“No.” I could scarce hear him.

“Well, then, man…what can you do?”

“I—” He could get no words out.

“You were a warrior,” said Thorgunna.

“Yes—that I was!” he said, his face kindling.

“Small use in Iceland when you have no other skills,” I grumbled, “but perhaps, if you can get passage to the eastlands, some king will take you in his guard.” Myself I doubted it, for a guardsman needs manners that will do credit to his master; but I had not the heart to say so.

Ketill Hjalmarsson had plainly not liked the way Thorgunna stood close to Gerald and spoke for him. Now he sneered and said: “I might even doubt your skill in fighting.”

“That I have been trained for,” said Gerald grimly.

“Will you wrestle with me, then?” asked Ketill.

“Gladly!” spat Gerald.

Priest, what is a man to think? As I grow older, I find life to be less and less the good-and-evil, black-and-white thing you say it is; we are all of us some hue of gray. This useless fellow, this spiritless lout who could even be asked if he did women’s work and not lift ax, went out in the yard with Ketill Hjalmarsson and threw him three times running. There was some trick he had of grabbing the clothes as Ketill charged…I called a stop when the youth was nearing murderous rage, praised them both, and filled the beer-horns. But Ketill brooded sullenly on the bench all evening.

Gerald said something about making a gun like his own. It would have to be bigger, a cannon he called it, and could sink ships and scatter armies. He would need the help of smiths and also various stuffs. Charcoal was easy, and sulfur could be found in the volcano country, I suppose, but what is this saltpeter?

Also, being suspicious by now, I questioned him closely as to how he would make such a thing. Did he know just how to mix the powder? No, he admitted. What size would the gun have to be? When he told me—at least as long as a man—I laughed and asked him how a piece that size could be cast or bored, even if we could scrape together that much iron. This he did not know either.

“You haven’t the tools to make the tools to make the tools,” he said. I don’t know what he meant by that. “God help me I can’t run through a thousand years of history all by myself.”

He took out the last of his little smoke sticks and lit it. Helgi had tried a puff earlier and gotten sick, though he remained a friend of Gerald’s. Now my son proposed to take a boat in the morning and go up to Ice Fjord, where I had some money outstanding I wanted to collect. Hjalmar and Ketill said they would come along for the trip, and Thorgunna pleaded so hard that I let her come along too.

“An ill thing,” muttered Sigurd. “All men know the landtrolls like not a woman aboard a ship. It’s unlucky.”