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the corpulent, sycophantic advisor.
                  “You may go as well,” he snapped and Asbjorn wisely said nothing, just gave a hint of a crestfallen look before scurrying out the door.
                  Damn him... Orm thought, not even certain who he was damning. All of them.
                  Magnus had done him no good at all. He had discovered nothing, resolved nothing, had left only more doubt behind. He had not even the decency to get himself drowned.
                  The Celts were a disorganized rabble with nearly as many kings as they had sheep, and as such they were no concern. But if they were able to unite against the Norsemen, that would be a different story.
                  Orm drained his cup. “Damn!” he said out loud. Morrigan, the Irish thrall he had taken when he took Dubh-linn, looked warily from the next room and Orm flung the cup at her. It was not enough that he should take and hold the town, build it up in a way that the idiot Norwegians could never hope to do. Now he had the Celts at his back and the threat of Norwegian vengeance from the sea. At times he wondered if it was worth the aggravation.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
     
     
     
    Wake early
    if you want
    another man’s life or land.
                             Hávamál
     
     
     
     
     
                  T
    horgrim Ulfsson dreamed of wolves.
                  He dreamed of wolves often. In his dreams he could not see himself, but he saw the other wolves, his eyes level with theirs, and he ran with them, swift and tireless.
                  He woke exhausted from these dreams. Sometimes there was blood, but he did not know where it came from.
                  Now he saw himself running with the wolves, and his eyes burned like the red eyes of the other beasts in the pack. They raced though thick forest, trees like giants barely seen in the dark. Thorgrim could smell the pack close by, could hear the snarls from canine throats, the muted padding of their feet on the forest floor.
                  There was something in his mouth. It was bloody and warm and the sensation of it excited him. Something freshly killed. And he alone had it.
                  Then suddenly he was no longer running. He was stopped, and there were other wolves around him, not his pack, but wolves he did not know and they were turning on him. He could see teeth flash in moonlight and heard the angry growls. The pack closed in, wary but deliberate, and Thorgrim backed away. He needed his teeth to fight, but he did not want to drop the thing in his mouth. He tried to make a noise but he could not.
                  Then they were on him, and he had a sensation of hot breath and matted fur, fangs snapping at him, a dozen angry mouths closing on him, and he kicked and shook and tried to fight, but still he would not drop the bloody thing in his mouth.
                  Then Thorgrim was awake. Sudden, like stepping through a door. One instant he was fighting the wolf pack, and in the next he was lying in his furs on the afterdeck of the longship. The night was cold, the rain falling as a light mist, but Thorgrim was coated in sweat. His breath was coming fast and hard, as if he had been running.
                  For some time he lay there, eyes wide, body motionless. The wolf dreams left him exhausted, and weak, as if he was coming out of a long illness.
                  Through the dark and the fog he could barely make out the loom of the mast overhead, the rigging hanging in long sweeping arcs. They had run the longship into a little bay just as the night came down on them, hauling the bow up on a shingle beach and securing the ship with a line ashore. They ate, drank to near