“And you stand in my way,” Sköll went on as though I had not spoken. “But I have met you now, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” he said, “I have seen you for what you are, an old man! A graybeard who cannot protect his own daughter, an old man who fled from me! You went south, desperate to escape me. You ran!”

“Only after I defeated your son.”

At our first meeting that comment had roused Sköll to immediate fury, but this time he just shrugged as though he did not care. “He still lives, but he is wounded here.” He tapped his head. “He cannot speak. He might as well be dead. I regret that, but I have other sons.” He even smiled at me as he said those words. “So I took one of yours, you took one of mine. We are equal, yes?”

My father told me that when an enemy talks it is because he dares not fight. Sköll, I admit, was surprising me. He was staying calm and speaking reasonably and that meant he was less impetuous than I had thought, but self-control does not win kingdoms. He had come to Bebbanburg with a purpose. So far the village had not been plundered, and no pyres of smoke smeared the western sky, which meant no halls had been burned and no farms put to the fire. He might call me old, but the very fact that he was talking told me he still feared me, and the fact that he had not burned any of my tenants’ steadings, nor ransacked the village suggested that his purpose was not to fight me. He had been waiting for my answer, but I had said nothing. “We are equal, yes?” he asked again.

“We shall be equal,” I said, “when I kill you.”

Sköll shook his head, as if he was disappointed in me. “No,” he said, “you won’t. Snorri has seen your future. Shall he reveal it to you?” Again I did not answer and Sköll turned to his sorcerer. “Tell them, Snorri.”

“At the fortress of the eagles,” Snorri said dully, and the small dog, hearing his master’s voice, whined. “Three kings will fight.” Snorri abruptly stopped speaking. His vacant eye sockets had been facing the harbor as if what he said was irrelevant to us, which only made his strangely bored tone even more unsettling.

“Three kings,” Sköll prompted him.

“Two with crowns and one without,” Snorri said. He stroked the wolf skull. “And two kings will die.”

“And what of me?” Sköll demanded, though in a respectful tone.

“The úlfhéðnar will make great slaughter,” the sorcerer intoned, “the blood of their enemies will flow like streams in spate. The ravens will gorge on flesh till they vomit, the wolves will rend the carcasses, the widows will wear ashes in their hair, and King Sköll will rule.” He shuddered suddenly, then bent as if in agony. “All this I have seen, lord King.”

“And Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” Sköll laid a hand on Snorri’s thin shoulder and spoke in a surprisingly gentle tone, “what of him?”