It was a blur of black and white and noise, bounding over the hill ahead of him. Within moments it came to a snarling stop six feet away, head down but eyes up, ears back, and hackles raised. Thinking quickly, Audun trained his eyes on the ground, only glancing at the big animal from the corner of his eye: this was the kind they kept to growl at wolves in the night and round up anything on legs in the day, good for snapping his shin in half if it felt like it.
Audun reached slowly into his sack and rooted around for the greasy chunk of meat Hrutur had given him. He teased off a strip and waved it. The dog leapt sideways across the road and barked louder. Audun crouched and held out his hand. “Come on, boy,” he said in soothing tones. “Here, boy.” The dog barked furiously at him, but Audun did not make eye contact; instead he kept his gaze on the ground and the hand holding the meat outstretched but drew it ever so slightly closer to his body.
The dog stopped leaping about and approached, still growling.
Audun pulled his hand in farther, muttering nonsense all the while in the same calming voice.
Still the dog drew closer, barking once again as if to emphasize that there had been an argument and that it had won.
Audun smiled and threw the chunk of meat over its head.
With improbable speed, the big dog leapt and caught the chunk in midair, but Audun was already up and walking past it. A couple of moments later the dog was on his heels, bounding and barking.
Audun ignored him for a couple of steps, then turned and addressed him. “Do you want some more?”
The dog barked louder, tongue flapping, tail twitching. Audun raised his hand, made sure it saw, and reached for the bag. “Sit,” he said. The dog paid no notice, so he withdrew his hand. The dog barked. Audun moved his hand toward the bag and tried again. “Sit!” he said. Now the dog stopped moving. “Sit,” Audun repeated, as authoritatively as he could. The dog barked once, loudly—and sat down. “Good boy!” Audun said and quickly tore more meat off the bone in his bag. The dog’s tail thumped as the hand came out, and it caught the flying chunk again.
Audun started walking in the direction the dog had come from.
Moments later, the dog came bounding after him, still barking at the world. Audun stood still and relaxed his hand by his side. When the big animal nudged him, Audun scratched the dog behind the ears. They fell into an easy stride, the dog loping along around and beside him.
The smoke lines were so thin that he smelled them before he saw them. Cresting a hill, he saw Skaer, thought back to Hrutur’s words, and couldn’t help but wonder what passed for a village these days. This was nothing but a smattering of houses with runty cook-fires and what looked from a distance to be a very crude pier set hardly a ship’s length into a naturally sheltered harbor.
The dog barked once more and took off at a dead run toward the houses.
“So much for company,” Audun muttered and scratched his arms. Still—they might have work. There was nothing for it but to go and find out.
SKAER, JUTLAND
EARLY NOVEMBER, AD 996
“There is nothing for you here,” the man said, scratching his pockmarked chin. “I hardly make a living myself, so I don’t know what we’d do with another blacksmith.”
Audun looked around his pitiful excuse for a smithy and thought he could probably point out a couple of reasons why the man was struggling for work but decided against it. “I see. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Try Helga in Ovregard. She’s a widow, our Helga, and will need a hand, although she’ll deny it. Mind you, might want to hurry,” the man added with a smirk.
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, nothing,” the man said as his face contorted. Whatever he was trying to dislodge with his tongue popped loose and was swallowed. There was nothing more Audun could get from him on the subject, so he settled for provisions and instructions. The blacksmith took Audun’s coins, counted them and gave back a fire-steel, a leg of lamb, a small knife, and a hammer that belonged on the scrap heap. They both knew Audun was being fleeced, but that was the way it was. Back in