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Danes.
    ‘They need war gear,’ Sigurd said to Olaf one dusk, watching the sun slip out of reach of Sköll’s jaws behind the rim of the world. We were moored in the shelter of a rocky cove where the water was calm and the fishing good.
    ‘Aye, they do,’ Olaf said, chewing meat from one of the few remaining smoked pig legs. ‘Because at the moment they’re as useful to us as tits on a bull.’
    Sigurd glanced across at the Danish ships, whose crews seemed in good spirits despite what we’d been through. I guessed that to men who had thought they would rot to stinking mush in Frankia, a faceful of storm was an improvement. ‘They’ll stand in the shieldwall if it comes to it,’ Sigurd said with a nod.
    ‘Then they’ll stand in the last bloody row,’ Olaf moaned, ‘and I’ll have their guts for twine if they stick any of us with their rusty bloody spears!’
    For we had seen smoke palling in the sky beyond a promontory swathed in holm oak, yew and willow, and there was enough of it to suggest a large settlement. Sigurd was aware that his men needed something to get their blood pumping hot again and there was nothing that could do that better than a fight and the chance for plunder. But he knew nothing of the land here or its people, and without decent war gear the Danes would be vulnerable if we ran into proper fighting men.
    Olaf’s teeth dragged his beard across his bottom lip. ‘I haven’t seen them in a scrap yet, Sigurd,’ he said dubiously. ‘Even if they had good gear we don’t know if they know how to use it. Thór’s hairy arse! I’ve seen more meat on a sparrow’s kneecap than on most of those Danes. A stiff breeze would carry them off.’
    ‘They’ll stand, Uncle,’ Sigurd said. ‘But I won’t ask them to fight without swords and helmets. Not until we know what sort of men those hearths belong to.’
    ‘So what’s your plan, Loki?’ Olaf baited, looking back to the Danes berthed the other side of Fjord-Elk . ‘You want to send Floki to sniff it out?’
    Sigurd pursed his lips but said nothing and so Olaf turned to Yrsa. ‘Get off your arse, lad, and fetch that miserable whoreson Floki,’ he said, taking a comb from his belt and dragging it through his beard with a grimace. ‘And fetch us something to wet our throats.’ Yrsa nodded.
    ‘Floki is not aboard, Uncle,’ Bag-eyed Orm said. He was pissing over the side and the hot fluid was fogging the evening air. ‘He was ashore before the anchor thumped the seabed. Haven’t seen him since.’
    The comb went still in Olaf’s hand as his brows arched. And Sigurd grinned.
* * *
    Floki returned when a thin crimson was all that remained in the western sky. He was announced by the squawks of the black-faced gulls that bustled on the rocks we had moored up to and I knew he would have hated that, for Floki was a warrior who thrived on stealth. He was the kind of man who believed he could steal Óðin’s beard without the All-Father feeling the breeze on his cheeks. Now, he climbed aboard, naked but for his breeks, and shook the salt water from his long crow-black hair. The only weapon he had taken ashore was the long knife he now wiped dry with a linen strip before doing anything else. But even with a knife Floki was someone you would be a fool to take on. He was like the Wessexman Penda in that way: as dangerous as thin ice on a lake. A born killer.
    ‘You greedy snot hogs better have saved me something to eat,’ he said to no one in particular, scrubbing his face with the linen. Arnvid blanched, suddenly realizing he had already shared out the last of the smoked meat and cheese. He would now have to tell Floki that all there was was dried fish and some stale mead. Which was another reason the pall of smoke had tempted Sigurd into that cove – we needed food.
    ‘You rancid goat turd, Arnvid!’ Floki said, fathoming the dread in the man’s face. ‘I’m freezing my balls off out there while you’re tucked up tighter than a