“Not one.”

“So we’re lost,” I said.

Finan turned and nodded southward, “Mameceaster has to be somewhere down there.”

“I need to go home,” I said harshly, “so we’ll ride east when the scouts get back, then find our own way.”

“And those two?” Finan gestured at the dead captives.

“Leave them here, let the bastards rot.”

Finan stared north through the persistent rain. “Sköll sounds like a mad bastard,” he said, “and he’ll want revenge for his son. He’ll be coming for us.”

“His son was alive when we left,” I said.

“You still humiliated the boy. You took his sword.”

I had thought I left Unker dying, but now I wondered if he had merely been stunned. He had bled enough, but head wounds always bled copiously. “He was fast,” I said. “If his horse hadn’t tripped you’d be singing a funeral song for me. For me and Stiorra.”

“We’ll make songs for her, lord,” Finan said.

I just gazed north, saying nothing. A gray day with gray rain and gray cloud. I remembered my first impulse to ride after Sköll and wondered if Finan was right, and that Sköll, with the same impulse, was planning to ride south and wreak revenge for his son’s wounding, but our two scouts returned to say that they had seen nothing. It seemed that Sköll’s pursuit had been called off and that the Norsemen must now be riding for home, and so we set off in the opposite direction, riding slowly toward the gradually lightening horizon where the sun rose beyond the clouds. It still rained, only now it was a sullen drizzle. I sent more scouts ahead, telling them to look for a settlement as well as any sign of an enemy, and it was midmorning when Eadric rode back to say there was a plump valley to the south of us. We were following a winding stream through thick trees when Eadric brought his news. “It’s just across the hills, lord,” he said, gesturing to the south, “and there’s at least three halls there. Big ones too.”

We called in our other scouts, turned, and followed Eadric across the low hills and down a valley of rich pastureland where, as Eadric had said, there were three halls. All had palisades and all had smoke drifting from roof-holes toward the low, persistent clouds.

Berg turned his horse toward me. “Want us to leap the palisade again, lord?” he asked eagerly, gesturing to the nearest hall.

“No.” I spurred Tintreg. I doubted we would need to fight. No men showed above the palisade, which was now little more than a long bowshot away, and that suggested there were few people in the hall. I wondered if the menfolk from this valley had ridden with Sköll, but that seemed doubtful. If they had, they would surely have returned by now, but no one watched from the steading’s gate. The only sign of life was the smoke from the hearth. “They won’t be happy,” I told Berg, “but if they can’t fight us they’ll open their gate.”