The ship’s master was calling; Ulf was responding. He wanted the bull thrown into the sea: an offering for Freyr. They could not afford to have the ill omen of Firehead’s death over this voyage. Eyvind decided he must be imagining things, for there was no sense to what his mind was telling him. He rose to his feet; there was work to be done.

“Oh, dear,” said Somerled. He stood quietly at a little distance, his face gravely composed. “He seemed quite a useful fellow, too. Still, I expect they’ll manage to sail this tub without him. And if these islands provide the lush grazing my brother praises so lavishly, no doubt there will be wild cattle there for the taking.”

“He was a friend of mine once,” Eyvind said, frowning. It unsettled him when Somerled spoke like this. It was as if he thought nothing in the world of very much account.

“You’re a strange creature, Eyvind,” said Somerled. “Death should be nothing to you. Don’t you deliver it a hundredfold as your daily business? What does it matter if this fellow got his chest split open? He was nobody. He was no different from the Jutes and Franks you take with your trusty axe when you’re out impressing Magnus on his raids.”

“It is different.” Eyvind was watching the crew as they began to drag the bull’s bloody carcass forward to the place where they could most easily lift it over the side of the knarr. “This was a friend. At heart, a good man. And it seemed to me that we—I—owed him something. Because of that business with Ragna.”

“Who?” asked Somerled blankly.