“And that’s his sorcerer, lord,” Beadwulf was whispering, “Snorri.” He did not need to point out the sorcerer, who had long white hair and wore a long white robe beneath a cloak of dark fur. I instinctively touched my hammer amulet. “He’s blind, lord,” Beadwulf said.

“The sorcerer?”

“They say Sköll blinded him with a red-hot sword tip, lord.”

“Jesus,” Finan muttered in disgust. But it made sense to me. We know that Odin’s great wisdom came at the price of an eye, so Sköll had made his sorcerer pay double the price to endow him with even more knowledge.

“Men fear Snorri,” Beadwulf said, “because he sees the future and he can kill with a curse.” He watched the riders beneath us. “And I think that’s Arnborg,” Beadwulf went on, “the man on the roan horse, lord. I think that’s him. It looks like his horse.”

The roan horse was some twenty paces behind Sköll and his sorcerer, but the rider was too far away for me to make out his face. He wore a helmet, a sword hung by his side, and a great dark cloak covered his horse’s rump. Like most of the passing riders he slumped in his saddle, plainly weary, and I was tempted to tell my men to mount, then charge across the crest and wreak havoc on the horsemen below. Kill the leaders, I thought, and the rest of the Norsemen would be discouraged. It was a risk, I might lose some horses to broken legs, and perhaps the Norsemen were not as tired as they appeared, and I was still weighing the dangers of such an attack when even more riders appeared. “God in his heaven,” Finan said, “but how many are there?”

There must have been at least sixty horsemen following Sköll’s group. They were not quite the last, because a quarter mile or so behind came a straggling bunch of women and children, guarded by nine horsemen. Some of the women limped, others were carrying small children, while the riders were using spears to goad the captured slaves, who numbered some thirty or forty. “I want prisoners,” I said, and looked at Finan. “Tell the Christians to hide their crosses.”

Finan hesitated, as if tempted to warn me against trying something rash, then abruptly nodded and wriggled back downhill. “What will you do, lord?” Beadwulf asked me nervously.

“I need prisoners,” I said. “I need to know what happened at Eoferwic.” Did I really need to know? The appearance of the Norsemen suggested they had failed, and that was surely news enough, yet I wanted to know more. I wanted to know the full story of their failure. So I would take prisoners.

I looked westward. The road crossed a lower spur some half a mile away, and then dropped out of sight. If I timed my approach right, then Sköll and his men would not see what was happening behind them. And if they did? It would take them time to return and fight us, time enough for us to retreat, and I doubted they would want to pursue us far into the waning afternoon.