Sköll laughed with every phrase of the curse. He was in his great white cloak, pointing at us, talking to the men around him. He cupped his hands and shouted, “You’re all doomed! Snorri will kill you with his next curse!”

“They’re just words,” I shouted, but I could see that my men, even the Christians among them, were troubled by Snorri. They knew the gods controlled our fate and knew that a sorcerer was closer to the gods than other men or women, and they had all heard the dread rumor that Sköll’s sorcerer could kill men at a distance, just by curses. “They’re just words!” I called again, even louder. “Just nonsense!” But I saw men making the sign of the cross or touching their hammers. Some began to edge away, and I knew our men trembled on the verge of a panicked flight. They could fight against men, but not against the gods. The Norse on the ramparts were jeering us again as Snorri seemed to take a deep breath ready to launch his most powerful sorcery.

Then Ieremias leaped out in front of us. My immediate impulse was to pull him back, but Finan put a hand on my arm. “Let him be, lord, let him be.”

Ieremias turned and hissed at me. “Have the stone ready, lord!” He looked back at Snorri, raised his arms, and screamed like a soul in torment.

There was another silence after that scream. Sköll’s men were plainly surprised to see that we had a sorcerer too, and they went quiet, not in fear, but rather anticipating a battle of sorcerers, both of them old, both white-haired and skinny, and both calling on the mysterious power of their god or gods. But Snorri, who had evidently expected no rival sorcerer and who was astonished by Ieremias’s scream, was momentarily speechless. Ieremias, meanwhile, appeared to be dancing. He was turning and leaping, singing in a high, crooning voice. There were no words, just the strange keening sound as the fool in his bishop’s clothing danced and twisted and capered toward Snorri.

“He’s drunk!” Sigtryggr said.

“No,” I answered, “he’s used the ointment.”

“Ointment?”

“The henbane. He thinks he’s flying.”

Ieremias suddenly crouched, then sprang up, arms wide. “Thou turd of Satan!” he shouted, pointing at Snorri, then he loped toward the Norse sorcerer with his dirty bishop’s robes trailing in the grass. He stopped some twenty paces short of Snorri and lifted his crozier on which the ram’s skull was still perched. “I curse you!” he called in his native Danish, a language very close to the Norse tongue. “By the power of Abraham’s ram I curse your head, I curse your hairs, I curse your eyes.”

“He doesn’t have any eyes, you fool,” I muttered.

“I curse your face, I curse your nose, I curse your serpent’s tongue, I curse your teeth, I curse your neck, I curse your hands, I curse your belly, I curse your prick, I curse your arse!” He paused for breath. His words were slurred, but clear enough to every man in both armies. “I curse every part of your foul being from the hairs of your head to the soles of your feet. I curse your loathsome soul and consign it to the deepest pits of hell. I doom you to be torn apart by Lucifer’s hounds, I condemn you to the torture of Satan’s endless flames, to the perpetual agonies of eternity.”