text: 'She's sleeping,' valgerd said, placing blood-soaked rags into the fire which burnt on the muddy sand of the shore. 'I was careful but there will be no missing the scar.'
  
  Sigurd looked over her shoulder at Runa who was lying amongst a pile of skins and furs above the tideline. He was relieved to see her asleep though not surprised, for he had poured a bucket full of mead down her throat to numb the pain. The arrow which had glanced off Sigurd's helmet had slashed open her face from just below her left eye to her ear. It had bled and it had hurt, but Valgerd had washed the wound with sea water and stitched it closed, and so long as there was no wound rot Runa would come out of it well enough. And yet Sigurd was in a foul mood and had hardly touched the plate of succulent beef which Olaf had put in front of him.
  
  'We go to the trouble of killing a dozen men and you can't bring yourself to eat?' Olaf had growled, sitting down beside Sigurd who had left Valgerd to dress the wound with linens. They had decided to spend the night on the shore beside Reinen, with lookouts posted in case Jarl Ebbi came looking for them. They would weigh anchor and be gone at first light, but first they would eat.
  
  'It is my fault she is lying there with her face torn open. I should have killed that whoreson back at that farm.'
  
  Olaf nodded. 'Yes, we should never have let him run off like that. But we had already made the mistake before that.'
  
  Sigurd looked up into his friend's eyes.
  
  'Runa shouldn't have been there, Sigurd,' Olaf said. 'Even had those turds not shown up at the same steading at the same time, you might have expected a fight of some sort. Or else why go armed like Týr himself?' He shrugged. 'There were blades and arrows flying around. People get hurt on days like today. There are twelve poker-stiff bodies up there that are proof of that, lad. Runa shouldn't have been there.'
  
  'I know that,' Sigurd said. What made it worse was that the others had known it before the first blood was spilled, which was why Svein was barely talking to Sigurd now. He was angry with Sigurd and it came off him like a stink.
  
  'What man takes his little sister raiding?' was all he had said, which had been more than enough as far as Sigurd was concerned.
  
  'What if there is more to it than that?' Sigurd had asked Olaf, who had frowned, not understanding where he was going with that. 'The arrow was meant for me. It hit my helmet, which changed its flight.'
  
  'You think the gods want to punish you?' Olaf asked. 'That they would hurt Runa to hurt you?'
  
  Sigurd thought about that. 'Perhaps they cannot let me die,' he said. 'I am Óðin-favoured. So maybe they go after my family instead. Maybe they want me to watch everyone I love suffer. Until I am the last.'
  
  'Has he been filling your head with this?' Olaf asked, nodding towards Asgot who sat cross-legged on a flat rock nearby, savaging a hunk of meat whose bloody juice was dripping into his beard.
  
  'I have not spoken to him about it,' Sigurd said.
  
  Olaf nodded. 'Good. Keep it that way.' He picked up the plate of meat and offered it to Sigurd, who took it and put it down beside him. 'Look, Sigurd, what happened out there with that arrow was an accident. Bad luck at worst.'
  
  'But I shouldn't have put Runa at risk,' Sigurd said.
  
  'We shouldn't have put Runa at risk,' Olaf corrected him. 'And seeing as there's bound to be plenty more fighting before this is all over, we ought to think about what we can do with the girl to keep her safe.' He shook his head and scratched his thickly bearded cheek. Ideas were not exactly bursting from him. After a little while he got up and walked up the strand to check on those men who were coming to the end of their watch.
  
  'Well, I won't abandon her,' Sigurd said. Not that anyone was listening. Then he went over to Runa and sat down beside her, leaning against the rock and looking out across the still black water. Holding her hand as she slept.
  
  Hrani had to admit that for all King Gorm's taste for chaining his enemies to the rocks and watching them drown, he was a generous host in his own hall. There were trenchers of pork and beef and whale meat and rabbit. There were plates of fish and cheese and freshly baked bread and pots of honey, all of it washed down with buckets of mead flavoured with apple, juniper berries, dried fruit blossoms and warmed by hot stones.
  
  'If this is how you celebrate drowning a nithing skipper, I hope Jarl Hrani and I are fortunate enough to be here when you kill Sigurd Haraldarson, my lord,' Herkja said to the king beside her, flashing him a smile and eyes which must have had his old snake stirring in his breeks.
  
  The king nodded, lifting his cup towards Herkja and Hrani beside her. 'That will be a feast to tempt the gods down from Asgard,' he said, 'which brings me to the question of what we should do to bring such a night to pass. Your husband and I must discuss how we are going to pay young Sigurd in kind for his treatment of my hirðman Freystein, and for his many other offences.'
  
  Being perched on the hill as it was, the royal farmstead was subject to the winds which blew up and down the Karmsund Strait. But the walls of the king's longhall were hung with thick tapestries which kept out all but the most determined gusts.
  
  'Is it true that Sigurd sent your man's corpse back to you wearing his father's jarl torc?' Herkja asked, knowing it was true but savouring the gore of the story, as she had when Hrani had first told it to her.
  
  The king frowned and Queen Kadlin leant forward, fixing Herkja with eyes like rivet heads in the fire-licked dark.
  
  'This Sigurd is a savage,' she said. 'He could have had power and wealth. Instead he insults us all.'
  
  I wonder what power. I wonder whose wealth, Hrani thought but did not say, for whilst being jarl at Hinderå he was now jarl at Skudeneshavn too, where Sigurd's father had been jarl. He would like to know what the king had been prepared to offer Sigurd in return for his fealty, though he knew he would get no answer about that now. Besides which, Sigurd had made it all moot by putting his blade through this Freystein and sending Harald's torc back to the king round his messenger's neck.
  
  'He may be a savage, my lady,' Herkja said, 'but I almost pity him for having made enemies of our husbands. He must feel like the woodlouse that finds itself on the end of the log in the middle of the hearth with flame all around.'
  
  Queen Kadlin laughed at that. 'My girl, you have the imagination of a skald,' she said, 'but your stomach is too weak if you pity such a man.' Now her face had all the charm of a granite cliff. 'Sigurd and any fools who follow him will die. They will die and be denied the Allfather's mead.' She held Herkja's gaze an uncomfortable moment, then forced a smile, wafting away her talk of death with a pale hand. 'Come now. Sit by me,' she said, beckoning Herkja and patting the bench beside her. 'Let us leave the men to discuss how they are going to pay the savage what they owe him. I would hear about your life at Hinderå and how you find raising that boy.' She leant in close. 'They say his mother was a thrall?' she said in the voice of someone whispering to be heard.
  
  Herkja planted a kiss on Hrani's cheek, then dutifully climbed out from the bench to do as her queen bid and talk about the son she had inherited. Not that Hrani cared what they talked about, but the sooner his new wife had her own boy growing in her belly the better. He pointed to his cup so that one of the pretty thralls would come over and fill it with warm mead. He was comfortable, his stomach was full and he had even put behind him that business about the king killing Estrith Left-Handed. Almost. And now his night was going to get even better. Because they were going to talk of killing their common enemy, a man Hrani hated to the very marrow in his bones.
  
  'Did you get the name of their leader?' Fionn asked, warming his hands over the fire. Clenching and unclenching his fists to help the heat get into them. The man had done well to get a fire going at all, what with all that snow and ice. But Fionn supposed it was either that or die out there like a lame beast, for the only dwelling Fionn had seen since yesterday was five rôsts to the north and it was already too dark to make that sort of distance and seek hospitality which might or might not be forthcoming.
  
  'No,' the man said. 'He was young though. Well, younger than me.'
  
  The pine branches crackled and spluttered but there was enough flame to warm their faces as the two of them crouched over the fire. And yet it was the smoke, not the flame, which had led Fionn inland, over a hill and across a valley, straight to the man as surely as if he could see him through trees, rock, earth and the blackness of night. It was the smoke which had killed the man, even if he did not know it yet.
  
  'Was there a one-armed man with them? A big wolf-jointed bastard.'
  
  The man shook his head. He was shivering. Looked as if he hadn't eaten for days. 'There was a red-bearded giant. Had a long axe. Of course.'
  
  Fionn had known already that it was Haraldarson's crew who had got the better of this man's raiding band, but it was good to have it confirmed. 'And you were the only one to escape?' he asked.
  
  The man turned to look at him now, his eyes narrow, reflecting the flame glow. 'What's it to you? Why the questions?'
  
  Tethered in the trees nearby, one of Fionn's two ponies nickered and snorted.
  
  'I'm looking for the men who killed your friends,' Fionn said. No harm in telling this man that. No harm in telling him anything.
  
  'Why?'
  
  'I'm going to kill the young golden-haired man who made you shit yourself and run away. Made you abandon your friends when they needed you.'
  
  The man stood then, clutching the hilt of his sword and glaring at Fionn as the pine branches hissed and spat.
  
  'Peace, friend,' Fionn said, raising a hand to show he meant no harm. Smiling even. 'I'm thankful for the fire. Your friends stayed and made a fight of it and look where it got them. You were wise to run.'
  
  The man frowned, not liking that much either, but he huffed into his hands and crouched by the fire again so that it lit the side of his gaunt, shadow-pooled face.
  
  'So where was this farm you mentioned?' Fionn asked. He picked up the nestbaggin from where he had left it on a bed of pine branches to keep it off the snow, then opened it and took out a dead hare which he had snared that morning.
  
  The man jutted his chin towards the south. 'Two days' walk. Got a decent fence around it. Did have a gate but we broke it in.' He was eyeing the hare with round, greedy eyes. 'I doubt the farmer will be able to tell you much. They were just there to steal his food, same as us.'
  
  'They might still be there, enjoying the hearth and a roof over their heads. All the meat they could want, a little crew like that,' Fionn said. 'And even if they didn't stay long, tracks will lead off from there. I'll find them.' Tracks in the snow perhaps, but other tracks too. A word spoken here. A name mentioned. Signs which a man could follow if he knew his business. He laid the hare on the snow beside the fire. Its dead eye glinted in the flamelight. It was a slow business, this tracking his prey through the snow, and at some point it was likely he would have to take ship again or fall too far behind. But he had still been at Avaldsnes when the news had been brought to the king that his ship Wave-Thunder and her skipper Bjalki had run into Haraldarson and his ship Reinen off the coast of Åkra in the open sea. Sigurd had smashed Bjalki's oars and fled into the south leaving Wave-Thunder all but crippled, like a bird with a broken wing, and her benches strewn with dead and dying men. King Gorm had raged and thundered and Fionn had set off southward, buying passage here and there to cross the water, asking questions. Threading together sightings of Reinen by fishermen and coast-dwellers and the whispers of the mackerel in the sea.
  
  Gods knew what would become of Bjalki, though in fairness he had at least tried to fight.
  
  And yet Sigurd might be even now sitting by some farmer's hearth, his ship hidden in some island cove while her crew warmed their bones.
  
  'You going to skin that and get it cooked or not?' the man asked, nodding at the hare.
  
  Fionn drew his knife and looked along its edge which reflected the fire's glow, then tested its sharpness against his thumbnail.
  
  Haraldarson and his crew were ahead of him but they would need to come ashore often, to hunt or raid and to cook their food. It was only a matter of time before Fionn caught up with them, and he did not mind the wait, for he was a patient man.
  
  'Not much meat on it,' he said. 'Even the hares can't find much to eat with all this snow.'
  
  The man looked down at the hare. 'I'll take whatever you can spare,' he said. Then he shrugged and shivered. 'I have shared my fire with you,' he reminded Fionn.
  
  Fionn nodded. 'We will need a good green stick for a spit,' he said, standing and moving towards the trees.
  
  'We should eat one of your horses,' the man said. He began to say something else but it came out as a gurgle because his throat was cut, the rent of it spraying blood across the snow and into the fire where it sizzled.
  
  When the man's legs had stopped shaking and his heart had stopped beating, Fionn laid him on his back in the snow, then cleaned his knife on the man's tunic. Then he went to fetch his hand axe from the horse and cut himself a stick from a pine branch. Nice and straight, it was, and green enough not to burn, if he was careful.
  
  Then he came back and sat down again beside the fire, and began to skin the hare.
  
  'There may be a place,' Valgerd said. She had come to stand beside Sigurd at the prow and she kept her voice low so that the others would not hear. 'Somewhere Runa can stay where she will be safe until this blood feud runs dry.'
  
  'Olaf told you?' Sigurd said. He did not like the idea of them talking about Runa and what to do about her behind his back.
  
  'And he's right. A shieldwall is no place for the girl,' she said. 'We cannot protect her when we are so few. And you will end up making the wrong decision in a fight because you are thinking about what might happen to her.'
  
  Sigurd thought about this for a while, though he needn't have. He knew what she said was true. Still, he didn't have to like it.
  
  'Where?' he asked.
  
  'There is an island. Fugløy,' the shieldmaiden said, which did not help Sigurd much for only the gods could say how many islands shared that name. He knew of three Bird Islands within a day's sailing from Skudeneshavn! 'It's a sacred place,' Valgerd went on, 'an island upon which men are forbidden to live for it is the home of the Maidens of Freyja.'
  
  Sigurd gave a slight shake of his head to show that he had never heard of these women.
  
  'Freyja the daughter of Njörd and Skadi was born in Vanheim,' Valgerd said and this time Sigurd nodded. He recalled the stories of the Vanir, those gods associated with fertility and magic, and their long ago war against the Æsir. 'When Freyja reached Asgard the gods were so impressed by her beauty and grace that they gave her Sessrymnir, a hall so vast that she could accommodate as many guests as she wanted.'
  
  Valgerd reached out to trace a finger over the intricate carving which ran up the stem post, her lips bowed in a sad smile so that it seemed to Sigurd her thoughts were caught up in the person who had told her this story rather than in the story itself. 'But for all her beauty Freyja was not satisfied to sit in her hall like some soft, pleasure-loving queen,' she said, 'which is why she often leads the Valkyries down to the battlefields, choosing and claiming one half of the heroes slain.'
  
  'As much as half the slain?' Sigurd said, struck by a sudden fear. What if in death he was claimed not by Óðin but by Freyja? If he were taken to this hall Sessrymnir he would never drink with his brothers and father again, for they were surely in Valhöll, Óðin being the god of jarls. Another reason for me to die wearing the jarl's torc, he thought.
  
  'I am just telling it as it was told to me,' Valgerd said, looking at him.
  
  'So Freyja the golden-haired and blue-eyed is no stranger to the sword-song. What has this to do with Runa?' he asked, though he knew what they were coming round to.
  
  'The Freyja Maidens devote their lives wholly to the goddess,' Valgerd said. 'They live on Fugløy and take no husbands. They spend their days training for war.'
  
  'What war?' Sigurd asked.
  
  Valgerd looked out across the water and shrugged. 'The end of days,' she said.
  
  'Ragnarök,' Sigurd said, the word itself heavy as a stone anchor.
  
  'They will fight at Freyja's side in the last battle,' the shieldmaiden said. It was hard to tell whether Valgerd admired these women or thought them fools. For as a shieldmaiden she had given her life to the gods in a way, protecting the völva and the sacred spring at which folk made their offerings. And yet since the witch had died, and taken a long and miserable time doing it, so Valgerd had said, the shieldmaiden had seemed to have nothing but scorn for the gods.
  
  A herring gull shrieked in the wan sky above them and Sigurd watched it wheel away into the west.
  
  'You want me to take Runa to this Fugløy,' Sigurd said. An icy wind thrummed the lines and whistled through the blocks. It ruffled beards and made eyes water.
  
  'The maidens may take her in,' Valgerd said.
  
  'How do you know all this? I thought you lived in a waterfall with the spirits and your völva down at the arse end of the Lysefjord.'
  
  'My mother told me of the maidens when I was a little girl,' she said.
  
  Sigurd's thoughts were buzzing like the shrouds with the gusts in them. Runa must stay with me and I must stay with her, he told himself.
  
  'Why would they take her?' he said.
  
  'Because you will pay them well,' Valgerd said, watching the sleeping, snow-covered land slide by. 'And because my mother's mother lived amongst them.'
  
  Sigurd turned to her but she kept her eyes fixed to the skeletal birch and the snow-laden pines and the cold rocks of the shoreline.
  
  'She was a Freyja Maiden for many years.'
  
  'You said they could not take a husband,' Sigurd said.
  
  Valgerd's lips pursed into what was almost a proper smile. 'Some do,' she said. 'If the prophetess deems the man a worthy match. If he is a strong jarl or a powerful king.' One of her eyebrows arched like Bifröst. 'Or sometimes a warrior of reputation can earn himself one of the Freyja Maidens as a wife, as happened in my grandmother's case. For the issue of such a match may be gods-favoured and will surely fight beside the Æsir and the Vanir at the twilight of the world.' She pointed to the shore and Sigurd looked up just in time to see an otter slip from the smooth rock into the water. 'Away from the Freyja Maidens Ingun brought my mother up as a warrior. That was always to be her wyrd with the parents she had.'
  
  'And your mother was a guardian of the spring before you,' Sigurd said, looking at her fierce beauty but seeing beyond it.
  
  She nodded, then turned to look at Runa who sat on a sea chest on the steerboard side before the sail, which had enough wind in it to save the oars getting wet. The girl was looking out to sea, her face still swathed in bandages and her eyes still full of shame. She blamed herself for the injury, which to Sigurd was worse than her blaming him.
  
  'I should have had my shield up,' she had told him.
  
  'I should have caught the arrow with my own shield instead of letting it hit my helmet,' he had said. But Runa believed she had let them all down through her own carelessness. And worse, she worried that the others thought she brought the crew bad luck, for in every other sense the raid had gone as smoothly as could be.
  
  'You think she would be safe with these corpse-maidens?' Sigurd said, for what were these island women if not Valkyries in training? And Valkyries were not necessarily to be trusted, he knew. It was said they shared some powers with the Norns and could not only prophesy the outcome of a battle but sometimes weave a victory or a defeat with their own hands. They possessed the art of the war-fetter, too, and could bind a warrior with terror or release him from those same bonds.
  
  'Safer than she'd be with us,' Valgerd said, which was not quite the same thing in Sigurd's mind. 'The Freyja Maidens are not sworn to any king,' Valgerd said. 'Nor do they pay tribute to any man.' She smiled at the saying of that. 'In my grandmother's day it was the opposite. The local jarls would make offerings at their temple. They'd even give them bairns sometimes, to be brought up as one of them, thinking it bought them the Goddess's favour, in this life and the next.'
  
  'Where is this island?' Sigurd asked.
  
  Valgerd shook her head. 'Somewhere not far from Skíringssalr in Vestfold. That's all I know.'
  
  Sigurd had heard of Skíringssalr. It meant shining hall, being named after the king's hall on the hill behind it, though he did not know which king, only that Skíringssalr was a trading outpost which sailors had talked about over the years in his father's hall. He did know that the Vestfold was under Danish control and had been for as long as anyone could remember. The royal estate there levied taxes from every trader who set up at the kaupang, the trading place, in summer to sell their wares.
  
  He and Valgerd both looked out over the sweep of the sheer strake, their hair whipping around their faces, breathing in the fresh sea air, letting it fill them. Letting it clean them. Not that sea or wind, rain or snow could scour away all stains, Sigurd thought. He had killed his friend Loker for Valgerd and that was one such stain. And yet there were few people he would not kill for her, he realized now, knowing that he was getting the terms of the oath they had sworn to each other back to front. She had sworn on his sword to kill his enemies and in return he would reward her with silver as if he were her jarl. Ha! Try telling that to Loker! There are bears in the forests that have more jarl about them than I, he thought, turning into the wind to look at his half crew of outlaws and homeless men.
  
  'If Runa is agreeable we will seek out these Freyja Maidens and ask them to take her in,' he said, drawing the words out of himself like an arrow from the flesh.
  
  'And if she is not?' Valgerd said, that eyebrow cocked again.
  
  'Then we will do it anyway,' he said, hating the thought. But he would not lose Runa. That was one death in which he would play no part. No matter what.
  
  Then he turned to make his way to Solmund, to ask the old skipper if he had ever sailed to Vestfold and knew where to find this Skíringssalr and the king who lived there.
  
  Fionn was enjoying the work. Having sat on his horse for the last two days it was good to get his body moving, get the blood flowing through his limbs again. He bent and lifted the split timber, knowing that the farmer would be surprised at how strong he was, then he held it in place against the new gate as the farmer hammered in the nails. There was little talking, just the rhythmic thump of the hammer on the iron heads, the sound chasing across the meadow and its white mantle, echoing back off the trunks of the trees where the woods began.
  
  Haraldarson was not here. That had been obvious, but the farmer had said Fionn looked in need of a proper meal and Fionn had offered to help the man repair his gate in return for a hot dinner and somewhere warm to sleep. The man used to have thralls, three of them, he said, but he had sold them after a poor harvest.
  
  'No trouble round here for eight or nine years, then I sell my thralls this summer past and get raided twice this winter. Twice on the same damned day,' the farmer said through lips clenched on a nail.
  
  'What can you tell me about the men who raided you?' Fionn said. The hammer struck once more and went still. 'Not the ones who died,' Fionn added. 'The ones that did the killing.'
  
  'Why?' the farmer asked. 'They friends of yours?'
  
  Fionn said nothing.
  
  The farmer shrugged. 'You're from somewhere off across the sea. These men were Norse.'
  
  The hammer came down once, twice, three times.
  
  'What are they to you?'
  
  'The leader of these men is called Sigurd Haraldarson,' Fionn said. 'I am going to kill him, which should please you seeing as he stole from you that which you can ill afford to lose.'
  
  The farmer grunted. 'Butchered my best cow. Took some cheeses and most of my ale.'
  
  There were tracks all over the place, which did not help. But some jarl called Ebbi had come with a war party the previous day, having seen the smoke from this farmer's signal fire up on the hill. There were other footprints too, because men from the nearest four or five farms had also come to show their support. None had helped this man fix his gate though.
  
  'I'll say this for 'em, they never laid a finger on my family, which I'm thankful for. Whereas you should have seen what they did to the other crew. The ones as showed up just after them. Those shits who broke in my gate. Killed my dog too.'
  
  'Dangerous men, then?' Fionn said, realizing that it might not be a straightforward thing this fishing for clues, because it seemed that, far from wanting his vengeance against Haraldarson and his crew, the farmer was grateful to them for dealing with the other raiders.
  
  'So how is it you're out to kill the man?' the farmer asked. He had sunk the last nail into that supporting plank and now stood back to see how straight it was.
  
  'He has a powerful enemy in the north.'
  
  'Namely?'
  
  'Namely King Gorm of Avaldsnes, whom men call Shield-Shaker.'
  
  The farmer hoomed in the back of his throat. 'Explains why they're on the run I suppose. But you're a brave man if you mean to fight them alone. Never seen blade skill like it. Carved that other crew up as easily as they butchered my cow.'
  
  A murder of crows was making a clamour at the far tree line and the farmer looked up. Nervous these days no doubt. 'Hands are getting cold,' he said, huffing warm air into them. 'You're a young man but just you wait. Skin gets thin. Blood too. The cold sinks right in and once it's in the only thing for it is hot broth and a seat by the fire.' He picked a spare plank out of the snow and leant it against the fence. 'Come on, let's eat. We'll finish this later.'
  
  They trudged up to the longhouse and were joined by the farmer's boy who had been into the byre to feed Fionn's horses. A handsome young lad, his eyes were drawn to Fionn's sword and knives the way crows are drawn to the dead. Only normal for a lad that age, and yet there was something about young Roe that told Fionn he had no intention of following the furrow which his father ploughed. He'll join a crew soon as he's strong enough to pull an oar, Fionn thought to himself as they stamped the snow off their shoes and went inside the smoky house. The farmer's fat wife was clucking over the broth she was preparing. An old woman was squatting over a bucket with the help of an old man who was himself bent as a bow. Another old woman lay snoring in her bed by the hearth.
  
  The farmer told his boy to fetch them some water and cheese to nibble on while they waited for the meat in the broth to soften.
  
  'Did Sigurd Haraldarson tell you where he was going?' Fionn asked the man. No point in delaying it.
  
  The man shook his head. 'Why would he tell me that?' he asked, watching his boy disappear behind the woollen hangings.
  
  He's lying, Fionn thought. That is a shame. 'None of them mentioned where they might be headed?' he said, looking from the man to his wife, who kept her eyes on the broth she was stirring.
  
  'Not that I heard,' the farmer said.
  
  Roe came back with two cups and a jug. When he had poured the water he went off again for the cheese.
  
  Fionn smiled. 'You are not protecting him, are you, Rognvald? This is not some misplaced loyalty because he killed that other crew?' His eyes were into the farmer's face like grit from the quern stone in the loaf.
  
  'I told you, they killed my cow. My best milker.'
  
  Fionn shrugged. 'They likely saved your lives. Who can say what that other crew would have done to your family? To your wife,' he added, nodding towards the woman.
  
  The farmer squirmed in his own skin.
  
  'Like to see the whoresons try it on with me,' the farmer's wife said, all belly and breasts behind the steam rising from the cauldron. 'As you can see, friend, I am no wisp of a girl.'
  
  Roe returned with a wedge of cheese on a plate and set it on the table in front of his father and their guest.
  
  'Wake your mormor, boy, and tell her the stew is nearly ready,' Rognvald said.
  
  'Would you like to see my knife, boy?' Fionn asked before the boy turned back towards the hearth and the beds round it.
  
  The boy nodded, glancing at his father who gave a slight shake of his head, but the boy came closer anyway and Fionn drew the long knife and flipped it over to offer him the stag-antler handle. 'Careful now, it's wicked sharp.'
  
  Roe closed his fingers round the grip, relishing the feel of the ridged antler, looking from Fionn to the blade, eyes wide with the grim curiosity that comes from having seen what such blades can do to a man's flesh.
  
  'Back where I come from we call it a scían. Two sharp edges here, see,' Fionn said, 'leading to a point which'll slide right into a man's eye and out the back of his head before he even knows you're there. Not like the long knives your people use, which are good for slashing a throat or hacking off a hand. I've heard it called a thrusting sax.'
  
  'Wake your mormor, boy,' the farmer said again, his face darkening, rubbing the fingers of his right hand together as he stood there.
  
  'Ah, let the boy look awhile longer,' Fionn said, ruffling Roe's golden head. 'He'll be able to tell his friends he's held a real scían all the way from Alba across the sea to the west.' He grinned at the boy. 'Beautiful, isn't she?'
  
  The boy nodded and grinned back.
  
  'So you are sure Haraldarson and his men said nothing, gave nothing away of their intentions?'
  
  The farmer looked at his wife, who gave him a look that would melt snow. Her fat neck trembled but still her husband kept his teeth together. He was afraid that to speak up now was to admit the earlier lie.
  
  'Have you killed men with it?' Roe asked, looking right into Fionn's eyes. No games with this young lad. As straight as an arrow, and so Fionn would be straight back.
  
  'Oh yes, I've killed many men with this blade. More than I can remember.' He held out his hand and the boy gave the knife back to him, hilt first. Good boy. Fionn turned the long blade in the firelight. 'She is a soul stealer. A lean, hungry bitch.' Roe was under the knife's spell and he seemed to have forgotten his task of waking the old crone whose every snore ended in a wheeze and crackle.
  
  'I can't be sure,' the farmer's wife said, glancing from her husband to Fionn, 'for I was seeing to the old ones, you see, and fetching some of my skyr for the girl. Must be this Sigurd's sister from the looks of 'em both. Pretty things the pair of 'em. Not what you expect from raiders. Anyway . . . when this Haraldarson was talking to his friends he might have mentioned Birka.' She looked at Rognvald. 'What do you say, husband? Did you catch mention of Birka?'
  
  Rognvald muttered that it was possible, though why anyone would want to go to that shit hole was a mystery to him.
  
  Haraldarson being Birka-bound made perfect sense to Fionn, though, for it was a place famed for attracting the dispossessed and men on the make, outlaws, traders and warriors looking for a ring giver. Perhaps Sigurd had the silver to buy himself a proper crew. Or perhaps he would offer his sword to some jarl, thinking he could escape King Gorm's wrath that way. Hiding behind new oaths in some faraway mead hall. Starting again like a damaged sword which is reforged.
  
  Fionn nodded. He would find Haraldarson in Birka then.
  
  His scían had split brynja rings before, with intent behind it. The blade had passed through the rings and the tough leather and wool beneath to kill men who were all sinew and muscle and fat.
  
  It slipped into the boy like a whisper into an ear. Between the ribs, brushing the bones then into his eager heart which fluttered through the blade. His eyes flared, would never close again, and piss ran down his leg on to the floor. Not enough of it to puddle.
  
  It was the woman, not the man, who moved first. Shrieking, she ran through the smoke and threw herself on the long knife, flailing with the ladle and foaming at the mouth as she died. While Rognvald came at him with a hand axe. Bravely enough, though is it courage when a man has already lost everything? Fionn wondered as he twisted out of the axe's path and put the scían through Rognvald's neck, letting the farmer's dead weight pull him off the blade to land in a heap across his wife's huge body.
  
  The old man was half out of his bed and cursing when he died, and as with the two skeletal women there was no pleasure in it, but they would die anyway soon enough without the hand that fed them. No pleasure in killing the boy either. He had not lied as his parents had. But the boy had spirit and might have grown into a killer. A hunter like Fionn. Only a fool would wound a young boar then turn his back on it and walk away. So it was done.
  
  He left the dead where they lay and went over to the broth. It smelt good.
  
  It tasted even better.