“Anything you can do without,” said Hereward, “leave it with Eldgrim. We’ll collect it when we return.”

If we return, I mused, and wondered how many of the others had the same thought.

There was a final flurry of objects being thrown to Eldgrim’s crew on the wharf.

“We will return here in a fortnight,” Eldgrim said. “If you are successful, we will bear you back to Hjorleif’s hall.”

“You will not wait here?” asked Runolf.

Eldgrim raised an eyebrow and glanced over at where Olvir watched on, surrounded by his warriors.

“Would you?”

Runolf snorted.

“See you in a couple of weeks then,” he said.

“Good luck.”

Strong hands shoved us away from the wharf and out into the deep waters of the fjord. Ingvar called out for the men to unship their oars and nodded with grudging approval as they followed his command promptly and without fuss.

“Pull,” he said, and all six oars dipped into the water together.

Eldgrim raised his hand to us, as did several of his men. The children of Sand shouted after us, but Olvir and the men and women of the settlement watched our departure with something like sorrow on their faces.

We slid out onto the water, rocking gently as the waves hit Gullbringa’s hull. I glanced over at Runolf. His jaw was set, his eyes hard. I sensed he was unhappy to be on this small craft. All those long months of toil building Brymsteda to only now have our fate resting on the timbers and peeling birch bark of an old sexæringr, as he had called it: a six-oared boat, skippered by a stranger.

And yet, as the warm sun rose high above us, glinting off the waters of the river mouth while Ingvar turned Gullbringa’s prow eastward, I had a strange sensation of belonging. Runolf was gazing away from me, but his hand rested on the haft of his great axe. Beside him, Drosten nodded at me, and I recalled our conversation after Orkneyjar. Hereward, serious as ever with the mantle of leadership that once again had fallen on his shoulders, looked all about us, as if expecting Ljósberari and his thrall brigands to leap out of the trees along the river at any moment.

Gwawrddur had a small smile on his lips, as if he alone had the answer to a riddle nobody else had even heard. Leofstan made the sign of Christ’s rood in the air and recited the paternoster under his breath. I joined him in the prayer, lending my voice quietly to his. Looking up in surprise, he offered me a thin smile. He still wore the borrowed sword at his side and I wondered whether he would wield it when the time to fight came, as it surely would.