should pop out from between her legs like a ripe pea from the pod,' Drífa went on, which had some of the others shaking their heads and telling Drífa she would be better off saying nothing than talking such nonsense. What did Drífa know of childbirth, having lived her whole life on an island of women who had no men? What did any of them know, Runa thought. Then again, she supposed many of them must have seen new lives being brought into the world, or at least been around labouring women when they were younger, before they had come to this life of sword-craft and solitude.
  
  'Bring it here, girl,' the old prophetess snapped at Drífa.
  
  She had told Drífa to bring ale, the strongest she could find, because she was getting angry with Gudny now. Had been angry for a good while, truth be told, though she had kept the fire of it behind a cold face, perhaps for fear of making things worse. For ever since they had got Gudny comfortably into a nest of fleeces, which had been no easy undertaking, she had refused to spread her legs properly and let the Wise Mother peer inside her or bring the lamplight close enough for a good look. Now and then those bent legs would drift apart, slowly, and it seemed Gudny would let them help her. But then they would snap together again and with the force of a dog's jaws too, so that the Wise Mother had nearly lost a hand on more than one occasion. Certainly the stubborn woman's knees would be bruised like the apples at the bottom of the barrel, as one of the Maidens had pointed out.
  
  'If she does not want our help she should go back to wherever she came from,' Sibbe said.
  
  'Our help?' the Wise Mother said, snatching the cup from Drífa, who shrank back as from a flame. 'And tell us, young Sibbe, just how are you helping, hey?' Sibbe had no answer to that and the old witch took a mouthful of ale herself before dragging a claw across her puckered mouth. 'Drink, girl,' she rasped, 'drink it all, you fool. I'd wager you spread your legs easily enough for that man outside.' Gudny's doe eyes gazed at the faces around her as she curled her fingers round the cup which the Wise Mother thrust at her.
  
  'Ale will surely get her legs open,' Signy said, leaning against a roof post, her arms crossed over her chest. 'Two cups and they'll fly apart so fast there'll be a breeze in here.'
  
  'Aye, get it down you, girl,' an older Maiden told Gudny, 'for if you do not want it, I will drink it for you.'
  
  'What is she waiting for?' a woman named Svanloga said. 'I'd wager she must have been up to her tits in ale to let that man out there ride her in the first place.' She nodded towards the door and got a rasped rebuke from Vebiorg who told her that was no way to talk to guests. For seeing as they had not cast the couple and their stuck bairn back into the sea, then surely it meant they were guests on the island and must be treated accordingly.
  
  'Tsk! He cannot hear me,' Svanloga said, waving a hand which made a nearby lamp flame gutter.
  
  'But she can,' Vebiorg said, jutting her chin towards Gudny, who if she was offended showed no sign of it as she sipped at the ale. Vebiorg had been replaced on the bluff by Rinda, who had gone off sulking because she had wanted to see the baby being born. Not that she was missing anything yet.
  
  'I'll not fetter my words for some man,' Svanloga said, loud enough that Varin, who was outside in the dusk, could surely not help but hear. He had been told that a house with a birthing woman in it was no place for a man and that he would only make things worse by standing there all useless, talking of things about which he knew nothing. The man had not needed telling twice and had not shown his face since, though Runa imagined he must have been sweating himself into a lather out there on his own.
  
  'Drink it, girl!' the Wise Mother snapped. 'Don't just wet your lips with the stuff. Drink!'
  
  Gudny drank. And after two more cups her resolve drowned in ale like a cat tied in a sack and thrown into the fjord. Those milk-white legs of hers all but fell open and Gudny let out a thin snickering laugh which had the women glancing at each other, eyebrows arched.
  
  'That ale is not so strong, or is there another stash which I do not know about?' Sibbe said, looking at Drífa, who shook her head.
  
  But the Wise Mother did not wait for further invitation. She had smeared butter on her hand and was up to the wrist in Gudny, whose eyes were round like her mouth. 'So you bled, hey?' the Wise Mother said, her eyes closed as she felt around inside the woman.
  
  'I … thought …' Gudny winced and drank more ale. 'I thought I was dying.'
  
  By the flickering light of the lamp flames Runa noticed the prophetess's face clench at the same time that her arm went still. She withdrew her hand from Gudny's sheath and wiped it on the fleece beneath her. She stood up on creaking legs, stared at Gudny lying there and then walked towards the hearth, the women parting to let her through the press of them.
  
  'Runa Haraldsdóttir, come here,' she said, and Runa, still holding Ingel's iron tongs, did as she was told, passing through the throng of murmuring Maidens until she stood at the old witch's shoulder.
  
  'What is it, Wise Mother?' Runa asked. She felt a sudden weight in her stomach. Something cold running up the skin of her arms. She looked round to see that the others were watching them, though none had come any closer.
  
  'That woman will squeeze the bairn out soon enough,' the old witch said, turning her gaze from the small hearth flames on to Runa. 'But not tonight. Not by my reckoning.' She chewed on her thin lips. 'The child is there and alive as far as I can tell. Its heart flutters like a little sparrow. See my hand, girl,' she said, holding it in the fire glow. 'Notice anything?'
  
  Runa did. 'There's no blood.'
  
  The witch nodded. 'So what is that on her clothes, eh? Something about these two does not smell right,' she said. 'Her man is still outside?'
  
  'Where else would he be?' Runa said.
  
  'Come with me, Runa Haraldsdóttir,' the old woman said, taking her catskin hat off the nail in the roof post where it hung, 'and we will see where this smell leads.'
  
  They stepped outside into the dusk and saw men. They were armed with shields and blades and by the faint last light of the day Runa saw their teeth and the whites of their eyes.
  
  She pushed in front of the Wise Mother, pulling her scramasax from its scabbard.
  
  'Drop it, girl, or I'll cut the old hag's throat.'
  
  Runa turned to see two more men looming in the near-dark either side of the longhouse door. One had a fist full of the Wise Mother's hair and a knife against her pale neck.
  
  'It would take just a stroke,' the man warned, pushing the flat of his blade against the witch's flesh, 'and a little tug. Easy as picking a sloe from the bush.'
  
  'Do as we say, Runa Haraldsdóttir,' Varin said, stepping forward to reveal himself to Runa, who hissed a curse at him but threw the scramasax on to the ground beside her. Then Varin nodded at another man who came forward and grabbed Runa round the neck, pulling her against him so that his stink flooded her and she felt the cold kiss of his knife beneath her chin.
  
  'Nice and still now, girl,' this one growled, his foul beard and breath assaulting her. 'I don't want to have to cut a pretty thing like you.'
  
  The others came together, spears and shields raised, some of them facing out into the night while the rest faced the longhouse door through which Varin walked, followed by Runa who went where she was shoved.
  
  'Who are you, then?' Vebiorg asked, she being the foremost of those who stood facing the threshold. Alerted to the danger, the women had grabbed whatever weapons they had to hand, but now they might as well have been rooted in the earth for they stood still as the posts which held up the longhouse roof.
  
  'Careful now,' Varin warned them. 'We don't want any accidents.'
  
  Drífa had her bow raised, its string pulled back to her chin, the arrow aimed at Varin, and Runa knew that she was good enough to put that shaft in any of the pitted scars on Varin's face that she chose.
  
  Yet Varin was confident and well he might be, for whatever his intentions he could not have hoped for it all to be this easy.
  
  'I want a pile of blades there,' he said, pointing his own spear at the long table. 'Every knife, every shield, any silver or iron you have. I want it all on there. Do what I ask and all will be well.' He pointed his spear at Drífa then swung it towards the Wise Mother and Runa. 'Disobey me and we will kill the witch and the girl.'
  
  Runa tried to meet the Wise Mother's eyes but all she saw were the whites as those eyes rolled up into the old woman's head before the lids came down. She was trying to see the future. Or communing with the gods perhaps. Either way she was no longer fully in that room with the rest of them, and Runa was filled with a dread fear that this night was the end which the prophetess had foretold.
  
  Surely Freyja would not have her Maidens' wyrds lead them to this. But what if this were the twilight of the world and Freyja needed her warriors to join her in the last battle between the gods and their enemies? Was Ragnarök upon them all? Runa's mind was knotted with these thoughts and perhaps the other women were thinking such things too. They looked to each other, not knowing what to do.
  
  'If we give up our blades, who is to say they will not slaughter us all anyway?' a fierce-looking, spear-armed woman named Harthegrepa asked the others.
  
  'They're men,' another woman spat. 'If they have come all this way it is not to kill us. Least not until they've had their pleasure.'
  
  Nevertheless, Vebiorg shook her head at Drífa, who eased the tension off the bow and lowered it, though she kept the arrow nocked.
  
  Just then one of Varin's companions appeared in the doorway. 'We've got the others. Gave us no trouble once we made things clear,' he said. 'But the blacksmiths are gone. Hiding in the woods, I would say.'
  
  Varin cursed. 'Keep your eyes open. If they show up meaning to make a fight of it, tell them we'll kill the girl. Her name's Runa. That should keep them out of it.' The other man grinned, nodded, then vanished again. 'Well?' Varin said, pointing his spear at the thirty or so women gathered in the hall. 'Do I have to bleed Runa here to show you that I mean what I say?'
  
  Vebiorg's eyes promised Varin a death she could not give him as she muttered some oath to Freyja and went over to the long table, putting her knife on it. 'Do what he says,' she told the others, who muttered their own dark threats at Varin but followed Vebiorg's lead until the table was covered with weapons whose iron and steel blades and creamy bone and antler hilts gleamed by flickering flamelight. Drífa had been one of the last, but her bow lay amongst the rest of it and now her glare was aimed at Varin, her eyes themselves gleaming like arrow heads.
  
  'Let her through,' Varin said, pointing his spear towards Gudny, who was standing now behind a knot of women who were not ready to let her rejoin her husband, if Varin was her husband.
  
  'What is to stop me putting my knife in her belly and skewering the child too unless you let them go?' Svanloga asked, placing the point of her scramasax, which she had kept hold of, against the great swell of Gudny. As for the swollen young woman, she was trembling with fear now that her and Varin's deceit was uncovered and the promise of death hung in the air.
  
  Varin shrugged. 'If it is in you to murder her and the life inside her, do it. I will put my seed in another woman. But I will not give up what we came for. Not for her.'
  
  Runa pitied Gudny then, for all her trickery and the part she had played in Varin's scheme to throw the Freyja Maidens off guard so that his friends could come ashore unnoticed. For there was no doubt in Runa's mind that Varin would stand there and watch Svanloga sheathe her blade in the woman's unborn bairn rather than see the stitching of his plan come undone. Svanloga saw this too, and with a hiss like that of the swan after which she was named she stepped aside and told Gudny to go. 'I hope that bairn splits you like a mallet and wedge,' she spat, going over to lay her scramasax on the table with the other war gear, and the brooches, silver rings, iron keys and amulets spread upon it.
  
  'Wait outside,' Varin told Gudny, who nodded, swiping away her tears as she waddled past Varin out into the night. 'Asvald, Iarl, get in here!' Varin called, and when those two came into the house Varin had them gather up what was on the table and carry it all outside, which took them three trips each, and all the while Runa seethed inside, hateful of these men and angry at herself for being fooled by this Varin and his whale of a woman. The weapon hoard on its own was plunder men such as these could only dream of.
  
  'On your knees, all of you,' Varin ordered them. 'You!' he barked at four women who stood at the far edges of the room where tapestries hung by the beds. 'Here with the rest. All of you, down.' He walked over to the Wise Mother and added his spear point to the long blade at her throat. 'Now!' he said, and the Freyja Maidens went down on their knees in the rushes and straw. 'Good,' Varin said, then he called to his companions outside to bring in the women they had rounded up, who were made to kneel with the rest, so that the only three missing were Gæierlaug and Ingibjorg, and Skuld Snorradóttir. Rinda had taken over Vebiorg's watch up on the bluff overlooking the bay, and Runa feared for her now, for surely she would have warned them about Varin's crew if she had been able to. And where was she now? Ingibjorg was over on the west side of the island at the beacon overlooking Flea Rock, because there was another sandy beach there which was kind to ships' hulls and so had to be watched.
  
  As for Skuld, she was under the cloak and so with the gods.
  
  'Are you enjoying this cuddle as much as I am?' the man gnarred in Runa's ear. She could smell pig grease on his beard and something rotten in his mouth.
  
  'I'll enjoy killing you,' she said, at which he pressed his groin against her and she flinched at the hardness in his breeks, and was suddenly even more afraid than she had been at the touch of his steel against her throat.
  
  'Ever had a man inside you, girl?' he rasped.
  
  'Have you?' Runa dared, and the man did not like that and so he squeezed Runa's neck in the crook of his arm and suddenly Runa could not breathe. Heat bloomed in her face and head and she struggled against the man's bulk but he was immovable, a great reeking mound of muscle and flesh, and so she went still instead, hoping that his grip would slacken if she gave him no trouble. It did. She gasped for breath.
  
  'We have come to Kuntøy for the silver which King Thorir sent here,' Varin said, pointing his spear at the Wise Mother, whom Varin's man had brought forward so that the women could see with their own eyes how helpless the witch was against the threat of the blade at her scrawny old neck. 'Do not bother telling me that you know nothing of it. I know the skipper of King Thorir's knörr Storm-Elk. I know that the day Storm-Elk brought young Runa Haraldsdóttir here from Skíringssalr there was an even prettier cargo aboard. A sea chest brimming with hacksilver. With full arm rings and ingots and all of it heavy enough that it took four men to offload it.' He planted the spear's butt on the floor and pointed at Vebiorg with his right hand. 'I know all this, so do not try to spin me your lies.'
  
  'That silver was King Thorir's gift to the Goddess,' Vebiorg said.
  
  'Ah,' Varin said, lifting his chin. 'I had wondered what use you would have for such a hoard. Living here stuck to this island like mussels to a rock.'
  
  'They say Thorir means to buy his way into Freyja's hall,' the man holding Runa growled.
  
  'He would rather spend the afterlife there than in Valhöll?' the one called Asvald asked from the doorway behind Runa.
  
  Varin shrugged. 'I know nothing about any of that,' he said, 'and care nothing about it either. What I know is that there is a silver hoard on this island and I will be leaving with it.'
  
  'You take that silver and you'll be stealing from the king himself,' Vebiorg said.
  
  Varin shrugged. 'There are other kings,' he said. 'With a hoard like that we can go anywhere. Pledge ourselves to another lord.' He grinned and it was the first smile Runa had seen on his face since she had met him on the shore. 'I could become lord of my own hall. Somewhere far from here.'
  
  'If we kill them, King Thorir will never know what happened here,' the reeking man holding Runa said, pressing his cold blade against her neck. Pressing his other weapon into her hip.
  
  'That is true, Gevar,' Varin acknowledged with a nod, 'but they are making this easy for us and I am grateful for it. I will be more grateful still when one of them tells me where I can find that chest that came ashore with young Runa scar-face there.' He was one to talk about scars, Runa thought as he swept the spear from Runa towards the women who knelt on the floor, the blade slicing through the smoke which hung above their heads. 'Which of you will tell me?' he asked.
  
  'Were it our silver to give, we would say take it and leave,' the Wise Mother said, her eyes still closed. They were the first words she had spoken since this thing had begun and as Varin turned to her she suddenly opened those eyes on him, making him start a little. Everyone in that room saw it, and Runa knew that for all his swagger the man still feared that the witch might put some curse on him. 'It does not even belong to King Thorir, that silver,' the prophetess said. 'Not any more. Vebiorg was wrong about that.' Those old eyes were in Varin's flesh like fish hooks. 'It belongs to Freyja now.' She grinned and it was as cold and desolate as Helheim. 'I know you are a man, Varin, but even so. Surely you cannot be so stupid as to steal from a goddess?'
  
  'Still your old tongue, crone,' Varin told her, turning back to the kneeling women. 'Where is the silver? Tell me now or I'll cut her throat.'
  
  They glared at him, their eyes full of defiance, none of them wanting to be the one to give the shit what he wanted.
  
  He sighed, then walked back to the Wise Mother and gestured at the man holding her to take his knife from her throat, which the man did. Then Varin brought his spear up and slashed open the witch's throat with the point, tearing apart her skin and flesh as easily as if it had been old sail cloth. Blood welled and spilled as the prophetess's eyes widened then rolled up into her skull again. The Freyja Maidens screeched and clamoured but the men threatened them with their spears and the women knew that to move against them was to die.
  
  Runa strained and fought against the arms holding her but the more she struggled the tighter Gevar bound her.
  
  'You next if you keep this up, girl,' he growled into her hair, his breath hot on her scalp. 'That what you want, eh? Hold still, bitch, or I'll cut you myself!'
  
  'Some seeress, hey,' Iarl said, jutting his chin at the old woman on the floor by Varin's feet. In her catskins she looked more animal than human, but for her grey hair which had spilled from her hat and now covered her face, wicking blood from the pool which was spreading amongst the straw. 'She did not see that coming, Varin.'
  
  But Varin ignored him as he bent to pick up a handful of straw and used it to wipe the old woman's blood off his spear blade. Then he walked over to Runa, who was still staring at the Wise Mother, who was no more. Just like that.
  
  'Did I not tell you all what would happen if you did not share the whereabouts of that silver?' Varin asked. He was looking at Runa. Her eyes slid from the dead witch on to his and she wanted to tell him he was a fool to kill a seiðr-wife, for who could say what curse she had laid upon him as she died? But she did not dare, because if Varin's silver-lust was strong enough that he would cut out the Wise Mother's throat like that, then he would surely do the same to her if she gave him reason.
  
  'Now I will ask again,' Varin said, lifting the newly cleaned spear tip to Runa's face. She wondered what he was doing then realized that the blade was tracing the scar which an arrow had carved from just below her left eye to her ear. 'Where … is … the … silver?'
  
  'Tell us, girl, and be done with it,' Gevar mumbled into Runa's hair. The man was all over her, his face and nose pressed amongst her braids. He was breathing her in, sniffing her like an animal.
  
  Runa clamped her teeth together to stop herself telling these men what they wanted to know. Let them kill me then, a voice said in her head, for she would not break now. Her father had been Jarl Harald of Skudeneshavn and her mother had fought until her last breath. Her brothers had been great warriors and the last of them yet living was Óðin-favoured. Of all the women in this hall, she would not be the one to break.
  
  'Well, Runa?' Varin said.
  
  She gave a slight shake of her head, then braced herself for whatever was coming. Varin's own jaw was clenched tight, the muscle bouncing beneath the pitted cheeks upon which no beard would grow. Suddenly he turned and strode over to the kneeling women and put the spear blade to Vebiorg's throat and Vebiorg lifted her chin so that it would at least be done cleanly.
  
  'It's buried!' Runa said. 'The silver. It's buried.'
  
  Varin held the spear still, a layer of wool grease and a piece or two of straw all that was between the blade and the Freyja Maiden's white flesh. 'Where?' he asked.
  
  Vebiorg's eyes told Runa to say nothing, but Runa knew that Varin would let that spear blade drink again unless she spoke up.
  
  'I'll take you there,' Runa said. 'I'll show you where it is buried.'
  
  Some of the kneeling women hissed or murmured their disapproval, but others nodded at Runa as if to tell her that she was doing the right thing given how the night was going so far.
  
  'Good,' Varin said with a nod, lowering the spear and walking to the door. 'Bring her,' he said over his shoulder. 'The rest of you, out.'
  
  'Looks like we're off for a walk, girl,' Gevar gnarred at Runa, shoving her after Varin.
  
  As she went, Runa shrugged at Vebiorg. What choice was there? she asked with a look.
  
  'The Goddess go with you, Runa,' Vebiorg said.
  
  And then Runa was amongst seven grizzled, predatory-looking men in the gathering dark. She looked at the Freyja Maidens' weapons piled on a fur on the ground but knew she would be cut down before she could make use of any of them.
  
  Those men must have already known what would happen next, for two of them retrieved several planks of wood along with a hammer and nails which they had piled against the longhouse wall while Runa was inside. They held the planks across the threshold and hammered the nails in while two others defied the night with firebrands, having lit them at the forge.
  
  Where were Ingel and Ibor? Runa did not know whether to be glad they were not here, for what could they do against seven armed men? Or angry because they had not at least tried to fight.
  
  'Gevar and Iarl with me,' Varin said, taking one of the torches from a man with a harelip who could not have been much older than Runa. 'The rest of you know what to do.'
  
  They ayed and grunted and hefted their spears and shields, grim-faced in the golden flamelight of those hissing brands.
  
  'This way,' Runa said, the blood in her legs and arms seeming to tremble as she led the three men away from the longhouses, past the grain store and the smoke house and into the woods on the south-east side of the settlement.
  
  At first there was enough light to see by, what with Varin's flame and the birch trunks which seemed to glow in the moonlight that spilled through their flickering leaves. But soon they left the birch and scrub behind and came among the tall pines, whose lower branches were sparse and brittle but whose upper reaches were thick and black as soot. Here was a darkness which might be pushed back by the firebrand's golden bloom but never vanquished, and no sooner had Varin and his torch passed a place than would the night flood in again.
  
  'How much further?' Varin asked after a while, passing Runa so that he could better light their way. He cursed as a branch caught on his tunic sleeve, ripping the wool.
  
  'A little way yet,' Runa replied. 'A little island walk never hurt anyone, Varin,' Iarl said, using his shield to fend off more branches. 'Not unless it was to settle a matter of honour between the hazel staves,' he added thoughtfully, and Runa knew Iarl was alluding to the hólmganga, when two men would go on to an empty island and fight a duel to settle a dispute.
  
  'I still don't see the point in burying a sea chest full of silver,' Gevar said. 'Strange enough that these women all live here together, never letting a man between their legs, without them going around putting silver in the ground for the worms.'
  
  'Or for the gods,' Iarl said. 'You heard the old woman. King Thorir meant his silver for Freyja. An offering, like a bull or a good ram, only without all the blood and bleating.'
  
  'Without the blood, Iarl?' Gevar said. 'Tell that to the old crone who Varin gave a new ale hole for the afterlife.'
  
  Varin muttered something foul. Perhaps he did not like the thought of having sent the Wise Mother to the afterlife. Perhaps he feared meeting her there when he met his own end. Still, he intended to go there a rich man and he picked up the pace, the flame of his torch whipping and flapping, guttering almost as he strode on.
  
  There was no track and Runa wove them in and out of the pines, having only a vague sense of where she was going. It was dark and she was afraid and she had only been to the place once before. But she pushed on and hoped that the Goddess was with her, and when the going became steep she was sure that one way or the other they would get there.
  
  'So, Runa Haraldsdóttir,' Varin said, stepping over a chiming stream and holding the brand up for the others to see their way, 'who are you and why did King Thorir Gapthrosnir put you on Kuntøy with these Freyja thralls? You are Norse, that much is clear whenever you open your mouth.'
  
  'A long way from home, aren't you, girl?' Gevar said. 'Sick for your kinfolk eh?' Runa saw his teeth in the gloom and despised him. These were desperate men. Outlaws and fugitives, perhaps even escaped thralls. None of them worthy of a sword or a name or a row bench on a good ship. Nithings who did not know what they were getting themselves into.
  
  'You can come home with me. I'm a wealthy man,' Gevar told her.
  
  'Ha!' Iarl blurted. 'Will be soon enough,' Gevar said, 'after this night's work is done.'
  
  'If we ever come to the place where they buried our hoard,' Iarl said.
  
  'Runa would not deceive us, would you, girl?' Varin said, casting his light on some deadfall so that he could see his way over it.
  
  Runa thought about making a run for it, haring off into the dark. She was sure she could escape before they could make a grab for her or put a spear in her, and once she was clear into the mire of the night they would never catch her. But then what? Varin and his companions would make their way back to the settlement and the other women would pay for Runa's actions.
  
  'My father was a jarl,' she said. 'Far from here. He was betrayed by a Norse king. A worm named Gorm.'
  
  'That's kings for you,' Iarl said.
  
  'My father and mother and three of my brothers were killed fighting our enemies,' Runa said, a stick snapping beneath her foot, 'but I have one brother who is very much alive. Sigurd is a great warrior, cunning and skilled and fearless. But what should worry his enemies most is that he is a favourite of Óðin Allfather.'
  
  Runa felt their eyes on her then and she put a little more straightness in her spine. She was being a fool telling them all this. Giving them a reason to take more than just the silver from Fugløy perhaps, for they would surely guess that she was hiding from her brother's enemies here on this island. And Varin was clearly not a man to turn his back on an opportunity, nor was he the kind to let the risk of an undertaking put him off, and so now he might think he could sell Runa to Sigurd's enemies. It would be easy enough to track down King Gorm, not least because the silver Varin was about to own would buy him information and passage on the journey north. He could have his own longship built for the journey if the weight of that sea chest was anything to go by, Runa thought, recalling how King Thorir's men had struggled to get the thing off Storm-Elk.
  
  Foolish to tell them so much, and yet the telling had filled Runa like the warm glow of strong mead. It had sluiced the fear from her belly and cooled the simmering of her blood. She was Runa Haraldsdóttir and would not pretend otherwise. Not to men such as these.
  
  'And just as my brother is Óðin-favoured, so I am Freyja-kissed,' she said. 'So do not think to lay your filthy hands on me again, Gevar.'
  
  Something rustled in the pine litter nearby and they all stopped, holding their breath, eyes scouring the darkness which Varin tried to chase off with his torch, and even Runa's heart tripped in her chest after all her talk of the gods.
  
  Then Varin shook his head and walked on, and a hand shoved Runa's shoulder. 'Move, girl,' Gevar growled, 'for I do not want to be on this island any longer than I need to be.'
  
  'Aye, and from now on keep your pretty mouth shut too,' Iarl said. 'No more talk of gods if you want to keep that tongue of yours.'
  
  Runa kept her mouth shut and they climbed, forcing a path through brambles and bracken and bilberry bushes, past upended pines whose soil-snarled roots dangled like filthy beards, and past rocks that glistened with moisture and were fragrant with moss.
  
  And they were all puffing like a pair of Ingel's bellows when at last they reached the top of a hill, the highest point on the whole of Fugløy, and Runa stopped because this was it. The sacred place.
  
  'You dragged a chest full of silver all the way up here?' Varin said, arming sweat from his forehead and glancing around.
  
  'Well I am not looking forward to dragging it all the way back to the beach,' Iarl said, leaning his spear against a tree and pulling a hand axe from his belt.
  
  'Why do you think I am here, little man?' Gevar said. Gevar was not Svein-big, but he was a head taller than his friends and his arms were like oak boughs.
  
  'Well, girl? Where do I dig?' Iarl asked, waving that hand axe.
  
  But Runa did not answer. She was looking at something which none of the men had seen yet, a spear-throw ahead of them, standing silent and more still even than the pines all around it.
  
  'What in Óðin's arse is that?' Gevar said, his own eyes having sifted the object of Runa's gaze from the dark, which was more silvered up here on this hilltop without the same dense mass of trees to soak up what moonlight there was.
  
  'That is our sacred tree,' Runa said, aware of the weight of that word our. Then I am one of them now, she thought, looking at the post which had once been a tree like any of those around it, but which had been stripped of branches and bark and carved with modest skill into the likeness of Freyja Giver.
  
  'Not the post, girl!' Gevar said, pointing, the whites of his eyes glowing. 'That! What's that?'
  
  Varin lifted his firebrand, which was half its original length now, so that he must have been starting to worry for his hand.
  
  Runa's blood suddenly iced in her veins. There, on the ground a few feet from the base of the Freyja tree, was a figure, hunched beneath a simple shelter made of sticks and animal skins. It would have been easy not to see it at all, and yet at the same time Runa wondered how she had missed it. But then anything was possible where Freyja the seiðr goddess was concerned.
  
  Varin started forward, the flame from his torch flapping.
  
  'No, Varin,' Runa hissed.
  
  He stopped. Slowly, he twisted his neck to look back at Runa. 'Why?' he asked, his voice low, his pitted, pocked face clenched and his hand on the hilt of the scramasax sheathed at his waist. He was nervous. They all were.
  
  'You must not disturb her,' Runa hissed. 'She is with the gods.'
  
  'Fuck this place,' Gevar muttered.
  
  'Who is she?' Varin asked. He had not taken another step towards the figure, whose back faced them, though there was a glimpse of long red braids in the glow of Varin's fire.
  
  'The High Mother,' Runa said. A tendril of white smoke curled up from a ring of stones beside Skuld, who was as still as a stone herself, so that it was not impossible to imagine that she must have died up there on that hill, or frozen solid even though it was summer.
  
  Varin seemed torn as to what he should do, his hand still clutching the grip of his long knife.
  
  'Leave her be, Varin,' Iarl rasped. 'Bad enough what we did to the old crone back at the house. Leave her be. I don't need some god's curse hanging round my neck for the rest of my days.'
  
  Gevar said nothing, which Varin took to mean that he agreed with Iarl, and he nodded, sweeping the firebrand back towards them to let the darkness claim the High Mother once again.
  
  'Where is it, girl?' Varin asked, his voice still low, as though he feared waking Skuld from her sleep or drawing the eye of whichever of the Æsir she was communing with.
  
  Runa pointed to the ground by her feet, which was soft with the rotting remains of an old tree. Iarl grunted and shoved her aside, then knelt and began to hack at the earth with his hand axe. No sooner had he broken the ground than his axe thunked into the wooden lid of the chest which the Freyja Maidens had buried as best they could given what little soil there was up there.
  
  'It's here,' Iarl said, grinning at Varin and Gevar.
  
  'Of course it's here,' Gevar said, but Varin, it seemed, needed to see the chest with his own eyes and he came and dropped to his knees across from Iarl, his grinning face cast in the copper glow of his flame.
  
  'How will we see our way back?' Gevar asked, nodding at Varin's torch. The flame was faltering now, guttering as it crept down the two staves, the tar-soaked rags and rope having all but burnt away.
  
  'If I had known it was this far I would have brought another torch,' Varin said, cursing as another scrap of burning cloth fell from the brand.
  
  'Who needs fire?' Iarl said, grinning. 'We will see our way by the silver glow.'
  
  'What about her?' Gevar said, pointing his spear at Skuld who still had not moved a muscle, so deep was she in the weave of the utiseta.
  
  Varin looked back towards the crude shelter and the woman beneath it in body if not in mind. He laid a hand on the sea chest. 'First we get this out,' he said. And as his face turned back towards Runa, she struck, throwing herself at the firebrand and pushing it into Varin's face. She heard the crackle as his hair, eyebrows and moustaches caught, and he screeched and threw himself back, dropping the torch, which Runa snatched up, spinning and sweeping it at the other two men.
  
  'You're dead!' Gevar yelled, coming for her with his spear, and Runa threw the guttering brand at him and it struck his forearm with a spray of flame and sparks and he yelled again. But Runa was moving. She ran to retrieve Iarl's spear from the tree against which it still leant, then turned and held her ground, relishing the feel of the solid ash shaft in her hands.
  
  Varin was writhing on the ground, clutching his burnt face so that his screaming was muffled.
  
  'Come then, Gevar Corpse-Breath,' Runa said, beckoning him to her with a jerk of the spear. She was more than aware of her disadvantage in terms of reach and strength, and in the fact that she faced two full-grown men. But she found that she was not afraid. Had she not worked with spear, sword, shield and bow every day since coming ashore with that sea chest full of silver?
  
  'You are dead,' Gevar said again, as Iarl drew his knife so that he had that in his left, the axe in his right, side-stepping to put some distance between himself and Gevar.
  
  'I am Runa Haraldsdóttir,' she said, 'and I am your death.' She pointed the spear blade at the other man. 'Yours too, Iarl Weasel-Prick.'
  
  Iarl did not like that and he ran at her, screaming, and what he thought he would do with that little axe against a seven-foot-long spear she would never find out, for she threw her right foot forward to meet his charge and thrust the spear straight into his belly, then twisted the blade and hauled it out again before it could get snarled in his ribs or spine. Then she turned, neat as a stitch, sweeping that blade up to face Gevar.
  
  Who had yet to move.
  
  The big man stood there like a witless troll, his mouth hanging so wide that a passing owl might think it was a tree hollow and roost in it.
  
  'What are you waiting for, Corpse-Breath?' Runa asked him, giving him her best wolf's grin, recognizing her brother by the feel of it. 'I think your spear-work will be slow like your wits. You move like a rat in the cesspit. You are as slow as a fat fly that is stuck in the honey,' she said, hoping that he could see the gore on the moon-licked blade between them.
  
  'Little bitch,' Gevar spat, and Runa nodded because she knew that her insults were stinging him, which was the idea, for anger was rarely a better weapon than skill. 'If you've still got your eyes, Varin, you will want to see this,' he told his friend. And as Varin looked up, Runa saw the horror of his scorched face, as if he wasn't ugly enough already.
  
  Then Gevar came and their spears clashed, and Runa blocked once, twice, three times, and jumped back, her hands stinging and her arms shaking from the impact. And she swallowed a curse because Gevar was not slow. Not slow at all.
  
  He strode at her and thrust for her chest, and she knocked the point aside using its own momentum rather than her own strength, then struck at him but he blocked and punched the butt end into Runa's head, sending her reeling against a pine, whose branch stubs tore open her shoulder. She rolled round the tree and the blade of Gevar's spear struck the trunk, the big man grunting with a blow that would have taken Runa's head from her shoulders.
  
  'Ready to meet your goddess, girl?' Gevar asked, lunging but missing Runa by a whisper of steel. She stumbled back, almost tripping amongst the forest litter, half blinded by the blood spilling into her eyes from the gash in her head. She feinted one way then moved in the opposite direction, her legs carrying her to another tree, against which she pressed herself so that she could not fall. No insults on her lips now. Just blood. Just the copper taste of it filling her mouth.
  
  Gevar came again and she blocked as she had been taught, and the ash spears sang their muted song, wood on wood, steel on steel, the rasp of it loud in the dark woods as Runa fended the man off, the bones in her body rattling under the impact of his attacks. And then, when she had turned aside five more of Gevar's thrusts, she laid her trap and the big man walked straight into it, expecting her block which never came, as Runa twisted the trunk of her body and his blade ripped open the flesh of her waist then went past her. He was open and she struck with everything she had, screeching as she scythed her spear up and across his right cheek, savaging his face with the blade, ripping it open in a spray of hot gore. Then, screeching still, she threw her foot forward and plunged the spear into his shoulder and the blade passed all the way through him, the resistance of muscle and flesh vanishing suddenly as it burst from his back.
  
  'Bitch!' Gevar spat, spittle lacing his beard, and Runa let go the shaft and stepped back on unsteady legs as her enemy stood there not knowing what to do now that he was skewered on that spear. Not that he could do much with half his face flapping around like a fish in the bilge, and while he stood there Runa picked up Iarl's hand axe and placed herself in front of Gevar so that he could see her, with one eye at least.
  
  'I told you I was your death, Gevar Corpse-Breath,' she said, and he muttered some filthy curse which was cut short as Runa planted the axe in his forehead with a crack that echoed off the surrounding pines. Gevar's legs gave way and he dropped, but before he hit the ground something barrelled into Runa almost snapping her neck and she flew and struck the earth and the weight landed on her, driving the air from her lungs.
  
  Varin's face was like some monster's from a story. The fire had crisped his skin and even burnt away his eyelashes and their lids, so that his eyes were bulging and hideous as he screamed at her, his drool falling on her face and in her mouth as she gasped for breath. But she could not breathe because Varin's hands were around her throat and Runa knew she was going to die.
  
  'I'll kill you! I'll kill you!' Varin screamed, his raw, bloody and blackened face warped in pain and savage fury, and Runa wanted to scream her defiance back at him, wanted to tell him that she would not die here on this hill and that he was a cursed nithing. But Runa could not breathe. The night was getting even darker and then she saw her mother Grimhild standing before her, tall and proud and beautiful.
  
  I'm coming, Mother.
  
  Then the weight was gone.
  
  Runa heard herself gasp. She hauled the night air into her lungs, the night which was brightening as if dawn was already here, and she felt another's hands gripping hers.
  
  She was being lifted, pulled up from the cold ground. She could breathe again and so she drank deeply of the sweet night air. Then the fog cleared and her sight sharpened and there standing before her, holding Runa's hands in her own, was Skuld Snorradóttir. The High Mother's eyes looked like black pools and it seemed to Runa that the woman was looking through her; that part of Skuld was still with the gods, wherever that was.
  
  'Runa,' Skuld said. Just that. Nothing more. Runa looked down and saw Varin lying there, face down, Skuld's scramasax buried up to the hilt between his shoulders.
  
  The other men lay where they had fallen. Blood offerings for the Goddess, Runa thought to herself. She bent and pulled Skuld's knife from its flesh sheath and gave it back to Skuld, who looked at it vaguely and so Runa slid it into the scabbard at the High Mother's waist. Then Runa saw something else and knew that they would not need a flame to guide them home. Through the trees and rising above them into the black sky was a molten iron glow.
  
  'They are burning it,' she said, a new horror flooding through her. Pain was seeping in now too. From the cut in her head and the gash in her side which she pressed a hand against, trying to stem the blood. Her neck felt as if it were on fire and other injuries were beginning to announce themselves, but they would have to wait.
  
  She went over to the dead and pulled Iarl's axe from Gevar's head and robbed Gevar of his long knife. She also took up the big man's spear because the one she had put through him would take too much getting out. Then, threading the sheathed knife on to her own belt, she turned back to Skuld, who was watching her every move.
  
  'We must get back, High Mother,' Runa said, pointing the hand axe in the direction of the fire glow in the sky.
  
  Skuld blinked slowly. Then a shiver seemed to go through her from her feet to her scalp, and Runa wondered if that was the High Mother shrugging off the veil of it all. She had been alone up here for days and Runa wondered if she had eaten in that time or whether some seiðr had sustained her.
  
  'Are you still with them? The gods?' Runa asked.
  
  Skuld seemed to consider the question. 'No,' she said.
  
  Runa nodded. 'We must go.'
  
  Skuld's hand dropped down to the hilt of her scramasax and there was a flash of something in her eyes.
  
  'Can you run?' she asked Runa.
  
  Runa touched the gash in her head. The bleeding seemed to have slowed, the oils in her hair helping it to clot. But the wound in her side needed stitching and she knew that blood would spill from it all the way back. Perhaps too much blood.
  
  'I can run,' she said.
  
  Then, leaving the Freyja tree to watch over their corpse-gifts, they loped off into the pine wood. Towards the fire.
  
  Two of the three longhouses were ablaze. Great flapping flames stretched up into the black, roaring their anger at the night sky and spitting torrents of swirling copper sparks. The third longhouse was beginning to burn too, crackling now as hungry young flames worked into the staves and the knots in the pine logs and set the thatch smoking like a beast belching foul yellow breath at the gods. And the Frejya Maidens of Fugløy could not get out of that doomed place because Varin's men had nailed planks across the door. But those men had their own lives to think of now because Ingel and Ibor faced them and the blacksmiths were dressed for war with helmets and brynjur, shields and swords. One of Varin's men already lay dead and by the light of the burning buildings Runa saw that Ingel's sword was bloody.
  
  'Give me your spear, Runa,' Skuld said, so Runa did, relieved to see that the High Mother seemed to have shed the seiðr which had clung to her like a sea fog and her eyes were clear and bright.
  
  'We're with you, Ingel!' Runa called as she and Skuld ran to stand with the blacksmiths against the three men who faced them. Gudny cowered in the shadows nearby, her arms wrapped protectively across her belly.
  
  'They must have killed Varin and the others,' the one called Asvald said, lifting his shield as the three of them drew together.
  
  Ingel glanced at Runa and in that heartbeat his face betrayed his horror at the sight of her.
  
  'I'm fine,' she said, knowing that she must look far from fine, her face sheeted in blood and her kyrtill more red than blue now. 'Ibor, get them out,' she told the older smith, gesturing at the longhouse inside which the Freyja Maidens were trapped. Above the roar of flame she could hear the cracking and splintering of wood and knew that the women were trying to break out.
  
  'We kill these whoresons first,' Ibor said. But the longhouse was burning well now and those inside must be choking on the smoke.
  
  'Do as Runa says, Father,' Ingel said. 'We can deal with these cowards.'
  
  Ibor nodded and ran off towards the fires.
  
  'Ready?' Skuld said.
  
  'Kill them,' Runa said, striding forward, the axe in her right hand, Gevar's long knife in her left.
  
  Asvald came to meet her, thrusting his shield at her, but Runa had known he would do this and she jumped back and swept the axe down on to the top rim of that shield and pulled, tilting it towards her so that Asvald's face was exposed. In the same movement she punched the knife into his eye which was wide with the shock of how easily he had been killed.
  
  Runa looked over to see Ingel slam his shield into his enemy's, the man yelling at the impact though he managed to lift his shield again. So Ingel rammed him again, his smith's strength behind that well-made, iron-reinforced shield and iron boss, and this time the brigand staggered backwards and tripped over his own feet to fall on his backside.
  
  Ingel's sword slashed down and finished him.
  
  'Don't kill me!' the last of Varin's men said, but even as he pleaded for his life he must have known that it was wasted breath and so he turned and ran and Skuld's thrown spear missed him but the arrow did not. It took him in the neck, spitting him, and yet he ran a good four or five spear-lengths even so, before the bones in his legs turned to water and he dropped into the mud by the pig pen.
  
  Runa turned to see Drífa, her face cast in shadow by the burning longhouse behind her, the bow still raised in the wake of that arrow. The other women were spilling out through the splintered planks of the threshold beside which Ibor stood doubled over, gasping from the effort of having hacked a hole big enough for them to escape through. They came coughing into the firelit night, heads turning this way and that as they gathered up their swords and spears and took in the terrible extent of the brigands' handiwork.
  
  'What happened up there?' Ingel asked Runa, his gaze swinging between her and Skuld, who was herself watching the buildings being eaten by flame, knowing it was far too late to try to save them.
  
  Runa's sight was failing her. She saw Sibbe strike down Gudny and spit on her, while another Freyja Maiden was yelling at Sibbe for killing a woman so swollen with child. But a rising tide of sickness eddied inside Runa now and she thought she would vomit. She was cold and her legs had no strength in them and she dared not look down at the cut in her side which felt as full of fire as the night.
  
  'What happened, Runa?' Vebiorg now. Or was it Drífa? The darkness was seeping in like seawater between the strakes.
  
  'Runa killed them,' Skuld said in a voice loud enough to challenge the roar of the flames and the crack and spit of the burning timbers. 'Our sister slaughtered them and left their corpses for the Goddess.' This stirred up a murmuring amongst the smoke-choked, eye-stung Freyja Maidens.
  
  Runa could no longer make out the faces around her, but she could feel all their eyes on her and the weight of that was terrible, yet she bore it, keeping her knees locked as the seasickness swirled and eddied in her belly and in her skull.
  
  I must look like the walking dead, she thought, slathered in blood and cut like meat for the wolves. Yet I am alive.
  
  'I've got you,' a man said, and for a cold heartbeat she fought against the arms that held her, fearing it was Gevar and that she had only imagined killing him. 'It's me, Runa. Ingel,' he said. And she let herself slacken against him.
  
  'Bring her into the light. Quickly! We need to stitch her,' someone said.
  
  'I'll fetch water,' another said.
  
  'High Mother, what did the gods say?' a woman asked.
  
  'Yes, what did Freyja tell you?' That was Drífa, Runa was sure of it. 'Are we to leave Fugløy? Or must we stay?'
  
  'Come, Runa,' Ingel said, leading her away.
  
  Runa braced against him. 'Wait,' she said, for she was no less eager than the others to hear what Skuld Snorradóttir had learnt under the cloak.
  
  'Tell us, Skuld,' a Freyja Maiden demanded. 'What did the gods say?'
  
  The flames from the burning buildings stretched into the darkness, thrashing like the sail from a god's ship ripped in a storm. Like tongues they flapped wildly, telling of the end which was surely coming, just as the old prophetess had warned. They spat tiny embers of flame, those tongues, sparks and cinders beyond counting which swirled and soared and were carried off on the fire's breath, and Runa imagined each one took with it word of what had happened here on this island.
  
  'What does it matter?' Skuld said.
  
  The flames whipped and the sparks soared.
  
  And Runa let Ingel take her.