CHAPTER ONE: ORKA

The year 297 of Friðaröld, The Age of Peace

“Death is a part of life,” Orka whispered into her son’s ear.

Even though Breca’s arm was drawn back, the ash-spear gripped tight in his small, white-knuckled fist and the spearhead aimed at the reindeer in front of them, she could see the hesitation in his eyes, in the set of his jaw.

He is too gentle for this world of pain, Orka thought. She opened her mouth to scold him, but a hand touched her arm, a huge hand where Breca’s was small, rough-skinned where Breca’s was smooth.

“Wait,” Thorkel breathed through his braided beard, a cold-misting of breath. He stood to her left, solid and huge as a boulder.

Muscles bunched in Orka’s jaw, hard words already in her throat.

Hard words are needed for this hard world.

But she held her tongue.

Spring sunlight dappled the ground through soft-swaying branches, reflecting brightly from patches of rimed snow, winter’s last hoar-frost kiss on this high mountain woodland. A dozen reindeer stood grazing in a glade, a thick-antlered bull watching over the herd of cows and calves as they chewed and scratched moss and lichen from trunks and boulders.

A shift in Breca’s eyes, an indrawn breath that he held, followed by a burst of explosive movement; his hips twisting, his arm moving. The spear left his fist: a hiss as sharp iron sliced through air. A flush of pride in Orka’s chest. It was well thrown. As soon as the spear had left Breca’s grip she knew it would hit its mark.

In the same heartbeat that Breca loosed his spear, the reindeer he had chosen looked up from the trunk it had been scraping lichen from. Its ears twitched and it leaped forwards, the herd around it breaking into motion, bounding and swerving around trees. Breca’s spear slammed into the trunk, the shaft quivering. A moment later there was a crashing from the east, the sound of branches cracking, and a form burst from the undergrowth, huge, slate-furred and long-clawed, exploding into the glade. The reindeer fled in all directions as the beast loped among them, oblivious to all around it. Blood pulsed from a swarm of wounds across its body, long teeth slick, its red tongue lolling, and then it was gone, disappearing into the forest gloom.

“What… was that?” Breca hissed, looking up at his mother and father, wide eyes shifting from Orka to Thorkel.

“A fell-wolf,” Thorkel grunted as he broke into motion, the stealth of the hunt forgotten. He pushed through undergrowth into the glade, a thick-shafted spear in one fist, branches snapping, Orka and Breca following. Thorkel dropped to one knee, tugged a glove off with his teeth and touched his fingertips to droplets of the wolf’s blood, brushing them across the tip of his tongue. He spat, rose and followed the trail of wolf-blood to the edge of the glade, then stood there peering into the murk.

Breca walked up to his spear, the blade half-sunk into a pine tree, and tried to pull it free. His body strained, but the spear didn’t move. He looked up at Orka, grey-green eyes in a pale, muddied face, a straight nose and strong jaw framed with crow-black hair, so much like his father, and the opposite of her. Apart from his eyes. He had Orka’s eyes.

“I missed,” he said, his shoulders slumping.

Orka gripped the shaft in her gloved hand and tugged the spear free.

“Yes,” she said as she handed Breca his spear, half-an-arm shorter than hers and Thorkel’s.

“It was not your fault,” Thorkel said from the glade’s edge. He was still staring into the gloom, a thick braid of black, grey-streaked hair poking from beneath his woollen nålbinding cap, his nose twitching. “The fell-wolf startled them.”

“Why didn’t it kill any of those reindeer?” Breca asked as he took his short spear back from Orka.

Thorkel lifted his hand, showing bloodied fingertips. “It was wounded, not thinking about its supper.”

“What did that to a fell-wolf?” Breca asked.

A silence.

Orka strode to the opposite end of the glade, her spear ready as she regarded the dark hole in the undergrowth from where the wolf had emerged. She paused, cocked her head. A faint sound, drifting through the woodland like mist.

Screams.

Breca joined her. He gripped his spear with both hands and pointed into the darkness.

“Thorkel,” Orka grunted, twisting to look over her shoulder at her husband. He was still staring after the wounded wolf. With a last, lingering look and shake of his fur-draped shoulders he turned and strode towards her.

More screams, faint and distant.

Orka shared a look with Thorkel.

“Asgrim’s steading lies that way,” she said.

“Harek,” Breca said, referring to Asgrim’s son. Breca had played with him on the beach at Fellur, on the occasions when Orka and Thorkel had visited the village to trade for provisions.

Another scream, faint and ethereal through the trees.

“Best we take a look,” Thorkel muttered.

“Heya,” Orka grunted her agreement.

Their breath misted about them in clouds as they worked their way through the pinewoods, the ground thick and soft with needles. It was spring, signs of new life in the world below, but winter still clung to these wooded hills like a hunched old warrior refusing to let go of his past. They walked in file, Orka leading, her eyes constantly shifting between the wolf-carved path they were following and the deep shadows around them. Old, ice-crusted snow crunched underfoot as trees opened up and they stepped on to a ridge, steep cliffs falling away sharply to the west, ragged strips of cloud drifting across the open sky below them. Orka glanced down and saw reed-thin columns of hearth fire smoke rising from Fellur, far below. The fishing village sat nestled on the eastern edge of a deep, blue-black fjord, the calm waters shimmering in the pale sun. Gulls swirled and called.

“Orka,” Thorkel said and she stopped, turned.

Thorkel was unstoppering a leather water bottle and handing it to Breca, who despite the chill was flushed and sweating.

“His legs aren’t as long as yours,” Thorkel smiled through his beard, the scar from cheek to jaw giving his mouth a twist.

Orka looked back up the trail they were following and listened. She had heard no more screams for a while now, so she nodded to Thorkel and reached for her own water bottle.

They sat on a boulder for a few moments, looking out over the land of green and blue, like gods upon the crest of the world. To the south the fjord beyond Fellur spilled into the sea, a ragged coastline curling west and then south, ribbed and scarred with deep fjords and inlets. Iron-grey clouds bunched over the sea, glowing with the threat of snow. Far to the north a green-sloped, snow-topped mountain range coiled across the land, filling the horizon from east to west. Here and there a towering cliff face gleamed, the old-bone roots of the mountain from this distance just a flash of grey.

“Tell me of the serpent Snaka again,” Breca said as they all stared at the mountains.

Orka said nothing, eyes fixed on the undulating peaks.

“If I were to tell that saga-tale, little one, your nose and fingers would freeze, and when you stood to walk away your toes would snap like ice,” Thorkel said.

Breca looked at him with his grey-green eyes.

“Ach, you know I cannot say no to that look,” Thorkel huffed, breath misting. “All right, then, the short telling.” He tugged off the nålbinding cap on his head and scratched his scalp. “All that you can see before you is Vigrið, the Battle-Plain. The land of shattered realms. Each steppe of land between the sea and those mountains, and a hundred leagues beyond them: that is where the gods fought, and died, and Snaka was the father of them all; some say the greatest of them.”

“Certainly the biggest,” Breca said, voice and eyes round and earnest.

“Am I telling this tale, or you?” Thorkel said, a dark eyebrow rising.

“You, Father,” Breca said, dipping his head.

Thorkel grunted. “Snaka was of course the biggest. He was the oldest, the father of the gods; Eldest, they called him, and he had grown monstrous huge, which you would, too, if you had eaten your fill each day since the world was born. But his children were not to be sniffed at, either. Eagle, Bear, Wolf, Dragon, a host of others. Kin fought kin, and Snaka was slain by his children, and he fell. In his death the world was shattered, whole realms crushed, heaved into the air, the seas rushing in. Those mountains are all that is left of him, his bones now covered with the earth that he ruptured.”

Breca whistled through his teeth and shook his head. “It must have been a sight to see.”

“Heya, lad, it must have been. When gods go to war, it is no small thing. The world was broken in their ruin.”

“Heya,” Orka agreed. “And in Snaka’s fall the vaesen pit was opened, and all those creatures of tooth and claw and power that dwelled in the world below were released into our land of sky and sea.” From their vantage point the world looked pure and unspoiled, a beautiful, untamed tapestry spread across the landscape in gold and green and blue.

But Orka knew the truth was a blood-soaked saga.

She looked to her right and saw on the ground the droplets of blood from the injured wolf. In her mind she saw those droplets spreading, growing into pools, more blood spraying, ghostly bodies falling, hacked and broken, voices screaming…

This is a world of blood. Of tooth and claw and sharp iron. Of short lives and painful deaths.

A hand on her shoulder, Thorkel reaching over Breca’s head to touch her. A sharp-drawn breath. She blinked and blew out a long, ragged sigh, pushing the images away.

“It was a good throw,” Thorkel said, tapping Breca’s spear with his water bottle, though his eyes were still on Orka.

“I missed, though,” Breca muttered.

“I missed the first throw on my first hunt, too,” Thorkel said. “And I was eleven summers, where you are only ten. And your throw was better than mine. The wolf robbed you. Eh, Orka?” He ruffled Breca’s hair with a big hand.

“It was well cast,” Orka said, eyeing the clouds to the west, closer now. A west wind was blowing them, and she could taste snow on that wind, a sharp cold that crackled like frost in her chest. Stoppering her water bottle, she stood and walked away.

“Tell me more of Snaka,” Breca called after her.

Orka paused. “Are you so quick to forget your friend Harek?” she said with a frown.

Breca dropped his eyes, downcast, then stood and followed her.

Orka led them on, back into the pinewoods where sound was eerily muted, the world shrinking around them, shadows shifting, and they climbed higher into the hills. As they rose the world turned grey around them, clouds veiling the sun, and a cold wind hissed through the branches.

Orka used her spear for a staff as the ground steepened and she climbed slick stone that ascended like steps alongside a white-foaming stream. Ice-cold water splashed and seeped into her leg-bindings and boots. A strand of her blonde hair fell loose of her braid and she pushed it behind one ear. She slowed her pace, remembering Breca’s short legs, even though there was a tingling in her blood that set her muscles thrumming. Danger had always had that effect on her.

“Be ready,” Thorkel said behind her, and then Orka smelled it, too.

The iron tang of blood, the stench of voided bowels.

Death’s reek.

The ground levelled on to a plateaued ridge, trees felled and cleared. A large, grass-roofed cabin appeared, alongside a handful of outbuildings, all nestled into a cliff face. A stockade wall ringed the cabin and outbuildings, taller than Orka.

Asgrim’s steading.

On the eastern side of the steading a track curled down the hills, eventually leading towards the village of Fellur and the fjord.

Orka took a few steps forwards, then stopped, spear levelled as Breca and Thorkel climbed on to the plateau.

The stockade’s wide gates were thrown open, a body upon the ground between them, limbs twisted, unnaturally still. One gate creaked on the wind. Orka heard Breca’s breath hiss through his lips.

Orka knew it was Asgrim, broad shouldered and with iron-grey hair. One hairy arm poked from the torn sleeve of his tunic.

A snowflake drifted down, a tingled kiss upon Orka’s cheek.

“Breca, stay behind me,” she said, padding forwards. Crows rose squawking from Asgrim’s corpse, complaining as they flapped away, settling among the treetops, one sitting upon a gatepost, watching them.

Snow began to fall, the wind swirling it around the plateau.

Orka looked down on Asgrim. He was clothed in wool and breeches, a good fur cloak, a dull ring of silver around one arm. His hair was grey, body lean, sinewed muscles showing through his torn tunic. One of his boots had fallen off. A shattered spear lay close to him, and a blooded hand-axe on the ground. There was a hole in his chest, his woollen tunic dark with crusted blood.

Orka kneeled, picked up the axe and placed it in Asgrim’s palm, wrapping the stiffening fingers around it.

“Travel the soul road with a blade in your fist,” she whispered.

Breca’s breath came in a ragged gasp behind her. It was the first person he had seen dead. Plenty of animals; he had helped in slaughtering many a meal for their supper, the gutting and skinning, the soaking of sinew for stitching and binding, the tanning of leather for the boots they wore, their belts and scabbards for their seaxes. But to see another man dead, his life torn from him, that was something else.

At least, for the first time.

And this was a man that Breca had known. He had seen life’s spark in him.

Orka gave her son a moment as he stood and stared wide-eyed at the corpse, a flutter in his chest, his breath quick.

The ground around Asgrim was churned, grass flattened. A scuffed boot print. A few paces away there was a pool of blood soaked into the grass. Tracks in the ground led away; it looked like someone had been dragged.

Asgrim put someone down, then.

“Was he the one screaming?” Breca asked, still staring at Asgrim’s corpse.

“No,” Orka said, looking at the wound in Asgrim’s chest. A stab to the heart: death would have come quickly. And a good thing, too, as his body had already been picked at by scavengers. His eyes and lips were red wounds where the crows had been at him. Orka put a hand to Asgrim’s face and lifted what was left of his lip to look inside his mouth. Gums and empty, blood-ragged sockets. She scowled.

“Where are his teeth?” Breca hissed.

“Tennúr have been at him,” Orka grunted. “They love a man’s teeth more than a squirrel loves nuts.” She looked around, searching the treeline and ridged cliff for any sign of the small, two-legged creatures. On their own, they could be a nuisance; in a pack, they could be deadly, with their sharp-boned fingers and razor teeth.

Thorkel stepped around Orka and padded into the enclosure, spear-point sweeping in a wide arc as he searched.

He stopped, stared up at the creaking gate.

Orka stepped over Asgrim into the steading and stopped beside Thorkel.

A body was nailed to the gate, arms wide, head lolling.

Idrun, wife to Asgrim.

She had not died so quickly as her husband.

Her belly had been opened, intestines spilling to a pile on the ground, twisted like vines around an old oak. Heat still rose from them, steaming as snow settled upon glistening coils. Her face was misshapen in a rictus of pain.

It was she who did the screaming.

“What did this?” Thorkel muttered.

“Vaesen?” Orka said.

Thorkel pointed to thick-carved runes on the gate, all sharp angles and straight lines. “A warding rune.”

Orka shook her head. Runes would hold back all but the most powerful of vaesen. She glanced back at Asgrim and the wound in his chest. Rarely did vaesen use weapons, nature already equipping them with the tools of death and slaughter. There were dark patches on the grass: congealed blood.

Blood on Asgrim’s axe. Others were wounded, but if they fell, they were carried from here.

“Did men do this?” Thorkel muttered.

Orka shrugged, a puff of misted breath as she thought on it.

“All is lies,” she murmured. “They call this the age of peace, because the ancient war is over and the gods are dead, but if this is peace…” She looked to the skies, clouds low and heavy, snow falling in sheets now, and back at the blood-soaked corpses. “This is the age of storm and murder…”

“Where’s Harek?” Breca asked.

CHAPTER TWO: VARG

Varg twisted to look back over his shoulder as he ran, stumbled, almost fell and carried on running. The rocky banks were giving way to black sand and shingle as the river widened, the dense trees and cliffs that had hemmed him in thinning and retreating as he drew closer to the fjord. Already he could smell the market town of Liga, a host of scents and sounds assaulting his senses.

Another look back over his shoulder: no signs of pursuit, but he knew they were there. He increased his pace.

How long have I been running? Nine days, ten?

He touched a hand to the leather pouch at his belt, sucked in the salt-tinged air and ran on.

His legs burned, lungs heaved and sweat trickled in a constant stream into his eyes, but he kept his pace, deep breaths, long strides.

I could run for ever, if only there were ground before me for my feet to tread. But the cliffs have steered me to the sea, and it is close. Where will I go? What should I do?

Panic fluttered through his veins.

They must not catch me.

He ran on, shingle crunching beneath his tattered turn-shoes.

The river spilled into a fjord, widening like a serpent’s jaws about its prey and Liga came into view, a market town and port built upon the fjord’s south-eastern banks. Varg slowed to a stop, put his hands on his knees and stared at the town: a bustling, stinking mass of buildings strewn along a wide, black-sanded beach and rolling back as far as the slopes of the fjord would allow. A stockade wall ringed the town, protecting the buildings and humanity crammed within. The town climbed the flank of a slope, a grass-turfed long-hall with carved, curling wooden beams built on the high ground, like a jarl in the high seat of a mead hall, looking out over his people. The sky above was thick with hearth smoke, the stink of grease and fat heavy in the air. Jetties and piers jutted out over the blue-black water of the fjord, a myriad ships rocking gently at harbour. One ship stood out among the others, a prow-necked, sleek-sided drakkar, a dragon-ship, looking like a wolf of the sea among a flock of sheep. All around it crowded slender byrdings and a host of knarrs, their bellies fat with merchant wares from places Varg had no doubt never heard of. He did not even know how old he was, but in his remembered life he had counted thirty hard winters and back-breaking summers that he had spent shackled to Kolskegg’s farm, only twenty leagues north-east along the river, and in all of those years his master had never taken him to Liga on one of his many trading trips.

Not that he wanted to go. The smells repulsed him, though the blending scents of fat and cooking meat were making his belly rumble, and the thought of being so close to so many people was incomprehensible to him. He took a few unconscious steps away, back towards the river-gully he had been running through.

But I cannot go back. They will catch me. I have to go forwards. I need a Galdurman, or a Seiðr-witch.

He rubbed his stubbled head and reached inside his cloak, pulling out a thick iron collar. Another search inside his cloak pocket and he drew out a key, unlocked the collar and with a shiver set the cold iron around his neck, snapping it shut. He locked it and put the key back in his cloak. For a few moments he stood and twisted his neck, grimaced. A shuddered breath. Then he stood straight, brushed down his mud-stained tunic and pulled his woollen cloak-hood up over his head. And walked on.

A wide, rune-carved gate stood open, two mail-coated guards

“Your business in Liga?” she said.

“Finding rooms for my master,” Varg said, his eyes downcast. “I have been ordered on ahead.” He gestured vaguely behind him, into the river valley.

The guard looked him up and down, then over his shoulder, at the empty mouth of the river valley.

“How do I know that? Who’s your master? Pull your hood down.”

Varg thought about the answers he could give, and where they would lead, and what they would give away. Slowly he pushed his hood back, revealing his stubbled hair, his mud- and sweat-stained face. He opened his mouth. A cart rolled up behind him, pulled by two oxen; a fine-dressed merchant sat upon the driving bench, a handful of freedmen with spears and clubs in their fists.

“Let the man through, Slyda,” the grey-beard grunted from his stump.

“My master is Snepil,” Varg said, saying the first name that came into his head. Snepil was a man that he knew would not be following him soon, as the last time Varg had seen him Snepil’s eyes had been bulging and his last breath had hissed and rattled from his throat as Varg throttled the life from him. He couldn’t remember how he came to have his hands around the man’s throat, only remembered blinking as Snepil’s rattling death filtered through some red mist in Varg’s head.

She eyed him one more time, then stepped out of his way and waved him through.

Varg pulled his hood back up and slipped into Liga like lice into a beard, the scents and sounds hitting him as if he had dived into water. Timber-sided buildings lined wide, mud-slick streets, and traders were everywhere, clamouring, their trestle-benches edging the streets and laid out with all manner of goods. Bolts of dyed cloth, bone needles and combs, axe heads, knives, fine-tooled scabbards, bronze cloak pins and amulets, wooden bowls, bundles of linen and wool, tied bales of wolf and bear skins, reindeer hides, pine marten and fox pelts. Varg’s eyes widened at the sight of walrus tusks and ivory. Others were selling horns of mead and ale, bubbling pots of rabbit and beef stew steaming over pit fires, turnips and carrots bobbing, fat glistening. Quartered steaks of whale meat, smoked herring and cod hanging. He even saw a trader selling vaesen body parts: Faunir’s dried blood; a troll’s tooth, big as a fist; a bowl full of skraeling eyeballs; and a necklace made from the needled hair of a Froa-spirit. It was endless, and overwhelming.

A spasm in his belly reminded him that a long time had passed since he’d last eaten. He was not sure exactly how long, but it was at least three days ago, or was it four, when he had been lucky enough to snatch a salmon from the river. He strode over to a trader who was standing behind a big stew-pot and using a cleaver to quarter a boar’s leg joint. The trader was a broad-bellied and wispy-bearded man wearing fur-trimmed boots and a fine green woollen tunic, though the tablet weaving around the neck and cuffs was dull and frayed.

Varg stared into the pot of stew, saliva flooding his mouth, the churning and twisting in his gut abruptly painful.

“Something to warm your belly?” the trader said, putting the cleaver down and lifting a bowl.

“Aye, that’d be good,” Varg said.

“A half-bronze,” the trader said. Then paused and stared at Varg. He put the bowl down and pushed Varg’s hood back, looked at his short, stubbled hair. His eyes narrowed.

“Away with you, you dirty thrall,” the trader scowled.

“I can pay,” Varg said.

A raised eyebrow.

“I’ll see your coin, first,” the trader said.

Varg reached inside his cloak, pulled out a pouch, loosened the leather-draw and fished out a bronze coin. He dropped it on the trader’s table, the coin rolling and falling, revealing the stamped profile of a woman’s head. A sharp-nosed profile, hair pulled severely tight and braided at the neck.

“A Helka,” the trader said, his beard twitching.

“Queen Helka,” Varg said, though he had never seen her, only heard snatched talk of her: of her hubris, thinking she could rule and control half of Vigrið, and of her ruthlessness against her enemies.

“Only calls herself queen so she can tax us down to our stones,” the trader grunted.

“No good to you, then?” Varg said, reaching for the coin.

“I didn’t say that,” the trader said, holding a hand out.

Faster than it took to blink, Varg snatched up the cleaver the trader had put down and chopped at the coin, hacking it in two. He lifted one half up between finger and thumb, left the other hack-bronze on the table.

“Where’d a dirty thrall come by a pouch of Helka-coin, anyway? And where’s your master?” the trader grunted, eyeing him.

Varg looked at him, then slowly put a hand out towards the coin again.

The trader shrugged and scooped a ladle of stew into the bowl, handed it to Varg.

“Some of that bread too,” Varg said, and the trader cut a chunk from a black-crusted loaf.

Varg dipped the bread in the stew and sucked it, fat dripping down his chin, into his newly grown beard. The stew was watery and too hot, but it tasted like pure joy to Varg. He closed his eyes, dipped, sucked, slurped until the bread was gone, then upended what was left of the stew into his mouth.

He put the bowl down and belched.

“I’ve seen hungry men before,” the trader said, “but you…” He whistled, gave a half-smile.

“Is there a Galdurman, or Seiðr-witch in Liga?” Varg asked, cuffing stew from his chin.

The trader signed a rune across his chest and frowned. “No, and what do you want with the likes of them?”

“That’s my business,” Varg said, then paused. “That’s my master’s business. Do you know where I can find one?”

The trader began to turn away.

Varg put the other half-bronze back on the table.

The trader looked at him appraisingly. “The Bloodsworn docked yesterday. They have a Seiðr-witch thrall.”

The Bloodsworn!

The Bloodsworn were famed throughout the whole of Vigrið, and most likely beyond. A band of mercenary warriors who hired themselves out to the highest bidder, they hunted down vaesen-monsters, searched out god-relics for wealthy jarls, fought in border disputes, guarded the wealthy and powerful. Tales were sung about them by skálds around hearth fires.

“Where are they?” Varg said.

“You’ll find them in Liga’s longhouse, guests of Jarl Logur.”

“My thanks,” Varg said. Then he dipped his hand back in his pouch and threw another hack-bronze on the table.

“What’s that for?” the trader said.

“Your silence. You never saw me.”

“Saw who?” said the trader, looking around, a smile twitching his thin beard, even as his hand snaked out and scooped up the coins.

Varg’s hand darted out, faster than the trader’s, and gripped the man’s wrist. He stared into the trader’s eyes, held his gaze a long moment, then let go; in the same movement he swept the cleaver from the table and hefted it.

“How much?” he said.

“You can have that,” the trader shrugged.

Varg nodded and slipped the cleaver inside his cloak, pulled his hood back up and walked into the crowd.

He made his way through the streets of Liga, past a quayside that heaved with activity, men and women unloading a newly docked merchant knarr. Its belly was wide and deep, sitting low in the water. Varg thought he heard the muted neighing of horses from deep in its hull and two more similar-looking ships were rowing into the docks. A group of strange-looking men and women were disembarking from the moored knarr. They wore caps of felt and fur and silver-buckled kaftans, with their breeches striped in blues and oranges, baggy above the knee, wrapped tight with winnigas leg-bindings from knee to ankle. Their skin was dark as weathered leather and they were escorted by a handful of warriors who wore long coats of lamellar plate that shimmered like scales as they moved. They had curved swords hanging at their hips, the men with long drooping moustaches, and their heads were completely shaven, apart from a long, solitary braid of hair. Varg paused and stared at them as they turned and shouted at sailors on the ship, gangplanks slamming down on to the jetty, pier-cranes swinging to hover over the ship’s belly.

“Where are they from?” Varg asked a dock worker who was hurrying past with a thick coil of rope slung over her shoulder.

“Iskidan,” she grunted, not slowing.

“Iskidan,” Varg whistled. The land beyond the sea, far, far to the south. Varg had heard tales of Iskidan, of its wide rivers and grass plains, of its beating sun and of Gravka, the Great City. Part of him had thought it just a tale, a place to escape in the mind during the cold, harsh months of winter.

Varg took one last look at the strangers and then walked on, turning into another street that steepened, climbing a slope towards the cliffs that brooded over the town, Jarl Logur’s mead hall nestled at their foot. The reek of fish lessened as he climbed, replaced by urine and excrement. Steps were carved into the street that led to a wide-arched gate, beyond it the thick-timbered beams of the mead hall visible. A press of men and women were shoulder to shoulder on the steps. Varg paused a moment, looking for a way through, and then slipped between a man and a woman, trying to thread his way up the steps.

A hand grabbed his shoulder.

“Wait your turn, like everyone else,” a woman said. She was dark-haired, her face hard and sharp, her eyes cold. A woollen tunic and fur-edged cloak were draped about her shoulders, a weapons belt around her waist with scabbarded seax and hand-axe hanging from it.

“I need to see the Bloodsworn,” Varg said.

“Ha, don’t we all?” the woman said. “What makes you so special?”

Varg looked at her, then at the crowd around him.

“All these, they are here for the Bloodsworn?” Varg said.

“Aye,” the woman grunted, “what else?”

“Why?” Varg asked.

“There’s an empty sea-chest and a spare oar on their drakkar,” the woman said.

“Empty sea-chest?” Varg frowned.

“Are you touched in the head?” the woman said, prodding his temple through his cloak-hood with a hard finger. Varg didn’t much like it. “One of the Bloodsworn has been slain, and they are holding a weapons trial to fill his place.”

“Ah,” Varg nodded, understanding blossoming.

“So, wait your turn,” she said, then looked him up and down. “Or are you in a rush to have your arse dumped in the dirt?”

Laughter rippled through those around them.

Varg just looked at the ground and waited.

The crowd shuffled up the steps. As Varg drew closer to the mead hall the sounds of shouting drifted down to him, punctuated with cries of pain. A slow, steady stream of bloodied faces filtered back down the steps, some groaning and supported by others. Others were carried unconscious.

Varg reached the top step and looked over the shoulders of those in front of him. An arched gateway led into an open space before Jarl Logur’s mead hall, a huge building of scrolled timber sitting upon thick stone footings. In the space before the hall the ground was trampled and muddied, dark patches glistening here and there. Warriors ringed the area, fifty or sixty of them, hard-looking men and women, some wearing brynja coats of riveted mail with swords at their hips. Varg had only seen a sword once before, when the local drengr had visited Kolskegg’s farm to collect the tax due to Queen Helka. Varg had suspected that sword was worth more than all the goods loaded upon a wagon and the chest of coin that Kolskegg had given the man. Varg’s eyes were drawn to a bald-headed, thick-muscled warrior, more grey than black in his braided beard. He wore a plain-scabbarded sword at his hip, a fine brynja of riveted mail over his broad frame and rings of gold and silver wrapped around his arms and neck. The sword and brynja alone were probably worth as much as Kolskegg’s farm. There was wealth to be had in death-dealing. The bald man was talking to a raven-haired woman, a pattern of blue tattoos across her lower jaw and throat. The Seiðr-witch. Varg blinked in surprise at the iron collar around her neck, and instinctively put a hand to his own throat. The old warrior was leaning upon a long-axe as he spoke, the butt stuck in the ground, the single iron blade hooked and cruel-looking. Varg was accustomed to axes, the callouses on his hand testament to long years of use, but this was not an axe made for chopping timber. This was made for killing. Varg looked away, the sight of it setting some uneasy feeling trickling through his veins. All of the warriors in the square bristled with a mass of assorted weapons hanging from weapons belts. Big round shields were slung across their backs, some propped against the wall and steps of the mead hall. A few were painted pale blue as a winter’s sky with a red sail upon it, Varg recognising that as the sigil of Jarl Logur, but most of the shields around the square were painted crow-black, each one with a splattering of red across the pitch-paint, as if someone had cast droplets of blood across each shield.

In the centre of the square two men were fighting. Or more accurately to Varg, a man and a tree were fighting. The shorter one was light on his feet, a round shield in one hand, dancing around the bigger man, who was stripped to the waist, woollen breeches tied with rope, with a red braided beard that dangled to his waist. He was thick bodied and limbed, muscles knotted and bunching like the roots of an old oak. As Varg watched the smaller man feinted right and then darted left, stepping in and slamming the iron boss of the shield into red-beard’s ribs. A hook from his right hand into the stomach. A grunt from red-beard was the only acknowledgement, one arm swinging, catching the smaller man across the back of the head as he tried to duck and leap away. He staggered, stumbled back a dozen steps, his legs abruptly loose. Red-beard stomped after him.

“Name,” a voice said. Varg blinked, tearing his eyes away from the spectacle.

“Name,” the man said again, leaning against the gatepost with his arms folded. He was roughly the same height as Varg and slim-built, red hair neatly braided and a trimmed beard oiled and gleaming. He was clothed in a well-cared-for brynja of riveted mail, fine scrollwork knotted along the scabbard of his seax.

“Varg,” Varg said. His natural response to a command was to obey unthinkingly. On Kolskegg’s farm anything other resulted in a thump or the lash.

“Varg what?”

Varg blinked.

The slim man sighed.

“This is the way it works,” he said. “I say name, you give me your full name. For example, I am Svik Hrulfsson, or Tangle-Hair, on account of my hair never being tangled. So, let’s start again. Name?”

“I don’t know,” Varg shrugged. “I never knew my father or mother.”

Svik looked him up and down.

“You are sure you want to do this?” he said.

“Do what?”

“Fight Einar Half-Troll.”

“I don’t want to fight anyone,” Varg said, “and especially not someone with a name like Half-Troll.” He took a deep breath. “I want to hire your Seiðr-witch.”

Svik blinked.

“Vol is not for hire,” he said, glancing at the tattooed woman talking to the bald man.

“I must speak to her,” Varg said. “It is… important.”

“Aye, to you, maybe. But to us,” Svik shrugged, “not so much.”

“I must speak with her,” Varg said, feeling panic begin to bubble in his belly.

“What is so important? You need a love potion? Want to hump some fine-looking thrall on your farm?”

“No!” Varg exclaimed. “I don’t want a love potion.” He shook his head. “It is more important than that.”

“More important than a hump?” Svik said, raising an eyebrow. “I did not know that could be true.”

Chuckles from the crowd behind Varg.

“I need your Seiðr-witch to perform an akáll.”

Svik frowned. “An invocation. That is a serious business.”

“It is a serious matter,” Varg said, fingertips brushing the pouch at his belt.

“The answer still is no,” Svik said. “Vol uses her talents for the Bloodsworn. No one else. She is not for hire. Even if Queen Helka herself marched up those steps and asked for it, the answer would be the same.”

Varg felt his hope draining away, a coldness settling in the pit of his belly.

A crunch from the square. Varg looked to see the huge warrior – Einar Half-Troll – punch the other warrior’s shield. The wood cracked, shattering and spraying in splinters.

“Why does Einar not have a shield?” Varg asked.

“To give the others a chance.” Svik shrugged. He leaned forward. “It’s not really much of a chance,” he whispered.

Einar grabbed his opponent by throat and crotch, lifted him squeaking into the air, then hurled him to the ground. There was a dull thud, the squeaks cut short, the man on the ground abruptly still. Men and women ran in and carried the unconscious warrior out of the square.

Varg looked at Einar, thick and solid and menacing, a few red marks on his body the only evidence that he’d already fought at least a score of fights. He looked back at Svik.

“I’ll fight him,” Varg said.

CHAPTER THREE: ORKA

Orka walked alongside the wagon, the bodies of Asgrim and his wife Idrun laid out upon the wagon’s flatbed. They were covered with a coarse woollen blanket, blood seeping in patches. Orka sniffed and looked around. The trees were thinning about them, the ground levelling as they took the winding path to Fellur, the fishing village on the banks of the fjord.

Breca was leading the wagon, one hand on the lead-rein of a shaggy pony they had found in Asgrim’s stable, his short spear in his other fist, Breca using it like a staff. Orka had given him the task of leading the wagon, something to focus his mind on after the sights at Asgrim’s steading, and she wanted to watch the treeline either side of the path.

There are killers abroad in these hills.

They had searched Asgrim’s steading and found no sign of Harek. Thorkel had found tracks upon the path that wound down the hillside, the ground churned, but the tracks had left the path soon after, heading back into dense woodland. After a heated discussion they had agreed that Thorkel would follow the tracks while Orka and Breca took the bodies down to Fellur. Orka wanted to be the one to take the dangerous path, to track Asgrim’s killers, but they both knew that Thorkel was the better tracker. In the end Thorkel had given her a smile and loped off into the trees, quiet as smoke, for all his bulk. Orka had scowled at his back, her worry manifested as anger. Then she snorted her disapproval and stomped down the path, ordering Breca to lead the pony.

“Will Papa find Harek?” Breca asked, keeping his eyes on the ground in front of them. They had left the snow behind them in the high places, the path turning to puddles and mud where it had been snow and ice.

“Maybe,” Orka grunted. She looked back, up at the cloud-wreathed hills. Thorkel had sworn to her that if he found the boy and Asgrim’s killers he would return to her, not take them on single-handed.

But he is a liar. And it will tear at him to leave the boy in danger. If he still lives.

She was eager to hand the corpses of Asgrim and Idrun over to Fellur’s jarl and go in search of her husband, before he got himself into trouble.

Fellur appeared through the trees, the village a few dozen reed-thatched, wattle-and-daub buildings huddled close, a larger longhouse at its centre. A small stockade surrounded the village, though the timbered wall was rotten in places, and ended a long way short of the dark-sanded beach.

But they are safe enough down here. The vaesen prefer the quiet, dark places, where they can remain hidden.

Orka could see fishing nets hanging on the beach, drying out and waiting for repair. A handful of timber piers that jutted out on to the fjord were mostly empty, only a few fishing boats and byrding coasters moored there.

Goats bleated as the wagon rolled passed them, Orka lengthening the stride of her long legs to draw level with Breca.

A guard stood leaning against one of the gateposts, a man Orka had seen before, though she did not know his name. He nodded to Orka, not bothering to look inside her wagon. Whenever she and Thorkel came to the village it was with a wagon loaded with pelts for trade, so why would this time be any different? Orka nodded to the guard and passed through the gate, feeling a building pressure in her head and chest. She looked up at the gate’s crossbar that ran above her and saw the gleam of bone sunk deep into the timber: the knuckle-bone of a dead god, still beating with a remnant of its power, helping to keep the vaesen out of the village. The pressure in Orka’s head lessened as she moved into a muddy street, away from the gates. Though there were no guards on the gate the village was busy enough, people milling, moving in a stream towards the village’s longhouse. That was where Orka was headed, for that was where she expected to find Sigrún, Jarl of Fellur.

She led Breca past mud-churned pigpens, past the orange glow and hammer-thud of a forge, then past the tavern, the reek of ale, barley and urine thick in the air.

“What is this?” a man said as he emerged from the tavern, blinking at the daylight. Orka knew him: Virk, a fisherman she and Thorkel had traded with many times. He was a big man, broad-faced and straight-talking. He had injured his arm when his fisher boat had been caught out at sea during a storm, and so was letting his two sons ply the seas while he healed. He was blurry-eyed, red veins in his cheeks. Orka took a sniff and curled her lip. By the reek of him he was better off at sea.

“Asgrim and Idrun.” Orka nodded into the wagon.

Virk stared at the bloody stains on the wool blanket covering the two bodies.

“And Harek’s gone,” Breca piped.

“How?” Virk said, others gathering around the cart.

“Not of old age,” Orka muttered and walked on.

Virk followed them, others with him, word spreading.

The wagon rolled into a courtyard before the longhouse, where forty or fifty people were gathered, at least half of the population of the village, others still arriving.

A young man stepped out of the longhouse: Guðvarr, nephew of Jarl Sigrún and one of her drengrs, another three warriors behind him. Guðvarr walked with a swagger and stopped between two wooden pillars at the top of wide steps that led down to the courtyard. A sword was hanging at his hip, his red woollen tunic embroidered with swirling tablet-weave at the neck, cuffs and rim. A silver arm ring wrapped around one arm. His black hair was oiled and pulled back, tied at his neck with leather and a silver wire, the wisps of a first beard on his chin. A ball of moisture glistened at the end of his pointed nose. Orka glanced down at her son. By the light in Breca’s eyes, any man with a sword was enough to impress his saga-filled head.

“What is going on here?” Orka asked Virk, who had come to stand at her shoulder. He was a tall man, but he still had to look up to meet her eyes.

“Guðvarr came down the river on a snekke this morning. Word is that Jarl Sigrún has sent him ahead of her return.”

“Jarl Sigrún isn’t here?”

Virk looked at Orka like she was touched.

“Jarl Sigrún was summoned…” He coughed. “I mean invited, to Queen Helka’s court in Darl. She has been gone more than two months.”

Orka raised an eyebrow and nodded.

“I have news,” Guðvarr called out, the crowd quieting.

He let the silence grow, clearly enjoying his moment before the crowd.

“I am to tell you that Jarl Sigrún will be back with us within a nine-day. She bid me tell you that Queen Helka is just, and good and wise, and that we could do worse than swear our oaths to her. To be under her care would be a benefit to our village.”

“Care!” Virk muttered. “Not so long ago we were all freedmen and women in Fellur, and queens and kings were arseling-jarls who had grown too big for their boots.”

Orka did not disagree with him.

“You mean RULE, not CARE,” Virk shouted, others in the crowd adding their voices.

“Times are changing,” Guðvarr answered, glowering at Virk and the crowd. “Jarl Störr threatens in the west, the vaesen are growing ever bolder, murdering and stealing. We are better off uniting with the strong, and Queen Helka is the strongest.”

More muttering.

“When Jarl Sigrún returns, there will be an Althing, held on the Oath Rock, where all can have their say about these important matters,” Guðvarr called out, gesturing to a rocky island that stood in the fjord, green with moss and dense with bracken and wind-blasted trees.

Voices called out, protesting, asking questions.

“Save your moaning for my aunt and the Althing,” he growled. “That is all.”

Orka took the lead-rein from Breca and clicked the pony on, pulling the wagon through the crowd. People parted for her.

“Drengr Guðvarr,” Orka called out, her voice loud, cutting through the crowd.

Guðvarr paused and turned, looked down at Orka, Breca and the wagon. He wiped the drop of snot growing at the end of his nose.

A silence fell around her as she led the wagon to the steps of the longhouse, wheels creaking as the pony came to a stand.

“What is this?” Guðvarr said as he stepped down the first two steps and stood staring at the bloodstained blanket in the wagon. The three warriors with him, two women and a man, all came to stand behind him. They carried spears, axes and seaxes hanging at their weapons belts.

“Asgrim and Idrun,” Orka said. “I was with my husband and son, hunting in the hills. We heard screaming, went to look and found Asgrim and Idrun murdered in their steading.” She pulled back the blanket.

Gasps rippled around the square.

“You see,” Guðvarr cried out. “Vaesen doing murder in our own hills. We need the strength of Queen Helka.”

“Vaesen did not do this,” Orka said.

“Oh ho, and how do you know that?” Guðvarr said, looking suspiciously at Orka. The ball of snot was starting to grow at the end of his nose again. “Are you a Seiðr-witch to see the past?” He looked at Orka with a sneer on his face, as if he had won some great contest of wits.

“I don’t need to be a Seiðr-witch to know a sword wound to the heart when I see one,” Orka said. “Vaesen hunt with tooth and claw, not swords of iron.” She paused, looking at the sneer that twisted Guðvarr’s lips. “I would have thought Guðvarr the fierce drengr would have known that at a glance.” She regretted the words even as they were leaving her mouth, knew that they would only bring her trouble. But she didn’t like the twist of his smug, arrogant face.

A few sniggers around the courtyard and Guðvarr flushed red.

He scowled at Orka. “Loners, living in the wild, they were asking for trouble.”

“Asgrim and Idrun did not ask for this,” Orka said.

“And Harek, their son, has been taken,” Breca squeaked in his high voice.

“Children taken,” Virk said. He had followed Orka through the crowd. “That is not the first time I have heard this.”

Orka frowned at him.

Guðvarr walked down the longhouse steps and stood before Orka. She was taller and wider than him, but he had the hubris of the powerful in his eyes: that belief that one is better, faster. She felt a tingle in her blood, a sharpening of her senses. The herald of violence.

“If I say they were asking for trouble, then they were asking for trouble,” Guðvarr said, his voice a hiss, like a sword leaving a scabbard. “As are you.”

The three warriors on the stairs took a step closer, hands moving to rest close to weapons.

Orka stared at Guðvarr, felt muscles in her jaw twitch. Felt her blood pounding through her veins. Heard distant voices in her head, screaming, an image in her mind, an axe carving into a skull…

“You are shaking,” Guðvarr said. “Do you fear me? You would be wise, if you did.”

Orka blinked, saw there was a tremor in her arm, her fist, passing into her spear. She looked at Breca, who was looking from her to Guðvarr with worried eyes.

Orka took a deep breath.

“I brought them here because I thought Jarl Sigrún would wish to know there are killers and child-stealers in her hills,” Orka said, choosing her words slowly. Her heart was thumping, blood shivering through her veins. She chose to control it. Tried to control it. “And to see if Asgrim and Idrun had kin here. They should have a barrow raised over them, as is proper.”

A silence. Guðvarr stared up at Orka. She returned his stare, flatly. Felt the hot flush of emotion leaving her, replaced by a coldness filling her veins. Some deep part of her knew that was a bad sign.

“Mama,” a voice said, filtering through the ice-fog in her head.

“Mama, Papa is coming,” the voice said, something tugging her sleeve.

“Orka.” Thorkel’s voice.

Orka blinked, tore her eyes away from Guðvarr and saw Thorkel approaching, pushing through the crowd, spear in his hand, his nålbinding woollen cap damp with sweat.

“Is all well?” Thorkel asked, his eyes flickering from Orka to Guðvarr and the other drengr warriors on the steps. His black brows knotted, a thundercloud, his mouth becoming a hard line. He seemed to swell in size as Orka saw the anger fill him, the light in his eyes shifting from concern to some flat, dead-eyed stare.

“We were talking about raising a barrow over Asgrim and Idrun,” Orka said, blowing out a long, slow breath. She forced a smile of greeting on to her face and Thorkel’s cold, hard lines softened a little.

Guðvarr looked from Orka to Thorkel. She saw him looking at Thorkel’s spear, at his size.

“My husband has been tracking Asgrim’s killers. They took his son, Harek.”

“Did you find them?” Guðvarr asked Thorkel.

“No,” Thorkel said.

Guðvarr’s lip curled back into what Orka thought to be his permanent sneer.

“I followed their tracks to a river,” Thorkel continued, “one of the many that feed out of the hills into the River Skarpain. There were signs of three boats pulled up on to the bank. Whoever slew Asgrim and Idrun took to the river and disappeared.”

Guðvarr nodded. “We will look into it.”

Orka thought about pressing Guðvarr, of asking him how many spears he would take with him; would he use hounds; would he send people and boats up the River Skarpain.

Instead she looked from Thorkel to Breca.

This is not our fight. Not our problem.

“Home,” she said to them, then turned and walked away.

CHAPTER FOUR: VARG

Varg walked into the square before the mead hall. He stepped over a pool of congealing blood and stopped.

His own blood was rushing in his ears, muting sound, though he could see smiling faces and mouths moving among the crowd lining the square, coin being exchanged. One woman with two wolfhounds at her feet watched him as she bit into an apple. She was lean-muscled with silver-grey hair knotted like rope, a white scar running through one ruined eye. She was clothed in a brynja, a spear in her fist, axe and seax suspended from her belt. She looked too old to be a warrior, with deep lines around her eyes and mouth. As Varg’s eyes met hers she smiled at him, but Varg saw no comfort in it. It was the kind of smile one gives a fool when they believe they can fly and leap from a cliff.

She dropped her apple and fished out a coin from a pouch at her belt, gave it to a man standing close to her.

They are betting on how quickly I lose, he realised.

Einar was bending to mutter something to the grey-bearded bald man and the tattooed woman. As he did so he wiped blood from his knuckles with a rag and passed it over to another warrior, a tall, blonde-haired woman, another of the Bloodsworn, going by her black shield and brynja. She took the rag and stuffed it in her weapons belt, then picked up a wooden shield that was leaning against the mead hall steps. Her eyes met Varg’s and she strode to him, offered him the shield.

Varg looked at it. Strips of limewood glued and bound with a rim of rawhide, an iron boss at its centre, a wooden handle riveted across the back.

“More useful if you hold it, rather than look at it,” the woman said to him. Her nose and chin were long and thin, sharp as a drakkar’s prow.

Varg shook his head. “Don’t want it,” he said.

“Don’t be an idiot. How long are you going to last against Half-Troll without it?”

Varg shook his head again. The truth was, he’d never held a shield before, let alone used one in a fight.

“It’s your life,” the woman shrugged.

“But look after this for me,” Varg said, taking his cloak off and folding it, holding it out to her.

The woman took it, curled her lip and dropped it on the ground.

“I’m no one’s thrall to be ordered,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Varg,” he said.

“He has no name,” Svik called out to them.

“And no shield,” she answered Svik. She looked back at Varg. “And no sense.” Then she turned away.

“VARG NO-SENSE TO CHALLENGE EINAR HALF-TROLL FOR A PLACE IN THE BLOODSWORN’S OAR-BENCH AND SHIELD WALL,” she bellowed as she walked back to the bald man and Einar. A roar went up from the crowd as Einar stepped into the square. His brows knotted as he saw Varg had no shield, but he walked on.

Close up Einar was bigger than he’d first appeared. His face was all slabs of bone and red hair, his fists the size of anvils.

Varg touched the pouch at his belt, glanced at Vol the Seiðr-witch, who was watching with dark eyes, then he looked back at Einar.

For you, Frøya. I do this for you.

He drew in a deep breath and shook out his arms and hands, bounced on the balls of his feet.

Einar loomed over him, blotting out the sun.

“When you go down, stay down,” the big man grunted at him, and swung a right hook.

Varg ducked the hook, whistling over his head, and darted close, releasing a flurry of punches to Einar’s gut, the slap of meat. It was like punching a tree. Einar gave no visible sign that he had felt anything. Varg ducked and stepped right, avoided another hook that swept over his head, stepped in and kicked at Einar’s knee. The big man grunted, beard shifting as his mouth twisted.

You felt that, didn’t you, big man.

A huge hammer-fist came hurtling down at Varg, who swayed and stepped right, air hissing past his face, and threw his own punch at Einar’s groin.

Varg had fought before, many times on the farm. The first time had been before he could grow hair on his chin, fighting among the farm’s thralls for an extra bowl of broth for Frøya, who had been shivering with a fever. Then more frequently as he found it a sure way to secure a few secret coins or extra meals. And finally, for Kolskegg, once his master had heard about his fast fists, putting Varg to work in bouts against the champions of other landed men. He had earned Kolskegg a chest of silver, and in the process fought many men and women bigger and stronger than him, but he’d not fought any man that could stand after a blow to their stones, no matter how big or strong they were.

Varg’s blow was perfectly timed, a straight right, his legs well set, the power from his legs and hips channelled into his twisting arm, wrist snapping just before impact.

Pain exploded in Varg’s fist, shot through his wrist, up his arm and he staggered back a step. There had been no soft, squashing connection; instead Varg’s fist crunched into something hard as iron.

“Ha,” Einar grinned. “Little men have tried that before. Jökul the smith has made me some protection.” And then he swung a meat-hammer fist at Varg’s face.

Despite the pain exploding in Varg’s hand he managed to move, Einar’s fist connecting with Varg’s shoulder instead of his chin. The blow lifted him from his feet and sent him twisting through the air, crunching to the ground and rolling in the mud.

Einar strode after him.

Varg scrambled on to hand and knees, his injured fist clutched his side. Waves of nausea pulsed from his gut. Then Einar’s boot connected with his ribs and he was lifted from the ground, weightless again, spinning.

The ground rose up to greet him, his head slamming into the mud. Stars exploded, his vision blurring, pain in his ribs screaming. He forced himself to roll, climbed to one knee, saw Einar closing on him again.

“I told you to stay down,” Einar growled.

A bloom of anger in Varg’s belly. The pugil-ring was the only place where he could not be told what to do. Where he had been free. Where the rage he always felt was unchained. It flooded through his veins now, white-hot.

Varg bunched his legs and leaped at Einar, snarling, rolled between the man’s feet and came up standing behind him. He punched once with his good hand to Einar’s kidney, then kicked into the back of the big man’s leg, sending him stumbling to one knee.

A silence from the crowd, as if everyone were holding their breath, then a huge roar.

Einar backhanded Varg, catching him on the side of his chin. It was a weaker blow, past its snapping point, but it still sent Varg to the ground. Einar climbed to his feet, face mottled with anger and raised a boot to stamp on Varg’s head.

Varg rolled, wrapped his arms around Einar’s ankle as his boot slammed into the mud, and pulled himself tight to the man.

“Get off, you little shite,” Einar grunted as he shook his leg, but Varg held tight. Pain was flaring everywhere now, Varg moving to a place beyond it. He opened his jaws and bit into Einar’s leg, through woollen leg wraps and breeches into the flesh of Einar’s calf.

Einar bellowed.

Varg tasted a spurt of blood, bit down harder.

The scream shifted higher in pitch.

Einar was abruptly still and through one eye Varg glimpsed a fist hurtling towards his face. He bit down harder, grinding his teeth.

White light exploded in his head.