The Wolf Sea

why he wanted to come.' He paused and patted the boy's shoulder. 'He thought he would be coming with an army to rescue them all, like some hero. He wasn't expecting this, I am after thinking. All dead. Ah well, lad — consumpsit vires fortuna nocendo.'

I doubted whether the Norns had exhausted their power of hurting. Those three sisters, I had found, were infinite in their capacity to inflict pain on the world of men. The Goat Boy certainly didn't believe it, for he was blubbering on his knees, then sank full length, shoulders heaving.

`Qui facet in terra, non habet unde cadat,' intoned Brother John.

If one lies on the ground, one can fall no further. There was truth in it but no help for the lad.

`Get him up, we are moving,' I said, harder than I intended, the stink of all those little deaths sharp in my nose. Brother John bent and tugged at the heaving shoulders, teasing the Goat Boy upright with soothings and croons and we moved away from that dead place.

An hour later, Gardi trotted back to us with news of a farm ahead and another stream beside it, just as the wind grew colder and the dark slid in like black water. 'There are dead there, too,' he added, which made my heart sink, for we could go no further now and had, it seemed, changed one field of corpses for another.

The farm was a huddle of ruins, but the outbuildings had suffered most, being almost all made of gnarled wood culled from the stunted pines. The main building had lost its roof, but the thick walls were intact, though blackened. Surrounding it were smoothed fields and what I had taken at first to be olive groves, but these were different trees, skeletal in the dusk. There were also the remains of splintered and burned wooden frames, like racks used to smoke herring in quantity, except that these were not slatted, but solid trays.

Finn turned a dry corpse over with a foot, a hissing rustle ending in a cracking sound as the shafts of two rotted arrows crumbled. 'Two dead here, no more. I think the others probably fled to the church, thinking it safer,' he muttered. He made a sign against any lurking fetch and I told Brother John to lay their Christ fetches to rest, just in case, for we had no choice but to spend the night here.

We had a fire, though I did not like the idea of it and weighed it against the hunched, pinch-faced fears of the crew, who did not like the idea of sitting in the dark beside strange dead and wandering fetches.

The flames chased out the dark and the fear. Hot food helped; after an hour there was even banter.

I moved to one side, staring out at the trees and trying to work out what this place had farmed, but could not. I wanted to ask the Goat Boy, but he was sleeping, exhausted by grief, and I had not the heart to wake him.

Finn appeared beside me, picking his teeth. He jerked his head back at the fire and grinned. 'We are almost one crew now, Trader,' he said, 'and a good fight will caulk the seams of it, I am thinking.'

`There won't be a long wait for such a caulking,' I replied and after that we were silent, gloomy — until Arnor started a riddle contest with one about mead which every child learns before they can walk.

`That had moss on it when I was a boy,' thundered Finn, heading towards the fire. 'You gowk, you incompetent. How dare you sit there with a nose shaped like your arse and present us with riddles so poor.'

Arnor, shamefaced and blinking, had no reply, but Vagn, a Dane they called Kleggi — Horsefly — for his stinging wit, had one ready.

`What cuts but does not kill?' he demanded, which set everyone looking at his neighbour and scratching.

`Finn's tongue,' said Kleggi triumphantly and everyone roared appreciation.

`Better, better,' said Finn amiably, shoving someone up to get a seat by the fire. 'Any more like that, little arse-biter?'

I listened to them, remembering how Einar had sat in silence, part and yet apart. Did he feel as I felt now? I slid down the wall and leaned my head back, feeling the faint heat of the flames, hearing the voices and laughter round the fire. The sword burned the back of my eyelids when I closed them. The Rune Serpent, dancing just out of reach.

A wind touched my cheek, a tendril of salt in it from a dream sea, and I lay back on the tussocked grass of Bjornshafen, where the gulls wheeled and the wrack blistered in a summer sun on sand and shingle.

Somewhere, a horse whinnied and I could see it, a grey with a flea-bitten back, curling back its top lip to taste the scent of a mare. .

In the dark, a rhythmic clanging and a blaze of sparks, each one flaring, for that brief instance, the red-glowed shape of a man, naked from the waist up and sweat-gleamed, a powerful arm rising and falling, bringing the hammer down on a glowing bar on the anvil.

It looked like Thor. I thought it was, but his face had high cheekbones, almond eyes like slits. A Finn. Was the Thunderer a Finn, then? No, not a Finn. A Volsung, who were all Odin's children, descended from him and able to shapechange as a result. I had forgotten that until now.

A shape changed the darkness beside me, too shadowed to make out, but I knew, somehow, that it was Einar, could see him standing beside me even without turning, the hanging wings of his hair like black smoke on either side of his head.

I killed you,' I said and then:

`You deserved it, though.'

I thought you were my doom,' he answered, 'and so it proved.'

`You killed my father,' I pointed out.

There was silence.

Is it true that Valholl is made from battle shields and the roof from spears?' I asked.

`How would I know? I cannot cross Bifrost — I broke an Odin-oath, made on Gungnir,' he replied, and half turned, so that the shadow of his face was broken by the gleam of one eye. 'Until that is braided up anew, I am lost,' he added, in a voice that trailed off to a whisper.

I said nothing, for I had the notion he meant for me to fix it and I had no idea how.

The clanging went on without pause and he raised one hand — firm and strong, I saw, as it had once been. I even saw the scars on his knuckles, the marks all swordsmen get at play and practice.

`He did not make this for Starkad,' he said, pointing at the smith. In the dark, the serpent of runes curled along the sabre's blade, red-dyed in the forge glow.

`For Atil,' I said, confused that he should not know this, he of all people who now sat on that lord's throne.

`He is dead,' Einar replied. 'Your hand grips it now. You need to get it back.'

I felt him fade, the clanging of the hammer growing louder and louder.

`What is death like?' I wanted to know, almost desperately. `Long,' he replied and was gone.

The thunderous clanging tore me back to the ruined room and the embers of the fire. Men were spilling up and out of the building, to where Hookeye, last man on watch for the night, rang a spearhead on a rusted iron wheel-rim. Those with byrnies struggled them over their heads.

`What the fuck-?' demanded Finn, a question chorused by everyone, bleary-eyed but weapons up and ready. Hookeye merely pointed.

On the hillside beyond, almost like the grey-green scrub they stood against, a dozen horsemen sat and watched us.

`They just appeared,' Hookeye said. 'At first light.'

`Form,' I told them and they obediently moved into a solid block, mailed men to the front, shields up.

The horsemen moved down, fluid riders who took the wet scree slope with ease. In their lead, a black- turbaned man did it with his hands held out clear of his sides, to show he was unarmed and wanted to talk.

The horsemen were well mounted and a chill went through me at the sight of them as they came closer still, until Black Turban was no more than a few paces away.

The horse was large and powerful and he sat it easily. He had a cased bow, wickedly curved. A quiver was strapped to his left hip, angled backwards and cut deep to show the shafts of the arrows, which would, I saw, make