Eyvind walked on until he saw the form of one such barrow looming up ahead. He thought he could discern an opening, though all was shades of gray on gray. The moon was low in the sky, casting the stones’ long shadows across the heather-clad hillside and touching the lake water with a faint glimmer of silver. It was apparent to him that he could go no farther; he recognized the gradual numbing in his legs and knew they would buckle and disobey him if he asked them to carry him on. Crouched double, he crept into the secret depths of the howe. He walked the edge of the chamber once, touching the neat-laid stones with outstretched fingers, judging the size, the positions of three small alcoves. He did not reach within them. If precious things were hidden here, it was not for him to disturb them. Eyvind unbuckled his stolen sword; he spread his wolfskin on the earthen floor and sat, leaning his back awkwardly against the sloping wall, staring into the blackness. The wolfskin was all he had left, the last thing that was his own: that, and the small tokens Nessa had given him. His captors had tried to seize even those, with muttered words about spells and witchcraft. He had not fought them for his bright sword or his dagger, he had not even fought them for Biter, so great had been his anguish on that day of death and betrayal. But he had fought them for this scrap of cloth, this ribbon, these little things that seemed of no consequence, yet encompassed the world in the space of a girl’s cupped hand.

He did not want to dream. He sat thinking, delaying the moment when his weary lids must drop over his eyes and the longed-for, the dreaded visions again assail him. The wolfskin was warm beneath him; he welcomed that. Not one of them had dared lay hands on that badge of honor, that garment of power. It was strange. In one way, he did not deserve the skin anymore; in another, it had never been more truly part of him. Thor had let him go. He would never again hear that golden trumpet voice calling him on, would never again know the thrilling flood of rage that threw the warrior forward in blind courage to do the god’s will, the call that made of a man an unthinking weapon of sheer unassailable power. Invulnerable, that was what they said: a Wolfskin could be stopped neither by spear nor axe nor broadsword. The Warfather’s silence had seemed a death blow; without that voice, he had indeed been lost, cast adrift, bereft of strength and robbed of purpose. A Wolfskin vowed lifelong loyalty; to break that vow was a kind of death. But he had been human then, as full of doubts and aspirations, of love and sadness as he was at this moment. Thor’s cry had made him deaf to that, the red haze of battle frenzy had made him blind to it. Now he understood what it was to be a man: that it was to be weak as well as strong, to be foolish sometimes and wise sometimes, to know how to love as well as to kill. And he had learned that there were other paths for him, other gods who called in the deep places of the earth, in the lap of wavelets on the shore, in the breath of the west wind. He had learned that there were other kinds of courage. He knew, with deep certainty, that the islands held a new path for him. He need only move forward to find it.