“It’s important to clean your blade, Ulfar. If you just bang it back in the scabbard, the blood will make it stick, and then you’re dead,” he muttered. He wondered whether Uncle Hrothgar had sat like this, on a stone, when he’d taught him about blades for the first time. Whether he’d looked down and seen the spark of heroism in a child’s eye. Ulfar tried to remember how old his big uncle had been, and couldn’t. That was another life, another world.
So what was this life, then?
He looked at the sword he was stroking. It was clean and had been for a while.
Easing the blade into the scabbard and looking down at Goran’s corpse, he said, “I’m sorry, old man. If I find him again, I’ll get him properly.”
The horses had shied away from the blood, but they were old enough not to stray far. Ulfar sent a bundle of silent thanks to Alfgeir Bjorne as he saddled up and headed south. He looked over his shoulder at Goran’s corpse and urged his mare into a run.
“Can you smell it?”
The horse didn’t reply, but Ulfar didn’t mind. Two days on the road, and he was starting to think he was alone in the world. Now, however, there was something in the air: something fresh and cold to replace the smothering smell of dank pine and wet earth. He’d swapped horses once a day and kept up a good pace, but he still felt as if the forest would never end. Now the trees ahead were thinning out, and there was something up ahead.
The world of wood he’d been living in dropped away from his eyes, and he gripped the reins so hard that the horse whinnied in protest as his vision filled with blue. The path inclined down to the sandy banks of the water, and the fresh breeze made him sit up straight in the saddle. Ulfar shivered.
It was the big lake. He’d heard of it but never seen it before. A full morning’s crossing by boat, it sliced the country near in half, if the stories were true.
But there was something else as well. His stomach detected it before his brain caught up.
Somewhere close, someone was cooking fish.
Under him, the horse tossed its head and snorted, bringing Ulfar back to his senses. “Easy,” he muttered to the mare, “easy. Let’s . . . give you both a break.”
He dismounted and led the horses into the forest, far enough so he couldn’t see the path anymore. He tethered them to trees close enough to patches of brownish grass, and they accepted their fate with resigned calm and set to eating what could be eaten.
Ulfar was stiff and sore, but the walk back toward the path and the lake limbered him up. The smell was stronger now, and in the distance he could see tendrils of smoke rising lazily.
A smart man would pick his way through the forest and observe from cover, he thought. A smart man would get a feel for whoever started that fire.
But there was a familiar tingling sensation somewhere in the back of his head, so disobeying all his instincts, Ulfar strode out onto the lakefront and started walking very slowly toward the source of the smell. Soon enough, he saw shapes huddled around a line of smoke just past the curve of the coastline. He glanced inland and noticed the two scouts he would have run straight into if he’d gone sneaking, and he smiled to himself.
He inched closer, making sure his hands were visible at all times, but when he was within shouting range he wondered whether he needed to be so careful after all. The men huddled around the half-buried fire looked cold and weary. There were twelve of them. A particularly bony man sat by the fire, turning speared fish this way and that, flicking them onto the broken shields that appeared to be serving as plates.
“Greetings to the fire,” Ulfar shouted the moment he thought he could be heard.
A couple of heads turned, but no one rose to greet him.
Taking their silence as consent, Ulfar sidled closer. The smell of the roasting fish was almost too much to bear.
He was within spear-throwing distance when he saw the injuries.
Every man had them: heads wrapped in dirty, blood-caked cloth, broken forearms crudely splinted, a leg hacked off at the knee. The gaunt cook looked up at him. He flashed a quick signal to the scouts behind Ulfar’s back. The