“The bear.” Maeres said it more quietly than ever into the noise of the erupting crowd. I’d never seen him angry, few men had, but I could see it now in the thinness of his lips and the paling of his skin.

“Bear?” Why not just shoot him with crossbows from the rail and be done! I’d seen a Blood Holes bear once before, a black beast from the western forests. They set it against a Conaught man with spear and net. It wasn’t any bigger than him, but the spear just made it angry and when it got in close it was all over. It doesn’t matter how much muscle a man may carry, a bear’s strength is a different thing and makes any warrior seem weak as a child.

It took them a while to produce the bear. This clearly hadn’t been part of the plan that involved Norras and Ootana. Snorri simply stood where he was, holding his injured hand high above his head and gripping the wrist with his other hand. He left the hook-knife where it was, embedded in his palm.

The fury the crowd had shown at Ootana’s entrance flared to new heights when the bear approached the gate, but Snorri’s booming laugh silenced them.

“Call that a bear?” He lowered his arms and thumped his chest. “I am of the Undoreth, the Children of the Hammer. The blood of Odin runs in our veins. Storm-born we!” He pointed up at Maeres with his transfixed hand, dripping crimson, knowing his tormentor. “I am Snorri, Son of the Axe. I have fought trolls! You have a bigger bear. I saw it back in the cells. Send that one.”

“Bigger bear!” Roust Greyjar shouted out behind me, and his fool brother took up the chant. “Bigger bear!” Within moments they were all baying it and the old slaughterhouse pulsed with the demand.

Maeres said nothing, only nodded.

“Bigger bear!” The crowd roared it time and again until at last the bigger bear arrived and awed them to silence.

Where Maeres had procured the beast I couldn’t say, but it must have cost him a fortune. The creature was simply the biggest thing I’d ever seen. Dwarfing the black bears of the Teuton forests, overtopping even the grizzled bears from beyond the Slav lands. Even slouched behind the gate in its off-white pelt it stood nine foot and more, and heavy with muscle beneath fur and fat. The crowd drew breath and howled its delight and its horror, ecstatic at the prospect of death and gore, outraged at the unfairness of the killing to come.

As the gate lifted, and the bear snarled and went to all fours behind it, Snorri took hold of the hook-knife and pulled it free, making that curious turn of the blade at the last moment necessary to prevent the wound from becoming larger still. He bunched the injured hand into a scarlet fist and took the blade in an overhand grip in the other.