And on the margins of that forest, where he had so often come in search of the reindeer who browse the tree moss, Snorri found his eldest son.

• • •

“I knew him the moment I saw him,” Snorri said.

“What?” I shook my head, ridding myself of the dream the Norseman had woven. He addressed me directly now, demanding a response, demanding something—perhaps just my company in this moment of rediscovery.

“I knew him, my son . . . Karl. Though he lay far ahead. There’s a deer trail up alongside the Wodinswood from the Uulisk, broadened into mud by the raiders, and he lay sprawled beside it. I knew him from his hair, white-blond, like his mother. Not Freja, she bore me Egil and Emy. Karl’s mother was a girl I knew when I wasn’t much more than a boy myself: Mhaeri, Olaaf’s daughter. We weren’t but children, but we made a child.”

“How old?” I asked, not really knowing if I meant him or the boy.

“We must have been fourteen summers. She died bringing him into the world. He died just stepping into his fifteenth year.” The wind changed and shrouded us in thicker smoke. Snorri sat without motion, head bowed over his knees. When the air cleared, he spoke again. “I rushed to him. I should have been cautious. A necromancer could have left his corpse to waylay anyone trailing them. But no father has that caution in him. And as I came closer I saw the arrow between his shoulders.”

“He escaped, then?” I asked, to let him take his pride in that at least.

“Broke free.” Snorri nodded. “A big lad, like me in that, but more of a thinker. People always said he thought too much, said I’d always be the better Viking however strong he grew. I said he’d always be the better man, and that mattered more. Though I never said it to him, and I wish now that I had. They’d had them in iron shackles, but he broke free.”

“He was alive? He told you?” I asked.

“He had a breath left in him. He didn’t use it to tell me how he escaped, but I could see the iron marks on him and his hands were broken. You can’t escape slave shackles without breaking bones. He only had four words for me. Four words and a smile. The smile first, though I saw it through tears, biting down on my curses so I could hear him. I could have been there quicker, I could have run, found him hours earlier. Instead I’d gathered my belongings, my weapons, as if I were going on a hunt. I should have run them down the moment the snowbank gave up its hold. I—” Snorri’s voice had grown thick with emotion and now broke. He bit the word off and ground his jaw, face twitching. He lowered his head, defeated.

“What did Karl say?” I couldn’t tell you where along the way I’d started to care about the Norseman’s story. Caring was never my strong suit. Perhaps it was the weeks together on the road that had done it, or more likely some side effect of the curse that chained us together, but I found myself hurting with him, and I didn’t like it one bit.