I had memorized the look of the land. I knew we must walk across rough pasture to find a ditch and then follow the ditch north and west until we came to a straggling hedge that would take us east to the track where we had seen the sheep being herded, and that track would lead us to the closest steading. And we must become sceadugengan, the shadow-walkers, creatures of the night.

It is no wonder that the gates are closed and the hall doors barred at night, because the darkness is when the sceadugengan walk. They are shape-shifters; goblins, elves, sprites, and dwarves. They might choose to appear as beasts, as wolves or bulls, they come from Midgard to haunt the land, and they are neither alive nor dead, they are horrors from the shadows. And as at last we crossed the pasture, treading carefully in the absolute darkness, I thought of the old poem, the lay of Beowulf, which had been chanted in my father’s hall and was still chanted in the same hall, now mine. “Com on wanre niht. Scriðan sceadugenga; sceotend scoldon,” the harpist declaimed, and we would shudder at the thought of ghouls slithering from the darkness. “Then out of the night slides the shadow-walker; stealthy warrior.” And we were the stealthy warriors.

I chanted the phrase over and over in my head as we left the woodland and walked toward the ditch. “Scriðan sceadugenga; sceotend scoldon, scriðan sceadugenga; sceotend scoldon.” Over and over I said it silently, a mindless chant to keep the demons away. The approach to the steading seemed to take much longer than I had anticipated, so that I began to fear we had lost our way, but at last I smelled woodsmoke, and Finan must have seen some faint glow off to our left because he plucked my cloak. “This way,” he whispered.

We followed the track. No grass beneath our feet now, only frost-hardened mud, sheep droppings, and horse dung, but there was the smallest glimmer of flame-light showing through a shutter of the hall that revealed a chink between the palisade’s logs. No dog barked, no one shouted a challenge as at last we reached the steading. The gate was edged by two high trunks into which iron hinges were secured. We heard nothing except our footfalls, the sigh of a small night wind, the distant howl of a vixen, and an owl calling. “Ready?” I murmured to Berg and Kettil.

“Ready,” Berg answered.

I stood with my back to the gate, linked my hands to make a step, and Berg, who was young and strong, put his hands on my shoulder, one foot on my hands, and heaved himself upward. I pushed him as he went. He made a scrabbling noise as he straddled the gate’s top, and I waited for the howl of dogs as Kettil took his place. “I’m over!” Berg called softly. He had jumped down on the gate’s far side, and I heaved Kettil up. He followed Berg over the gate, and I thought the noise they made must wake the dead, especially when the two lifted the great locking bar that scraped in its brackets. Still no barking. The hinges squealed as Berg and Kettil pushed the gate open.