He was frightened by that. I saw his hand move toward the hammer again, but he checked the motion, dropping his hand to caress the big blade of the ax instead. “You talk bravely, old man. Do you fight bravely?” He waited for my answer, but I kept silent. “Do you want to fight me now?” he asked.

“I want to kill you.”

He laughed at that. “Then fight me now, old man.”

“Why would I sully my reputation by fighting a failure?” I taunted him.

“You have a reputation to sully?” he sneered.

“I am the old man who defeated your son in combat,” I said. “Is that not reputation enough for you?”

And that, at last, roused him. He had been surprisingly restrained, but my words made him spur his horse forward and lean down to snatch my spear from the turf, but before he could level the unwieldy weapon, I had drawn Wasp-Sting, my short-sword, kicked Tintreg, and had lunged the sword’s point into the tangle of his beard.

His three followers had all half drawn their swords. Finan was even faster, and his sword, Soul-Stealer, was already clear of her scabbard, but he froze just like the others when I rammed Wasp-Sting into Sköll’s beard. Did I mean to kill him? Yes, but the horses moved slightly apart before the blade broke his skin and the stallion belonging to the man with the plaited beard was stopping Tintreg from moving further ahead. Sköll had his head back, held there by Wasp-Sting’s sharp point.

“Enough!” Osferth snapped in English. “Put the sword down, lord,” he added to me in a calm voice. “Please, lord, put it down.”

Finan sheathed Soul-Stealer. He did it very slowly, very deliberately, then leaned over, and, still moving with extreme care, pushed my sword arm down. “This is a truce, lord,” he chided me, “a truce.”

“What are they saying?” Sköll asked me.

“That you have no honor,” I snarled back.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“The man who will kill you,” I answered, “and I swear on the gods that you will have no sword in your hand when you die.”

He sneered at that. “You frighten me, old man.”

“What is being said?” Osferth insisted.

“Childish insults,” Father Oda said dismissively.

Sköll rammed the spear back into the turf and backed his horse away. I also backed Tintreg, who tossed his head and whinnied. Osferth put a gloved hand onto the horse’s bridle as if to prevent me from attacking Sköll again. “You suggested the truce,” he said to me, “why?”

“Because I want to see the man I’m going to kill,” I answered, “and if your men were mounted we could finish the bastard off now.”

“I came to find you,” Osferth said, “not to start a war with Northumbria.”

“The war has found you,” I said, “so let’s fight now.”

“What are you saying?” Sköll demanded.

“Tell them to go home,” Osferth insisted.

“You won’t fight?”

Osferth frowned. He knew we outnumbered Sköll’s men, he knew that in a fight we would eventually overwhelm the Norsemen, but he also knew that to start a fight was to lend his men to a purely Northumbrian quarrel, and if Æthelstan or King Edward were to discover that West Saxons and Mercians had died in a fight to settle a feud between two pagans they would not be happy. “I came to find you,” he said stubbornly, “and I have no reason to fight this man.”