“I heard you,” Hakon said heavily. “And I will not swear. I cannot. My wife is one of these folk: so is my small son. I will not promise blindly to kill, when I cannot know if her brother, her father, her kinsman may face the point of my bloodied sword. For Ulf, I might have made such a vow. But not for you.”

And with that, he reached up to unfasten the silver clasp that held his wolfskin around his shoulders and, stepping forward, took off the heavy gray pelt and laid it on the table before Somerled. There was a collective gasp of indrawn breath.

“Very well,” Somerled said evenly. “You’ve made your choice. I wish you luck. You’ll be needing it.”

Hakon said nothing. He inclined his head toward Margaret, and looked at his old companions once more, and walked out of the hall into the night.

After that, there was some unrest. Eirik was angry, Thord silent, the others saddened but unwilling to put what they felt into words. Eyvind was sure Somerled must be wrong. When Hakon had married the widow, back in summertime when things had been so different, both islanders and men of Rogaland had danced at the wedding, and shared the same ale. But soon enough it was proven that Somerled’s misgivings were well founded. There was another border skirmish. This time Grim was in it, and he said that he had broken one fellow’s neck and finished another with his war hammer before Engus’s men fled into the darkness. Two nights after that, as Eyvind walked from hall to sleeping quarters he saw a fire in the distance to the east. It burned long and hard. In the morning, when they walked out to investigate, they found the widow’s cottage burned to the ground, and five sets of bones there among the ashes. You could tell from the way they lay that Hakon had tried to protect his small family, for his arms had been around them, his wife, her little sons, the infant, as if to shield them from the suffocating smoke, the searing heat. His face the color of the ash that still drifted and settled in that place of death, Eirik lifted out the remains, while Thord and Eyvind dug a makeshift grave. They laid their old friend to rest with those who had been his hope of the future. And when it came time to return to the settlement, Eirik said he was not going.

“What?” asked Eyvind, rubbing a hand across his face.

“I can’t go back. I just can’t do it. Besides, there’s a job for me in Hafnarvagr, guarding the ships over winter. Thord’s coming with me; his woman’s already down there. We’ll do well enough.”

“What if there’s war, after this?” Eyvind was surprised at the alarm Eirik’s announcement caused him. “We need you.”