“You can’t go on, old fellow.” Thord’s tone was kindly. Thord didn’t understand. None of them understood. He had to go on. That was what a Wolfskin did. If it was not the Warfather who had called him to that sudden burst of crazy effort which had saved Nessa, then it was some other deity of equal power, a force which still compelled him forward, weary and damaged as he was. Whatever it was, it spurred him. It drove him. It came to Eyvind, as he lay down obediently on the pallet, that it was his own voice, and a truer one than any that had hitherto commanded his steps. With that knowledge came a clearing of the head, and caution. He made pretense of swallowing the sleeping draft; the woollen blankets soaked up most of it. Now he must wait. Not long: they were all tired. Then he would go and do it, and at least he could show her, before she sent him away, that his own kind was capable of changing if they got the chance. He knew he was not a clever man, but that much, surely, even he could manage.

So it was that a little later, when Eirik and Thord and Grim were sleeping the slumber of deep exhaustion, and the Jarl and his companions were enjoying flatbread and cold mutton by the fire, Eyvind slipped out of the settlement past unattended sentry posts—for what guard need be kept when one’s enemy is reduced to a scattering of old women and infants?—and, on a stolen horse, made his way northwestward under the pale, bright sky of a spring morning. By his side ran Shadow. They passed across the borders of King Engus’s land, and turned the corner of the hill, that wondrous corner which reveals to the traveler’s eye the vast, rising mass of the Whaleback like a great, gray-green sea creature breaching majestically from the western ocean. No smoke rose from the ashes of the hall fire; no clash of battle rang out above the high screams of the gulls. Now he came down the hill and toward the point, and now he could see the line of spears with their strange cargo, stark evidence of the carnage that had defiled this shore so short a time ago. One dawn, one bloody battle, and a whole race of sons and fathers lost. The horse shied; a trembling coursed through its body, and Shadow hung back uneasily. Eyvind dismounted, staying on his feet only by clutching the horse’s mane. Gods, he was indeed weakened. He must get a grip on himself. This weariness, these aches and pains were nothing to what others here had endured.

He tied his horse outside the fisherman’s hut where, not so long ago, he had confronted Somerled. Somerled. What would happen to him now? The Jarl would decide it according to the penalties of Rogaland, he supposed. There would be a fine paid in ells of wadmal cloth or bags of silver, or they might forbid him to return to the home shore of Freyrsfjord, or to his birthplace in Halogaland. It might all be settled before Eyvind was finished here, for there was much to be done, and only himself to do it.