“Einhaur was sacked too?” A quin, breaking the moment.

“Before they came to Eight Quays?” Another.

“What of Dark Falls?” Tuttugu.

“It must be all of them.” Arne Dead-Eye kept his gaze on the table. “Or we would have heard the tale a dozen times by now.”

Every man at the table, save Snorri, took their ale and drank until they had no more.

“The enemy is there, past the Black Fort,” Snorri said. The night pooled around him, darker than it should be while the sun still sank in the west, not yet swallowed by the sea. “We will go there. Kill everyone. Raze their works. Show them a horror darker than death.”

The northmen lowered their tankards, watching Snorri with uneasy fascination. I looked out to sea once more, west, along the coast to where the burning rim of the sun still beaded the horizon with red jewels. Fewer, fewer, gone.

“I said, Undoreth, we will paint the snows with Hardanger blood!” Snorri surged to his feet, freed by the sunset, eyes clear, the table scraping back across the stones. “We will take back what we love and show these Red Vikings how to bleed.” He raised his axe above his head. “We are of the Undoreth, the Children of the Hammer. The blood of Odin runs in our veins. Storm-born we!”

And where Aslaug left the northmen unmoved with her dark threats, Snorri ver Snagason had them on their feet in a moment, roaring their defiance at the evening sky, pounding the table until the wood splintered and the tankards leapt.

“More ale!” Snorri sat at last, thumping the table one more time. “We drink for the dead.”

“Will you come with us, Prince Jalan?” Tuttugu asked, taking a tall flagon from the server, the head of foam as white as the quins. “Snorri says they call you a hero in your homeland, and your foes named you ‘Devil.’”

“Duty compels me to see Snorri to his homeland.” I nodded. When a course of action is forced upon you it’s best to accept it with grace and milk it for whatever you can get, right up to the moment the first opportunity to weasel out of the deal presents itself. “We’ll see what these Hardanger scavengers make of a man of the Red March.” Hopefully I’d find a way for it not to be a corpse.

“What makes us think we’ll fare any better with nine than Snorri did with one?” Arne Dead-Eye wiped ale foam from his moustache, his voice morose rather than fearful. “The Broke-Oar had enough men to lay waste to Einhaur and every village along the Uulisk.”

“Fair question.” Snorri reached out to point at Arne. “First understand that there were very few men at the Black Fort, and it’s not a place that could ever be garrisoned to its capacity. Every meal eaten there must be hauled across the ice. Every log or sack of coal must be carried there. And what is there to defend against? Slaves labouring beneath the Bitter Ice, digging tunnels in search of a myth?