Odinn's Child

Four days later a messenger arrived from Karstad to ask Snorri to officiate at a burial. Farmer Thorodd was dead. During the haymaking on his farm, the young bull Glaesir had been kept confined to a stall as he was troublesome, and the labourers needed to mow the home meadows without being disturbed by the aggressive young bull. As soon as the hay was put up in haycocks, they had let Glaesir out on the stubble. First they took the precaution of tying a heavy block of wood over his horns to restrain and tire him. Glad to be free, the animal had charged up and down the largest of the home meadows. Within moments he had shaken off the block of wood and, something he had never done before, he began assaulting the carefully stacked haycocks. Ramming his horns into the stacks, he shook his head and scattered the hay in all directions. The farm workers were angry to see their work destroyed, but too fearful of the young bull to interfere. Instead they had sent word to Thorodd at the main house. He arrived, took one look at the situation and seized a stout wooden pole. Then he vaulted the low wall into the paddock and advanced on Glaesir.

Previously Glaesir had shown a unique respect for Thorodd. Alone of all the people on the farm, Thorodd was able to handle the young bull. But this time Glaesir had dropped his head and charged the farmer. Thorodd stood his ground and, as the bull closed with him, brought the heavy wooden pole down with a massive thump, striking Glaesir on the crown of the head right between the horns. The blow stopped Glaesir in his tracks and the animal stood there shaking his head in a daze. The force of the blow had broken the wooden pole in half, so Thorodd - confident of his mastery over the bull — strode forward and grasped Glaesir by the head, seeking to twist the horns and bring the animal to his knees. For a few moments the tussle went on. Then Thorodd's foot slipped on the short cut grass, and he lost his purchase. Glaesir jerked backwards and gave his head a shake which partially broke Thorodd's grip. Thorodd managed to keep one hand on the left horn and, stepping behind the bull, boldly vaulted onto Glaesir's back, putting his body right forward on the animal's neck, intending that his weight - for Thorodd was a big, heavy man - would eventually subdue the young bull. Glaesir bolted down the field, swerving and twisting from side to side in an attempt to dislodge the burden on his back. The bull was quick and agile and stronger than Thorodd had anticipated. An unlucky leap, a change of direction in mid-air, unseated Thorodd and he began to slip to one side. Glaesir must have sensed the change, for he turned his head, placed a horn under Thorodd and got enough leverage to throw the farmer up into the air. As Thorodd fell back down towards the animal, Glaesir raised his head and the farmer fell straight onto one of the horns, which pierced his gut on the left side, low down. The horn drove deep. Thorodd fell off the bull and lay in a heap, as Glaesir, suddenly quiet, trotted off and began grazing. The farmhands ran into the field and picked up their master. They placed Thorodd on a hurdle and carried him up to the farmhouse. As they reached the door, Thorodd insisted on getting off the hurdle and walking into his own house upright. He lurched into the hall, the right side of his shirt drenched in blood. That night he died.

When the messenger finished his story, Snorri dismissed him, and waved away the small crowd who had gathered to hear the gruesome tale. Then he beckoned to me to follow him and led me to the small sleeping closet at the side of the hall. It was unoccupied and the only place where he could speak to me privately.

'Thorgils,' he asked, 'how many people did you tell about your vision of Thorodd in his blood-stained shirt?'

'No one apart from yourself.' I replied. 'I am sure that Thorodd's mother saw the blood too, but we were the only people to see it.'

'Let me give you some advice,' Snorri went on. 'Don't ever tell anyone else that you saw Thorodd's blood-stained shirt before his accident happened. In fact, I advise you not to talk to people whenever your second sight foretells anything that can be interpreted in a sinister way, particularly if there is any hint of death in it. People become fearful and nervous. Sometimes they think that a seer can cause an event to happen, and that once a seer has seen a vision, he or she shapes the future to make the vision come true, and they do this to enhance their reputations as visionaries. When ordinary people start to think like this, and some tragedy does occur, things can get very ugly. Fear leads to violence. People take revenge or try to remove the source of their fear by hurting the seer.'

'But aren't seers and volva and seidrmanna respected?' I asked, 'I thought that it was forbidden to spill their blood.'

'So it is. The last time that the people of this area mistrusted a magician, it was a man named Kolmek. He was another half-Irish like yourself, just a small farmer, who could see portents and make forecasts. A gang of his neighbours grabbed him one evening, pulled a sack over his head and bound it so tight that he choked to death. That didn't spill a drop of his blood. Nor did the way they dealt with Kolmek's wife. They accused her of black witchcraft. They carried her to a bog, tied a heavy stone round her feet and dropped her in.'

Already reticent about my dreams and second sight, I made a silent promise to myself that only in the most extreme circumstances would I disclose what my second sight revealed to me and not to others. Also I began to suspect that my flashes of second sight came from Odinn himself and, like all of Odinn's gifts, they could cause both help and harm.

TWELVE

HALLBERA WAS SNORRI'S fourth daughter. She had light freckles on healthy pale skin, rounded arms with a light fuzz of golden down, blue-grey eyes, blonde hair worn long and a face that was perfectly symmetrical. In short, she was the epitome of a normal, wholesome, good-looking Norse maiden. She adored her brothers, of whom she had eight, and she got on well with her sisters, of whom she also had eight. Indeed, if any proof is needed that Snorri Godi was more pagan than Christian, it is the fact that he had one official wife, and a second wife, whom he never married but made clear was his second consort. And he treated all their children equally. Hallbera's background in such a large and well-to-do family could scarcely have been more different from mine as an impoverished newcomer living on the fringes of her father's household. There were many times when I felt overawed by the energy and self-confidence of the Snorrissons and Snorradottirs. But I was smitten. I did everything I could to stay in her father's favour so that I could be close to this honey-gold girl. For the first time in my life I was in love.

Quite why Hallbera accepted my infatuation is something I have never been able to explain fully. There was really no reason for her to take up with such a modest prospect as myself. The only explanation that I can find is that she was bored and perhaps

curious as to how to manage the opposite sex, and I was conveniently on hand to experiment with. There was nothing improper about our relationship. Hallbera and I began to meet quietly, exchange kisses and indulge in some gentle cuddling. These physical contacts made my head spin and I would feel weak for half an hour afterwards, though Hallbera never seemed to experience similar surges of emotions. She was always so robust and crisp and energetic. She was capable of emerging from an embrace, suddenly announcing that she had promised to help one of her brothers in some task, and go bouncing off in her athletic stride, her blonde hair swinging, leaving me dazed with emotion and completely baffled. I am sure that Snorri guessed at the relationship between his daughter and myself, and there is no doubt that it was known to Hallbera's mother. But neither of them chose to interfere because there were so many other children and more important matters to occupy their attention.

In the throes of calf love, I would go off for hours to some quiet corner and fall into a trance, meditating on how I could spend the rest of my life close to that glorious, milk-and-honey girl. Now I realise that I wanted more than just Hallbera. I was longing to be absorbed for ever into the embrace of a large family, where everything seemed to be in a perpetual state of sunny commotion and bustle, where there were few problems which, when they did arise, were solved in moments by mutual help and support. In short, I was feeling lonely and insecure, and my view of Snorri's family was a fantasy which overlooked the fact that my darling Hallbera was no more than a thoroughly normal, conventional young woman in the blush of her maidenhood.

The conversation that autumn was all about a local bandit by the name of Ospak, and what should be done about him. Listening to the discussions, I learned that Ospak had plagued the region for many years. He had always been a bully. A brute by nature and in stature, he had started his mischief when he was still in his teens, knocking about his neighbours and generally terrorising them. As he grew to middle age, he graduated to systematic oppression of the people living within reach and a gang of similar-minded ruffians soon clustered around him. On one notorious occasion he and a gang of his toughs showed up when a dead fin whale had been stranded on a beach. By Icelandic law the division of anything washed up on a beach is strictly controlled. Each stretch of rocky foreshore belongs to the farmers who own the driftage rights there. Dead whales, lengths of driftwood, bits and pieces from boat wrecks, are all considered valuable. They are so precious, in fact, that the first pioneers developed an ingenious system of selecting where to build their homes. Sailing along the new-found coast, the captain of the vessel would throw overboard the carved wooden panels that traditionally stand on each side of the high chair in a Norse hall. Later, going ashore, the new arrivals would range the coast looking to see where the panels had washed up. There they built their home and claimed the beach rights because they knew that the sea currents would supply an endless source of bounty at that spot.

On the day the fin whale washed up, the farmers who owned the driftage rights went down to the beach early in the morning to check what the sea had cast up. The previous night there had been a great gale from the direction which normally brought the best flotsam, and sure enough the carcass of the whale, dead from natural causes, was found lying in the shallows. The farmers went home, fetched their cutting spades and axes and began to butcher the dead whale. They had peeled back the blubber and got as far as cutting up large chunks of the meat, stacking it in piles ready to be shared out, when Ospak appeared. He had no driftage rights, but knew the wind and waves as well as anyone and had rowed across the bay with fifteen of his gang, all heavily armed. They came ashore and demanded a share of the meat, only to be told by one of the farmers, a man named Thorir, that if the other workers agreed they would sell Ospak what he wanted. Ospak gruffly told Thorir that he had no intention of paying and instructed his men to begin loading their boat. When Thorir objected, Ospak struck him on the ear with the flat of an axe blade and knocked him unconscious. The rest of the farmers, outnumbered, were in no position to resist. They had to look on while Ospak and his men filled their boat with as much meat as they could carry, and rowed off, taunting their unfortunate victims.

The following year Ospak's behaviour became even more wild. He and his men took to raiding isolated farms and looting them, often tying up the farmer and his family. They carried off whatever valuables they could find, all spare stocks of food, and drove away the cattle and horses. They operated with impunity because the farmers were poorly organised, and Ospak had taken the trouble to fortify his own farmhouse so strongly that it was dangerous to counter-attack. His following increased to at least twenty men, all desperadoes attracted by the chance of easy pickings. But the more men Ospak recruited, the more he had to extend his raids to obtain them enough supplies. So the vicious cycle continued unabated. Some time before I joined Snorri's household, Ospak and his men had raided Thorir's farm, pillaged it and dragged Thorir outside and killed him. The raiders then headed on towards a farm owned by another of the men who had been at the whale kill, and against whom Ospak bore a grudge. Fortunately Alf, known as Alf the Short, was fully dressed and still awake when the raiders arrived, though it was late in the evening when most people would have been in bed and asleep. Alf managed to slip out of the rear of the house as the raiders battered down the front door, and he ran off across the moor, heading for refuge with Snorri, who was one of the few men in the district too powerful for Ospak to meddle with.

Snorri heard Alf s tale and his plea for help. But though he gave Alf shelter for as long as he wanted to stay, Snorri waited several months without taking any action against Ospak. For this Snorri was criticised by many, but it was typical of his style. Snorri never did anything in haste, and only after he had made meticulous preparations did he reveal his hand. He wanted more information about Ospak's defences, and asked if I would visit Ospak's fortified farm. Ostensibly I was calling to look for work. In reality I was, once again, a spy and — as Snorri made this request just when I was in the full fever of my passion for Hallbera and badly wanted to impress her — I accepted without hesitation.

It took me two days to walk across country to Ospak's stronghold, and as I approached his farmhouse I could see that he had built a tall palisade made of timber and closed the entrance to the stockade with massive double gates. Round the inside of the palisade ran an elevated walkway, which would allow the defenders to stand at the rampart and hurl missiles down at any attackers who came too close. Even more daunting was the garrison. I saw at least twenty heavily armed men, including one ugly specimen who affected the old-fashioned style of weaving his long beard in plaits, which he arranged in a mat down his chest. Snorri had already told me about this flamboyant villain, who went by the name of Hrafn the Vikingr. He was a simple-minded, lumbering sort of oaf who drank away his spoils and was already under sentence of full outlawry for committing a random murder.

I also laid eyes, for the first time, on a second, rather more intriguing outlaw at Ospak's farm. When I walked in through the massive wooden gates I saw a young man sitting in the farmyard on a bench, moodily carving a piece of wood with his knife. I remember he was wearing a brown tunic and blue leggings, and that he seemed to control a repressed fury. The pale shavings were curling up from his knife blade and jumping into the air like nervous insects. Only the breadth of his shoulders, his long arms and powerful hands gave a hint of how he had earned his name, Grettir the Strong. I was interested to meet him because he was only two years older than myself, yet already infamous throughout Iceland. He was not a member of Ospak's band but visiting the fortified farm with his sister, who was betrothed to Ospak's son. All sorts of stories were circulating about Grettir the Strong. Even as a young boy he had been uncontrollable. He wilfully disobeyed his parents, refused to help on the family farm and spent most of his time sprawling lazily in the house. When forced to get to his feet and carry out any chore, Grettir made sure he did it in such a way that he was never asked to do the same job again. Sent to lock up the poultry for the night, he left the chicken-shed door ajar so the birds escaped onto the moors. Told to groom the prize stallion, he deliberately scored its back with a sharp knife point so the wretched animal was invalided. He was an impossible youth, wayward and perverse. Nor was he affable with his contemporaries. He was always picking fights, quarrelling and brawling, and he made few friends. I had first heard his name mentioned that winter when I and several of Snorri's younger children were out on the frozen fjord, playing an ice game. We had divided into two teams and were using shaped sticks to hit a small ball through a mark. One of my team lost his temper and rushed at an opponent, threatening to smash him on the head with his stick. It was called 'doing a Grettir'. I found out that Grettir had famously attacked an opponent during the ice game and nearly killed him when he hit the boy so hard that his skull cracked. Three months later Grettir killed a man in a quarrel over, of all things, a leather flask of skyr, sour milk. After that brawl, Grettir was sentenced to lesser outlawry, and when I met him he was in the second grace year, preparing to leave Iceland and seek service with the King of Norway. At that time I had no inkling that one day Grettir would become perhaps my closest friend.

Ospak bluntly turned me away, saying that he had no work for me. However, in the few hours I spent inside his stockade I was able to glean enough information to report on Ospak's force and defences to Snorri when I got back to Saelingsdale.

I told Snorri what I had seen, and as usual he made little comment. He had been talking with the local chieftains about organising a unified attack on the brigands, and he was prepared to wait until all his allies were free to join him, and also for an excuse to assemble them without arousing Ospak's suspicions. The one person he did summon to Saelingsdale in advance of his attack was a former member of his household who had now set up as a farmer on his own account — Thrand Stigandi.

Thrand was the sort of person who causes people to lower their voices nervously when they catch sight of him. A head taller than any other man in the neighbourhood, he had a leathery, competent air and was known to be handy with sword and axe. He also looked formidable, with a craggy face, a great prow of a nose, and bushy eyebrows that he could pull down in a ferocious scowl. Anyone facing Thrand in a quarrel would have second thoughts about resorting to physical violence. But within moments of Thrand walking into Snorri's house I knew that there was another, hidden reason why Snorri had summoned him. When Thrand entered the main hall, I was standing slightly to the left of the entrance, and as he came into the room, he glanced to one side and caught my eye. The moment that happened he paused in his stride and waited for the space of a heartbeat. In that instant I recognised the same cool, calm look I had seen eighteen months before in Vinland, on the day I had stumbled across the two Skraelings in the forest. It was in the eyes of the Skraeling shaman when I blundered into the sick man's shelter. I guessed at once that Thrand was a seidrman, and my intuition was confirmed when Snorri and Thrand went that same evening to Thor's temple and spent many hours there. Thrand, I was sure, was communing with the God.

Thrand's arrival had the same effect on me as when I saw the blood-stained shirt in the company of Thorodd's mother, or when I saw the ghost of my dead uncle with Gudrid. The presence of someone who could also see into the spirit world aroused the spirit energy within me. On the second night after Thrand's arrival I had my first omen dream.

I dreamed of a farm that was under attack. Half awake, half asleep, I was in a dimness that was neither night nor day. The attackers had surrounded the building and were pressing home their assault with great ferocity, and I was conscious of the shouts of the combatants and the screams of women inside the building. Several times the thud of blows jolted me part awake, though they were sounds that could only have existed within my dream. The first time I woke, I told myself that my nightmare was a memory of all the horrors that I had heard about the Burning when Njal and his family had been massacred. But as I slipped back into the nightmare I realised that the farm I was watching was not being attacked with fire. There were no flames, no smoke, only the figures of men running here and there, occasionally hurling themselves at the rampart. Then I saw that it was Ospak's farm, and among the assailants was Thrand. His tall form was unmistakable, but he seemed to have an owl's head, and there was something about the conflict which reminded me of how the Skraelings had fought when they attacked us in Vinland. I woke up sweating.

In the morning I recalled Snorri's warning about keeping silent about my visions, particularly if they involved death or harm, and I told no one.

Snorri moved against Ospak's farm some three weeks later and with overwhelming force. Every able-bodied worker from the farm, including myself, joined the expedition. On our march across the moor we met a column of fifty farmers led by a neighbouring chieftain, Sturla, who had brought his people to assist in the campaign. Our joint company must have amounted to at least eighty combatants, though, as usual, there were very few trained fighters among them. Everyone carried a sword or an axe, plus his dagger, but there was a noticeable shortage of defensive armour. A few men wore leather jackets sewn with small metal plates, but most of the farmers were relying on their wooden shields and thick leather jerkins to protect them from any missiles that Ospak and his cronies would hurl at them from the rampart. In our entire war band I counted only a dozen metal helmets, and one of those was an antique. Instead of the conical modern style with its noseguard, it was round like a pudding bowl and the wearer's face was hidden behind two round eyepieces. I was not in the least surprised that the man who carried that helmet was Thrand.

Ospak's scouts must have been watching the trail because when we came in sight of the farmhouse the gates were already shut and barred, and we could see his men had taken up their positions on the elevated walkway. Snorri and Sturla held a short council and agreed that to make the best use of our own superior numbers all four sides of the farm should be attacked simultaneously. Snorri found that he was facing the forces commanded by Hrafh the Vikingr, while Sturla and his men attacked the section of the rampart where Ospak led the defence.

The siege of the farmhouse opened with a barrage of rocks and small boulders which the opposing forces hurled at one another. In this phase of the battle, the defenders on the elevated walkway held a considerable advantage, as they were able to drop boulders on any of the attackers who came too close. Their weakness was their limited supply of boulders and other missiles, so Snorri's and Sturla's forces spent the first hour or so of their attack making quick feints up to the palisade, shouting insults and throwing stones, then turning to run back as they dodged the counter-hail of missiles. When the defenders' supply of stones ran low, the attackers began to run right up to the palisade, concentrating on the fortified gateway and attempting to break through by hacking and levering at the planks. This tactic, however, had little success as the gates were too stoutly built, and the assaults were beaten back. The attackers threw few spears because they tended to bounce off the ramparts, or if one flew over the wall and landed in the compound, one of the defenders was likely to pick it up and hurl it back with more dangerous effect. Only a couple of men on either side used bows and arrows because, quite simply, they are seldom used among Icelanders in their quarrels — they much prefer hand-to-hand fighting.

The rather untidy assault had been in progress for a couple of hours when it seemed to me that the enthusiasm of the attackers was waning. It was at that moment that Thrand showed his worth. Wearing his antique helmet, he sprinted forward from our group, ran up to the palisade and, using the advantage of his great height, sprang into the air so that he leaped high enough to hook the blade of his battleaxe over the top of the palisade. He then grabbed the handle of the axe in both hands and pulled himself upwards, so that he got a leg over the rampart and was able to jump down on the walkway on the far side. There he came face to face with Hrafn the Vikingr, who rushed at him with a great roar of anger. Thrand dodged the Viking's clumsy spear thrust, knocked the plait-bearded warrior off balance, and hacked at the outstretched arm that held the spear. The axe blow was perfectly aimed. It struck Hrafn on the right shoulder and severed his arm from his body. Hrafn reeled sideways, slipped from the walkway and fell with a heavy thud into the compound below. As Ospak's men looked at the fallen body of their champion in shock, Thrand took advantage of the moment to vault back over the rampart, drop to the ground and run back to rejoin us. His intervention demoralised the defenders. Ospak's men began to fight with less bravado and, seeing this, Snorri sent me with a message for Sturla, who was attacking the opposite side of farm. I was to tell him to launch an all-out assault now that the defence was in disarray.

I ran round the side of the farm, scrambling over the low sod walls that marked out the home pasture, and reached Sturla just in time to see him step forward holding a weapon that I vaguely recognised. It was a thin, flat board, about as long as a man's arm, and I had first seen it when the Skraelings attacked us in Vinland and, most recently, it had appeared in my nightmare. It was a spear thrower. Where Sturla had obtained this device I do not know. But he knew how to use it, for he ran forward until close enough to the rampart to deliver an accurate strike. Ospak must not have known what Sturla was carrying because when he saw Sturla come so close, Ospak jumped up on the lip of the rampart, made an obscene gesture, and raised a large rock above his head with both hands, ready to toss it on Sturla's head. Ospak was wearing protective armour that few Icelanders could afford — a thigh-length shirt of chain mail, which protected almost his entire body. But the action of raising the rock lifted the skirt of the chain mail and exposed his upper thigh. Seeing his target, Sturla swung the spear thrower in its arc and delivered its projectile. The spear shot upward. The iron head of the spear was long and slender, with two small flanges to serve as wings. Behind it uncoiled a loop of line. The spear's point passed clean through Ospak's thigh and, as he staggered, Sturla gathered the line in both hands and gave a tremendous jerk. Like a fish that has been harpooned, Ospak was literally plucked off the wall and pulled down to the ground. Gesturing to his companions to stand back, Sturla ran forward, drew his dagger and stabbed Ospak through the heart.

The death of their leader ended all resistance from Ospak's gang. They lowered their weapons and began shouting out that they would leave the building if they were allowed to go unharmed. A moment later the double gates of the stockade were tugged open. Snorri, Sturla and the rest of us walked into the compound to find the bandits looking frightened and exhausted. Hrafn, Ospak and one other man were the only fatalities, but many of the defenders had minor wounds and bruises. Snorri kept his word and was remarkably lenient with their punishment. He held a brief court hearing on the spot, and in his capacity as the local godi condemned the worst culprits to exile. He did not have the power to exile them from Iceland, but he could forbid them to come ever again into Westfjords on pain of being prosecuted as full outlaws at the next Althing. The men were obliged to leave their weapons behind and quit the farm immediately, never to return. Snorri treated Ospak's widow and son magnanimously. The widow, he said, had not had any choice in her husband's behaviour, and though the son had fought in the defence of the farm, he was honour-bound to do so for his family's reputation. He had not been involved in his father's brigandage, and in consequence Snorri pronounced that the widow and son could continue in possession of the farm and its lands.

Thrand Stigandi stayed on at Snorri's farm for several weeks after Ospak's defeat at the battle of Bitra, as it came to be called, and there were many who came to congratulate him on his bravery and some, more discreetly, to thank him for interceding with Thor on behalf of the law-abiding people of the Westfjords. Snorri must have told Thrand about me and I was flattered when Thrand beckoned to me one evening as supper was being cleared from the table and led me to a quiet corner, where we could not be overheard. He sat down on a storage chest and said in his deep,

husky voice, 'Snorri tells me that sometimes you see things which others cannot see.'

'Yes, occasionally,' I replied, 'but I don't understand what I am seeing, and I never know when it will happen.'

'Can you give me an example?' he asked.

I thought of Snorri's warning never to reveal dreams of death to anyone, but the events were in the past and Snorri had assured me that Thrand was seidr-skilled so I told him about my dream of the battle at Ospak's farm, the owl-headed man, and the rest.

Thrand did not interrupt, and when I had finished my account, he said, 'And how many days before the fight did you have this dream?'

'Soon after your arrival here, on the night after you and Snorri spent so much time in Thor's temple,' I answered.

'I wonder if you would have had the dream earlier, in the temple itself, if the conditions had been right,' Thrand commented, almost speaking to himself. 'Some seers are lucky. Dreams come to them so easily that they need only to withdraw to some quiet place, close their eyes and empty their minds, and the visions enter their consciousness. Others must get fuddled on strong drink, or chew strong weeds, or breathe the smoke of a sacred fire, or listen to sacred chants repeated over and over again until their spirit floats free from their body.'

He got up and went to where his sword and helmet were hanging from a peg on the wall. He brought them over and showed the flat of the sword's blade to me. 'What does that mean?' he asked.

The runes were easy to decipher and simple. 'Ulfbert made,' I replied.

'Now, what about this?' he continued, holding out his antique helmet with its quaint eye protectors. He had turned the helmet upside down so I could see inside the metal bowl. From the centre, radiating down to each side, was incised a plain, thin cross, its arms ending in arrow heads which pointed back towards the intersection.

'That's the aegishjalmr,' I said, 'the helm of awe.' 'Yes,' replied Thrand, 'but what about the marks around the edge?'

I looked more closely. Around the inner rim of the helmet I could see a number of small scratches. They were badly worn, but they had been put there deliberately. Several of them I recognised immediately as rune staves in the futhark, but others were more difficult to decipher. I ran my finger round them, to feel their shapes, as Tyrkir had taught me. Several I identified as letters which Tyrkir had said were little used nowadays. In the end, I did manage to puzzle them out.

'I don't know what it means, but if I try to read out the message it would sound something like . . . a g mod den juthu pt fur . . . but I cannot be sure.'

Thrand looked thoughtful. 'No more than half a dozen people in Iceland know how to read the archaic runes,' he said. 'That's galdrastafir — rune spell. It was put there soon after the helmet was forged, and the staves make the helmet a talisman against harm to the wearer, as well as a physical protection. I would never exchange this antique helmet for a modern one. Who taught you the archaic runes?'

'An old German, a metalsmith named Tyrkir, instructed me in how to read and cut rune staves while I was in Greenland.'

Thrand said solemnly, 'The message you carve in runes is more important than just knowing what each stave represents. Quite a few people know how to carve their name, but only the initiated know the spells and charms and curses that can be written. Odinn showed rune writing to mankind and now it is merely a matter of passing the knowledge from one person to the next.'

He seemed to make up his mind about something, turned towards me and, speaking to me as if I was an adult and not a fourteen-year-old lad, he went on:

'The greatest and most profound visions require pain and sacrifice. Odinn gave one of his eyes in order to drink from the fountain of Mimir and learn the secret wisdom which allows the Gods to survive. He also impaled himself on a spear and hung for nine days from Yggdrasil, the world tree, in order to learn the secret of the runes. Only through the sacrifice and pain could he open his mind and spirit to wisdom. That is one thing which distinguishes us from the Christians. They believe that the soul lives in the heart, but we hold that it resides in the mind, and that when the mind is set free the spirit also is liberated.'

Unwittingly I had allowed my rune literacy to impress Thrand in a way that was to have painful consequences. When he was ready to return to his own farm, he suggested to Snorri that I go with him and become his pupil in seidr skills. Snorri summoned me and, watching me with those quiet grey eyes, said, 'Thrand has offered to take you on as a pupil. I believe that this is your chance to develop a talent that you were born with and which may yet compensate for the disadvantages you have already faced in your young life. For that reason I am closing my house to you and sending you away.'

Thus I began to appreciate how the acquisition of knowledge can mean pain and sacrifice, for I was heart-broken to be parted from my adored Hallbera. Years later, long after my departure from Snorri's household, I learned that she married an eminently suitable husband, the son of a neighbouring landowner whose help Snorri needed at a session of the Althing. Her young man was ideal - respectable, well-connected, reliable. He was also decidedly dull. I am sure that Hallbera was very happy with him. The last I heard was that they had their own family of seven or eight children, lived on a well-run farm on the Westfjords, and were similarly looking for suitable matches for their numerous offspring. On the few occasions when I imagine myself as that young man Hallbera could have married, I wonder whether it was Hallbera's wish to have a more settled future that made her marry her worthy husband, or whether once again it was Odinn's intervention that led her family to judge me to be no more than a pleasant and temporary diversion for their fourth daughter.

THE SUMMER THAT I spent with Thrand at his farm in the uplands behind Laxadale was perhaps the most formative period of my life.

Thrand lived by himself on a small homestead, no more than a single cabin with a barn nearby. His dwelling was sparsely furnished with only a couple of stools, a pair of wooden cots, his iron cooking pot and griddle — he did all his own cooking - and a few large storage chests, always kept locked. The walls of his cabin were bare except for several foreign-looking wall hangings with strange patterns, which I could not decipher, and a row of pegs from which Thrand hung his weapons and various satchels and cloth bundles containing his seidr materials. The place was so orderly that it was stark, and this reflected the character of its owner. My teacher in seidr was reserved and self-controlled to the point of austerity and as a result he was very difficult to get to know. I am sure he never meant to seem unfriendly but if I plucked up enough courage to ask a question, the answer was sometimes so slow in coming that I feared he thought me stupid or that he had not heard the question. When the answer came — and it always did, though I might have to wait until the next day - it was terse, accurate and clear-cut. It was to take me a long time to grow fond of Thrand, but from the start I respected him.

He was a methodical teacher. Patiently he built on the foundation of the knowledge that Tyrkir and Thorvall had imparted. Sometimes he found it necessary to correct errors. My earlier mentors had occasionally muddled the roles of the Aesir, the family of Gods, and at other times I had misunderstood their lessons. So Thrand began by putting my chaotic knowledge in some sort of order and then went on to expand and deepen the details. I progressed from my basic knowledge of the main Gods and Goddesses of the Aesir and Vanir, and became aware of an entire pantheon, and this in addition to the Norns and light-elves and dark-elves and dwarves, and frost giants and the otherworld creatures and the roles they played in the ancient cosmology. 'Everything interlocks,' Thrand was fond of saying. 'Think of the braiding roots of the World Tree, where one root tangles with another, and then reaches out to a third, and then doubles back and binds on itself, or the spreading branches above which do the same. Yet all the roots and branches have a function. They sustain Yggdrasil and they are Yggdrasil. This is how it is with ancient lore. If you have the foundation knowledge, you can follow the path of a single root or just one strand, or you can stand back and see the whole pattern.'

Committing the lore to memory was surprisingly easy. It seemed that every deed, every deity, every detail, had been set into a language that flowed and rippled seductively, or laid out in lists that marched to a steady beat. Even now, half a century later, I can count off all forty-eight names of Odinn - from Baleygr, Harbardr and Herblindi, to Herian, Hialmberi, Thekkr, Thriggi, Thundr, Unnr, Viudurr, Yrungr, and so forth. The ones that still make my heart beat faster when I hear them in my head are: Aldafadr, All-Father; Draugadrottin, Lord of the Dead; Grimnir, the Masked One; Farmognudr, Maker of Journeys and Gangleri, the Wanderer.

Tyrkir and Thorvall had told me the simple tales that illustrate the deeds of the Gods - that the earth quakes when Loki writhes in his bonds, that the gales arise from the flapping wings of the great eagle giant Hraesvelg, and that lightning is the flash of Mjollnir when Thor hurls his hammer. Now Thrand placed these tales in their wider context. He explained the relationship between deeds past and the events that still lie in the future, and how at their intersection lies what happens today. And always he emphasised that everything interweaves, so that while those who were gifted with second sight might look into the future, there was little we could do to avert what had been ordained by the Norns. Those three supernatural women hold the ultimate power, for they have decided the fate of every living creature and even of the Gods themselves.

'The greater pattern cannot be altered,' Thraud emphasised to me. 'Even the Gods themselves know that they must inevitably face Ragnarok and the destruction of the world. With all their power they can only delay that fatal time, not avoid it. How much less can we, mere mortals, alter the web that the Norns have spun for us or the marks they have cut in the timber of our lives.'

Thrand was a firm believer in divination. If fate was set, then it could be revealed by skilled interpretation. He owned a casting set of rune blocks, carved from whalebone and yellow with age. He would spread out a white sheet and throw the blocks on the sheet like dice, then puzzle over the way the symbols fell, reading the message in their random patterns and then explaining their symbolism to me. Often the message was obscure, even more frequently it was contradictory. But that, as he explained to me, was in the nature of the runes themselves. Each owned two meanings, at the very least, and these meanings were opposites; whether they occurred in light or dark conjunctions determined which was the correct sense. I found it all very confusing, though I managed to grasp most of the basic principles.

Galdrastafir, the rune spells, were more straightforward and reminded me of the smith's galdr that Tyrkir had taught me. Thrand would take practice pieces of timber and show me how to carve correctly the sequence of runes, dividing my lessons into categories: mind runes for bringing knowledge, sea runes for safe journeys, limb runes for healing, speech runes to fend off revenge, the helping runes for childbirth. 'Don't be surprised if they are ineffective sometimes,' he warned me. 'Odinn himself only learned eighteen rune spells when he was hanging on Yggdrasil, and we are presumptuous to think that we can achieve more.' The accuracy of cutting was not all, he stressed. Every stave had its own spoken formula, which I had to recite as I made the mark, and Thrand made me repeat the formula until I was word-perfect. 'Speak the words right,' said Thrand, 'and you will not have to resort to such tricks as rubbing the marks with your own blood to make the spell more potent. Leave such devices to those who are more interested in doing harm with the rune spells, not achieving good.'

Thrand also had a warning. 'If galdrastafir is done badly, it is likely to have the reverse effect from what was intended. That

arises from the double and opposing nature of the runes, the dual nature of Odinn's gift. Thus a healing rune meant to help cure an invalid will actually damage their health if incorrectly cut.'

Thrand, who was by nature an optimist, refused to teach me any curse runes. And, as a precaution, he insisted that at the end of every lesson we put all the practice rune staves into the fire and burn them to ashes, lest they fell into malevolent hands. On these occasions, as we watched the flames consume the wood, I noticed how Thrand stayed beside the dying fire, gazing into the embers. I had the impression that he was far away in his thoughts, in some foreign country, though he never talked about his past.

THIRTEEN

A HORSE FIGHT marked the end of my stay with Thrand. The match between the two stallions had been eagerly awaited in the district for several months, and Thrand and I went to see the spectacle. The fight, or hestavig, was held on neutral ground for the two stallions. To encourage them, a small herd of mares was penned in the paddock immediately next to the patch of bare ground where the two stallions would fight. Naturally a small crowd had gathered to place bets on the outcome. When we arrived, the owners of the stallions were standing facing each other, holding the halters. Both animals were already in a lather, squealing and lunging and rearing to get at one another. A visiting farmer — he had probably backed the animal to win — had boldly walked behind one of the stallions and was poking at his testicles with a short stick to enrage the animal still further, which led Thrand to comment to me, 'He wouldn't be doing that if he knew his lore. He could be making an enemy of Loki and that will bring bad fortune.' I didn't know whether Thrand was referring to the story in which the trickster God Loki changed himself into a mare to seduce a malignant giant in the shape of a huge stallion, or the comic scene in Valholl when Loki is given the task of amusing the visiting giantess Skadi. Loki strips off, then ties one end of a rope round the beard of a billy goat, and the other end round his testicles, and the pair tug one another back and forth across the hall, each squealing loudly until the normally morose giantess bursts into laughter.

There was a sudden shout from the crowd as the two stallions were given slack and immediately sprang forward to attack one another, teeth bared and snorting with aggression. Their squeals of anger rose to a frenzy as they clashed, rising up on their hind legs to lash out with their hooves, or twisting round with gaping jaws to try to inflict a crippling neck bite. When all eyes were on the contest, I felt a discreet tug on my sleeve and turned to see a soberly dressed man I did not recognise. He nodded for me to follow him, and we walked a short distance to one side of the crowd, which was cheering as the two stallions began to draw blood. "Kari sent me with a message,' said the unknown visitor. 'He plans to go to Orkney, and has arranged to board a ship leaving from Eyrar two weeks from today. He says that if you want, you can travel with him. If you do decide to make the journey, you are to find your way to Eyrar and ask for the ship of Kolbein the Black. He's an Orkney man himself and an old friend of Kari's.'

I had heard nothing from Kari since the day at the Althing when he had refused to accept the godi's proposed settlement with the Burners. But plenty of rumours had reached me. It seemed that, as soon as the Althing ended, Kari launched himself on a personal and deadly campaign of revenge. He intercepted a party of Burners and their friends as they rode home from the Althing and challenged them to fight. They took on the challenge because Kari had only a single companion, a man named Thorgeir, and the Burners were eight in number. But Kari and Thorgeir had fought so skilfully that three of the Burners were killed and the remainder fled in panic. The leader of the Burners, Flosi, again offered to settle the blood feud and pay a heavy compensation for Burned Njal's death. But Kari was not to be placated. He persuaded his colleague Thorgeir to accept the settlement, saying that Thorgeir was not directly concerned in the blood feud, but that he, Kari, was a long way from settling the debt of honour that he owed to his dead family.

Kari was now outside the law and every man's hand was against him, but he refused to give up his campaign of retribution. Driven by the Norse sense of honour I mentioned earlier, he skulked in hiding for months, either living on the moors or staying with friendly farmers. He found another comrade-in-arms in a smallholder named Bjorn the White, a most unlikely associate as Bjorn was known as a braggart who boasted much and did little. Indeed, Bjorn's reputation was so low that even his wife did not think he had the courage for a stand-up fight. But Kari was a natural leader and he inspired Bjorn to excel. The two men ranged the island, tracking down the Burners and confronting them. Each time the combination of Kari and Bjorn won the day. Bjorn guarded Kari's back while the expert dueller tackled the Burners. By now fifteen of the original gang of Burners had been killed, and the rest had decided that it was wiser to begin their own period of exile and leave Iceland rather than be hunted down by Kari. In late summer the last of the Burners had departed from Iceland, intending to sail to Norway, and nothing more had been heard from them. Now, I guessed, Kari was planning to begin his own period of exile.

I told Thrand of Kari's message as soon as we got back to Thrand's cabin. My mentor's response was unhesitating. 'Of course you have to go with Kari,' he said decisively. 'There is a bond between you. Kari has kept in mind his promise he made to you at the Althing. With this offer of a passage to Orkney, he is honouring his pledge. In turn, you should acknowledge his nobility of spirit, accept his offer and go with him.' Then he made a remark which showed how — all this time — he had been aware of what was troubling me. 'If there is to be a final lesson which I want you to take away with you, let it be this: show and maintain personal integrity towards any man or woman who displays a similar faith and trust in you and you will find that you are never truly on your own.'

KOLBEIN THE BLACK sailed south from Eyrar at the end of November. It was late in the year to be making the voyage, but we had weather luck and the trip was uneventful. En route to Orkney Kari asked if we could stop at the Fair Isle, which lies between Orkney and Shetland, as he wanted to visit another of his friends, David the White, whom he had known from the days when both men were in the service of Earl Sigurd of Orkney. It was while we were staying at Fair Isle that a fisherman brought news that the Burners were nearby on Mainland, as the chief island in Orkney is called. The Burners had sailed from Iceland two weeks before us, but where we had good weather the Burners had encountered a heavy gale. Driven off course, their vessel was wrecked on the rocks of Mainland in poor visibility and they only just managed to scramble ashore. The mishap put Flosi and his colleagues in a real predicament. One of their victims at the Burning, Helgi Njalsson, was formerly a member of Earl Sigurd's retinue. There was every chance that if they were caught by the earl's people, the earl would put them to death for murdering one of his sworn men. The worried Burners spent a very uncomfortable day on the seashore, hiding in rocky clefts, camouflaging themselves under blankets of moss and seaweed, before Flosi decided that they had no choice but to walk across the island to Earl Sigurd's great hall, present themselves before the ruler of Orkney and throw themselves on his mercy.

Earl Sigurd knew at once who they were when the Burners arrived. Most of the Norse world was talking of the Burning of Njal. The earl was renowned for his violent temper and, as the Burners had feared, his initial reaction was to fly into a rage and order the visitors to be arrested. But Flosi courageously spoke up, admitting his guilt for Helgi Njalsson's death. Then, invoking an old Norse tradition, he offered to serve in Helgi's place in the earl's retinue. After some grumbling, Earl Sigurd agreed. The Burners had then pledged obedience to the earl and now were under his protection.

'Sigurd the Stout', as he was popularly known, was a pagan Norseman of the old school and proud of it. He always attracted fighting men. It was said that his two favourite seasons of the year were spring and autumn because at the first sign of spring he would launch his warships and go raiding his neighbours. He then came home for the summer to gather the harvest, and as soon as that was done he promptly put to sea again for a second round of viking. His most celebrated possession was the battle banner that his mother, a celebrated volva, had stitched for him. Its insignia was Odinn's emblem, the black raven. It was claimed that whoever flew the banner in battle would be victorious. However, in keeping with Odinn's perverse character, the person who carried the banner in battle would die while winning the victory. Given this warning, it was hardly surprising, that only the most loyal of Earl Sigurd's retainers was prepared to be his standard-bearer.

This was the man, then, in whose long hall at Birsay my mother had conducted her affair with my father Leif the Lucky, and the woman who had stitched the raven banner was my mother's confidante, Eithne the earl mother. According to the fisherman who brought us the news about the Burners, the earl mother was well advanced in years but still very much alive.

Kari decided that the most prudent time for us to cross to Mainland and arrive at Sigurd's great hall was during the Jol festival, when there should be several days of feasting and oath-taking. Sigurd still followed the old-fashioned tradition of having a large boar — an animal sacred to the fertility God Frey — led down his great hall so that the assembled company could lay hands on the bristly animal and swear their solemn oaths for the coming year. Then that evening the oath boar would be served up roast at a great banquet, at which the earl displayed his bounty by distributing vast quantities of mead and beer for his retainers and guests. For Sigurd the festival was a proper celebration in honour of Jolnir, another of Odinn's names, but he had no objection if the Christians chose to combine the earthy celebration of Jol with one of their holy days, provided they did not interfere with the priorities of eating, drinking, story-telling and carousing. Indeed, it occurred to me that it might have been under similar circumstances, fifteen years earlier, that I was conceived.

Kolbein's boat had a favourable tide under her and carried us across the strait between Fair Isle and Mainland in less than ten hours. Kolbein knew of a quiet sandy beach for our landing place, and he, Kari and I went ashore in the boat's tender, leaving a few men aboard at anchor watch. It was less than a half-hour walk over the rolling sand dunes to reach the earl's long hall, and there was still enough daylight left for me to have my first glimpse of an earl's residence. After hearing so much about the wealth and power of an earl, for which there is no equivalent rank in Iceland, I was frankly rather disappointed. I had expected to see a grand building, something with towers and turrets and stone walls. What I saw was nothing more than an enlarged version of the longhouses that I already knew from Iceland to Vinland. The only difference was that Earl Sigurd's long hall was considerably bigger. In fact it was almost three times larger than the largest home I had yet seen, with side walls that were over four feet thick. But the rest of it, the stone and turf walls, the wooden supports and the grassy roof, were identical to the domestic structures I had known all my life. The interior of this huge building was just as gloomy, smoky and poorly illuminated as its more humble cousins, so Kari, Kolbein and I were able to slip quietly in through the main doors without being noticed in the crowd of guests. We took up our positions just a few paces inside. There we could see down the length of the great hall, yet we were far enough from the central hearth, where Sigurd, his entourage and chief guests were seated. In the half-light and surrounded by a jostle of visitors, there was little chance that Kari would be recognised.

I had forgotten about Kari's exalted sense of self-honour. We arrived in the interval between the parading of the oath boar and the time when it would be served up with an apple in its mouth. This long intermission lasts at least three hours, and the assembled company is normally entertained with a programme of juggling, tumbling and music. It is also a tradition for the host of the Jol banquet to call on each of his chief guests to contribute a tale from his own experience. Scarcely had the three of us found our places in the audience than Earl Sigurd called on one of the Burners, a tall, gangling man by the name of Gunnar Lambason, to recount the story of Njal's death and the events leading up to it. Clearly Earl Sigurd thought that a first-hand account of this famous and recent event, told by one of the chief participants, would impress his guests.

From the moment Gunnar Lambason started speaking, I knew he was a poor choice for a saga teller. The Icelanders can be somewhat long-winded when it comes to narration, but Gunnar made particularly heavy going. He had a nasal voice that grated on the ear, and he often lost the thread of his tale. He also skewed the story so that it showed the deeds of the Burners in the most favourable light. As Gunnar Lambason recounted it, the Njalssons had brought their fate on themselves and thoroughly deserved to die in the flames and smoke of their home. When Gunnar finished his recitation, Sigurd's most important guest, a sumptuously dressed chieftain with a splendidly lustrous beard, asked how the Njalsson family had endured their final hours. Gunnar answered dismis-sively. They had fought well at first but then begun to cry out, begging for quarter, he said. His reply was more than Kari could stomach. Standing next to him, I had heard his deep, angry breathing as Gunnar's dreary tale proceeded. Now Kari gave a roar of fury, broke out from the little knot of bystanders and raced half the length of the hall. Like everyone else, I stood and gaped as Kari jumped over the outstretched legs of the men seated at the side benches until he was level with Gunnar Lambason, who had just seated himself and turned to see what was the commotion was.

Everyone was so startled that there was no time to react. Kari had his famous sword Leg Biter in his hand. With a single sweep of the blade Kari cut Gunnar Lambason's head from his shoulders.

Sigurd, the veteran warrior, was the first to react. 'Seize that man!' he shouted, pointing at Kari, who stood there confronting the crowd, with a pool of Gunnar Lambason's blood seeping around his feet. There was a shocked murmuring, followed by an uncomfortable silence. No one got up from their seats. At banquets it is customary for weapons to be hung up on the walls as a precaution against drunken brawling leading to bloodshed. Kari had only managed to bring Leg Biter into the hall because we arrived so late that the gatekeepers were already drunk and had failed to search him. The only other people with any weapons were Sigurd's bodyguard, and they were men who had previously served with Kari and were wary of his prowess as a fighter. Kari looked straight at Sigurd and announced loudly, 'Some people would say that I have just rendered you a service by killing the murderer of your former servant, Helgi Njalsson.' There was a mutter of approval from the onlookers and Flosi, the leader of the Burners, rose to his feet. He too turned towards Sigurd and said, 'I can speak on behalf of the Burners. Kari has done no wrong. He never accepted any settlement or compensation we offered for the deaths of his family, and he has always made it public that he intends to seek blood revenge. He only did what is his duty.'

Sigurd quickly sensed the mood of the assembly. 'Kari!' he thundered. 'You have offended our hospitality gravely, but in a just cause. With my permission, you may leave this hall unharmed. But I declare that by your action you have brought upon yourself the same outlawry for which you were condemned in Iceland. For that reason you must leave Orkney without any delay, and not return until your sentence of exile has been fully served.'

Kari said nothing, but turned on his heel and, the blood-streaked sword still in his hand, walked back quietly down the hall to where Kolbein and I were still standing. As he passed us, we both made a movement to step forward and join him. Kari nodded to Kolbein and said quietly, 'Let's go,' but to me he said firmly, 'you are to stay. I have brought you to Orkney as I promised, but you have not had time to carry out your own mission. I hope everything goes well for you. Perhaps we will meet again some day.' With those words, he stepped out of the door and into the darkness of the night. I stood watching him walk away, with Kolbein at his shoulder, until I could no longer see them in the gloom.

The earl was quickly back to his role as a genial host. Even as Sigurd's guards hauled away Gunnar Lambason's body, the earl was calling for more drink to be brought and a moment later was shouting at the cooks, demanding to know how much longer it would be before they could serve up the oath boar. I suspect that he was secretly delighted that the spectacular events would make his Jol festival remembered for years to come. The housemaids and thralls washed down the tables, and to his great credit Flosi stood up and in a loud voice asked the earl if he might have permission to retell the story of Njal's Burning, but this time with proper regard for the heroism of Njal and his family. When Earl Sigurd waved his hand in agreement, Flosi turned to the audience and announced that he would start the tale all over again, right from the beginning. His listeners nodded approvingly and settled themselves down for a lengthy discourse. Not only do Norsemen have an insatiable appetite for such narratives, but the more often a tale is told the better they seem to like it.

Flosi had barely started when Sigurd's steward was pushing through the crowd to where I was standing. 'Are you the young man who arrived with Kari Solmundarson?' he asked. 'Come with me,' he said. 'The earl wants a word with you, and so does his guest of honour.' I followed the steward through the crush of people, and found myself standing beside the earl's high seat.

Sigurd looked me up and down and asked my name.

'Thorgils,' I replied.

'How long have you known Kari?' asked the earl.

'Not very long, sir,' I answered respectfully, 'I helped him last

year before the Althing, but just for a few days. Then he invited me to join him on his voyage to Orkney.' 'Why was that?' asked Sigurd.

'Because he knew that I wanted to come here to enquire about my family.'

Before Sigurd could ask me what I meant, the man seated on his right interrupted, 'What a remarkable fellow that Kari is,' he said, 'walking straight in, and carrying on his blood feud under our noses, with no thought for his own safety. Great courage.'

'Kari has always been known for his bravery,' replied Sigurd, and his slightly deferential tone made me look more closely at his guest. He was the most expensively dressed man I had ever seen. He wore at least three heavy gold rings on each arm, and his finger rings glittered with magnificent coloured stones. Every item of his clothing was of the finest material and in bright colours. His shoes were of soft leather. He even smelled richly, being the first man I had ever met who used body perfume. His sky blue cloak was trimmed with a broad margin of gold thread worked in an ornate pattern, and the precious brooch that held the cloak to his left shoulder was astonishing. The pattern of brooch was common enough. The pin pivoted on a slotted ring, and the wearer drove the pin through the cloth, turned the ring and the cloth was held in place. My father Leif had worn one very similar at feasts. But he had never worn one anything like the brooch displayed so ostentatiously by Sigurd's guest. The brooch was enormous. Its pin was nearly the length of my forearm, and the flat ring was a hand's span across. Both the pin - spike would be a better description — and the flat ring were of heavy gold. Even more amazingly, the surface of the gold ring was worked with intricate interlacing patterns, and set into the patterns was a galaxy of precious stones carefully picked for their colours — amethyst, blue, yellow and several reds from carmine to ruby. The brooch was a masterpiece. I guessed that there was probably no other piece of jewellery quite like it in all the world. It was, I thought to myself, a work of art fit for a king.

Earl Sigurd had already turned back to his dandified guest without waiting to hear my further explanation about why I wanted to visit Orkney. He was deep in conversation with him, and I caught a scowl from Sigurd's steward, who had been hovering in the background. Realising that my presence next to the high seat was no longer required, I made my way quietly back to the steward.

'No eavesdropping on matters of state,' he growled, and for a moment I thought he might know about my role as a spy for Kari at the Althing.

'Who's the man wearing the superb brooch?' I asked him.

'That's Sigtryggr, King of Dublin, and he's come here to negotiate with Earl Sigurd. Sigtryggr's looking for allies in his campaign against the Irish High King, Brian. Knowing Sigurd the Stout, I doubt that he'll be able to resist the chance of winning loot, even without the added attraction of that meddling hussy, Kormlod.'

The steward noticed that I had not the least idea what he was talking about, and beckoned to one of the hall servants. 'Here, you. Look after this lad. Find him something to eat and a place to sleep. Then something useful to do.' With that I was dismissed.

The Jol ended with the ceremonial quenching of the Julblok, a large burning log whose flames were doused with ale to ensure the fertility of the coming year, and when most of the guests had left I found myself assigned to domestic duties. Twelve days of uninterrupted revelry had left a remarkable mess in the great hall and the surrounding area. I was employed in sweeping up the debris, collecting and burning the rushes that had been fouled on the floor, raking out the long hearth, swabbing down benches, and digging out patches of sodden earth where the guests had relieved themselves without bothering to go to the outside latrines. At times I wondered whether the cattle in the byres at Brattahlid had not been more sanitary.

King Sigtryggr was still with us and some sort of negotiation was going on because I noticed that he and Sigurd the Stout spent

a good deal of time in Sigurd's council room, often accompanied by their advisers. Among these advisers was Sigurd's mother Eithne. As had been reported, the celebrated volva was surprisingly well preserved for her advanced age. She must have been over seventy years old, but instead of the bent old crone that I had expected, Eithne was a small, rather rotund old woman full of energy. She bustled about, turning up at unexpected moments and casting quick glances everywhere and missing very little that went on around here. Only her thin, scraggly grey hair gave away her age. Eithne was almost bald, and she had a nervous habit of adjusting her headscarf every few moments so that no one would see her pate.

Her ears, as well as her eyes, were collecting information. I had barely begun to question the older servants about their memories of a certain Thorgunna, who had stayed at Birsay one winter fifteen years before, when I received another summons. This time it was to Eithne's retiring room at the back of the great hall. I found the earl mother standing so that the light from a small window fell directly on my face as I entered. Most windows in Norse houses are no more than open holes in the wall, which can be closed with a shutter in bad weather or when it is cold outside, but it was a mark of Sigurd's wealth and status that the window in his mother's chamber was covered with a sheet of translucent cow horn, which allowed a little of the dreary north light of winter to fall on me.

'I'm told you've been asking about Thorgunna, who stayed here a long number of years ago,' Eithne said. 'I suppose you are her son.'

My mouth must have dropped open with shock, for she went on, 'Don't look so surprised. You have the same colour of eyes and skin as she had, and perhaps the shape of your face is the same.'

'I never knew my mother,' I said. 'She sent me away to live with my father when I was still a babe in arms, and she had died by the time I came back to where she lived.'

'And where was that?' asked Eithne.

'At Frodriver in Iceland,' I answered. 'She died there when I was only three years old.'

'Ah yes, I had heard something about that,' this strange, rotund little woman briskly interrupted.

'It was said that there were portents shortly before she died and hauntings afterwards.' I ventured. 'It was something to do with her goods, with the things she brought with her, her clothes and bed hangings. At least that was what I was told. When these things were finally burned, the troubles ceased.'

Eithne gave a little snort of impatience. 'What did they think! No wonder there was trouble if someone else got their hands on a volva's sacred possessions.'

She gave another sniff. 'Your mother may have been nothing to look at, but she was skilled in other ways and I don't mean just at needlework. Those wall hangings she owned, she brought them with her from Ireland and she had stitched them herself and chanted the spell-words over them.'

'You mean like rune writing,' I commented.

Eithne gave me a patient look.

'Yes, like rune writing, but different. Men and women can both cut runes, but women often prefer to stitch their symbols. In some ways it is more painstaking and more effective. Those cloths and hangings and garments your mother cherished were powerful seidr. In the wrong hands they caused the spirits to be uneasy.'

I was about to make some comment about the earl's mystical raven flag, but thought better of it. 'I was told that you and my mother spent time together, so I was hoping you would be kind enough to tell me something about her. I would truly appreciate any details.'

'Most of our discussions were on trivial matters — or on matters which do not concern men,' she replied crisply. 'Your mother kept herself to herself nearly all the time she was here. She was a big woman — as I expect you know — and rather fierce, so most people kept out of her way. I had more to do with her than anyone else because we spoke Irish to one another, and of course she recognised that I have the sight, just as I knew she was a volva.'

'Did she say where she came from? Who her family were?' I persisted. 'If I knew that, perhaps I could find out if I have any living relatives.'

Eithne looked at me with a hint of pity. 'Don't expect too much. Everyone thinks that they are descended from some special line, princes or great lords. But most of our forebears were ordinary folk. All I know is that your mother spoke excellent Irish and she could be well mannered when she was not being peevish, which might mean she came from a family with good social standing. She did once mention that she belonged to a tribe who lived somewhere in the middle of the island of Ireland. I don't remember its name but it might have been Ua Ruairc or Ua Ruanaid, or something like that. But the Irish tribes love giving themselves new titles and names, even changing where they live. The Irish are a restless and wandering people. I've been living in Orkney so long that I'm out of touch with what goes on there. It's possible that King Sigtryggr might recognise your mother's clan name. But, on the other hand, he may not have any idea at all. Although he's King of Dublin and has his home there, he's a Norseman through and through. You would be better advised to find your way to Ireland yourself and make enquiries there. Though don't be in a hurry, there's already war in the west and it will soon get worse. But why am I telling you this? You know that already, or you should.'

Again I must have appeared puzzled because the old woman shot me a glance and said, 'No, perhaps not. You're still too young. Anyhow, I can arrange for you to accompany Sigtryggr when he returns home, which should be some time very soon — that doesn't require second sight to anticipate. He and his men are locusts. They'll eat up our last stocks of winter food if Sigurd doesn't make it obvious that they have outstayed their welcome. I've advised him to serve up smaller and smaller portions at mealtimes, and resurrect some of the stockfish that half rotted when the rain got into the storehouse last autumn. If the smell doesn't get rid of them, nothing will.'

The old lady was as good as her word and her dietary stratagem was effective. Sigtryggr and his followers left Birsay within fortyeight hours, and I was added to the royal entourage at the earl mother's particular request. I had failed to learn anything more about Thorgunna, but was glad to leave Orkney because I had noticed how one of the Burners had started giving me occasional puzzled glances, as if he was trying to remember where he had seen me before. I recognised him as one of the men on whom I had eavesdropped at the Althing, and was nervous that he would make the connection. If he did so, it was likely that I could finish up with my throat cut.

FOURTEEN

SIGTRYGGR'S SHIP WAS a match for his magnificent dress brooch. The Norsemen may not be able to weave gossamer silks into gorgeous robes or construct the great tiled domes and towers of the palaces that I was later to see in my travels, but when it comes to building ships they are without peer. Sigtryggr's vessel was a drakkar, sleek, sinister, speedy, a masterpiece of the shipwright's craft. She had been built on the banks of the Black River in Ireland, as her crew never tired of boasting. The Ostmen, the word the Norse in Ireland use to describe themselves, build ships every bit as well as the shipwrights in Norway and Denmark because the quality of native Irish timber equals anything found in the northern lands. Coming as I did from two countries where big trees were so rare that it was unthinkable to build a large ocean-going vessel, the moment I clambered aboard the drakkar I could not resist running my fingertips along the handpicked oak beams and the perfect fit of the flawless planking. I would have been a complete ignoramus not to appreciate the gracefully sweeping lines of the long black-painted hull and the perfect symmetry of the rows of metal fastenings, the ingenious carving of the wooden fittings for the mast and rigging, and the evident care which the crew lavished on their vessel. The drakkar — her name was Spindrifter — was deliberately flamboyant. At anchor her crew rigged a smart wadmal tent to cover her amidships, a tent sewn from strips of five different colours, and set it up so tautly that she looked like a floating fairground booth. And as soon as we were at sea with a fair wind, they set a mainsail of a matching pattern so that the vessel crested along like a brilliant exotic bird. As a king's ship, Spindrifter was prettified with fancy carvings and bright paint. There were intricately cut panels each side of the curling prow, a snarling figurehead, blue, gold and red chevrons painted on the oar blades, and the intricate decorative lashing on the helmsman's rudder grip was given a daily coat of white chalk. Even the metal weathervane was gilded. Spindrifter was meant to impress, and in my case she did.

Most mariners, I have noticed, share a particular moment of weakness. It comes in the first hour after a ship safely clears the land and is heading out to open sea. That is when the crew lets out a collective breath of relief, sensing that they are back in their closed world that is small, intimate and familiar. The feeling is particularly strong if the crew has previously sailed together, gone ashore for a few days and then returned to their vessel. They are eager to re-establish their sense of comradeship, and that is their moment of indiscretion. As the last rope is coiled down and the ship settles on her course, they begin to talk about their time ashore, compare their experiences, comment on sights they saw and the people they met, perhaps boast of the women they encountered and speculate about the immediate future, and they do so openly. They are a crew binding together and, as our ship sailed down the inner channel from Orkney, the crew of Spindrifter overlooked the fact that among them was a stranger. Too insignificant to be noticed, I heard their unguarded thoughts on the success of their visit to Birsay, the prospects for the coming war and the manoeuvrings of their lord and master, King Sigtryggr.

What I heard was puzzling. Sigtryggr's kingdom of Dublin is small, but it is the richest and most strategic of all the Norse domains scattered around the rim of Ireland, and Sigtryggr was savouring its prosperity to the full. Dublin's thriving commerce was the milch cow providing him with the money for the luxuries he enjoyed so much — his jewellery and fine clothes, his splendid ship, and the best food and wine imported from France. Indeed, his income from taxing the Dubliners was so great that Sigtryggr had taken the unique step of minting his own money. No other ruler in Ireland, even their own High King, was wealthy enough to do that, and I saw one of the drakkar sailors produce a leather pouch and double-check his wages by counting out a small stack of silver coins struck by Sigtryggr's moneyers.

The more I heard the sailors brag about the wealth of their lord, the more rash, it seemed to me, that he should be about to risk such a comfortable sinecure by joining a rebellion against a grizzled Irish veteran who styled himself 'Emperor of the Irish'. This was the same High King Brian whom Sigurd's steward had mentioned, a warlord who had been rampaging up and down the country with a sizeable army, imposing his authority and winning battle after battle.

Brian Boruma claimed to be driving out the foreign invaders from his land. Yet a large part of his army was made of foreigners, chiefly Ostmen, so what really distinguished his actions was that he was as virulent a Christian in his own way as 'St' Olaf of Norway had been. He travelled everywhere with a cluster of White Christ priests. Wild-looking creatures, they seemed as convinced of their own invincibility as any berserker. These Irish holy men, according to one of the drakkar sailors, were by no means as peaceable as their profession might suggest. The sailor had been in Dublin some fifteen years earlier when Brian Boruma had entered the city and ordered the destruction of a sacred grove of trees, a temple site for Thor. A group of Old Believers had stood in the way of the woodcutters, and the Irish holy men had rushed forward and beaten them back, wielding their heavy wooden croziers like clubs. The sailor's mention of Thor's sacred grove reminded me of Snorri and his twin role as priest and ruler, and it seemed to me that this Irish High King who mixed rule and religion was a grander version of my more familiar godi, and perhaps even more ruthless.

King Sigtryggr's informers had warned that the plan for

Boruma's next campaign was to overrun Dublin once again and bring to heel the provincial ruler, the King of Leinster. So Sigtryggr was scurrying around to build up a grand alliance to defeat the expected invasion. He was using his ample war chest to hire mercenaries and looking for assistance from overseas. In Birsay he had set a clever snare, according to the crew of Spindrifter. He had promised Sigurd the Stout that if the Earl of Orkney came to his help, then he would arrange for Sigurd to marry Kormlod, Brian Boruma's ex-wife. This Kormlod was an irresistible bait. She was not only the divorced wife of the High King, but also the sister of the Irish King of Leinster. Whoever married her, according to Sigtryggr, would be able to lay claim to the vacant throne of Ireland after the defeat of Brian Boruma, and his claim would be supported by the Leinster tribes. Yet I noted that when the crew of Spindrifter talked about this scheme, they chuckled and made sardonic comments. Listening to them, it seemed to me that the Lady Kormlod was not the meek and willing consort Sigurd would have been led to expect and neither did Sigtryggr himself set much store by the plan.

Thor sent our drakkar the wind she loved — a fine quartering breeze that brought us safely past the headlands and the tide races, and into the mouth of Dublin's river without the need to shift sail or even get out our oars until we were closing the final gap across the dirty river water ready to tie up at the wooden jetty which was the royal landing place.

I had never even seen a town before, let alone a city, and the sight of Dublin astounded me. There are no towns or large villages in Greenland or Iceland or Orkney, and suddenly here in front of me was a great, grey-brown untidy sprawl of houses, shops, laneways, roofs, all spilling down the side of the hill to the anchorage in the river. I had never imagined that so many people could exist, let alone live together cheek by jowl in this way. The houses were modest enough, little more than oversized huts with walls of wattle and daub and roofed with straw or wooden tiles. But there were so many of them and they huddled so close together that it seemed there were more people living in one spot overlooking the south bank of Dublin's river than in the whole of Iceland. It was not just the sight of the houses which amazed me. There was also the smell. The river bank was thick mud littered with rotting, stinking matter, and it was clear that many of the citizens used the place as their latrine. On top of the stench of putrefaction was laid an all-pervading odour of soot and smoke. It was an early January evening when we moored and the householders of Dublin were lighting fires to keep warm. The smoke from their hearths rose through holes in the roofs, but just as often it simply oozed through the straw covering so it seemed as if the whole city was smouldering. A light drizzle had begun to fall, and it pressed down the smoke and fumes of the fires so that the smell of wood smoke filled our nostrils.

Sigtryggr's steward was waiting at the quayside to greet his master and led us up the hill towards the royal dwelling. The roadway was surfaced with wooden planks and woven wicker hurdles laid on top of the mud, but even so we occasionally slipped on the slick, damp surface. Through open doorways I caught glimpses of the interiors of the houses, the flicker of flames from an open hearth, dim shapes of people seated on the side benches or a woman standing at a cooking pot, the grimy faces of children peering round the doorpost to see us go by until unseen hands reached out and dragged them back out of sight. Sigtryggr and his cortege were not popular. The reception for the King of Dublin was very muted.

We passed through the gateway of a city wall which I had not noticed before because the cluster of houses had outgrown Dublin's defensive rampart. Then we had reached the centre of Dublin, where the houses were more spread out, and here stood Sigtryggr's residence, similar in size and shape to Earl Sigurd's hall though it was built of timber rather than turf. The only unusual feature was a steep, grassy mound slightly to the rear and right of Sigtryggr's hall. 'Thor's Mound,' muttered Einar, the sailor, who had spoken about the warlike Irish priests earlier, and who now saw me looking in that direction. 'Those mad fanatics chopped down the sacred trees, but it will take more than few axe blows to get rid of every last trace of his presence. Silkbeard still makes an occasional sacrifice there, just for good luck, though his real worship should be for Freyja. There's nothing he would like better than to be able to weep tears of gold.' Tyrkir had taught me long ago in Vinland that the Goddess of wealth shed golden tears at the loss of her husband, but I didn't know who Silkbeard was, though I made a shrewd guess. When I asked the sailor, he guffawed. 'You really are from the outer fringes, aren't you? Silkbeard is that dandy, our leader. He loves his clothes and perfume and his fine leather shoes and his rings, and haven't you noticed how much time he spends combing and stroking and fondling his chin whiskers.'

But I hardly heard his reply. I had come to a dead stop and was staring at a woman standing at the entrance to Sigtryggr's hall among the group of women and servants waiting to greet the king formally. I guessed her age at about fifty. She was very richly dressed in a long blue gown with expensive shoulder clasps, and her grey hair was held back in a matching silk scarf. She must have been important because she was standing in the front rank, next to a younger woman, who I guessed was Sigtryggr's wife. But it was not the older woman's dress which had caught my eye; it was the way that she stood, and the way that she was looking at Sigtryggr, who was now walking towards her. There was a sense of exasperation and determination on her face. I had seen precisely that look before and that same posture. I felt that I was seeing not the grey-haired matron in front of me, but another person. It was a memory that made me feel queasy. I had seen exactly that expression on the face of Freydis Eriksdottir.

'Get along and stop gawping,' Einar said from behind me.

'Who's the grey-haired woman standing in the front row?' I asked him.

'That's Sigtryggr's mother Kormlod, the Irish call her Gormlaith.'

I

was utterly confused. 'But I thought that she was the person

Earl Sigurd was supposed to marry as a reward if he came to help Sigtryggr. The person who would help him become High King.'

'Precisely. Until last year she was the wife of the High King Brian, but he divorced her after some sort of a row. Now she says that Brian doesn't deserve to remain on his throne. She hates him so much that she would support whoever marries her in a bid to replace him. She's got a lot of influence because she also happens to be the sister of King Mael Morda of Leinster, and at one time she was even married to Malachi, another of the important Irish chieftains who's spent years intriguing and fighting against Brian to become the High King himself. Whatever happens in high politics in this part of the world, you can be sure that Kormlod is involved. Now you'd better report to Sigtryggr's steward and see if he can find a place for you.'

Ketil the steward gave me an exasperated glance when I finally managed to get his attention. He was bustling here and there in a self-important manner, organising the storage of various boxes and bundles that his master's embassy had brought back from Orkney, calling for food to be brought from the kitchen and served, and generally trying to give the impression that he was essential to the smooth running of the royal establishment, though in fact he seemed to be more of a hindrance. 'You can be a temporary dog boy,' he snapped at me. 'One of those Irish chiefs the king is negotiating with has sent a couple of hairy wolfhounds as a present. Apparently it's a compliment, though I call it more of an aggravation. I'm told the brutes can only be exchanged between kings and chieftains, so you'd better be sure they are kept healthy in case the donor comes on a visit. Feed them before you feed yourself.' He waved me away and a moment later was berating one of the household servants for setting out the wrong goblets for the king's meal.

My charges were hard to miss. They were skulking around the back of the hall - tall, hairy creatures, occasionally loping in embarrassed confusion from one corner to the next. I had no experience whatsoever of looking after dogs. But even I could see from the way their tails were curled tightly down between their legs and their large flappy ears were pressed close to their skulls that they were unhappy in their new surroundings. I had come across a few of the same breed of dog in Iceland, where they had been imported in much the same way as Irish slaves, so I was aware that they were not as lethal as they looked. I succeeded in coaxing them outside the king's hall and giving them some scraps which I wheedled from the kitchen staff. The dogs looked at me mournfully, their great dark, oval eyes blinking through their drooping fur, obviously recognising an incompetent, though well-meaning, dog keeper. I was grateful to the lanky beasts because they gave me an excuse to stay in the background and pretend to be busy. Whenever anyone looked in my direction, I made a show of brushing their rough, harsh coats, and the hounds were decent enough to let me do so, though I did wonder if there might not come a moment when, fed up with my incompetence, they would sink their teeth into me.

Fortunately my role as royal dog boy was never put seriously to the test. King Sigtryggr lacked any real affection for the animals, regarding them as decorative accessories akin to his fine footwear or personal jewellery. My only real duty was to see that the two hounds were prettily presented, sitting or lying near his seat whenever he held court or had meals.

Queen Mother Gormlaith scared me, and not simply because she reminded me so often of Freydis, the organiser of the Vinland massacre. There was a calculating coldness about Gormlaith which occasionally slipped out from under her elegance as the gracious queen mother. She was still a very handsome woman, slim and elegant, and she had retained her youthful grace so that with her green eyes and haughty stare she reminded me of a supercilious cat. She had exquisite manners — even condescending to make the occasional remark to the lowly dog boy — but there was a flinty hardness to her questions and if she did not get the answer she sought, she had a habit of ignoring the response and then putting on the pressure until she got the reply she wanted. I could see that she was manipulative, calculating, and that she could twist her son, the showy Sigtryggr, into doing precisely what she wanted.

And what she wanted was mastery. Eavesdropping on the high table conversations, and casually questioning the other servants, I learned that Gormlaith was not so much a woman scorned as a woman thwarted in her ambitions, which were vaunting. 'She married Boruma hoping to control the High King of Ireland,' one of the other servants told me, 'but that didn't work. Brian had his own ideas on how to run the country and soon got so fed up with her meddling that he had her locked up for three months. Brian's an old man now, but that doesn't mean he would allow himself to be manipulated by a scheming woman.'

'Is the Queen Mother really that ambitious?' I asked.

'You wait and see,' the servant replied with a smirk. 'She sent her son off to Orkney to recruit Fat Sigurd, offering herself as the meat on the hook, and she'll do anything to get even with the High King.'

Not until the middle of March, nearly seven weeks later, did I understand what the servant meant. I spent the interval as a member of Sigtryggr's household, carrying out domestic duties, learning to speak Irish with the slaves and lower servants, as well as feeding and exercising his two dogs as their guardian. If I have given the impression that the Norse people are uncouth and unwashed savages with their raucous drinking bouts and rough manners, then my descriptions have been misleading. The Norse are as meticulous in their personal cleanliness as circumstances will allow and, though it may seem unlikely, their menfolk are great dandies. And of course King Sigtryggr fancied himself as an arbiter of good taste and style. The result was that I spent a good deal of my time pressing his courtiers' garments, using a heavy, smooth stone to flatten the seams of the surcoats and cloaks from their extensive wardrobes which they changed frequently, and combing not just the rough hair of the two dogs, but also the heads of the royal advisers. They were very attentive to their hairstyles, and would even specify the length and fineness of the teeth on the combs I used. There was a special shop in Dublin, where I was sent to purchase replacement combs, specifying that they should be made of red-deer antler and not common catde horn.

It was at a noon meal, one day in early spring, that I fully grasped the extent of the ambitions of Gormlaith, and how ruthlessly she worked her way towards achieving them. I had led into the great hall my two wolfhounds, setded them near the king's chair and stood back to keep an eye on them. King Sigtryggr was jealous of his regal dignity, and the last thing I wanted was for one of the big grey dogs to leap up suddenly and snatch food from the royal hand while the king was eating.

'Are you sure that Sigurd is going to keep his word?' Gormlaith was asking him.

'Positive,' her son replied, worrying at a chicken leg with his teeth and trying to stop the grease dripping onto his brocaded shirt. 'He's one of the old breed, never happier than when he's got a war to plan and execute. Cunning too. He's got a bunch of hard men at his court, Icelanders, renegade Norwegians and so forth. He knows that a campaign in Ireland will keep them occupied so they don't start plotting against him in Orkney.'

'And how many men do you think he will be able to bring?'

'He claimed he could raise eight hundred to a thousand.'

'But you're doubtful?'

"Well, Mother, I wasn't there long enough to count them,' Sigtryggr answered petulantly, wiping his hands on a linen cloth that a page held out for him. Sigtryggr was a great one for aping foreign etiquette.

'My information is that the Earl of Orkney can probably raise five hundred men, possibly six hundred, no more — and that's not enough,' she said. It was evident that his mother already knew the answer to her own question.

Sigtryggr grunted. He had detected the stern tone in his mother's voice, and knew that an order was coming.

'We need more troops if we want to be sure of dealing with that dotard Brian,' Gormlaith continued firmly.

'And where do you expect to find them?'

'A merchant recently arrived from Man mentioned to me this morning that there's a sizeable vikingr fleet anchored there. They are operating under joint command. Two experienced leaders. One is called Brodir and the other is Ospak Slant-eye.'

Sigtryggr sighed. 'Yes, Mother. I know both men. I met Brodir two years ago. Fierce looking. Wears his hair so long that he has to tuck it into his belt. Old Believer, of course. Said to be a seidr master.'

'I think you should recruit the two of them and their men into our forces,' his mother said firmly.

Sigtryggr looked stubborn, then decided to concede the point. I suspected that he had long since given up trying to dissuade his mother from her schemes, and it was obvious what was coming next.

'Good,' she said. 'It's less than a day's journey to Man.'

For a moment I thought that the king would raise some sort of objection, but he hesitated only briefly, then petulantly threw the chicken bone at one of the two wolfhounds and, forgetting the page with the napkin, wiped his hands on his tunic and ostentatiously turned to open a conversation with his wife.

Gormlaith's wish was Ketil's command. He was terrified of her, and that evening the steward was fluttering around warning the palace staff. Spindrifter's crew were to be aboard by dawn, ready to take Sigtryggr to Man. 'And you,' he said to me spitefully, 'you're going too. You can take the big dogs with you. The king thinks that they will make a handsome present for those two pirates. I expect he'll tell them that they are war dogs, trained to attack. But from what I've seen of them they're happier to lie on the rushes all day and scratch for fleas. At least we'll be rid of them.'

The voyage to Man was cold, wet and took twice as long as we had expected. My two charges were miserable. They scrabbled on the sloping deck, threw up and shivered, and after falling into the bilges for the twentieth time, just lay there and were still looking wretched when Spindrifter rounded the southern headland of Man and under oars crept slowly into the sheltered bay where the vikingr fleet lay at anchor. We approached warily, all our shields still hung on the gunnels, the crew trying to look submissive, and Sigtryggr and his bodyguard standing on the foredeck weaponless and without body armour, making it clear that they came in peace. Spindrifter was easily the largest vessel in the bay, but she would not have withstood a concerted attack from the vikingr. Ospak and Brodir had assembled thirty vessels in their war fleet.

Neither side trusted the other enough to hold a parlay on one of the ships, so the council was held on the beach in a tent. Naturally Sigtryggr wanted his two hounds to be on display. Dragging along the two seasick dogs, I felt almost as cold and wretched as they did when I took up my station in the entourage. Ospak and Brodir paid no attention to the cutting wind and the occasional bursts of rain, which slatted and battered the tent as they stood listening to Sigtryggr's proposal. By now I knew his methods well enough to know what was coming. He spoke at length about the extent and prosperity of the Irish High King's realm, and how Brian Boruma had grown too old really to protect the kingdom's wealth effectively. An example of his fading powers, Sigtryggr pointed out, was how he had mistreated his wife Gormlaith. He had locked her up for three months, recklessly disregarding that this would be an insult to her family, the royal house of Leinster. Brian Boruma was old and feeble and losing his touch. It would take only a well-managed attack to remove him from power and lay Ireland open to pillage.

The two Viking leaders listened impassively. Brodir was the more imposing of the two. Ospak was slender and ordinary-looking, apart from the odd angle of his left eye socket which gave him his nickname, Slant-eye. But Brodir was huge, taller by nearly a head. Everything about him was on a massive scale. He had a great rough face, legs like pillars, and he had the largest hands and feet that I had ever seen. His most distinctive feature, however, was his hair. As Sigtryggr had told his mother, Brodir grew his hair so long that it came to his waist and he was obliged to tuck it into his belt. Unusually for a Norseman, this tremendous cascade of hair was jet black.

The meeting ended without reaching any firm conclusion. Both Ospak and Brodir said they needed to consult with their chief men and would let Sigtryggr have a decision the following morning. But as we made our way back down the shingle beach to our small boats, Sigtryggr took Brodir on one side and invited him to continue the discussions privately. An hour later the viking giant was clambering aboard Spindrifter and ducking in under the striped awning of the tent, which we had rigged to protect ourselves from the miserable weather. Brodir stayed for nearly an hour, deep in conversation with Sigtryggr. In the confined space there was little privacy, and every word of the discussion could be heard by the men on the nearest oar benches. Brodir wanted to know more about the political situation in Ireland, who would be supporting the High King and what would be the division of spoils. In his answers Sigtryggr sweetened the terms of the proposed alliance. He promised Brodir first choice in the division of any booty, that he would receive a special bonus-, and that his share was likely to be greater than Ospak's because Brodir commanded more ships and more men. Finally, as Brodir still sat, cautiously refusing to commit himself to the venture, Sigtryggr made the same grand gesture that he had made in Orkney: he promised that Gormlaith would marry Brodir if Brian Boruma was defeated and that would open the way to the throne of the High King. As he made this empty promise, I noticed several of our sailors turn away to hide their expressions.

Brodir was not fooled. 'I believe you made the same offer to the Earl of Orkney recently,' he rumbled.

Sigtryggr never faltered. 'Oh yes, but Gormlaith changed her mind when I got back to Dublin. She said she would much prefer you as her husband to Sigurd the Stout — though he too is a fine figure of a man — and we agreed that there was no reason for Sigurd to know of the change of plan.'

At that precise moment Sigtryggr noticed that I was within earshot. I was crouched against the side of the vessel, with one of the hounds despondently licking my hand. Belatedly it must have occurred to Sigtryggr that perhaps I was a spy for the Earl of Orkney. 'As a token of my regard,' he went on smoothly, 'I would like to leave you with these two magnificent Irish wolfhounds. They will remind you of the homeland of your future wife. Come now, let us make a bargain on it and seal it with this present.' He reached forward, clasped Brodir's brawny right arm, and they swore an oath of friendship. 'You must come to Dublin with your ships within the month, and try to persuade Ospak to come too.'

Brodir rose to his feet. He was such a colossus that he had to stoop to avoid brushing his black head on the wet tent cloth. As he turned to go, he said to me, 'Come on, you,' and I found myself once more dragging the unfortunate dogs out of the bilges and over the edge of the drakkar. When they refused to jump down into the little boat and paused, whimpering, on the edge of the gap between longship and tender, Brodir, who had already gone ahead, simply reached up and grabbed each dog by the scruff of the neck and hauled them down as if they had been puppies.

I awoke next morning, after an uncomfortable night curled up between the two hounds on the foredeck of Brodir's warship, and looked across to where Spindrifter had lain at anchor. The great drakkar had gone. Sigtryggr had decided that his mission was accomplished and had slipped away in the night, setting course for Dublin doubtless to report to his mother that she was now on offer to two ambitious war leaders.

In mid-afternoon Brodir beckoned to me to join him. He was sitting at the foot of the mast, a chunk of wind-dried sheepmeat in one hand and a knife in the other. He cut off slivers of meat and manoeuvred them into his mouth past his luxuriant beard as he cross-examined me. I think he suspected that I was a spy placed by Sigtryggr.

'What's your name and where are you from?' he enquired.

'Thorgils, sir. I was born in Orkney, but I grew up in Greenland and spent time in a place called Vinland.' 'Never heard of it,' he grunted.

'Most recently I've been living in Iceland, in the Westfjords.' 'And who was your master?'

'Well, I was in the service of Snorri Godi at first, but he sent me to live with one of his people, a man called Thrand.'

Brodir stopped eating, his knife blade halfway to his mouth. 'Thrand? What does he look like?'

'A big man, sir. Not as big as yourself. But tall and he's got a reputation as a warrior.'

'What sort of helmet does he wear?'

'An old-fashioned one, bowl-shaped with eye protectors, and there are runes inside which he showed me.'

'Did you know what the runes read?' Bordir asked. 'Yes, sir.'

Brodir had put aside the lamb shoulder and looked at me thoughtfully. 'I know Thrand,' he said quietly. 'We campaigned together in Scotland a few years ago. What else did he tell you about himself?'

'Not much about himself or his past, sir. But he did try to teach me some of the Old Ways.'

'So you're an apprentice of seidr?' Brodir said slowly.

'Well, sort of,' I replied. 'Thrand taught me a little, but I was with him for only a few months, and the rest of my knowledge I have picked up by chance.'

Brodir turned and peered out from under the longship's awning to look at the sky. He was checking the clouds to see if there would be a change in the weather. There was still a thick overcast. He turned back to face me.

'I was once a follower of the White Christ,' he said, 'for almost six years. But it never felt right. I was baptised by one of those wandering priests, yet from that moment on my luck seemed to falter. My eldest son — he must have been a little younger than you — was drowned in a boating accident, and my vikingr brought little reward. The places we raided were either too poor or the inhabitants were expecting us and had fled, taking all their property with them. That was when I met up with Thrand. He was on his way to visit his sister, who was married to a Dublin Ostman, and he joined my war band for a quick raid on one of the Scots settlements. Before we attacked, he made his sacrifices to Thor and cast lots, and he predicted that we would be successful and win a special reward. It was a hotter fight than we had anticipated because we did not know that the King of Scotland's tax collector happened to be staying in the village that night, and he had an escort with him. But we chased them off, and when we dug in the spot of churned earth, we found where they had hastily buried their tax chest containing twenty marks of hack silver. My men and I were delighted, and I noticed how Thrand took care to make an offering of part of the hoard to Thor. Since then I have done the same before and after every battle. I asked Thrand if he would stay on with me as my seidr master, but he said he had to get back home to Iceland. He had given his word.'

'That would be to Snorri Godi, sir,' I said. 'Snorri still consults Thrand for advice before any sort of conflict.'

'And you say that you studied seidr under Thrand?'

'Yes, but just for a few months.'

'Then we'll see if you can be more than a dog boy. Next time I make a sacrifice to Thor, you can assist me.'

Brodir and Ospak held their combined flotilla at Man for another ten days. There was much coming and going between the two men as Brodir tried to persuade Ospak to join him in King Sigtryggr's alliance. The two men were sworn brothers, but Ospak took umbrage at Brodir's grand plan to become Gormlaith's consort and felt that the new scheme had now replaced their own original agreement for a vikingr campaign. Ospak's ambitions were more down to earth than Brodir's. He wanted booty rather than glory, and the more enthusiastically that Brodir spoke about the wealth of King Sigtryggr and his potential as an ally, the more Ospak saw the assets of Dublin as something waiting to be plundered. So he prevaricated, repeatedly pointing out that an alliance with King Sigtryggr was dangerous. The High King Brian, Ospak noted, had the more impressive record as a warrior, and even if King Brian was now getting old, he had four strapping sons, all of whom had shown themselves as capable commanders on the battlefield.

Eventually Brodir became so exasperated with this hesitation that he suggested to Ospak they should take the omens and see which way the forthcoming campaign would turn out. Ospak was also an Old Believer, and he agreed to the idea at once, so a sweat cabin was set up on the beach. I have mentioned that the Norse are as clean a people as circumstances allow. Among their habits is to take baths in hot water, quite a regular occurrence in Iceland, where water already hot emerges from the ground; they also bathe in steam, though this is more complicated. It involves constructing a small and nearly airtight cabin, bringing very hot stones and then dashing fresh water on the stones so that steam fills the chamber. If the process is excessive, more and more steam fills the room until the occupants become giddy from heat and lack of air and sometimes lose their senses. In Iceland Thrand had told me how this could be done to induce a trance-like state and, if one is fortunate, bring on dreams or even spirit flying.

While the steam hut was being prepared on the beach, Brodir set up a small altar of beach stones very like the one I had seen Thorvall construct in Vinland, and asked me to cut invocation runes on several pieces of driftwood. When the heated steam stones were placed inside the steam hut with a bucket of water, Brodir took my rune sticks and, after approving the staves I had cut, added them to the embers. As the last wisps of grey smoke curled up from the little pyre, he removed all his clothes, coiled his hair around his head and squeezed his great bulk into the hut. I covered the doorway with a heavy blanket of cloth, reminded of the similar structure where I had met the Skraeling shaman.

Brodir stayed in the steam cabin for at least an hour. When he emerged he was looking dour and did not say a word, but dressed quickly and ordered his men to row him out to his ship. Seeing his expression, no one on board dared ask him whether he had seen visions and, if so, what they were. The following day he repeated the process with much the same result. If anything, he emerged from the ordeal looking even more solemn than before. Later that evening he called me over and told me that next day it was my turn. 'Thrand would not have wasted his knowledge on someone who has not the sight. Take my place in the steam cabin tomorrow and tell me what you see.'

I could have told him that there was no need. I already knew. On both nights after Brodir had undergone his ordeal in the steamhouse, I had violent dreams. By now I knew enough about my own powers of sight to realise that my own dreams were echoes of his earlier visions. In the first dream I was aboard an anchored ship when there was a roaring noise in my ears and the sky began to rain boiling blood. The crew around me tried to seek shelter from the downpour and many of them were scalded. One man was so badly burned that he died. The dream on the second night was similar except that after the shower of blood the men's weapons leapt from their sheaths and began to fight, one with the other, and again a sailor lost his life. So when the flap dropped down behind me in the steam cabin, and I poured the water on the stones and felt the steam sear my lips and nostrils and burn deep into my lungs, I had only to close my eyes and I was immediately back in my dream. Now the sky, instead of spewing bloody rain, disgorged flight after flight of angry ravens like fluttering black rags. The birds came cawing and swooping, their beaks and claws were made of iron, and they pecked and struck so viciously at us that we were obliged to shelter beneath our shields. And for the third time we lost a sailor. His eyes pecked out and his face a bloody mess, he stumbled blindly to the side of the vessel, tripped on the coaming and, falling into the water, drowned in the spreading pink tendrils of his own blood.

Brodir woke me. Apparently I had been lying in the steam hut for six hours and there had been no sound. He had broken in and found me insensible. Brodir did not question me but waited until I had recovered sufficiently, then sent for Ospak to come to the beach. The three of us withdrew to a quiet spot, out of earshot of the other men, and there Brodir described his visions in the sweat hut. As I suspected, they were almost exactly what I had seen in my own dreams. But only I had the nightmare of the iron-beaked ravens. When Brodir rumbled, 'The lad has the sight. We should listen to him as well,' I described how Odinn's crows had attacked my shipmates and caused such ruin and disaster.

Only a fool would have been blind to the omens and Ospak was no fool. When Brodir asked whether he would be joining with him in King Sigtryggr's alliance, Ospak asked only for time to think things over. 'I need to consult with my shipmasters,' he told Brodir. 'Let us meet again on the beach this evening after dusk, and I will give you my answer.'

When Ospak returned to the beach that evening, there was barely enough light to see by. He was accompanied by all his ship's captains. It was not a good sign. They were all armed and they looked wary. I realised that they were frightened of Brodir, who, besides being very burly, was also known to be quick-tempered. I reassured myself with the thought that there is a prohibition among the Old Believers - not always obeyed - that it is unwise to kill someone after dark because their ghost will come to haunt you. Even before Ospak started speaking, it was obvious what had been decided. 'The dreams are the worst possible omen,' he began. 'Blood from the sky, men dying, weapons fighting among themselves, war ravens flying. There can be no other explanation than that there will be death and war, and that brother will fight brother.' Brodir scowled. Right up to that moment, he had been hoping that Ospak and his men would join him, and that he would be able to keep the combined flotilla together. But Ospak's blunt interpretation of the dreams left no doubt: Ospak and his ships would not only leave the flotilla, but he and his men intended to throw in their lot with the Ostmen fighting for King Brian. With the High King, they thought, lay their best chance of victory and reward.

Brodir did lose his temper, though only for a moment. It was when Ospak referred to the ravens again, almost as an afterthought. 'Perhaps those ravens are the fiends from hell the Christians are always talking about. They are supposed to have a particular appetite for those who have once followed the White Christ and then turned away.' Brodir had been some sort of priest during his Christian phase, I later learned. Stung by this jibe, he took a step forward and moved to draw his sword. But Ospak had stepped quickly back out of blade range, and his captains closed up behind him. 'Steady,' he called, 'remember that no good will come of killing after dark.'

Killing a man after sunset might be forbidden, but departing in the dark is not. That same night Ospak and his captains quiedy unmoored. Their vessels had been anchored in a group, close inshore, and their crews poled them out into the ebb tide so that they silently drifted past us as we slept. Later some of our men said that Ospak had practised some sort of magic so that none of us awoke. In truth several of our sailors did glimpse Ospak's squadron gliding past in the blackness, but they did not have the heart to wake their colleagues. All of us knew that, soon enough, we would meet again in battle.

FOURTEEN

'NONE OF US can escape the Norns' decision,' said Brodir heavily. He was fastening the buckles and straps of his mail shirt. 'We can only delay the hour and even then we need the help of the Gods.' Brodir's fingers were shaking as he did up the straps, and I thought to myself that he was not as trusting as Thrand. Brodir's mail shirt was famous. Like Thrand's helmet, it was reputed to have supernatural qualities. It was said that no sword or javelin could penetrate its links, rendering its wearer invulnerable. Yet I judged that Brodir did not believe in the magic qualities of his armour but wore it only as a talisman to bring good luck. Or perhaps there were few mail shirts large enough to fit the leader from Man.

Brodir's contingent, nearly seven hundred men, was getting ready for battle. Our position was on the extreme right of Sigtryggr's grand alliance of Dublin Ostmen, Sigurd's Orkneymen, King Mael Morda's Leinstermen and sundry Irish rebels who had taken this chance to challenge the domination of the Irish High King. Behind us, an arrow-shot away, was the landing beach of sand and shingle onto which the keels of our ships had slithered at first light that morning.

The plan had been to catch Brian Boruma off guard. For the past ten days the allies had been gathering in Dublin in response to King Sigtryggr's request that they arrive before the great Christian festival at the end of March. I thought this was an odd calendar to set for such staunch Old Believers as Sigurd the Stout and Brodir, but at the long, long war council in the king's hall which preceded our deployment Sigtryggr had explained there was a reason for this unusual deadline, a reason based on intelligence which Gormlaith had supplied. While married to Brian Boruma, she had detected that her ex-husband was becoming more and more obsessed with his religion as he grew older. Apparently the Irish High King had vowed to her that he would no longer fight on the high and holy days of the Christ calendar. It was blasphemy, he had said, to do battle on such sacred occasions and such days were ill-fated. When Sigtryggr mentioned this, some of the Norse captains exchanged nervous glances. Sigtryggr had come closer to the mark than he knew. Rumours of Brodir's raven dream had spread among the Norse and there were many who thought we had no business pursuing our campaign after such an ill-starred start. Brodir had not revealed the content of our visions on the beach at Man, nor had I — the source had been Ospak. From Man he had promptly sailed to Ireland and marched to Brian Boruma's camp to offer his services to the Irish High King. Ospak must have expected a vast haul of loot from Dublin because, that very day, he cheerfully submitted to being baptised by the Irish priests. On the other hand he put such little store by his conversion that he lost no time in spreading word about the raven dreams and how they foretold that Brodir and his men were doomed.

Gormlaith herself spoke at Sigtryggr's council of war and she was very persuasive. Brian Boruma's personal prestige had been vital to his previous military success, she told the hard-bitten war captains. His army rallied to him personally. That was the Irish habit. Their warriors flock to a clan chief considered to be lucky, and when it comes to a battle they like to see their leader at the forefront of the charge. So Sigtryggr's grand alliance would hold a crucial advantage if it brought the High King's army to battle when Boruma himself was unable to participate for his misguided religious reasons. The one day of the Christian calendar that Boruma was sure to refuse to carry weapons was the gloomy anniversary of the White Christ's death. Brian Boruma regarded it as the holiest day of the year, and there was no possibility that he could personally lead his men into battle on that day. Gormlaith had also pointed out that the morbid nature of such an anniversary would further dishearten the High King's forces. Some of his more devout troops might even follow their master's example in refusing to bear arms. Her logic impressed even the most sceptical of the council, and there was not a single voice raised in objection when Sigtryggr set Good Friday as the day most suitable for our attack. Sigtryggr also suggested that Earl Sigurd and Brodir might go back aboard their ships the previous evening and pretend to sail off. The hope was that Boruma's spies stationed on the hill overlooking the river would report that many of Sigtryggr's allies were deserting him, and the High King would be further lulled into inaction.

But such a commonplace deception had clearly failed. Already depressed by whispers about Odinn's ravens, our troops were further discouraged by the sight which greeted us as we came ashore. Drawn up on the hill facing us were the massed ranks of the High King's army and clearly they had been expecting us. Even more clearly, they had no compunction about spilling blood on the holy day. 'Would you look at that?' said one of Brodir's men who was standing next to me as we began to form up. He must have been a shiphandler rather than a fighting man as he was poorly equipped, carrying only a javelin and a light wooden shield, and had neither helmet nor mail shirt. 'I can see some of Ospak's men in the line right opposite us. That fellow with the long pike and the grey cloak is Wulf. He owes me half a mark of silver, which he never paid after our last dice game, and I didn't dare press him for the debt. He's got a foul temper, which is why everyone calls him Wulf the Quarrelsome. One way or another, that's a debt he and I are likely to settle today.' Like me, the shiphandler had been assigned to the rearmost of the five ranks in our swine array, the standard formation for a Norse brigade. It places the best armed and most experienced fighters in the front rank, shield to shield and no more than an arm's length apart. Youngsters like myself and the lightly armed auxiliaries fill up the rearmost ranks. The idea is that the shield wall bears the brunt of any charge and is too dense for the enemy to penetrate, while the lightly armed troops can make some minor contribution to the contest by hurling spears over the heads of their fighting colleagues. Quite what I was supposed to do, I had no idea. Brodir had told me to bring the two so-called 'fighting dogs' on shore, but there was no role for such fanciful creatures in the swine formation. Not that the two hounds were in the least interested in biting enemy flesh. They were nervously darting from side to side and getting their leads in a tangle. As I hauled on the dogs' collars, I glanced across to my left, and with a sudden shock of surprise I recognised at least a dozen of the Burners among Earl Sigurd's Orkneymen. The Burners had sworn their oath to Sigurd the Stout and now they were obliged to do their duty. Just beyond their little group rose Earl Sigurd's famous battle standard with its symbol of the black raven. The sight caused me to have a sudden doubt. Had I misinterpreted my dream? I wondered. The iron-beaked birds who had swooped into the attack from far afield and torn men's flesh, were they Brodir's enemies? Or did they symbolise the arrival of Sigurd and his Orkneymen across the Irish Sea, following the raven banner to wreak havoc on Boruma's host?

My confusion was increased by this familiarity of friend and foe. Here I was fighting alongside men who would have counted me their enemy if they had known of my role in Kari's vengeance. And the sailor at my side was standing in the battle line facing a companion with whom, until a month ago, he had rolled dice. Nor was this mutual recognition restricted to the Norse warriors. 'Are you there, Maldred?' bellowed one of our front-rank men. He was a big, round-shouldered, grey-haired warrior, well armoured and carrying a heavy axe, and he was shouting his question across the gap that separated the two armies. 'Yes, of course I am, you arsehole!' came an answering cry from the High King's forces. From the opposing rank stepped a figure who, apart from his

stature - he was slightly shorter - and the fact that he wore a patterned Irish cloak over his chain mail, was almost indistinguishable from our own man. 'No more farting about, now's the time to see who is the better man,' called our champion, and while the two armies looked on and waited as if they had all the time in the world, the adversaries ran forward until they came within axe swing, and each man let loose a mighty swipe at the other.

Each deflected the blow with his shield, and then the two men setded down to a bent-kneed crouch as they circled one another warily, occasionally leaping forward to deliver a huge blow with the axe, only for the other man to block the blow with his round shield and take a retaliatory swing which failed to connect because his enemy had jumped back out of range. When the two men lost patience with this alternate thud and leap, it seemed as if they reached some mutual pact of self-destruction, for in the instant that one man flung aside his shield so he could raise his axe with both hands his opponent did the same. Suddenly the contestants were charging at one another like a pair of mad bulls, each determined to deliver the mortal blow. It was the man with the cloak who struck first. He knew he had the shorter reach, so he let go of his axe as he swung. The weapon flew across the last two feet and struck the Norseman a terrific blow on the side of his face, laying bare the bone. The Norseman staggered, and blood sprayed from the wound, yet the surge of his charge and the momentum of his blow carried him forward so that the strike of his axe smashed down on the Irishman's left shoulder, cutting deep into the neck. It did not behead the victim, but it was a killer blow. The Irishman fell first to his knees, then slowly toppled forward face down on the mud. His conqueror, dazed and disorientated, with blood pouring down his face, lasted only a few moments longer. As the two armies looked on, the Norseman wandered in a circle, tripping and lurching, the side of his face smashed open by the axe, and he too fell and did not rise again.

'Can you see the High King anywhere?' I heard someone ask in front of me.

'I think I caught a glimpse of him earlier, on horseback, but he's not there now,' a voice replied. 'That's his son Murchad over there on the left. He seems to be in charge. And his grandson is that cocky youngster dressed in a red tunic and blue leggings.' I squinted in that direction and saw a lad, younger than myself, standing in front of one of the enemy divisions. He was turned to face his men, Irishmen to judge by their dress, and he was waving his arms as he declaimed some sort of encouraging speech.

'Dangerous puppy,' said a third voice, 'like all his family.'

'But no sign of the High King himself, are you sure? That's a bonus.' It was the same man who had asked the first question, and by the plaintive tone in his voice I guessed he was trying to find some courage to cheer himself up.

'Not much different from us then,' said a voice sourly. We all knew what he was talking about. King Sigtryggr had not expected to dupe the High King with the fake withdrawal of his Norse allies; he preferred to dupe his own allies. When the longships had withdrawn the previous evening, Sigtryggr had promised to be ready on the beach next morning to join forces with us. But we found waiting for us only Mael Morda's Leinstermen and several bands of bloodthirsty Irish volunteers from the northern province, Ui Neills they called themselves. From Dublin's garrison there was just a handful of troops, but the best of them, Sigtryggr's personal bodyguard, were entirely absent. They had stayed behind to protect Sigtryggr himself and Gormlaith, who had chosen to watch the outcome of the battle from their vantage point behind the safety of Dublin's walls. It was hardly a cheerful beginning for our own efforts, and I suspected that some of our men would have been happy if King Sigtryggr's face had been at the opposite end of the blows from their battleaxes.

I had little time to ponder King Sigtryggr's duplicity. At that moment the enemy line began to move. It came at us not in a single organised rush, but as a ragged, rolling charge, the Irish first letting loose a high keening scream, which overlaid the deeper roar of their Norse allies. They ran forward in a broken torrent, brandishing axes, swords, pikes, spears. A few tripped on the rough ground and went sprawling, vanishing under the feet of their companions, but the ones on top rushed on, determined to gather as much speed as possible before they hit the shield wall. When the collision came, there was a massive, shattering crash like oak trees falling in the forest, and into the air flew an eerie cloud of grey and white sprinkled with bright flecks. It was the dust and whitewash from several thousand shields that had been carefully cleaned and repainted before the battle.

The thunderous opening crash immediately gave way to a confused, indiscriminate chaos, the sound of axes thudding into timber and stretched cowhide, the ringing clash of steel on metal, shouts and curses, cries of pain, sobs of effort, the scuffling grunts of men fighting for their lives. Somewhere in the distance I heard the high, wild, urgent notes of a war horn. It must have come from the High King's army because we had no war trumpeters as far as I knew.

The two opposing battle lines lost all formation within moments. The conflict broke into swirling groups, and I noticed how the Norsemen tended to fight with Norsemen and the Irish with Irish. There was no cohesion, only larger clumps of fighters clustered around their own war leaders. Sigurd's raven banner was the centre of the largest and most unified group, and Brodir's contingent appeared to be the chosen target for the men who followed Ospak. My own role in the conflict was minimal. The two war hounds panicked at the sound of the initial collision between the armies and bolted. Foolishly I had tied their leads around my wrist and the dogs were so strong that I was plucked off my feet and dragged ignominiously over the ground, until the leather thongs snapped and the two dogs raced free. I never saw them again. I was scrambling back to my feet, rubbing my aching wrist to restore the circulation, when a light spear thudded into the ground beside me, and I looked up to see an Irish warrior not twenty paces away. He was one of their kerns — lightly armed skirmishers — and thankfully both his aim and courage were inadequate to the situation. Just as I was realising again that I was unarmed, apart from a small knife hanging inside my shirt, the Irishman must have thought he had ventured too far inside the enemy lines, and he turned and scampered away, his bare feet flying over the turf.

Already the opposing armies were growing exhausted. First the skirmishers disengaged and withdrew, and then the knots of hersirs, the Norse warriors, began to disentangle as both sides fell back to their previous positions, and paused to count the cost of this first engagement. The losses had been severe. Badly injured men sat on the ground, trying to staunch their wounds; those who were still on their feet were leaning over, propped on their spears and shields, as they gasped for breath like exhausted runners. Scattered here and there were dozens of corpses. Mud and blood were everywhere.

'Seems that we're not the only ones to have slippery allies,' said a tall, thin soldier who was trying to stop the blood running down into his eyes from a sword slash that had nicked his forehead just below the brow line of the helmet. He was looking across at a large Irish contingent of the High King's army, which now stood some distance away from the rest of his battle line. It was apparent from their fresh appearance that these cliathaires as the Irish call their fighters, had not joined in the charge, but had stood by, watching. 'That's Malachi's lot,' explained one of our Ostmen. 'He laid claim to be the High King before Brian Boruma pushed him off the throne, and he would dearly like to have it back. The moment Malachi joins in the battle, then we'll know who's winning. He'll throw in his troops to join whoever is about to be victorious.'

'Form shield wall!' bellowed Brodir, and his men moved into line and began to lock shields again. A concerted ripple of movement among the High King's troops farther up the gentle slope of the hill showed that our opponents were getting ready for a second charge.

This time they picked their targets. The elite of the Irish forces was Murchad's bodyguard. As the High King's eldest son, he was entitled to an escort of professional men-at-arms, many of them battle-hardened from years of fighting in his father's numerous campaigns. The most menacing among them were the Gall-Gael, the Irishmen known as the 'Sons of Death', who had been adopted into Ostmen familes as youths and trained in Norse fighting methods. They combined their weapons skill with the fanaticism of re-converts, and of course their Norse opponents regarded them as turncoats and traitors, and never gave them any quarter. The result was the Gall-Gael were as feared as any berserk. In their earlier charge Murchad's bodyguard had singled out Mael Morda's Leinstermen. Now they shifted their position along the Irish battle line to join forces with Ospak's raiders and strike at Brodir and the contingent from Man.

They came screaming and bellowing at us, running downhill with the advantage of the slope, and the shock of their charge broke our shield wall. I found myself being bundled here and there in a shouting, swearing mass of men as Murchad and his bodyguard erupted through the first and second ranks of the swine array, closely followed by chain-mail-clad troops from Ospak's division, who surged into the gap torn in our line. I thought I recognised the face of Wulf, the cantankerous card player, over the upper rim of a red and white shield when the tall, gangling warrior behind whom I was standing, took a direct hit in the chest from a spear. He gave a surprised grunt and fell backwards, knocking me to the ground. As I squirmed out from under his body, one of the Gall-Gael careering into the attack took a moment aside from the more serious fighting to glance down and casually club at me with the back of his battleaxe. Even in the hubbub of the battle he must have heard the loud snapping crack as the axehead struck my spine. I caught a glimpse of his teeth as he bared them in a grimace of satisfaction before turning away, satisfied that he had broken my back. The shocking thump of the blow sent a terrible pain searing through me and I let out a gasp of agony as I fell face forward into the earth. I was dizzy with pain and when I tried to move, I found I could only turn my face far enough to one side to breathe.

As I lay there semi-paralysed, I watched from ground level the fight raging above and around me. I recognised instantly the Irish leader, Murchad. He was armed with a long, heavy sword and using it two-handed to thrust and sweep as he carved his path through the disorganised swine formation. He had no need for a shield because fully armoured bodyguards kept pace with him on each side, blocking the counter-blows and leaving Murchad the glory of killing his opponents. I saw two of Brodir's best men go down before him, no more than five paces from where I lay, and then Murchad was called away by someone shouting urgently in a tongue which, even in the waves of pain coming from my spine and ribs, I could understand as Irish. Then someone trode heavily on my outflung arm, and the edge of a grey cloak passed across my field of vision. I closed my eyes, pretending to be dead, and after a moment's pause I opened them a slit and saw that it was Wulf the Quarrelsome who had tramped over me. He still held his long pike in his hand and was headed for the huge figure of Brodir, who was sweeping with his battleaxe to fend off a frontal attack from two more of Ospak's men. I was too tired and in a state of shock to shout a warning, even if I had thought to do so. It probably would have been the death of me, for Gall-Gael and Ostmen thought nothing of spearing a wounded man lying on the battlefield. Instead I watched Wulf come within pike thrust of Brodir and pause, waiting for his chance. As Brodir's axe swept down on one of his adversaries, Wulf lunged. He was aiming for the weakest spot in Brodir's famous mail shirt, the place in the armpit where even the most skilful armourer finds it impossible to make a flawless join between the metal rings which protect the shoulder and the torso. The point of the pike pierced the mail and carried into Brodir's side. The huge Manx leader staggered for a moment, then turning, pulled the weapon free. His face had gone deadly pale, though I could not tell whether it was from the pain of the stab or the shocking realisation that his talisman, the famous mail jacket, had failed him. Wulf had stepped back half a pace, still holding the pike, its point wet with Brodir's blood, and then stabbed again, hitting the same spot, probably more by good luck than judgement. I had expected Brodir to counter-attack, but to my dismay he began to retreat. He switched his battleaxe to his uninjured arm, and took several steps backwards, his body hunched over to protect his wounded side while still swinging his battleaxe to keep off his attackers. From his ungainly posture it was clear that he was hurt, and even more obvious that he was strongly right-handed and not at all accustomed to using a battleaxe with his left hand.

As Brodir backed away slowly from his attackers, it dawned on me that he should not have been fighting alone. Members of his war band should have been on hand to protect their leader's retreat, but no one was coming to his assistance. Cautiously I twisted my head around to see what was going on elsewhere. The sound of battle was ebbing, and I guessed that there would soon be another lull in the fighting to allow the two armies to pull back and regroup. Lying prone on the ground, I could not see what had happened on the rest of the battlefield, who had sustained the heaviest losses or who had gained the upper hand. But the fighting between Brodir's men and Ospak's followers must have been murderous. Beyond the body of the tall soldier whose collapse had knocked me down lay three dead men. Judging by their armour, they were from the front line of our swine array, and they had not given up their lives cheaply. In front of them were two enemy corpses and one casualty, whether he was friend or foe I could not tell, who was still alive. He was lying on his back and moaning with pain. He had lost an arm, chopped off at the elbow, and was trying to sit up, but was so unbalanced by his maiming, that he never managed to rise more than a few inches before falling with a small whimper. Soon he must bleed to death. Cautiously I began to check my own injuries. I stretched out one arm, then the other, and half-rolled onto my side. The pain from my back pierced deep into me, but I was encouraged to find that I could feel sensation in my right leg. My left leg was completely numb and then I saw that it was still trapped under the dead soldier. Cautiously I worked the leg free and, like a crab, pulled myself away from the corpse. After a pause to gather more strength, I struggled up onto my hands and knees, and reached back to feel the spot where the axe had struck me. Under my shirt my hand touched a hard, jagged edge and for one awful moment I thought I was touching the end of a broken rib emerging from my flesh. But I was imagining. What I was feeling was the broken haft of the small knife, which I usually wore out of sight, protected in a wooden sheath and hanging loosely from a thong around my neck. During the turmoil of the battle, the knife must have swung round behind my back, and it had taken the full force of the axe blow. The crack that the Gall-Gael thought was my spine breaking was the knife and wooden sheath snapping in two.

Slowly I rose to my feet as waves of dizziness swept over me, and set off at a hobbling run, weaving my way between the scatter of dead and wounded men and heading for the one symbol that I could recognise: the black raven banner of Earl Sigurd, which marked where the Orkneymen still rallied to their leader. There were not nearly as many of them as I had remembered, and at least half of those who were still on their feet appeared to be wounded. Sigurd himself was in the centre of the group and unharmed, so I guessed that his bodyguard had done their duty. Then I noticed that most of his surviving bodyguard were Burners. They must have stood together in the battle as fellow Icelanders and that is what had saved them. To my surprise, Sigurd the Stout noticed me at once. 'Here's Kari Solmundarson's young friend,' he called out cheerfully. 'You wanted to come to Ireland and find out what it is like. Now you know.' At the mention of Kari's name, several of the Burners glanced round and I was sure that the Burner who had been puzzling over my identity finally realised who I was and that he had seen me at the Althing. But there was nothing he could do, at least for the moment.

Sigurd was demanding everyone's attention. An overweight butterball of a man, he did not look as if his place was among the cut and thrust of the battlefield, but his courage matched his corpulence. Purple in the face and hoarse from shouting, he began to stamp up and down, exhorting his men to get ready for the next clash, to fight boldly and to maintain their honour. His mother's seidr spell on the black raven banner was holding true, he told them. The Orkneymen had been the most successful of Sigtryggr's allies on the battlefield. They had withstood the enemy onslaught better than anyone else, and he praised the sacrifice of the three men who had been cut down while carrying the standard.

'Even now the Valkyries are escorting them to Valholl, where each man has rightly earned his place. Soon he will tell the tale of how he defended Odinn's raven though it meant his own certain death.' Few of the Orkneymen seemed impressed. They looked utterly exhausted and when Sigurd called for a volunteer to carry the banner at the next assault, there was no response. There was an awkward silence into which I stepped. Why I did this, I still cannot say for sure. Perhaps I was dizzy and disorientated from the battering I had received; perhaps I had decided that I had nothing to lose now that I had been recognised by the Burners. I only know that as I walked unsteadily to where the flagstaff was stuck in the ground I was feeling the same sensation of calm and inevitability that I had felt years earlier when, as a boy, I had crossed the clearing in the wood in Vinland and entered the hut of the Skraelings. My legs were acting on their own and my body was separate from my mind. I felt as if I was floating at a little distance outside and above my physical self and calmly looking down on a familiar stranger. I tugged the flagpole from the earth. For a moment Sigurd looked astonished. Then he gave a roar of approval. 'There you are,' he called to his men 'we've got our lucky bannerman! The lad's unarmed, yet he'll carry the black raven for us.'

My role as the earl's standard bearer was brief and inglorious. For a third time the High King's forces came swarming down the slope at us, and once again it was Murchad's shock troops who led the way. We had now been on the battlefield all morning and both sides were torn and weary, but somehow Murchad's people seemed to find the strength to smash down at us as fiercely as ever. Sigurd's raven banner was their supreme prize. First it was a half-crazed, kilted Irish clansman leaping down the hill determined to show his courage to his colleagues by seizing the standard. Then came a pair of grim-faced Norse mercenaries heavily chopping their way through the shield wall, concentrating at the spot nearest to the raven banner. For a short interval Fat Sigurd's Orkneymen held firm. They stood solid, shields locked together, resisting the onslaught and exchanging axe sweeps with the enemy. Two paces behind them, for I was in the second rank of the swine array now, I could do no more than use the banner staff as my crutch, leaning on it for support with my head bowed and one end of the pole resting on the ground. I was in agony from my damaged back and I tried desperately to think of a galdr spell chant that might help me, but my mind was in turmoil. I heard and felt the conflict rather than saw it. Once again there was the shouting of voices, much hoarser now, the clang of metal, the thump and thud of bodies meeting and falling, the press and jostle as our formation bent and buckled. I do not even know who struck — Gall-Gael, kern or Ostmen. But suddenly there was a terrible pain in the hand that held the staff and the banner was wrenched from my grasp as I doubled over, clasping my injured hand into my belly. Someone swore in Norse, and I was aware of a tussle as two men fought over the flag, each trying to wrench the shaft from the other. Neither won the contest. I looked up to see one of Sigurd's bodyguards, it was one of the Burners — Halldor Gudmundsson, receive a killing sword thrust in his left side, just as another of the Burners stepped behind the other man and crippled him with a downward blow behind the knee. The man fell sideways and was lost beneath the stamping feet.

'Rally to the Raven!' It was Sigurd's voice, shouting over the tumult, and the tubby earl himself pushed through the brawl and grabbed the banner staff. 'Here! Thorstein, you may carry our emblem,' and he held it out to a tall man standing nearby. It was another of the Burners.

'Don't touch it if you want to live,' warned a voice sharply. An

Icelander, Asmund the White, chose this moment to desert his lord.

Thorstein hesitated, then turned away. At that moment I understood that my first interpretation of my omen dream had been correct. We had spurned our own emblem of Odinn, and the war ravens were our enemies.

Overweight and out of breath, Sigurd might have been a poor foot soldier but he was not a coward. 'Right then,' he growled, 'if no one else will carry the banner, then I will do so even if it means my death. It is fit that the beggar bears the bag, and I would prefer to die with honour than to flee, but I will need both hands if this is to be my final fight.' He pulled the red and black banner from the staff, folded it lengthways, and wrapped it around his waist as a sash. Then, with a sword in one hand and a round shield on the other arm, he stumped forward, puffing and wheezing. Only a handful of men followed him, and at least half of them were Burners. Perhaps they too realised that their lives were over and that, forbidden to ever return to Iceland, they might as well die on the battlefield. The final encounter was very brief. Sigurd lumbered straight towards the nearest Irish chieftain. Once again it was Murchad, who seemed to be everywhere during the battle. There was little contest. Murchad took a spear from a solder nearby, levelled it and when Sigurd came within range thrust forward so the weapon took Sigurd in the throat. The Earl of Orkney fell, and the moment he went down those who remained of his contingent turned and began to retreat towards the ships. A moment later I heard a deep baying cry and the wilder rattle of light drums. It was Malachi committing his fresh troops on the side of Brian Boruma.

I ran. Hugging my injured hand to my chest, I fled for my life. Twice I tripped and fell sprawling, crying out with pain as my spine was wrenched. But each time I got back on my feet and blundered forward, hoping to reach the safety of the boats. My eyes were filled with tears of pain so I could barely see where I was going. I knew only to run in the same direction as my fellows, and try to keep up with them. I heard a choking cry as someone close to me received an arrow or javelin in the back. And suddenly I was splashing through water, the salty drops flying up in my face, and my headlong rush slowing so I almost pitched forward. I looked up and saw that I had reached the beach, but was far from safety. During the battle the tide had come in, and the sand flats to which we had brought the longships that dawn were now submerged. To get to the ships our defeated men would have to wade, then swim.

I laboured forward through the pluck of the water, my feet slipping on the unseen sand and mud. Not all the men around me were fugitives. Many were hunters. I saw Norsemen who had taken Brian Boruma's pay catch up with their countrymen who had fought for Sigtryggr and cut their throats as they floundered in the sea. Blood oozed across the tide. The retreat was becoming a massacre. I watched a young Irish chieftain - he was the same man who had been pointed out as the High King's grandson — come bounding out through the shallows, his hair flying and his face alight with battle craziness. He closed with two Orkneymen, each far bigger than himself, and without a weapon his hand, he grabbed and pulled them down underwater to drown. There was a terrible thrashing in the water, and the three contestants surfaced several times before all three grew weaker until the youth and one of the Norse failed to come back and gulp for air. Their two waterlogged corpses were floating face down even as the third man, now too tired to swim the final gap, threw up his arms and sank from view.

As I watched him drown, I knew that my injured arm and hand would prevent me from swimming to the waiting boats. Turning, I waded back to land and by some intervention of the Gods I was left alone. Soaking wet, shivering with cold and shock, I emerged on the beach and, like a wounded animal, looked around me to seek shelter from my enemies. Halfway up the slope of the hill I saw a thicket of bushes at the edge of the wood overlooking the battlefield. Aching with tiredness, I laboured up the hill towards this refuge. For the last hundred paces I was panting with exhaustion and dreading the shout of discovery. But nothing came and as I reached the bushes I did not stop, but blundered forward until the tearing of the thorns slowed me. I dropped to my knees and crawled forward, holding my injured hand to my chest as a fox with a wounded leg seeks shelter after the trap. Reaching deep into the thicket, I collapsed on the ground and lay panting for breath.

I must have lost consciousness for some time, before the sound of singing penetrated through my nausea, and I thought that my ears were deceiving me. I heard the words of a hymn that my grandmother, Erik the Red's wife, had sung in the White Rabbit Hutch back in Greenland. Then the sound came again, but not in a woman's voice. It was a male choir. I crawled a few feet forward to find that my refuge was not as deep and effective as I thought. The bushes made only a thin fringe on the edge of the woods. On the far side of the bushes began a forest of young oak trees. There were wide open spaces between the tree trunks, and at that moment the nearest trunks gave the impression of being the columns of a church because, set on the forest floor, was a large portable altar. The sound of singing came from half a dozen White Christ priests who were celebrating some sort of ceremony, holding up sacred symbols, a cross, a bowl and even several candles as they sang. One of the celebrants was about my age and he was carrying a large dish covered with a cloth. The leading figure standing beside the altar was an old man, perhaps in his early sixties, grey-haired and gaunt. He was the high priest, I thought, because all the other priests were treating him with great respect and, though he was bareheaded, he was richly dressed. Then I heard the whicker of a horse and to my left I saw a large tent, half hidden among the trees, placed where it had a commanding view of the battlefield I had just left. Loitering beside the tent were half a dozen Norsemen. My brain was fuzzily trying to work out the connection between the tent and the religious ceremony when there was a great crashing sound. Out from the bushes, like an enormous enraged bear, burst Brodir. He too must have been hiding from enemy pursuit. Now he came lumbering out of the bushes and I caught a glimpse of the crusted streak down his right side where blood had leaked from his wound. Brodir still had his battleaxe in his ungainly left hand, but why he had burst from cover in this suicidal manner did not occur to me at once. I watched as Brodir ambushed the priests, and the young man with the dish tried to block his charge. The boy stepped into Brodir's path and held up the metal dish like a shield, but Brodir swept him aside with a single awkward blow from the battleaxe, and I cringed in sympathy as the boy's right hand was cut off, leaving a stump which spurted blood. Brodir gave a curious low growl as with another ungainly left-handed sweep he swung his axe at the old man's neck, half-severing his head from his body. The old man seemed to shrivel to a bunch of rags as he collapsed to the ground even as the men-at-arms came running forward, too late. Some knelt to pick up the fallen priest, the others, awed by Brodir's immense size, cautiously formed a half-circle around him and began to close in. Brodir offered no resistance, but just stood there, swaying slightly on his feet, the battleaxe hanging straight down from his weak left hand. He threw back his head and shouted, 'Now let man tell man that it was Brodir who killed King Brian.' At that moment I knew that the seidr magic of the black raven banner had been a hoax worthy of Odinn the Deceiver. I, the last person to carry the banner on high, had survived, yet we had lost the battle. By contrast our enemy, who had won the victory, had sacrificed their leader. I had witnessed the victory of the High King but the death of Brian Boruma.

Brodir was pressed back slowly by his enemies. It seemed that the men-at-arms wanted to take the killer of the High King alive. They held their shields in front of them as they advanced deliberately and cautiously, forcing Brodir back towards the thicket in which I lay. More than ever Brodir seemed like a great wounded bear, but now it was a beast that has been cornered at the end of a forest hunt. Finally he could back away no farther. His retreat was blocked by the thicket and as he took one more step backwards, still facing his enemies, he caught his heel and fell. The hunters leapt forward, literally throwing themselves on their quarry, smothering Brodir in a crackling smash of branches and twigs. Overcome in the confusion, I lost consciousness once again and the final image in front of my eyes was of the iron-beaked ravens swarming in until the entire sky went black.

SIXTEEN

I AWOKE TO a jolt of excruciating pain in my arm. I thought at first that the source was my injured hand. But the pain was now coming from the other side. I opened my eyes to find a cliathaire leaning over me, clumsily hammering a rivet to close a fetter on my right wrist. He had missed his stroke and struck my arm with the hilt of his sword, which he was using as a makeshift mallet. I twisted my head to look around. I was lying on the muddy ground not far from the bush, out of which I had been dragged unconscious. About a dozen Irish and Norse soldiers were standing with their backs to me, staring at something which lay at the foot of one of the oak trees. It was Brodir's corpse. I recognised it from the lustrous long black hair. He had been disembowelled. Later I was told that this had been done at the request of the mercenaries in the High King's bodyguard. They claimed that Brodir's murderous ambush of the unarmed High King had been the mark of a coward and should be punished in the traditional way — his stomach slit and his guts pulled out while he was still alive. So his entrails had been nailed up to the oak tree. The truth, I suspected, was that the mercenaries were trying to divert attention from their own deficiency. They should never have left the High King unguarded.

The Irishman hoisted me to my feet, then tugged the fetter's chain to lead me away from the scene of Brian Boruma's death.

'Name?' he asked in dansk tong. He was a short, wiry man of about forty, dressed in the usual Irish costume of leggings bound with gaiters and a loose shirt, over which he wore a short brown and black cloak. He slung his small round shield onto his back by its strap so that he had one hand free to hold my leading chain. In his other hand he still held his sword.

'Thorgils Leifsson,' I replied. 'Where are you taking me?'

He looked up in surprise. I had spoken in Irish. 'Are you one of Sigtryggr's people, from Dublin?' he demanded.

'No, I came here with the ships from Man, but I didn't belong to Brodir's contingent.'

For some reason, the Irishman looked rather pleased with this news. 'Why were you fighting alongside them, then?' he asked.

It was too complicated to explain how I had come to be with Brodir's men, so I replied only, 'I was looking after a pair of wolf hounds for him, as their keeper.' And, unwittingly, with those words I sealed my fate.

After a short walk we reached the area where the remnants of the High King's army were gathering together the plunder of battle. The simple rule was that the first person to lay hands on a corpse got to keep his spoil provided he stripped the victim quickly and made it clear that he had established his claim to the booty. Many victors were already dressed in several layers of garments, a motley collection of captured finery worn one on top of another, with many of the outer layers blood-stained. Others were carrying four or five swords in their arms as if collecting sticks of firewood in the forest, while their colleagues were busy stuffing looted shoes into their sacks, together with belts and shirts, which they had stripped from the slain, including the dead from their own side. One Irish fighter had assembled a gruesome collection of three severed heads, which he had thrown on the ground, their hair knotted together. Clusters of men were disputing the more valuable items — chain-mail shirts or body jewellery. These arguments were frequently between Malachi's fresh troops and Boruma's battle-stained soldiers, who had done most of the fighting. The latter usually won the argument because they had an ugly, tired gleam in their eyes which indicated that after so much slaughter they were fully prepared to keep their rewards even if it meant taking arms against their own side.

My captor led me to a small group of his colleagues who were clustered around a campfire, preparing a meal. A jumble of their booty lay on the ground beside them. It was rather meagre, mosdy weaponry, a few helmets and some Ostman clothes. They looked up as he approached. 'Here,' he said, jerking on my chain, 'I've got the Man leader's aurchogad.' They looked impressed. An aurchogad, I was to learn, was a keeper of hounds. This is an official post among the Irish and found only in the retinue of a senior chief. By the Irish custom of war it meant that, as far as my captors were concerned, I had been a member of Brodir's personal retinue. Therefore I was a legitimate captive, an item of war booty, and thus I was now my captor's slave.

Our little group did not linger on the battlefield. Word quickly spread that Malachi, who was now effectively the leader of the victorious army, was already in negotiations with King Sigtryggr, still safe behind his city walls with Gormlaith, and that there would be no attack on the city, so no booty there. With Brian Boruma dead, Malachi had lost no time in laying claim to the title of High King, and Sigtryggr was promising to support his claim on condition that Malachi spared Dublin from being plundered. So the real victors of our momentous battle were the two leaders who had taken the least part in the fighting and, of course, Gormlaith. As matters turned out, she was to spend the next fifteen years in Dublin as the undisputed power behind the throne, telling King Sigtryggr what to do.

The losses among the real combatants had been horrific. Nearly every member of Boruma's family who took part in the battle had been killed, including two of his grandsons, and Murchad's reckless courage had finally brought about his own death. He had knocked one of Brodir's men to the ground and was leaning over him, about to finish him off when the Norseman thrust upward with his own dagger and gutted the Irish leader. One-third of the High King's fighters lay dead on the battlefield, and they had inflicted a similar level of damage on their opponents. Mael Morda's Leinstermen had been annihilated, and only a handful of the Norse troops from overseas survived the desperate scramble through the tidal shallows to get back to their ships. Earl Sigurd's Orkneymen suffered worst of all. Fewer than one man in ten managed to escape with his life, and Earl Sigurd's entire personal retinue had fallen, including fifteen of the Burners, though, for me, that was little consolation.

My owner, I learned as we marched into the interior of Ireland, went by the name of Donnachad Ua Dalaigh, and he was what the Irish call a ri or king. This does not mean a king as others might know it. Donnachad was no more than the leader of a small tuath or petty kingdom located somewhere in the centre of the country. By foreign standards he would have been considered little more than a sub-chieftain. But the Irish are a proud and fractious people and they cling to any level or mark of distinction, however modest. So they have several grades of kingship and Donnachad was of the lowest rank, being merely a ri tuathe, the headman of a small group who claim descent from a single ancestor of whose semi-legendary exploits they are, of course, extremely proud. Certainly Donnachad was much too unimportant to have rated an aurchogad of his own. Indeed, he was fortunate even to have the services of the single elderly attendant, who helped to carry his weapons and a dented cooking pot, as we travelled west with his war band of no more than twenty warriors. Donnachad himself proudly held the chain attached to his one and only slave.

I had never seen such a verdant country in all my life. Everywhere the vegetation was bursting from bud to leaf. There were great swathes of woodland, mostly oak and ash, and between the forests stretched open country that brimmed with green. Much of the ground was soggy, but our track followed a ridge of high ground that was better drained and on either hand I looked out across a gently rolling landscape with thorn trees so heavy with white blossoms that the sudden gusts of winds created little snowstorms of white petals that drifted down onto the path. The verges on each side of the track were speckled with small spring flowers in dark blue, pale yellow and purple, and every bush seemed to hold at least one pair of songbirds so intent on their calls that they ignored our approach until we were nearly close enough to touch them. Even then they only hopped a few feet into the upper branches to continue to announce their courting. The weather itself was utterly unpredictable. In the space of a single day we experienced all seasons of the year. A blustery grey morning brought an autumn gale that buffeted us so fiercely that we had to walk leaning into the blast, and the squall was succeeded by a spring-like interval of at least an hour when the wind suddenly dropped and we heard again the shouting of the small birds, only for a swollen black cloud to throw down on us a rattling attack of winter sleet and hail that had us pulling up the hoods of our cloaks and pausing for shelter under the largest and leafiest tree. Yet by mid-afternoon the clouds had cleared away entirely and the sunshine was so hot on our faces that we were rolling up our cloaks to tie them on top of our packs as we tramped, sweating, through the puddles left by the recent downpour.

After all, Donnachad proved to be a rather good-natured man and not the least vindictive. On the third day of the journey he abandoned the practice of holding my lead chain, and let me walk along with the rest of his band, though I still wore the fetters on each wrist. This was particularly painful for my left arm because the hand in which I had held the staff of the black raven banner when I was struck was puffed up and swollen and had turned an ugly purple-yellow. At first I had thought I would lose the use of the fingers entirely, for I could not bend them and I had no sense of touch. But gradually the swelling receded and my hand began to mend, though it would always ache before the onset of rain. The small bones, I suppose, had been fractured and never knitted together properly.

We passed a succession of small hamlets, usually set off at some distance to one side of the road. They were prosperous-looking places, groups of thatched farms and outbuildings often protected by a palisade, but their vegetable patches and grazing pastures were outside the defensive perimeter so evidently the land was not entirely lawless. From time to time Donnachad and his men turned aside to tell the farmers about the outcome of the great battle and to purchase food, paying with minor items of their spoil, and I looked for the barns where the farmers stored the winter hay for feeding their cattle, but then realised that the Irish winters were so mild that the herders could allow the cattle to graze outside all year long. We were travelling along a well-used road, and frequently met other travellers coming towards us — farmers with cattle on their way to a local market, pedlars and itinerant craftsmen. Occasionally we met a ri tuathre, a chieftain one step up the hierarchy from Donnachad. These mid-ranking nobles ruled over several smaller tuaths, and whenever we met one on the road I noted how Donnachad and his people stood respectfully aside to allow the ri tuathre to trot past on his small horse, accompanied by at least twenty outriders.