“Where is Arnborg?” I asked her.

“Hunting you,” she said.

“Hunting me where?”

“Wherever he is.”

“I can make her talk, lord,” Eadric said. He spoke in English so that Eerika did not understand him, but she understood the vicious look on his face.

“No,” I said, then swung down from Tintreg’s saddle and called for Rorik to take the stallion. “Lady,” I spoke to Eerika, “last night we took Hallbjorn’s farm. His wife defied me too. Where do you think she is now?” Eerika did not answer. She was a fine-looking woman, maybe thirty years old, with dark eyes and a high-boned face. “Hallbjorn’s wife,” I told her, “lives. As does her son. We hurt neither of them and I left her silver to pay for the food we ate. Do you understand me?” She still just stared at me silently. “I’ve no wish to hurt you,” I went on, “but I do need answers and I promise I will get them one way or the other. It would be easier, I think, if you just talked to me. So, where is Arnborg?”

“Gone east,” she said curtly.

“Where?”

“East,” she said stubbornly.

“With Sköll?”

“With Jarl Sköll, yes! And pray you never meet him or his sorcerer!” She spat toward me, but her spittle fell short. The mention of Sköll’s famous sorcerer made me shudder. Had he cursed me?

I walked toward her, Serpent-Breath still naked in my hand. I saw her eye the blade nervously. “The missionary monk, Beadwulf. Is he here?”

She sneered at that question. “Is that why you came?”

“Is the monk here?” I repeated patiently.

“You can have him,” she said in derision, then jerked her head toward the buildings beyond the great hall. “In his hut, of course.”

“Which hut?”

“The dirtiest hut. The smallest one.”

“We’ll be gone soon enough,” I said as I sheathed Serpent-Breath, sliding her into her scabbard very slowly so that Eerika would take note and, sure enough, she looked at the blade as I pushed it home. “And my sword,” I went on, “is unblooded. But if any of your men lifts a hand against us, her blade will be drenched in their blood. And if you lift your hand against us, the blood will be yours.” I nodded to Finan. “Let her go.”

And so Finan, Berg, and I walked past the great hall, past two barns, and past a reeking blacksmith’s forge to where smaller huts were the homes of Arnborg’s warriors. Most of those warriors had ridden with their lord, gone eastward, but their women were still here, and they watched as we walked toward the last hut, a small thatched hovel with smoke trickling from its roof-hole. Newly woven willow fish traps were piled by the doorway. A sullen woman confirmed that it was the monk’s home. “They had a bigger one,” she said, “but when the other monk died . . .” she shrugged.

“And the monk is here?” I asked her.