In fact, the only one who had left was Your Humble Narrator, who saw the situation and wisely removed himself from the scene. But the mistletoe dart had struck home. Balder fell.

There was silence.

First they assumed he was playing dead. Then, as they realized the truth, it was too late to save him. He died right there, in Nanna’s arms, while Thor, never quick on the uptake, still bellowed:

‘Hey folks, let’s try something else! How about we use my boxing gloves?’

Turns out the dart had punctured a lung, and Balder was dead as he hit the ground. As for Hoder, he never got the chance to find out what was happening. As soon as the others realized who had thrown the mistletoe dart, they were on him like wolves. I didn’t see the result myself but I’d guessed it wouldn’t be pretty, which made me all the more grateful that I had already left the scene.

No one had seen me arrive, or leave, and the only witness to the crime had just been summarily neutralized. Whatever the unforeseen consequences of my little practical joke, the upside was that I was in the clear; and my daughter owed me a favour.

Of course, Balder’s death caused a terrible fuss, not least because they felt guilty about killing an innocent blind man in an irrational frenzy of rage. Not the best publicity for the gods of Asgard – and I made sure that word got round in all the appropriate places. They gave Balder a stylish funeral which, naturally, I did not attend. Nanna, his wife, died of grief and was burnt on his funeral pyre. Hoder too, redeemed by death, was given a rousing send-off. And Odin became even more remote, speaking to no one but Mimir’s Head, and of course his ravens.

As for myself – I found that I didn’t feel as good about all this as I’d expected. I hadn’t entirely believed in the Oracle’s prophecy – and yet Golden Boy had died just as the Head had predicted. That got me thinking about other events that Mimir had predicted, and the likelihood of them coming true. Then there was Hoder’s ugly death – something the Oracle had not predicted but which perhaps I should have foreseen. In spite of everything, I felt just a little responsible.

And now I was trapped, no longer in charge of my personal destiny. Perhaps we were all Mimir’s playthings, pieces on a chessboard. If he hadn’t told me the prophecy, would I still have gone in search of the means of killing Balder?

Probably not. In fact, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind if I hadn’t already known what the Old Man was planning to do to me.