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there was plenty to avenge. And the story was long told of the woman Blenda, who sent out messages to the other women, and together they met the jarl and his men near the Nissa River with bread and salt pork. Quite a lot of salt pork, as it turned out. They provided an extraordinary feast, and oddly enough, there was plenty of ale to go with the salt pork.

    The jarl and his men finally staggered off to a barn to sleep while the soldiers, just as drunk as the noblemen, had to make do as best they could underneath ox and sheep hides out in the snow. It was then that Blenda and the other women made their preparations. They tarred big torches and summoned their men, who were hiding in the forest.

    When silence had fallen over the army’s encampment and only snoring could be heard, they carefully barred the door of the barn and then set fire to all four corners simultaneously. Then they attacked the sleeping soldiers.

    The next morning, with joyous laughter, they drowned the last of the captives beneath the ice on the Nissa River, where they had chopped two big holes so that they could drag the prisoners down under the ice as if on a long fishing line.

    King Sverker had won the war with the Danes without lifting a finger or sending out a single man.

    No doubt he believed that this was due both to his prayers of intercession and to God’s providence. Yet he was man enough to have Blenda and her kinsmen brought before him. And he proclaimed that the women of Varend, who had shown themselves so manly in the defense of the country, should henceforth inherit just as men did. And as an eternal emblem of war they would wear a red sash with an embroidered cross of gold, an insignia that would be granted to them alone.

    If King Sverker had lived longer, his decrees would surely have had greater legal effect than they did. But King Sverker’s days were numbered. He would soon be murdered.

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    No fortress can be built to be impregnable. If strong enough motivation exists, any man’s home can be pillaged and burned. But the question then is whether it is worth the price. How many besiegers had been shot to death with arrows, how many had been crushed by stones, how many had lost their will and health during the siege?

    Herr Magnus knew all this, and he was greatly troubled as the construction progressed. Because what he couldn’t know, what no one at that time could know, was what would happen after the death of old King Sverker. And that time was fast approaching.

    Anything was possible. Sverker’s eldest son Karl might win the king’s power, and then nothing in particular would change. If nothing else, Sigrid had seen to improving her husband’s relationship to King Sverker by donating Varnhem almost as if in his name.

    But it was difficult to know much about what was happening up in Svealand, and which of the Swedes was now preparing for the battle to become king. Perhaps it was some Western Goth? Perhaps someone in their own lineage or in a friendly clan or in a hostile clan. As they waited for the decision to be made, there was nothing to do but keep building.

    Arnas was located at the tip of a peninsula that jutted out into Lake Vanern, and so had a natural water defense on three sides. Next to the old longhouse a stone tower was now being erected that was as tall as seven men. The walls around the tower were still not finished, but the area was mainly protected by palisades of tightly packed, pointed oak logs. Here there was still plenty to do.

    Magnus stood for a long time up in the tower on his property, trying out shots with a longbow, aiming at a bale of hay on the other side of the two wall moats. It was truly remarkable how far an arrow from a longbow could reach if he fired down from an elevated position. And after very little practice he was learning to calculate the angle so that he hit the target almost perfectly, at most an arm’s length to one side or the other. Even in its present unfinished state,