Thorvald then continued: ‘Or perhaps send a party of our finest hunters to search for tracks? Should I send half my men into a battle that is at best evenly matched or send all of them out on a wild chase after a phantom raiding party, which will either leave me looking like a fool with no defences or a wise man with a score of dead brothers and warriors, sent to their deaths for your beliefs and your insistence on having your own settlement? Would you like me to decide on one of those choices?’
The friar looked down. ‘I cannot ask you to do that.’
‘No,’ Sigurd said. ‘No you damn well can’t. So why are you here, Friar Johann? And how did you get here? I am an old man, but unless memory fails me you were a member of the council anda man of name and responsibility in your settlement. Why did you not die defending your people, Johann?’
‘We do not believe in fighting,’ the friar muttered.
‘Yet you are asking me to believe in your stories of a horde of mystical northerners, raiding and ravaging just up my coast. You’re asking me to believe that they’ve somehow raised a party that has advanced within four days’ journey of Stenvik without any word getting back to anyone, and that they have razed just your little pile of rock and nothing else. And that nobody has spotted so much as a sail of theirs. I’ll tell you what I am going to do with you. I’ll—’
There was movement in the shadows behind the dais. Sven emerged, moved towards Sigurd’s seat, leaned in and whispered a few words in the chieftain’s ear.
Sigurd looked thoughtfully at the dejected friar. ‘Tell me about this so-called Devil’s Fire. It sounds like fun.’
The friar shuddered. ‘I was sleeping soundly when the screams started. When I got to my feet there was a noise … like a …’ He looked at his audience. ‘… Like a giant drawing a breath. Only it wasn’t. I went outside, and our church was on fire. And it wasn’t regular fire. It was like someone had draped our church in northern lights.’
‘They burned your roof? You Christians should be used to that by now,’ Harald smirked.
The friar turned to the burly captain as if noticing him for the first time. ‘No. Not the roof. The church.’
‘The church on Moster was built of stone, was it not?’ Sven asked.
‘Yes.’
An uneasy silence filled the room.
‘So … they set fire to the stone?’ Sigurd asked.
The friar winced at the edge in his voice. ‘I’m telling you what I saw.’
Sigurd stared at him for a long time. Finally, the chieftain leaned back in his chair. ‘You’re a lucky man, Friar Johann. My charity is such that I would happily have had your head mounted on our wall so you could scout your army of mysterious demons for yourself, but wiser men than I look to your fate. Go now, get out of my sight and try to make yourself useful somehow. Go to Einar in the old longhouse and tell him I said he should feed you.’
The friar made to speak but thought better of it, turned and walked away from the high seat. Sigurd and his men watched him leave without a word.
Silence descended upon the chieftain’s longhouse as the large wooden door closed. Sigurd seemed lost in his own thoughts. Thorvald watched him intently. Harald leaned back in his chair and stifled a yawn. The mounted weapons, elaborate tapestries and gilded wooden carvings did little to relieve the oppressive silence.
Finally, Sigurd spoke.
‘So. What do you think?’
‘We cannot be certain of anything,’ Thorvald said. ‘Common robbers? Or do we think he’s telling the truth?’
‘A couple of stinking northerners decided to do away with the simpering cowards on their little island. Why do we care?’ Harald spat for emphasis. ‘Stupid place to put a church anyway, stone or no stone. I can’t say I blame whoever did it – I just hope they got loot to show for it. Less use than tits on a duck, those Christians.’
‘Still, we cannot ignore this,’ Sven said.