Of course, I’d be a key part of that. I knew Asgard’s defences. I had lived with the gods for so long that I knew all their weaknesses, both strategic and personal. For instance, I knew that if we introduced certain elements into the fray (the World Serpent, or the Fenris Wolf, for instance), then members of Asgard’s key personnel could be counted upon to drop everything, to leave their position, however strategically valuable, and to confront the enemy on whatever ground we chose. Timing is so important. And we had the advantage there; we could choose when the war would start, and how it would continue.

Oh, she’d been planning this for decades. I’d thought my dreams of vengeance grandiose, but next to hers mine were just the fleeting dreams of a sleeping cat. Gullveig had it all worked out: over the years she had entered the dreams of Ice Folk and Rock Folk, manipulating their chieftains; whispering hatred into their ears so that now they were almost ready to strike. She had entered the dreams of the insane; the murderous; the unhappy; the lost. Now all were converging on Ironwood – Ice Folk; Rock Folk; Tunnel Folk from underground; werewolves and witches and half-blood demons and bastard Firefolk from whatever little empire they’d managed to build during the reign of Order – while the unsuspecting Folk, Odin’s beloved wor-shippers, assembled their warriors in the foothills and plains of Inland, driven by instincts as powerful as those of a nest of wild bees, swarming under the influence of some new, rapacious Queen . . .

Of course I was dazzled. Who wouldn’t be? She was the golden Queen; I was the King. Of course, a beehive has no king, but I wasn’t exactly following logic at the time. Heidi showered me with praise; worshipped me with her body; lavished me with extravagant gifts and placed me on a fire-ship at the head of a battle fleet that would launch, not across the One Sea, but through Dream, Death and Damnation itself.

That fire-ship. It was beautiful. Slim as a sword, and as deadly, it could glide through anything – air, or stone, or water. Its sail was like St Sepulchre’s Fire; its skeleton crew was tireless. (And by ‘skeleton crew’ I mean a crew of actual skeletons, coaxed into life by a cantrip of Naudr and press-ganged into my service.) And when I was tired of playing with it, I could fold it up like a pocket knife and carry it wherever I went, or moor it in Dream, where it would wait patiently to be summoned.