And thus they came to Kurland. They made landfall south of the gulf that Lysir sought and bore along the coast until they found it. Far across the land, the smoke of watchfires. lifted. “That is as well,” said Lysir. “To do more than strike and run, we must meet Loker. The earlier the better. We’re late as is—not much time for plundering after the fight, if we’re to be home for harvest.”

They dragged their keels onto a sandy beach well within the gulf. On their left, farmland stretched green, a stockaded hamlet in the offing. All dwellers had gone inside with their livestock. Doubtless a man or two had galloped away to tell the king. On the right, thick with undergrowth, a wildwood loomed, farther than eye could follow. “I chose this landing because of that,” Lysir told Hadding. “Ii we stand in front of it, the foe can’t outflank us.” The young man took the fore-thoughtfulness to heart.

Lysir likewise held his crews back from trying to take the stronghold. “We’d spend lives for scant gain,” he said. “Once we’ve beaten Loker, we’ll grab it off readily enough, and everything else we want.”

Still, they grumbled, and quarrels flared in the three dreary days afterward. “This too is part of warcraft,” Lysir taught Hadding: “how to wait.”

Then at last iron blinked, horns dunted, feet and hoofs thudded, shouts rang raw, as the Wendish host arrived. It stopped a ways off, hundreds of men. A few leaders went on horseback, banners afloat overhead, and at the middle were ranked a few score in helmets and byrnies like the riders, the king’s Northern troopers. Otherwise the newcomers were tribesmen. Some of them had kettle hats and might wear a leather coat besewn with iron rings, but most owned merely cap, breastplate, and leggings of boiled hide, and maybe a shield. Their weapons were axes, spears, knives, and clubs that might or might not have stone heads. Such short bows as the vikings saw among them were better fitted for hunting than battle, and none of them was a slinger. Though outnumbered, Lysir’s folk bragged that what lay ahead would be more a reaping than a fight.

First, while men growled and glared across the ground between and shifted bristling from foot to foot, he sent one forward bearing a white shield and his word. The vikings would go peacefully home on payment of ten marks of gold to each and a hundred to himself, or the value in furs and thralls.

Loker spat and ordered the man back. As he left, the king flung a spear after him, soaring over his head.

“He learned that from his Northmen,” Lysir muttered. “It means he’ll slaughter us all for the gods.”

Hadding gulped. “It’ll go the other way,” he answered. He heard his voice waver. Anger at that burned unsureness out of him.