The hero realized what it was that he feared the most. Not that the legless one, the boneless longserpent, would kill him. That would almost be a relief in this terrible place. But that it would see him. And stop. And speak, before it began its long sport with him.

The dragon halted, one foot in mid-stride. And looked down.

Shef came from his sleep with a shriek and a bound, landing in one movement, just feet from the bed where they had stretched him. Three pairs of eyes stared at him, alarmed, relieved, surprised. One pair, Ingulf’s, looked suddenly knowing.

“You saw something?” he said.

Shef passed a hand over his sweat-soaked hair. “Ivar. The Boneless One. As he is on the other side.”

The warriors around Ivar watched him out of the corners of their eyes, too proud to show alarm or even anxiety, yet conscious that at any time now he might break out, turn on anyone at all, even his most trusted followers or the emissaries of his brothers. He sat in a carved chair looted from one of King Burgred’s baggage-carts, a horn of ale in his right hand, dipped from the great keg in front of him. In his left hand he swung the gold coronet they had taken from Burgred’s head. The head itself was on a spike in the stark ring surrounding the Vikings’ camp. That was why Ivar’s mood was grim. He had been balked yet again.

“Sorry,” Hamal had reported. “We tried to take him alive, as you ordered, to pin him between our shields. He fought like a black bear, from his horse and then on foot. Even then we might have taken him, but he tripped, fell forward on a sword.” “Whose sword?” Ivar had demanded, his voice quiet. “Mine,” Hamal had said, lying. If he had indicated the young man who had really killed Burgred, Ivar would have taken out his spite and frustration on him. Hamal had a chance of surviving. Not an especially strong one, for all his past services. But Ivar had only studied his face for a moment, remarked dispassionately that he was a liar, and not a pretty one, and had left the matter there.

It would break out some other way, they were sure. As Dolgfinn went on with the tale of victory—prisoners taken, loot from the field, loot from the camp, gold and silver, women and provisions—he wished deeply that some of his own men would turn up. “Go round everywhere,” he had told them, “look at everything. Never mind the women for the moment; there’ll be plenty left for you before the night’s over. But in the name of old Hairy Breeks himself, find something to keep the Ragnarsson amused. Or it could be us he pegs out for the birds tomorrow.”