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Grayle plucked it from him, did something to it with his hands, threw it aside, in the same motion caught Jimbo as he rose, tapped him lightly against the wall, dropped him. He stepped to the rear of the car, gripped the steel rods which engaged slots at the sides of the double door, braced his feet, and lifted. One rod popped from its socket; the other broke with a crystalline tinkle. Grayle kicked the doors wide; a swirl of rain whipped at him. Gripping the jamb, he swung out, caught at the lamp housing above, pulled himself up onto the roof of the speeding vehicle. As he drew his legs up, there was a sharp double report, and a sharp pang stung his left shin.

    He rose to his knees, looking down at the concrete railing flashing past, at the multistrand barbed wire above it, the dark water frothing whitecapped below. He rose to his feet against the rushing wind, gauged his distance, and dived far out over the pavement and the wires as the car braked, tires squealing, its siren bursting into howling life.

    The escort spent half an hour patrolling the bridge on foot, playing powerful handlights across the water, but they found no sign of the escaped convict.
    * * *

    Under the high-beamed roof of the timbered farmhouse at Björnholm, the man who had been Gralgrathor sits at a long table, musing over a bowl of stout ale. In the fire burning on the hearth, images of faces and figures form, beckon, flicker away, their whispering flame-voices murmuring words in a tongue he has half-forgotten. Across the room Gudred sits on a bench between the two household servant girls, her youthful head bent over her needlework.

    He pushes the bowl away, stands, belts a warm coat of bearskin about him. Gudred comes to him, the firelight soft on her plaited hair, the color of hammered gold.

    "Will you sit with me by the fire awhile, my Grall?" she asks softly. Of all the daughters of Earl Arnulf, she alone had a voice that was not like the bawling of a bull calf. Her touch was gentle, her skin smooth and fair.

    "You are a fool, Grall," the earl had said. "She is a sickly creature who will doubtless die bearing your first son. But if you indeed choose her over one of my lusty, broad-beamed wenches—why, take her, and be done with it!"

    "I'm restless, girl," he tells her, smiling down into her face. "My head is fuddled with ale and too long lazing indoors. I need to walk the hills awhile to clear the cobwebs from my brain."

    Her hand tightens on his arm. "Thor—not in the hills! Not in the gloaming; I know you laugh at talk of trolls and ogres, but why tempt them—"

    He laughs and hugs her close. Across the wide room, the curtains of the sleeping alcove stir. The face of a small boy appears, knuckling his eyes.

    "See—we've waked Loki with our chatter," Gralgrathor says. "Sing him a song, Gudred, and by the time you've stitched another seam in your Fairday gown, I'll be back."

    Outside, the light of the long northern evening gleams across the grain field which slopes down to the sea edge. Above, the forest mounts the steep rocks toward the pink-stained snowfields on the high ridges. With the old hound Odinstooth beside him, he sets off with long strides that in a quarter of an hour have put the home acre far below him.

    Beside him, Odinstooth growls; he quiets the dog with a word. On the hillside, a movement catches his eye. It is a man, wrapped in a dark cloak, approaching from the tongue of the forest that extends down toward the farm. Grall watches him, noting his slim, powerful physique, his quick, sure movements.

    The man's course leads him down across the fold of the earth, up again toward the ledge where Gralgrathor waits; there is something in his gait, his easy movements, that remind him of someone from the forgotten life . . .

    The man comes up the slope, his face shadowed under the cowl. For an instant, the heavy gray cloth looks like a Fleet-issue weather cloak . . .

    "Thor?" a mellow tenor voice