The two men followed her out, across the ashy remains of the village green, to where another makeshift shelter had been set up near the ruin of the thane’s house. A small huddle of people stood outside it. Occasionally one would break away and walk inside, look, and come out again. Their expressions were unreadable. Grief? Anger? Mostly, thought Shef, it was just plain fear.

Inside the shelter stood a horse-trough, half filled with straw. Shef recognized at once Wulfgar’s blond hair and beard, but the face between them was that of a corpse: white, waxy, the nose pinched and the bones sticking through the flesh. Yet the man was not dead.

For a moment Shef could make no sense of what he saw. How could Wulfgar lie in a horse-trough? He was too big. He was six feet tall, and the horse-trough—Shef knew it well from the beatings of his youth—was barely five feet long … . There was something missing.

Wulfgar had something wrong with his legs. His knees reached the bottom of the trough, but then there were only clumsy bandages, wrapped round and round the stumps, with dark blood and foul matter clotted in them. A smell of corruption, and of burning, drifted up to Shef.

With growing horror he saw that Wulfgar appeared to have no arms either. The bits that were left were crossed on his breast, the limbs ending in stumps and bandages just below the elbows.

A voice murmured behind them. “They brought him out in front of us all. Then they held him over a log and chopped off his arms and legs with an axe. Legs first. After each one they seared the stump with a red-hot iron, so that he would not die from loss of blood. First he cursed them and fought, but then he began to beg them to leave him just one hand, so that he could feed himself. They laughed. The big one, the jarl, said they would leave him everything else. Leave him his eyes so he could see fair women, and his balls, so he could desire them. But he would never be able to take down his own breeches, never again.”

Never do anything for himself again, Shef realized. He would depend on others for every action of life, from eating to pissing.

“They’ve made him a heimnar,” said Edrich, using the Norse word. “A living corpse. I’ve heard of this before. Never seen it. But don’t trouble yourself, boy. Infection, pain, loss of blood. He won’t live long.”

Incredibly, the wasted eyes in front of them opened. They shone with pure malevolence on Shef and Edrich. The lips parted and a dry snakelike whisper came forth.