“Do what you will,” replied the boatman. “We will all be dead soon anyway, so we might as well be warm tonight.”

“Hush your bleating,” said Runolf. “Fear is an unbeatable foe once you let it get a hold.”

“I am no warrior,” replied Ingvar. “I am not brave, like you.”

“Then be silent,” Runolf snarled.

Hereward lit a small fire and set a watch. In the night I listened to the sounds of the forest and wondered what horrors awaited us. The more I thought of the burnt bodies, Gudrun’s tale, Audun’s fear when he had spoken of Ljósberari and his host of fiends, so the darkness seemed to grow deeper and colder, wrapping itself around me like a shroud. My terror grew, so that when Gersine touched my shoulder to take my place, I let out a small cry.

“It is just me, Hunlaf,” he whispered.

I took a long breath, my heart hammering. I patted him on the arm and lay down beside the fire, thinking of what Runolf had said. I must not allow fear to get a grip on me. But as I lay there, a light breeze rustling the leaves above us, the shriek of an owl startled me fully awake once more, and I wondered if it was not already too late.

I awoke to half-remembered nightmares of fire and screams. I had been in the clearing on Gudrun’s isle. Men and women were being consumed by bonfires all around. In the centre of the glade, shadowed, faceless men leered at the pale, naked body of the seeress as she stood defiantly awaiting her death. When I looked at her face in the dream, I was shocked to see not the pink eyes and white hair of the witch, but the freckle-cheeked, guileless features of Aelfwyn.

The forest was alive with birdsong and the murmur of insects. Warm sunlight lanced between the trunks of the trees. That summer morning seemed far removed from the twisted corpses of the people of the village at the mouth of the river. And yet, as we rounded the headland and entered the river, there they stood, stark and horrifying in the bright light.

With dour expressions, we turned away from the dead, pulling with renewed vigour at the oars. The river flowed fast here and we immediately understood Ingvar’s warning of the day before. The mountains climbed up steeply, and everywhere we looked the slopes were covered in densely packed trees. As we hauled Gullbringa laboriously upriver, we repeatedly passed from bright sunshine into shadow, but never for long enough to cool us. Dense swarms of insects whirred in the patches of sunlight, making us curse as they stung exposed skin and buzzed around our faces. We were all panting, scratching and soaked in sweat by the time we had travelled past the first few bends.