Valrik’s men emptied the ship of every object that wasn’t nailed down – every bale of skins, every sea-chest, every oar, every pot, every rope, every yard of sail. Even the mast came down. Lilla watched as the pile of goods and gear on the floodplain grew, until only the bare hull remained, dragged halfway out of the water onto a silty bar and flopped on its side. She wondered whether Erlan really had passed this way. Perhaps he was a thousand leagues away, to the west or the north or. . . anywhere. After all, they only had the word of a ten-year-old to go on. . . Perhaps he was dead.

Besides these gloomy doubts, the more immediate problem was how to shift a fifty-foot longship dozens of leagues overland to the Dnipar.

‘I don’t see how it can be done,’ she told Valrik when the ship was finally empty.

‘There ain’t much in this world can’t be done if you’ve a mind to do it,’ was his reply.

He was as good as his word, and was soon stripped to the waist in the water, heaving away and bellowing orders in all directions until his men had dragged the ship onto the floodplain. This done, he ordered half his men to fell the straightest trunks they could find in a nearby pine wood and fashion them into rollers and levers.

Meanwhile, he and another man named Bayan – who apparently knew something of the native tongue spoken in those forests – together with three others, packed knapsacks, slung axes and shields, and went looking for help. The rest stayed behind to guard the ship and their gear. And wait.

‘He likes to give an order, that one,’ said Einar, flopping down on a bale of pelts as they watched Valrik’s little party hiking up the hill.

‘He knows what he’s doing,’ Lilla replied.

‘Maybe. But do you trust him?’

‘It’s a bit late if she don’t,’ said Gerutha.

Lilla sighed, wiping away the sweat on her brow. ‘He has stakes in this game. He wants to find his sons. So yes. I do.’

It was three days before the shout went up. Lilla recognized Valrik’s white crop of hair at once, bowling down the slope towards the encampment at the head of his band of scouts, and with them there were a dozen more. A few had the look of warriors; the rest looked like bondsmen or thralls. They were leading four pairs of oxen, each pair drawing a cart.

‘Did you miss me, girl?’ he grinned rakishly, as the other crew members greeted each other.

‘I was worried you were dead, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Not yet,’ he chuckled.

‘You’ve made some new friends, I see.’

‘Maybe.’ A flicker of uncertainty crossed his face. ‘We made a deal anyhow.’