“And if it’s possible?” Svart asked.

“We attack,” Sigtryggr said.

Which meant the Measurer, or rather the Norns, or perhaps both, would be measuring.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

War cries were loud. Ravens and eagles

Were eager for corpse-meat, the earth trembled.

Men let fly their spears, file sharpened,

Bows were loosed, shields hard blade-struck,

Bitter was the onslaught . . .

“Onslaught,” I said quietly.

Father Selwyn looked at me anxiously. “Is that the wrong word, lord?” he asked.

I had not realized I had spoken aloud. “It’s the right word,” I assured the poet, “but I don’t remember any eagles.”

“Could there have been eagles, lord?”

“In those hills? I suppose so, yes. Their sorcerer called it the fortress of the eagles, so I suppose there must have been eagles.” I paused, then added, “And of course there was Berg’s banner.”

“Berg’s banner, lord?”

“You didn’t hear about that?”

“No, lord.”

“It showed an eagle,” I said, smiling, then fell silent.

“Lord?” the young priest prompted me.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “think about eyes and lips instead.”

“Eyes and what, lord?” he thought he had misheard me.

“Eyes and lips,” I repeated. “They’re the first things the ravens eat. Eagles too, probably. They perch on the helmet rim and begin with the eyeballs, then tear off the lips. After that they rip up the cheeks. Have you ever eaten cod cheeks?”

“Cod cheeks?”

“They’re delicious. Fishermen usually toss the cod heads, but when I was a boy we used to scoop out the cheek-meat. Ravens seem to like the taste of our cheeks, unless of course you’ve laid the man’s skull open with an ax, then they feast on the brains first.”

Father Selwyn had a boyish face and fair hair that fell across his eyes. He frowned. “I’m not sure I can put those things in a poem, lord,” he said faintly.

“And after the ravens,” I went on, “the dogs come. Dogs, foxes, and wolves. They like corpse-meat too, but they start feeding lower down the corpse, usually . . .”

“So really, lord,” Father Selwyn dared interrupt me, “the word onslaught can stay?”

“It’s the right word,” I said again, “and bitter is right too.”

War is bitter. The poets give battle a splendor, extolling the brave and exulting in victory, and bravery is worth their praise. Victory too, I suppose, but the poems, chanted in mead halls at night, give boys and young men their ambition to be warriors. Reputation! It is the one thing that outlives us. Men die, women die, all die, but reputation lives on like the echo of a song, and men crave reputation, as they crave the heavy arm rings that mark a warrior’s victories. We revel in reputation and I am as guilty as the next man, proud that when men speak of me they tell how I slew Ubba Lothbrokson, cut down Svein of the White Horse, killed Cnut Longsword, and defeated Ragnall the Sea King. But reputation does not remember the ravens tearing a man’s face, the weeping of men dying, or the weariness of victory. There is almost nothing harder than leading men to battle knowing that some will die, that young men we have trained to fight and come to love as comrades will whimper like infants. “It is better to talk,” Hrothweard, the archbishop, often told me, “than to kill,” but how does one talk to a man like Sköll, who craved reputation and claimed a kingdom and was willing that any number of young men should die to sate his appetite?