“Lord?” Finan edged his horse close to mine. “Lord!” he said again, louder.

I looked up for a sign, for any omen that I was not cursed. A bird in flight would reveal the will of the gods, I thought, but no birds showed. In that place of birds, beside an estuary of birds, there was just the burning winter sun, the pale sky, and the high rippled clouds. “There’s a curse on me,” I said.

“No, lord,” Finan said, touching the cross at his breast.

“It’s a curse,” I said. “We should have gone to Bebbanburg, not here.”

“No, lord,” Finan said again.

“Just find the monk,” I said.

“If he’s here.”

“Find him!”

Though what good would it do to find Brother Beadwulf if I were cursed? I could fight Arnborg, I could fight Sköll, I could fight Æthelhelm, but I could not fight the gods. I was cursed.

Wyrd bið ful āræd.

CHAPTER FOUR

The gods are not kind to us, any more than children are kind to their toys. We are here to amuse the gods, and at times it amuses them to be unkind. The Christians, of course, claim that any misfortune is caused by our own sin, that ill fate is their nailed god’s way of punishing us, and if you point out that the wicked thrive they simply say that their god is unknowable. Meaning they have no explanation. I had done nothing I could think of to earn the displeasure of the gods, but I did not need to have offended them. They were simply amusing themselves, playing with me like a child plays with a toy, and so I clutched the hammer amulet in my gloved hand and prayed I was wrong. Perhaps my conviction that I was cursed was false, but there were no birds in the winter sky, and that omen told me I was the plaything of cruel gods. Cruel? Yes, of course, just as children are cruel. I remember Father Beocca crowing with delight when I had once said that our gods are like children. “How can a god be like a child?” he had demanded.

“Don’t you Christians say we must be like Christ?”

He had frowned, suspecting a trap, then had nodded reluctantly. “We must indeed be Christ-like, yes.”

“And when I was a child,” I had pressed him, “didn’t you tell me that your nailed god said we must all be like little children?”

He had just stared at me, spluttered for a moment, then had remarked that the weather was getting colder. I miss Father Beocca. He would have dismissed my fears of being cursed, but I could not dismiss the certainty that my fate was suddenly dire. All I could do now was survive, and the beginning of that survival was to discover whether the monk Beadwulf was still in Arnborg’s fort.

“Eerika,” Finan said behind me. I turned, puzzled, to see him gripping the arm of the angry woman who had tried to kill me with her thrown spear. “She’s called Eerika,” Finan explained, “and she’s Arnborg’s wife.”