All around him the last of the winter snow was stained with it, a scarlet slush slowly melting into rivulets, mingling with the rain and the run-off from the pigsty into broad black puddles.

‘It’s over now,’ said Erlan Aurvandil, palming the strands of dark hair out of his eyes. His two younger companions were panting like hounds after the hunt.

‘What do we do with these?’ Adalrik, the older twin, prodded his spear-butt at the body crumpled at his feet.

‘The ground’s too hard to bury them. Drag them in there,’ Erlan said. There was a battered cattle byre huddled in one corner of the farmstead. ‘Then burn it down.’ He wiped his blade on his cloak before re-sheathing it in its wool-lined scabbard. His throat tasted foul. He spat into the mud. This was foul work any way you cut it.

They had come for settlement of a debt. A small debt from a small man, but Lord Osvald refused to overlook the sum. ‘Folk will reckon it an insult. And an insult can’t go unanswered.’ As if it were a personal slight to the Lord of the Livi that this farmsteader was beggar poor.

The man lay dead now, together with his thrall and his son. His woman had fled into the forest. All for what? A few ounces of silver? Two head of sheep? Erlan shook his head. The fool should have paid up whatever he had. But the man was stubborn and, worse, brave. He had gone for his axe. . .

And now there was this mess to clear up.

Erlan turned away in disgust as the twins reappeared in the byre doorway, their lanky frames stooping to clear the sagging lintel. Inside, the fire crackled as it went to work. Leikr still had a torch alight in his hand. He swung it over his shoulder onto the thatched roof.

‘Muttonhead,’ sniggered Adalrik.

‘What?’ his brother squawked.

‘It’s not going to burn in this weather, is it, dung-breath?’ Adalrik was right. Sheets of rain were slanting down from a leaden sky. The torch died at once. Leikr scowled.

They were boys, good-natured lads most of the time, with hardly sixteen winters behind them. And already they have innocent blood on their hands, he thought. ‘Get your gear together. We’re moving out.’

It was three leagues back to Osvald’s hall. Dunsgard stood on a rise above the south bank of the Dagava river, overlooking its sluggish brown waters. From this stronghold, Osvald ruled the Livi – a tribe that had long ago settled the shores of the Gulf of Estland, which lay straight across the East Sea from Sveäland. The Livi called Osvald king. Erlan reckoned the man unworthy of the title.