We tied the two prisoners to a tree. “So what happened when you reached Jorvik?” I asked them.

“They invited us into the city,” the second captive, a young man called Njall, answered from the dark.

“Invited you?”

He explained that Sköll had sent a small party ahead, just thirty men, none of them dressed for war, but pretending to be travelers. “They were to say they were looking for a ship to buy,” Enar added. “The rest of us waited a couple of miles west of the place.”

It was not a bad plan. A handful of men, none in mail, would have hardly looked like a threat to Sigtryggr’s garrison. Enar said the thirty men had ridden through the village that spread on the Usa’s western bank and crossed the Roman bridge. Then they must have reached the southwestern gate with its massive stone towers and high fighting platform. “We know the thirty men captured the gate,” Enar said, “because they flew Sköll’s wolf flag from one of the towers, and that was the signal for us to follow. Sköll sent his best men first.”

“The úlfhéðnar?”

“The úlfhéðnar,” Enar confirmed, then continued his story. “Sköll led them, but it was a trap. They’d let us capture the gate, but the streets beyond were barricaded, and behind the barricades was an army. And when a hundred or so were inside the city another band appeared at the river bank to cut them off. They made a shield wall to stop the rest of us crossing the bridge, so the men inside the city were trapped.”

“And slaughtered,” Finan put in with relish.

“Most of them, yes.”

“Most of them,” I repeated the words. “Didn’t you say that Sköll was inside the city?”

A gust of wind brought rain spattering down from the branches. “Sköll,” Enar said, “is an úlfheðinn. Ten men can’t stand against Sköll.” There was awe in his voice. “He came back through the gate with twenty of his wolf-warriors, and they attacked the shield wall barring the bridge. We attacked too, from the other side of the river, and we broke them. We ran the river red with their blood, but by then the city gates were closed.”

So Sköll’s lunge across Britain had failed. His sorcerer had been right, and the defenders of Eoferwic had thwarted him and so, as recompense for his followers, he had led them on a rampage through the wide farmlands around the city, taking slaves, plunder, and cattle, and had then started back across the hills to Cumbraland. “And Sigtryggr didn’t pursue you?” I asked.

“He wasn’t there.”

“He’d gone south,” Njall said sullenly.

“We captured a priest,” Enar explained, “who said Sigtryggr had led men to Lindcolne.” He said the unfamiliar name uncertainly.

“Mercians,” Finan said sourly. He meant that there must have been some threat from Mercia on Northumbria’s southern border, and Sigtryggr had led men to reinforce Lindcolne’s garrison. I listened to the rain beating on the leafless trees and felt the frustration of ignorance. Had Edward of Wessex invaded Mercia? Was Lindcolne under siege? The only consolation I could find was that Eoferwic had survived and that the Norsemen had been defeated in the battle fought around the city’s gate.