Stormcrow

by Ben Kane

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Stormcrow is the first in a new series from Sunday Times bestseller Ben Kane. This epic and thrilling adventure is inspired by the Norseman who forever changed Ireland. Combining historical research with propulsive storytelling and Norse mythology, Stormcrow is packed with blood and intrigue, battles and magic, love and betrayal.

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 352

Sample

‘Brilliantly entertaining. In Matthew Carrey, Ben Kane has created a wonderfully flawed but human hero, a man who, often unwittingly and many times entirely through his own errors of judgement, finds himself caught up in one desperate escapade after another, and which, like the very best historical adventures, see him cross seas and travel continents and, along the way, meet an array of acutely observed characters from villains to femme fatales and to Napoleon himself. Ben Kane’s attention to historical detail is also second-to-none – in Napoleon’s Spy he has brought Napoleon’s calamitous Russian campaign vividly and compelling to life in one of the most enjoyable and compelling historical romps I’ve read in a very long time’

James Holland, historian, writer and broadcaster

‘Napoleon’s Spy is a tour de force on an epic scale that immerses the reader in the scent of cannon smoke and the whistle of grapeshot. You can almost taste the fear. The 1812 campaign is a story of immense sacrifice, enormous courage and a man who never knew when to take a step back until it was too late for those who revered him. Ben Kane is one of our finest historical novelists and his passion for his subject shines through on every page’

Douglas Jackson, author of Hero of Rome

‘As soon as I read the first few pages of a Ben Kane novel, I’m all in. It was no different with Napoleon’s Spy. Kane’s historical detail is as intriguing and fascinating as his characters are compelling. His prose is lively, economical and intimate, so that this story reads like a first hand account, but with the Kane master storyteller treatment. In fact, Napoleon’s Spy is an exemplar of a Ben Kane novel; exciting, immersive, well researched and great fun. The author’s very name has long been a seal of quality, and here he is at the top of his (or anybody’s) game. What I love about this book, and his others too, is that it feels nostalgic. It reminds me of those classic, epic Hollywood movies of the 1950s and 1960s, which fired my imagination as a child and, in many ways, shaped me. We have a flawed hero on a mission, thwarted by colourful villains and beset by every danger, all set against an epic backdrop of nation-defining war. What’s not to love? Bravo, Ben Kane, you’ve done it again’

Giles Kristian, author of Lancelot

‘With intrigue, espionage and duels, this is a great adventure story set against the epic background of Napoleon’s doomed invasion of Russia’

Adrian Goldsworthy, bestselling historian

‘Ben Kane pivots from ancient Rome and medieval England to the Napoleonic Wars, and delivers up a rip-roaring tale full of both swashbuckling and pathos. Half-English, half-French Matthieu Carrey battles a weakness for cards and wine which frequently lands him in hot water, finding himself strong-armed into the reluctant position of Imperial messenger for Napoleon and clandestine spy for the English. Matthieu makes an appealingly flawed hero, fighting not only illicit duels and Cossack lances on the Grand Armee’s campaign through Russia, but his own worst impulses. It looks like the adventures of Napoleon’s Spy may continue for future books - I for one will be first in line!’

Kate Quinn, author of Blood Sisters

‘An epic tale that never loses sight of the raw experience of the hero. I loved Napoleon’s Spy’

Simon Scarrow, author of the Eagles of the Empire series

‘The first half of Napoleon’s Spy is fun – a picturesque tale of duels, love affairs and gambling dens. The second is a searing, vivid account of Napoleon’s terrible retreat from Moscow’

Antonia Senior, The Times

‘Richard the Lionheart’s name echoes down the centuries as one of history’s greatest warriors, and this book will immortalise him even more. A rip-roaring epic, filled with arrows and spattered with blood. Gird yourself with mail when you start’

Paul Finch, author of Strangers

‘Kane’s virtues as a writer of historical adventures – lively prose, thorough research, colourful action – are again apparent’

Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times

‘Lionheart has plenty of betrayal, bloodshed and rich historical detail’

Martin Chilton, Independent

‘Plenty of action, blood, scheming, hatred, stealth and politics here, if that’s what you want in your read – and you know it is!’

Sunday Sport

To read one of Ben Kane’s astonishingly well-researched, bestselling novels is to know that you are, historically speaking, in safe hands’

Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail

This is a stunningly visual and powerful read: Kane’s power of des­cription is second to none . . . Perfect for anyone who is suffering from Game of Thrones withdrawal symptoms’

Helena Gumley-Mason, The Lady

Fans of battle-heavy historical fiction will, justly, adore Clash of Empires. With its rounded historical characters and fascinating historical setting, it deserves a wider audience’

Antonia Senior, The Times

Grabs you from the start and never lets go. Thrilling action combines with historical authenticity to summon up a whole world in a sweeping tale of politics and war. A triumph!’

Harry Sidebottom, author of the The Last Hour

‘Exceptional. Kane’s excelled once again in capturing the terror and the glory . . . of the ancient battlefield, and this story is one that’s been begging for an expert hand for a long time’

Anthony Riches, author of the Empire series

‘Carried off with panache and Kane’s expansive, engaging, action-packed style. A complex, fraught, moving and passionate slice of history from one of our generation’s most ambitious and engaging writers’

Manda Scott, author of the Boudica series

‘It’s a broad canvas Kane is painting on, but he does it with vivid colours and, like the Romans themselves, he can show great admiration for a Greek enemy and still kick them in the balls’

Robert Low, author of the Oathsworn series

‘Ben Kane manages to marry broad narrative invention with detailed historical research . . . in taut, authoritative prose . . . his passion for the past, and for the craft of story-telling, shines from every page’

Toby Clements, author of the Kingmaker series

‘This thrilling series opener delivers every cough, spit, curse and gush of blood to set up the mighty clash of the title. Can’t really fault this one’

Jon Wise, Weekend Sport

‘Ben Kane’s new series explores the bloody final clash between ancient Greece and upstart Rome, focusing on soldiers and leaders from both worlds and telling the story of a bloody war with style’

Charlotte Heathcote, Sunday Express S Magazine

A thumping good read. You can feel the earth tremble from the great battle scenes and feel the desperation of those caught up in the conflict. Kane’s brilliant research weaves its way lightly throughout’

David Gilman, author of the Master of War series

Putting a note at the start of my novel is becoming something of a habit. As with Napoleon’s Spy, I feel the need from the outset to explain details found in the book, because they may be unfamiliar to some readers.

A quick explanation: The Norse were a people who lived in modern-day Denmark, Sweden and Norway from the eighth to the early eleventh century ad. They were seafarers, traders, settlers and farmers. Vikings were a specific group of Norsemen, part-time warriors who served jarls, and sometimes went raiding. In other words, all Vikings were Norse, but most Norsemen were not Vikings.

In medieval Norse culture the main performers of seiðr, sorcery, were women. The men who practised it were effeminate and existed in a ‘sexually charged state of dishonour’, to quote Professor Neil Price, author of The Viking Way. They were regarded as unmanly, and by implication, assumed to adopt the female role in sex. Interestingly, being gay was acceptable among the Irish.

In 2017 the revisiting of a grave find from Birka in Sweden changed interpretation of Norse culture forever. A skeleton buried with the accoutrements of a warrior: an axe, quiver of arrows, spears and a sword, had originally been determined as male. When re-examined by archaeologist Anna Kjellström, it was found, remarkably, to be that of a woman. A woman, buried with war gear. The debate since has been endless, but one thing is clear – this woman was a warrior.

The find is not perhaps as unique as it might first seem. There are recorded instances of women serving in the Royal Navy in the Napo­leonic conflict, as well as in the armies of the American Civil War. Their motivation remains unclear, but it is reasonable to put forward possible explanations. They may have been following their husbands or lovers into military service. They may have simply been seeking adventure. Fleeing domestic abuse. Or they may have been transgender.

In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Dublin had one of the largest slave markets in Europe. The sale of black slaves there is also in the historical record. Racism may have existed then as now, but there is no evidence in Norse culture of negative attitude towards people of colour.

These, then, are the historical bases for some of the characters you will read about in Stormcrow – not demented figments of my ‘woke’ imagination, but people who really could have existed.

Linn Duachaill, east coast of Ériu, spring ad 990

Mesmerised, I stared at the dark shape on the muddy sand.

Just ordered by my mother to see what the previous night’s storm might have sent ashore, I had disgruntledly spooned down the last of my barley porridge, thrown on my cloak and left the longhouse. There would be sea wrack, I had decided, lots of it, hard to work through for flotsam and jetsam. There would be dog whelks too, on the rocks. If my luck was in, there might be timber. Every so often, ship’s cargo washed up; that too would be cause for celebration.

What I had not anticipated this gusty spring morning was a corpse.

The man lay on his back some fifty paces away, where the receding tide had left him. I wove a path in his direction, staying on the drier patches of sand, all the while my attention returning to the body. What flesh I could see was wrinkled and pale, the effects of time in the water. Bearded, fully clothed in tunic and leggings, he looked to be a Norseman, like my father Thorgil.

It could not be my father, however, because I had seen him already, sooty-faced, hard at work in his forge. It could not be my father, because this man wore a silver arm ring, and there was a scabbarded sword attached to his belt. Only the wealthy afforded such jewellery and weapons.

Fascinated, for I was not allowed to handle the few swords that my father made, I went closer. I was only a little scared. Death, of animals and people, was an everyday occurrence. Not every newborn lamb survived; every autumn, we slaughtered a pig. People died too, like Rodrek the thrall, taken by a fever two years before, or our nearest neighbour, Old Inga, whom I had found dead in bed some months since. This corpse was very different. Half the top of its head was missing, sliced away by the look of it. This man had not drowned, I thought, but been slain.

Alarmed, my gaze went seaward. The water was choppy, white horses capping the waves to the horizon, but of longships there was not a sign. Relief filled me. It was not raiding season, yet stranger things had happened. I wondered uneasily if anyone would come looking for this dead man. It was unlikely, I decided. His comrades would have no idea that his body had ended up on the strand at Linn Duachaill.

Krrruk. A flutter of black wings, and a raven landed a dozen steps away. It cocked a beady eye at me, and hopped towards the corpse.

The sudden cold I felt had nothing to do with the wind.

Ravens were sacred to the god Oðin. Two of them he had, Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory. Flying hither and thither over the world, they returned each evening to perch on his shoulders, bringing news.

Only now did I notice the absence of gulls. Expert scavengers, they should have been here in numbers, feasting on the dead man’s flesh. There were none. ‘Because Oðin’s bird is here,’ I whispered.

If my mother had heard me, she would have boxed my ears. Irish and a devout Christian, she reviled the Norse gods. My father, though, still held faith with the beliefs of his ancestors. I did too, finding little to admire in the Christ worshippers’ turn-the-other-cheek behaviour.

Krrruk. The raven hopped onto the dead man’s belly. To my amazement, it did not make for his face, but the hilt of the sword. Mine, the gesture said. That was very plain, even to my thirteen-year-old eyes.

‘Finn!’

We had few neighbours; the voice could not have been that of many people, but I would have known Vekel’s voice anywhere. The same age as me, near enough, he was the only other boy in the immediate area. Tall, gangling, womanish, he was my best friend.

‘Finn!’

‘What?’ I did not turn my head, but watched the raven. In between pecks at the yellow-white hilt, it appeared to be studying me. I was not sure where the courage came from to stare back, yet I did.

‘Did he drown?’

‘No. Someone took off the top of his head.’

‘And now Oðin’s raven is on him? Finn, come away!’ There was an unusual nervousness in Vekel’s voice.

I saw the sword first, I thought stubbornly, and took a step towards the corpse.

‘Finn! Finn!’

I hesitated. I had always been fierce-tempered, and loved rough-and-tumble horseplay. When the chance came to battle another boy, I took it every time. Fighting came naturally to me, I did not know why. I had regular dreams of being a warrior, a painter of the wolf’s tooth. In all likelihood, though, I would train as a smith like my father. Vekel was very different. Living with his grandmother, both parents dead, he was, most agreed, destined for a seiðr life, an existence entwined with magic. It wasn’t just his uncanny ability with horses, or his feminine behaviour; he liked darkness, tales of Ragnarök, anything to do with the spirit world. When his father died, he had crept unseen from his bed and sat out all night by the grave, so, he proudly revealed afterwards, he could better commune with the shade.

The mere thought loosened my bowels. Why then, I wondered, did I not feel the same fear about possibly depriving a god’s chosen bird of its prize?

Two more steps. Now I eyed the sword with naked greed. It was magnificent. The hilt seemed to be ivory, and the silver-chased scabbard ran down to an elaborately carved chape. I wanted it, more than anything in my life before.

Another step.

The raven let out a croak, and stayed where it was.

‘Finn! Are you mad?’

‘I saw the sword first,’ I told the raven.

‘What did you say?’ Vekel shouted.

The bird’s head cocked this way and that. Its beak clacked.

A raven could not carry a sword away, I thought. Maybe Oðin himself would come to claim it, but I doubted that. Sightings of gods were rare as hen’s teeth. After the raven had eaten its fill, it would fly off, and whoever next came upon the body would take the princely blade. It might as well be mine, I decided.

Another two steps, within touching distance of corpse and bird.

Incredibly, the raven did not move.

‘Let me have the sword,’ I said, the words rising unbidden to my lips, ‘and I swear to serve Oðin the length of my days.’

Time slowed. Vekel’s cries and questions dimmed in my ears. My focus narrowed. All I saw was the raven’s glossy black head, beak slightly agape. Its flint-black eyes bored into me.

My mouth dried. A pulse beat in my throat.

‘Is this truly your oath?’ the raven seemed to ask.

‘Strike me down if I lie.’ My voice, not quite broken, cracked on the last word. ‘From this moment, I am Oðin’s servant.’

Krrruk. Krrruk. The raven hopped off the corpse, as if to let me approach. Its head bobbed up and down; it did not fly away.

Something made me glance over my shoulder. Vekel was watching from a short distance away, and his mouth was hanging open. That reaction, from my magic-loving friend, was a spur to the last of my indecision.

‘With your permission,’ I said gravely to the raven, and reached down to slip off the dead man’s baldric.

A little while later, I was walking the strand. The baldric was not adjustable, so the sword, by my side, reached almost to my left foot. I did not care. A quick look had revealed the blade to be every bit as magnificent as the scabbard. I felt like a giant. I did not know how long my jubilation would last, however. I suspected that upon my return my father would take the sword from me. Therefore, I decided, my search of the beach would be slow.

Vekel had not challenged the raven as I had. After a wary look at the corpse, after asking if I truly wanted the blade – my reply had been a vehement ‘yes’ – he had come with me. He demanded every last detail. There wasn’t much to tell, I told him, laying out my story. Repeating the oath to Oðin, however, the magnitude of what I had done drove home.

‘You did what?’ Vekel’s expression was again a picture.

‘In return for the sword, I dedicated myself to Oðin.’ My cheeks were warming; said aloud now, it sounded childish. Stupid.

Vekel walked on in silence.

I glanced sidelong at my friend, expecting him to chide, or even make fun of me, but he was deep in thought. I concentrated on looking for timber, or anything of value that the tide might have delivered. I could not resist a peek over my shoulder either. The raven was gone. Gulls were quarrelling over the corpse. More circled overhead. The air of mystery had vanished.

‘Of course!’

‘What?’ To myself, I said, do not let him tell me that Oðin will curse me unless I put the sword back.

‘It’s so obvious I didn’t see it at first.’ Vekel’s thin face had lit up.

‘Tell me!’

‘The raven knew you were going to be there.’

‘It did?’

He buffeted me with an arm. ‘Oðin told him!’

All I could do was stare. There was something guarded about his last words, almost as if he’d held back information, but my hopes of keeping the blade soaring, I paid no heed.

‘Oðin wanted you to have the sword, so he sent the raven,’ Vekel said. ‘Huginn, it was.’

How he ascertained the god’s purpose, I had no idea, still less how he knew which raven it had been. But Vekel’s words held the ring of conviction, and I believed them. My father would too. My friend’s manner, his behaviour, meant that many people regarded him as spirit-touched. I think it helped that there was no vitki in the area, no one else associated with seiðr. Few would have the conviction to deny what Vekel said.

‘Look.’ Vekel’s arm pointed into the freshening breeze.

Great banks of cloud, black and thunderous, had gathered far out to sea.

‘Another storm is coming,’ I said.

‘Oðin again. He has interceded with Thor to mark the occasion.’

I gave him an uneasy smile. It was incredible enough for a god to give me a sword; quite another for two deities to be involved.

‘There can be only one name for you now.’ Vekel’s expression was solemn.

I dared not speak my mind: Sword-stealer. Corpse-thief.

‘Stormcrow.’

No one ever came looking for the corpse or his sword, and over the next four years, many things happened. The first and most significant occurrence was my mother’s death in labour, birthing a third child she, narrow-hipped, should never have borne. It was a kindness that the babe, a girl, did not live out the day of its arrival in this world. The family shrank, leaving me, my younger sister Ashild, and my father. Ashild, strong-willed and capable, took over the running of the house. It was as well, for my father’s heart had been broken. Despite his Norse background and my mother’s Irish one, they had made a good match, and largely been content with one another.

During this time I grew, mostly upwards, but I also filled out. By seventeen, I was stocky, broad-chested and the same height as my father, who was taller than most. I was cocky with it, not least because daily work in the smithy had seen me muscled like an ox. I was able to use an axe and shield, thanks to my father. He had long given up war, but as a young man sailed with the Dyflin Norse, his kin, raiding down the coastline and around to the kingdom of Mumhan. He rarely spoke of it, and was at first reluctant for me to learn weaponcraft. ‘Better to work iron,’ he would growl. ‘It’s safer.’ I ground him down, though, with a mixture of flattery and outright begging.

He was too busy to train me as much as I wanted, though. War is not pretty, he would sometimes say in his cups. Better to have soot stain your hands than blood. Imagining myself a hero in one of the sagas, I did not listen. Long after our occasional sessions ended, I would practise the moves he taught me outside our longhouse. A training partner would have been good, but the only boys of my own age in the settlement were a neighbour’s son Berghard, dim-witted since being kicked in the head by a bull, and Vekel. The latter had an aversion to weapons. It was rare indeed that I could persuade him to pick up axe and shield and stand against me.

Despite my dreams, I was no battle-ready warrior, but at least my father had not taken the sword from me, as I had first worried. I think he might have, but Vekel’s account of how I had found it changed his mind. He would not teach me how to use it. Better learn from a master, or not at all, he said, adding, especially when the blade came from a god. It was hard logic, but I accepted it. I lived in hope that Vekel had been correct about the raven, and that because of it, my time would come one day. Whether it was because of these hopes, or just an innate wanderlust, I had long been eager to spread my wings and leave Linn Duachaill.

Few people except Vekel called me ‘Stormcrow’, but everyone had heard the story of the sword. The tale had grown with the years. There had been two ravens, one of which had guided me to it, while the other had picked up and offered part of the baldric to me. Thunder had rumbled overhead when I took hold of the weapon. Enjoying the untruths, I made no effort to dispel them.

Vekel was my constant companion during that time, but an occasion when he was not bears mention. It was perhaps a year after my discovery of the sword, one of those spring days when for the first time in what seems an age, the sunshine is warm. When every plant is growing, every tree branch budding and verdant. When the birdsong has a joyous tone evident to all, and male hares box for supremacy in the paddocks.

Linn Duachaill was humming with excitement. It didn’t take much. A Norse trader, Egil the Fat, had called in on his way up the coast. It was a yearly, much looked forward to event. Once Egil’s broad-bellied knarr was safely moored in the best landing spot, which lay around the first two bends of the river, his thralls unloaded merchandise. Most of the people in the settlement were there to watch, me included. I hoped that Vekel, who had gone for a walk on his own, would soon arrive.

Egil’s son Olvir, a corpulent, surly youth about a year older than Vekel and I, had come on the voyage too. He was a contrast to his jovial father, and never offered a greeting to us. As Egil waxed lyrical about the exotic origins of his goods: Valland, Miklagard, Serkland and Groenland, Olvir, who had probably heard it a hundred times before, rolled his eyes and wandered off. I didn’t care.

As well as the costly and out-of-the-ordinary, Egil had staples everyone needed. The women gathered around the bales of coloured wool and rolls of off-white linen, touching, and muttering together about the price. There were glass beads and ring-headed dress pins from Jorvik, pieces of jet, amber from Lochlann. I had never seen the like of the woman’s headdress, fashioned from a wondrously smooth fabric called silk. He had spindle whorls, loom weights, glass smoothers, fine bone needles and skates made from pig bones. Hjaltland honing stones lay beside pottery and metalworking crucibles from northern Britain, and quernstones fashioned from a porous, honeycombed type of rock that Egil said came from a fire-mountain.

I was drawn to the most expensive and rare objects for sale. These ones Egil stood over, his keen eyes moving between them and the watching audience to them every now and again. There were bear claws, and even a whole pelt, tafl pieces of ivory and whalebone, and the tusk of a fantastical but real beast called a hrossvalr. Much larger than a seal, and dangerous, Egil said, it lived in Groenland. I spotted a silver disc brooch fashioned like a large coin and covered in mysterious script, and wondered if Ashild would like it. I dared to ask the price, which was so high I gasped. Egil, the master, immediately halved what he’d asked, and suggested I take the brooch off his hands. I coloured, and replied that it was still far more than I could afford.

Egil, who like as not had been aware, took my reply good-humouredly.

Something else caught my eye, and I was brought back to the beach, the corpse, the sword and the raven. Reaching out, I wondered how it had escaped my notice. A silver amulet, it was the length of my thumb from the tip to the first knuckle, and less than half that across. Intricate, interwoven lines formed the wings, the body, the tail, the head of a bird. The breath caught in my chest. It was a raven, no question, one of Oðin’s.

Egil had seen my interest. ‘A nice piece, is it not?’

‘Finn!’

I turned with a smile. ‘Come and look, Ashild.’

‘Not now, Finn!’ Her face was pinched, and not at all happy.

Alarm stirring, the amulet forgotten, I stepped away from the onlookers. ‘What is it?’

‘Vekel is hurt.’

‘While he was out walking?’ That was odd, I thought. The flat landscape around Linn Duachaill offered little in the way of danger.

She lowered her voice. ‘No, it’s Olvir. He’s beating Vekel for no reason.’

We began to run, my sister leading the way.

‘I heard the shouts and cries,’ said Ashild, ‘and when I got there, told Olvir to stop. He laughed, and said I was a straw-footed slattern, good for nothing but breeding brats.’

I was even more angry now. ‘Where is he?’

‘Just the other side of the rampart.’

Where no one would hear or see, I thought, fresh urgency driving me on.

I outstripped Ashild, and came haring through the cart-wide entrance at top speed. Olvir was standing over a prone Vekel. I heard him say, ‘What’s wrong, you ragr-nithing? Ergi!’ He kicked my friend, who cried out.

Rage pulsing behind my eyes – the words he’d used were derogatory in the extreme – and frantic to help Vekel, I gave no consideration to the fact that Olvir was bigger by some margin, and heavier built. He heard me, but didn’t have time to react. I hit him in the middle of the back with my shoulder, sending him flying forward. He went down in a sprawl of limbs, just managing to stop his face hitting the ground. I came in fast, kicking him in the midriff. He oofed, but he didn’t give in. A meaty hand grabbed my leg. Then he sprang up, wrapping his arms round me, and took us both to the dirt. He was on top, a fight-winning position, and stars exploded in my head as he clattered me one, two.

I was incandescent, though, that he had attacked my friend. With pain as my fuel, I punched him in the pit of his belly, and when he gasped, I did it again. He collapsed sideways, and wriggling like an eel, I freed myself and stood. Ashild swooped in like a valkyrja. Armed with a length of branch, she began to beat Olvir. He tried to grab it, to grab her, but she was too quick and too angry. She stopped when the branch broke, by which point Olvir’s face and defensively raised arms were cut and bleeding.

Panting, she glanced at Vekel, who was looking on in astonishment. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I am.’ Wiping his tear-streaked cheeks, he approached Olvir, who cowered. ‘No means no,’ said Vekel.

‘What did he do?’ I demanded.

‘He wanted to lie with you,’ said Ashild, woman-sharp.

‘Something like that,’ said Vekel, a long-nailed forefinger circling his lips.

Understanding and revulsion crashed in. ‘And when you refused, he attacked you?’

A nod.

Perplexed that a man who preferred men would assault one of his own kind, I kicked Olvir again several times. He did not defend himself. ‘Touch my friend again,’ I told him, ‘and I’ll cut your throat.’ Murderous words from a youth who had never drawn blood, but I was in deadly earnest.

‘Before he does that,’ said Ashild, kicking him herself, ‘I will cut off your prick and shove it down your throat.’

We left him there, the nithing. He didn’t dare follow, at least until we had gone back inside the settlement.

‘He’ll tell his father lies,’ Vekel said. ‘That I tried to seduce him.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said stoutly. ‘We found him beating you senseless. You’re half his size. He got what was coming to him.’

‘Father will support us,’ said Ashild.

Vekel looked at each of us in turn. ‘You’re good friends. Thank you.’

When I went back to Egil’s spot, there was no sign of Olvir. I haggled hard, and bought the raven amulet. I slipped it onto a thong, and hung it around my neck. By all the gods, it felt good. I felt stronger, as if Oðin were watching me.

There was no further trouble, and Egil departed later that day without a word of complaint. My opinion on the matter, and the others agreed, was that Olvir hadn’t said anyt