Once people accepted the bull was really dead, they ran to help. It was too late for Firehead. No man could survive such an injury, even supposing it might be possible to find him in that surging expanse of icy water. While the ship’s master maneuvered her close enough to the Golden Dragon so they could shout across to Ulf, Eyvind knelt by the bull’s still-warm body and carefully extricated his axe from where it was lodged deep in the skull. Biter was a fine weapon; he never let it rust or lose its edge. The axe had saved many lives today. He wished it could have saved Sigurd’s—Firehead’s—as well. Why had the bull suddenly gone mad like that? He was sure they’d had enough time, certain they could have tethered it safely, between the two of them. Now all the creature was fit for was roasting on a spit and being served up for supper, and Eyvind would never learn the tale behind Firehead’s haunted eyes. He got to his feet, studying the great, limp body and thinking that the open deck of a knarr, with rain beginning to slant in, was scarcely the ideal spot for cutting joints of meat. He bent over again, looking more closely. He squatted down by the creature’s rump. What was this? There was blood here, not Sigurd’s blood, for that was all on the horns and the rail and sprayed over the inner surface of the strakes. This blood dripped down the inside of the bull’s rear legs, and pooled now on the deck beneath its tail. There was a fresh wound there, a slit to the animal’s testicles, and it was from this the blood still ran, though that would stop soon enough. How could such a tidy cut have been inflicted in such a place? Perhaps the bull had damaged itself in its frenzy, maybe it had gashed the testes on something: a jutting piece of wood, a food trough, anything. What else could this be? Yet the cut was so neat, like a surgeon’s incision, and there was no barrel, no protrusion; the stock area was always kept as clear as possible. This was like a knife wound, precise and true. But that could not be. There had been nobody close enough, nobody with the opportunity. Almost nobody. In the back of his mind, Eyvind put two things together. A painful jab to the privates. A sudden enraged lunge, breaking the last rope and impaling a man all at once. He knelt by the bull, thinking. Firehead had died. But it might just as easily have been himself or even Somerled. Nobody could have known which way the bull would turn. A risky game indeed.