‘Not if you don’t tell him where we went. Here.’ He produced a knife in its sheath. The haft was an elegant blend of ashwood and antler. ‘Take it.’

‘Your knife?’ Her eyes were wide as platters.

‘Yours now,’ Adalrik grinned. He tossed it to his baby sister. She caught it and gazed down at it, her mouth gaping with admiration.

‘Not a word to Father, mind. At least not until we’re long gone.’

‘Two days at least,’ said Erlan.

‘Aye. Two days.’

Tikki nodded, her eyes still on the knife.

‘Right,’ said Erlan. ‘Say your farewells.’

This they did, then told her to run off home, the knife apparently having bought her obedience. Erlan had his doubts she would keep her mouth shut for long.

‘Let’s get on with it.’ He shoved off and took his seat by the tiller while Adalrik and Leikr began their long pull on the oars. Aska perched on a thwart in the bows, his long nose sniffing at the coming dawn.

‘I can’t believe you gave her your favourite knife,’ muttered Leikr, swinging his body with the sweep of the oar.

‘I didn’t,’ Adalrik chuckled. ‘It was yours.’

The days turned into weeks and the rowing made them strong. Erlan took his turn at the oar as much as the others, levering the little knarr deeper and deeper into a fathomless land of sombre browns and greys. In the main, the river coursed south-east, although it twisted north and south like a writhing serpent.

The labour was brutal, hardening their backs into knotted muscle, shredding their hands, soaking their tunics with sweat every day. The twilight fire was needed as much to dry them out as keep them warm or cook their supper. Further inland, it turned colder despite that spring must be close. Leikr took this badly, reckoning it unjust and a sure sign the gods had taken against the whole damned business. Maybe they had.

On a bad day, Leikr could croak as hard as any of the marsh frogs that kept them awake at night, but Adalrik wasn’t much better. He griped about his hands, which had been sanded away to a mess of bloody skin and weeping pus.

Despite the physical hardship, they ate well. Leikr’s hook and the abundance of bream and trout in the Dagava, and even the odd carp in the smaller tributary streams, kept their bellies full. They drank water straight from the river and suffered nothing for it. And in time, Adalrik’s hands became hard as old leather, Leikr’s back grew strong as a yew-bow, the cold eased, the stream weakened, and the snowy floodplains melted away into sparse woodland. Then, at last, came the first buds of spring.