“Raid!” Snorri bellowed it. “To arms!”

Lower down the slope, a fire struggled to keep burning on the turf roof of a hut closer to shore. Dark shapes hurried past amidst white flurries, caught in the glow for a moment, then swallowed by the night once more. Foreigners, then: Vikings might set torch to thatch when raiding in warmer climes, but none of them would waste time on that in the North.

Figures converged on Snorri, three rounding the hut, half-running, one tripping over the log stack. Others came up the slope. Smaller, scrawny shapes that made no sense to the eye. Snorri rushed the closest trio. Darkness, flame, and shadow offered little chance to pick out the glimmer of weapons and defend himself. Snorri made no attempt at it, relying instead on the logic that says if you kill your foe immediately you have no need of shield or armour, no need to parry or to evade. He swung, double-handed, arms extended, body turning with the blow. Hel sheared through the first man’s head, hit the second in the shoulder, and buried deep enough to leave his arm swinging on threads. Snorri reversed his turn, feeling but not seeing the hot spray of blood across his shoulders as he spun. The rotation brought him level with the third man, rising with an oath amongst the scattered logs. Snorri’s shin caught the man’s face, his momentum wrenched Hel free, and he brought the axe down, overhead, as he had so many times before in this very spot—a different axe, splitting logs for the fire. The result was much the same.

Something hissed past his ear. Cries and screams went up across Eight Quays now, some terrified, some the terminal sounds men make when wounded beyond repair. He could hear Freja shouting at the children inside the hut, getting them to stand behind her by the stone hearth. Something sharp struck him between the shoulders, not hard, but sharp. He turned, sighting figures atop Hender’s hut, straddling the roof, dislodging the snow to fall in miniature avalanches, some kind of sticks in their hands . . . A dart struck him in the shoulder, no longer than his finger. He pulled at it, running for Hender’s doorway, where he would be out of sight from the roof. The dart resisted, its barbs hooked deep in his flesh, and yet there was no pain, just a numbness. Snorri ripped the thing free, careless of the damage.

Hender’s door hung from one leather hinge, men in black rags huddled over something at the far end of the main chamber, hinted at by the glow of a dying fire. The place stank of rot, so bad it made Snorri’s eyes sting, rotten meat and an acrid bog stench. Dark footprints marked the floor around a pool of blood before the hearth.

A roar from behind brought Snorri twisting back to the scene outside. Before Magson’s hut Olaaf Magson laid around him with the broadsword his father won from a Conaught prince. His son, Alrick, beside him with a torch flaring in one hand and a hand-axe in the other. Ragged men pressed in on all sides, weaponless, their flesh sunken, skins stained dark, hair in black ropes. They came forwards, even without hands, even with Alrick’s hand-axe buried in the join between neck and shoulder. A huge figure strode past the melee, wolfskins trailing from his shoulders, double-headed battle-axe in one hand, small iron buckler in the other. Two Vikings kept at his side.