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Beyond the humped dead and the fire there were shouts; lights flared and there was the unmistakeable sound of chains and creaking hinges as a heavy gate opened in the fortress wall.

'There is no silver, nor tomb,' I said. 'Only a vengeful boy-prince and a frightened garrison. With luck they will fight each other and let us escape with our lives.'

'We will never manhandle this boat to the river in time,' muttered Gizur, as men sprang to the frozen ropes.

'Time I was gone,' Morut called from below and I sprang off the boat to stand beside him.

'Come with us,' I said, for I liked the little man and his knowledge of horses. He shook his head, grinning. 'What? Spend my life hauling ships across the steppe from river to river? Besides, that great fool Avraham may decide to come up with these folk from the keep and I do not want to have to fight him. If you have to, try not to kill him.'

'Anyway — how can I leave that marvellous horse of mine behind?' he added, 'I must get back to where I tethered him before some Khazar ben shel elef zona finds him. You know what these people are like.'

I smiled, then fished out the armring I had taken from Kvasir before we had wrapped him.

'As I promised,' I said, 'in case that son of a thousand whores has indeed stolen your scrubby little pony. I will find a richer mark of favour to bury with Kvasir.'

Morut caught it deftly and touched it briefly to his heart before making it vanish inside his tunic.

'Good journey,' I said and he waved once, then was gone into the shadows. He had barely vanished when the horsemen came on us out of the dark of the fortress.

'Cut the ropes!' yelled Finn and the men trying to knock out iced tether-pegs stopped and then fumbled out blades. 'Cut them, fuck your mothers!'

They hacked and swore; and one of them — I could not see who it was — turned with a shrieking gurgle as an arrow took him in the throat.

At the same moment a horseman surged forward out of the dark, kicking his unwilling mount. Hauk, flailing furiously at the tether with a too-blunt sword, spun round, dipping as he did so, taking the horse in the forelegs, which snapped like twigs. It fell, kicking a blizzard of snow and screaming, the rider's own cries of pain lost in that skin-crawling horse-squeal. Trapped, the rider struggled, wide-eyed, until Hauk's blunt sword crashed on his face and ruined it.

The strug lurched and, panicking, men flung themselves aboard with the job only half done. There was a crashing sound as Gyrth dropped over the side and ran at us; Hauk turned as another horseman roared out of the dark and I saw they were all round us now.

'Get aboard,' I yelled at Hauk and brandished the axe to show what I intended. He hesitated only briefly, then leaped up for the side of the strug and caught it with his one free hand as others pulled him over.

Gyrth looked at me, his yellow teeth bared; he must have known when he flung himself back over the side, that he would never get back aboard — it had taken four men to haul him up the first time. He turned in a whirl of flailing fur and roared himself to the darkness, head back and arms out, the great axe in one fist.

'Orm!' Finn bellowed, but I hacked at the rope and it parted in two strokes; the strug lurched again and shifted slightly sideways, swinging on the tether of one remaining rope; I saw the linden bast of it tremble, spitting out little shards of ice.

An arrow hissed like a snake over my boots, skittering through the snow; another plunked at my feet, I felt the wind of a third on my cheek and turned to start hacking at the last rope.

A horse stumbled out of the dark and the noise, wild eyes white, nostrils wide. The rider on him gave a high shriek of triumph and slashed down with a curved sword, but I had already flung myself flat and sideways and hacked out with the axe.

With a dagger scream the horse spun on its hocks, one front leg shattered; the rider spilled from the saddle and landed in a great whoof of driven air and spattering snow. I drove at him, the axe up and coming down, so that it took all I had to twist my wrist at the last, burying the blade so close to the fear-white familiar face that one brow braid was sheared.

'For Morut,' I growled into the cod-mouthed stare of Avraham, then tore the axe blade free, showering him with diamond chips of ice to remind him of how close he had come. Then I whacked him between the eyes with the butt end.

'Orm!'

The bull-bellow from Finn was almost too late; the horsemen were crashing on us and I turned into Gyrth's big, lopsided grin.

'Heya!' he yelled, swung up the long-axe and smashed it down on the rope, which parted in a shower of little ice shards. I was half up on one knee when the strug groaned, shifted and started to move, a great bulked beast on its cradle of wooden runners; ice spat and cracked as its own weight started to tear it loose down the slope.

Gyrth's face was suddenly close to mine, close enough to have the rank breath of him on me and the great wild of his eyes staring into mine.

'Jump,' he said and then was gone, rolling forward into the mass of horsemen; an arrow shunked into him, with no more seeming effect than a skelf in his finger. I saw him grab the bridle of one horse, hauling it almost to his knees then, one-handed, slash the axe head into the face of the rider. The horse struggled, trying to tear free and Gyrth slammed his own helmeted head on the blaze of the beast, so that it gave a grunt and sank to its knees, eyes rolling white into its head.

Then more horsemen surged out of the dark, milling around and I heard him bear-roaring his name at them. Steinnbrodir. Steinnbrodir is here.

'Orm, you arse — the rope!'

Finn's roar shook me into the Now of it; the world sped up, the trailing rope whipped away from me and I grabbed it with my left hand. It slithered, iced and slippery, through the few fingers I had, so I dropped the axe and hurled myself at it with the other.

The wrench tore shrieks from my arms, but I held on with both hands, in a whirl of stars and snow, dragged bouncing down the slope as the strug bucked and kicked, galloping down the ice, leaping into the air on its wooden runners.

A man, one of Vladimir's long-coated druzhina who had run forward to attack us too, was hit as the strug lurched forward, gathering speed; he was flung aside with a crunch of bone and a shriek, while the runners were given extra slick with the smear of him.

There was a great bang and objects whirred darkly around me; I clung on, lost in a world of pain and ice, a small, clear part of me seeing the remains of the wooden cradle of runners spinning away behind me in shards. Vladimir's men scattered from the path of that plunging stallion of a boat, their faces white stabs of fear whirling away from me into the dark.

The strug lurched and slid, hit the last of the shore, hissing a bow-wave of snow from under it — then ploughed into the black river and the shadows, spouting up a great grue of ice under it as it took us to the slow, cold slide of the crow dark river.

I lost the rope as it whipped me up and there was a marvellous moment of flying, the great wheel of clear stars tilting in a pitch sky — then there was the whooping shock of the water, so cold it burned. I went down and round and spinning into freezing darkness, surfaced once to see the strug forging away from me, while men shouted and howled and tried to get it to stop — then I sank again, the world a muffled roar in my ears.

It was Hlenni Brimill and Onund who saved me, the one spotting me, the other leaping in like a bull walrus to grab me and tow me back to the surface.

When I blinked back to the world, it was on the deck, shivering and soaked, bruised and with fingers scorched with rope burns. Hlenni was rubbing me so furiously I shook, but his hands burned feeling back to my limbs. Nearby, Red Njal did the same for Onund, who shivered under a cloak, but managed to grin and wave. I trembled out a nod, acknowledgement of what I owed him.