“He was dying,” I said.

“That’s seven, lord,” Oswi had not heard me, and would not have cared if he had. He ran past me, eager for his eighth victim.

“Lay down your weapons!” Sigtryggr shouted, and some of his men took up the shout. Berg’s brothers and their Snælanders had stayed by the gate, anxious not to be mistaken for Sköll’s men by our vengeful warriors. Discipline had let our men defeat the úlfhéðnar, but that order now vanished in a horror of slaying. Our men filled the alleys with rivers of blood. I smelled the stink of gore. I saw men hacking at corpses, screaming as if they were themselves úlfhéðnar. I called on them to make shield walls, to defend themselves against a desperate, panicking enemy, but they were men who had expected to die, and they took revenge for that despair by killing in a fury.

Most of Sköll’s warriors were still on the fighting platforms of the ramparts, above the slaughter in the fort, but even those men began to surrender. Berg, who was known to my men, had left his brothers and was shouting at the enemy to drop their shields and swords, and Sigtryggr was calling the same encouragement. Some men leaped from the walls onto the outer ditches, but Sihtric of Dunholm, whose men had been on the far left of our shield wall during the failed assaults, had stayed outside the fort, and those defenders who tried to escape were either killed by the men of Dunholm or else meekly gave up their weapons.

I remember my father saying that nothing is certain in battle except death, which makes battle resemble life itself. Be ready for surprises, my father had preached. Be ready for the spear thrust that comes under the shield, be ready for the ax blade that hooks over the shield’s rim, be ready for everything, he liked to say, and you will still be surprised. I had been surprised by Berg’s survival, by the unexpected help of the Snælanders, and now I was surprised by the speed with which Sköll’s vaunted army collapsed. The fighting died suddenly, as if men were exhausted by the slaughter. The killing-fury of my men was sudden and vicious, but then they began to realize they had won and that to go on killing was to risk being killed themselves. Sköll’s men laid down their shields when they sensed the fury was past, and men from both sides greeted each other. Many of Sigtryggr’s warriors and a good few of mine were Norsemen, and, like Berg, were finding men among the enemy that they had known years or months in the past. I saw Vidarr Leifson embrace a bloodied enemy who, moments before, had been trying to kill him.

Only Sköll, his sorcerer, and his closest household warriors were left, and most of those men, some of them wearing the gray cloak of the úlfhéðnar, showed little desire to fight. They had lost and they knew it. I knew Sköll himself would not give up, but the only remaining thing worth fighting for was to make Snorri’s prophecy come true; that two kings must die. Sköll might have lost this day, but he could still retrieve some pride and make a reputation out of the disaster.