“Odin’s bones, Eyvind, lie still, will you? We’ll never get this bleeding stopped if you keep bobbing up and down like that. This tooth’ll have to come out. Need that fellow with the tongs. Or one of us can do it. Thor’s hammer, man, settle down, can’t you? You’re as twitchy as a brooding hen. Drink that up, don’t just hold it.”

“No,” said Eyvind, and got to his feet. The room reeled, his ears rang with sound, his eyes wanted to close, oh, so much, but he forced them open. “No, not yet. Who’s here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Shut the door. Who’s here, who’s near at hand?”

“Just us,” Grim said as Eirik drew the thick, coarse hanging across the doorway. “Just me and Eirik and Thord there. What is it, man? What’s eating you?”

“Listen, little brother,” said Eirik, planting his bulk in front of the doorway. “I see a look in your eye I recognize, and I don’t like it. It suggests to me that rest and recuperation are not exactly foremost in your mind right now. If you think for a moment—”

“I can’t stay here. There’s something I need to do—”

“Nothing that can’t wait,” Grim put in firmly.

“Besides,” Eirik said, “like it or not, you’re under orders to stay here until these legal proceedings are over. Think how it would look if you went rushing off now, guilty or not guilty. Now lie down, drink that up, and shut your big mouth. You’re not the only one here who needs sleep, little brother. Whatever it is, now’s not the time for it.”

“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.