“So, I picked a spot. Stretch of beach backed by good, high cliffs. One stream leading down to it through a gully. I put half a dozen men there just to make sure none of the girls we’d caught escaped. I put one man on each of the cliffs to either side, with a horn to blow if he saw any sign of a rescue party turning up. And because of the cliffs, I gave each of them a rope tied to a stake. If we were surprised, they blew the horns, the party in the gully ran back, and the ones on the cliffs slid down the ropes. We had the boats, three of them, tethered bow and stern—bow to the beach, stern to an anchor well out to sea. In a hurry all we had to do was pile in, loose the bow-ropes, haul ourselves off on the stern-rope and set sail. But the main thing is, I had the beach sealed off tight as a nun.”

“You would know,” said Thorvin.

Sigvarth’s teeth flashed again. “None better, unless he’s a bishop.”

“But she got away,” Farman prompted.

“Right. We had our fun. I did it with her, on the sand, twice. It got dark. Now, I wasn’t passing her round, but the men had a dozen girls they were sharing, and I felt like joining in—hah, I was thirty then! So I hauled in my boat, I left my clothes on the sand and got in it with her. I pulled out on the stern-rope, maybe thirty yards out, and made fast. I left her there, dived in the sea and swam back. Fine, big blonde girl there I fancied. She’d been making a lot of noise.

“But after a while—I’d got a roast rib in one hand and a mug of ale in the other—the men started shouting. Just outside the light of our fires there was a shape on the sand, a big shape. Beached whale, we thought, but when we ran over, it wheezed and came at the first man there. He backed off, we looked for our weapons. I thought it might be a hrosswhale. Whaleross, some say.

“And right that moment there was a lot of shouting from the top of one cliff. The lad up there, Stig was his name, shouting for help. Not blowing his horn, mind, but wanting help. Sounded as if he was fighting something. So I climbed up the rope to see what it was.”

“And what was it?”

“Nothing, when I got there. But he said, near in tears, he’d been attacked by a skoffin.”

“A skoffin?” said Vigleik. “What’s that?”

Skaldfinn laughed. “You must talk more to old wives, Vigleik. A skoffin is the opposite of a skuggabaldur. The one is the get of a male fox and a she-cat, the other of a tom and a vixen.”