Eyvind’s head swam. Images rushed before him, old ones, new ones: Ulf’s dead eye, a child’s fragile skull, a bull’s horn piercing living flesh, his own axe rising and falling, rising and falling, only it wasn’t the helm of an enemy warrior he split in two but the head of an infant with round, innocent eyes, the head of a fair-haired woman in a clinging nightrobe, and he held in his hand not an axe but a little knife, a knife that scored a set of runes in the white flesh of a boy’s forearm, neat twig-runes that spelled out, for everyone to see, his own name, Eyvind. Eyvind made this. This was Eyvind’s doing. “Thor,” he whispered as a kind of darkness fell on him, “Thor, where are you?” But there was only silence: a silence that was like the stillness after a great door closes, a silence that seemed to him as final as death. He was somewhere new, somewhere he did not want to be, and there was no going back. In their circle, the others still jeered and cursed, smiting their fallen prey. There wouldn’t be much left when they were done. Eyvind eased off his fine helm with the fringe of metal rings, and put it under his arm. Without looking back, he began to walk away. Then he began to run, and his heart kept pace with his feet, faster, faster, away, away, farther and still farther. His spirit called, and called again, Thor! Thor, help me! I have been true. Where are you? But there was only the silence, and the distant roar of the sea. As he ran, unseeing, blundering up and down hillocks, stumbling over rabbit holes, as rocks bruised his flesh and needle-sharp grasses tore at his skin, something padded soft-footed beside him on the margin of sight: something as long and gray and quiet as a wolf.

SEVEN