Bjorn called a kaerl to him and bade him fill his horn to the brim. The kaerl's mask was that of a saenyeti. Bjorn squinted at him. The leather was pale grey rather than red-brown, and furred, like the beast it represented. The mask wavered. The few mannish features the mask allowed him to see melted away. The beast was real. The kaerl was a varutfing, a shape-shifter. Bjorn started, knocking his horn and startling the kaerl, who once more became a man in a mask. The illusion vanished. Bjorn sent him away with an angry stare, watching him until he disappeared into the smoky gloaming. His gaze dropped to his horn. Mjod shimmered in the well of the vessel, dark as blood. He drank again.

In the space before the high table axe games were underway, and the spear catch, and other violent sports. Ogvai whooped and hammered his mjod horn harder than all the others upon the tables as a warrior fumbled a catch and the spear point opened up his forearm. The revelry seemed a sham to Bjorn. Helmschrot was trying too hard. The clash of empty lanxes and horns was similar to the funeral racket performed to drive the wights of the newly dead down into the Underverse where they could not harm the living.

'All wrong,' he muttered into his drink. 'It's all bloody wrong.' In Bjorn's body the Allfather's gifts fought a losing battle with the mjod. Bjorn's eyelids drooped.

'Bjorn the Fell-Handed!'

Bjorn came back to wakefulness, spilling his drink in his haste to reach the short iron sword he wore at his side.

Only one called him by that name.

A figure in grey battleplate had appeared in front of him, as uncanny as a wight emerging from the night. Two others lurked nearby, their white armour giving them the appearance of phantoms. All three were armoured and armed for war.

Bjorn woozily looked up at the haggard face of Kva Who-is-Divided. 'Kva,' he said.

'Stay your hand,' said the Rune Priest. 'Do not draw your blade.' A cloak of quiet enveloped them, drawing in the shadows like blankets, so the dark seemed sharper around Bjorn's hiding place. The noise of the feast faded and deepened, like a vox record played too slowly. The dance of the fires lost its vitality. The flicker of flame became a soporific strobe. Ogvai and the rest continued their feasting with arrested motion, slowed by the shaman's trick. The kaerls that moved among the Vlka changed. Like the server who had brought Bjorn his drink, they became animals that walked upon two legs and held their pitchers of mjod in fang and claw.

'Maleficarum,' he said. He did not draw his sword, but his hand remained upon the hilt.

'No witchcraft. The soul of Fenris works upon our threads,' said Kva.