“He killed my daughter. He knows that makes him my enemy.”

“But Snorri has convinced him he shouldn’t fight you! He didn’t come to frighten us, he came to persuade you from fighting.”

I wanted to believe that, but how could I know if it was true? I looked for an omen, but only saw the first stars showing above the shadowed sea. “You forget,” I said, “that the gods have cursed me.”

“Damn your gods,” Finan said savagely.

“And when the gods talk,” I went on as though he had not spoken, “we must listen.”

“Then listen to Ieremias,” Finan said, still angry, “he and God talk to each other morning, noon, and night.”

I turned and looked at him. “You’re right,” I said. Ieremias did speak with a god. That god was not my god, but I am not such a fool as to believe that the Christian god has no power. He does. He is a god! He has power, as do all the gods, but alone among the gods of Britain the Christian god insisted that he was the only god! He was like a mad jarl in his hall who refused to believe there were other halls where other jarls lived, yet for all his madness the Christian god had ordered the mad bishop to give me a stone.

I felt in my pouch and brought out the sling-stone, which was little more than a large pebble. I rolled it in the palm of my hand and thought that if I carried the stone then the Christian god would reward me with victory. That was Ieremias’s promise. Yet surely, I thought, my own gods would be furious if I were to rely on the gift and on the promise of a god who hated them, who denied their existence, yet did all he could to destroy them. A curse, I realized, was a test, and the Christian promise of victory was a temptation to abandon my own gods. Two sorcerers had spoken to me; one promised victory, the other defeat, and I would defy them both to amuse the gods.

And so I turned to the sea, to the fort-shadowed, wind-stirred, white-flecked sea, and I drew back my arm. “This is for Odin,” I shouted, “and for Thor,” and then I hurled the stone as far as I could. It flew above the waters and vanished into the curling foam of a breaking wave. I paused, staring at the ever-shifting sea, then looked at Finan. “We’re going to Heahburh,” I said. The sorcerer be damned. We would fight.

CHAPTER TEN

We gathered at Heagostealdes, a large village just south of the great wall. The settlement lay on the Roman road that came north from Eoferwic, threaded the Roman wall, and ended at Berewic, the most northerly burh in Northumbria and a part of Bebbanburg’s estates. I was forced to keep warriors in Berewic to help the men of the settlement defend the earth and timber walls against the Scots who insisted it was in their land, but that springtime I left only five men, and those were old or half-crippled, because I would take as many warriors as I could to meet Sköll. I left another eighteen men, helped by the fishermen of the village, to guard Bebbanburg. That was a perilously small garrison, but enough to defend the Skull Gate. Merchants traveling south from Scotland had told me King Constantin was in the north of his country, skirmishing with the Norse who had settled there, and none spoke of men gathering for war near the southern border. King Constantin was doubtless watching Sköll, looking for an opportunity to take advantage of Northumbria’s quarrels, and he would have liked nothing more than to capture Berewic or Bebbanburg while I was gone, but by the time he heard I had stripped the fortresses of their usual garrisons I expected the war against Sköll to be over.