all my strength, and the blade chopped into his waist where his clothes took most of the force. He fell over, shouting, and his two friends dragged me away as Rorik went to untie his sister.
That was all that happened. Sven was bleeding, but he managed to pull up his breeches and his friends helped him away and Rorik and I took Thyra back to the homestead where Ravn heard Thyra’s sobs and our excited voices and demanded silence. ‘Uhtred,’ the old man said sternly, ‘you will wait by the pigsties. Rorik, you will tell me what happened.’
I waited outside as Rorik told what had happened, then Rorik was sent out and I was summoned indoors to recount the afternoon’s escapade. Thyra was now in her mother’s arms, and her mother and grandmother were furious. ‘You tell the same tale as Rorik,’ Ravn said when I had finished.
‘Because it’s the truth,’ I said.
‘So it would seem.’
‘He raped her!’ Sigrid insisted.
‘No,’ Ravn said firmly, ‘thanks to Uhtred, he did not.’
That was the story Ragnar heard when he returned from hunting, and as it made me a hero I did not argue against its essential untruth which was that Sven would not have raped Thyra for he would not have dared. His foolishness knew few limits, but limits there were, and committing rape on the daughter of Earl Ragnar, his father’s warlord, was beyond even Sven’s stupidity. Yet he had made an enemy and, next day, Ragnar led six men to Kjartan’s house in the neighbouring valley. Rorik and I were given horses and told to accompany the men, and I confess I was frightened. I felt I was responsible. I had, after all, started the games in the high woods, but Ragnar did not see it that way. ‘You haven’t offended me. Sven has.’ He spoke darkly, his usual cheerfulness gone. ‘You did well, Uhtred. You behaved like a Dane.’ There was no higher praise he could have given me, and I sensed he was disappointed that I had charged Sven instead of Rorik, but I was older and much stronger than Ragnar’s younger son so it should have been me who fought.
We rode through the cold woods and I was curious because two of Ragnar’s men carried long branches of hazel that were too spindly to use as weapons, but what they were for I did not like to ask because I was nervous.
Kjartan’s homestead was in a fold of the hills beside a stream that ran through pastures where he kept sheep, goats and cattle, though most had been killed now, and the few remaining animals were cropping the last of the year’s grass. It was a sunny day, though cold. Dogs barked as we approached, but Kjartan and his men snarled at them and beat them back to the yard beside the house where he had planted an ash tree that did not look as though it would survive the coming winter, and then, accompanied by four men, none of them armed, he walked towards the approaching horsemen. Ragnar and his six men were armed to the hilt with shields, swords and war axes, and their broad chests were clad in mail, while Ragnar was wearing my father’s helmet that he had purchased after the fighting at Eoferwic. It was a splendid helmet, its crown and face-piece decorated with silver, and I thought it looked better on Ragnar than it had on my father.
Kjartan the shipmaster was a big man, taller than Ragnar, with a flat, wide face like his son’s and small, suspicious eyes and a huge beard. He glanced at the hazel branches and must have recognised their meaning for he instinctively touched the hammer-charm hanging on a silver chain about his neck. Ragnar curbed his horse and, in a gesture that showed his utter contempt, he tossed down the sword that I had carried back from the clearing where Sven had tied Thyra. By rights the sword belonged to Ragnar now, and it was a valuable weapon with silver wire wrapped around its hilt, but he tossed the blade at Kjartan’s feet as though it were nothing more than a hay-knife. ‘Your son left that on my land,’ he said, ‘and I would have words with him.’
‘My son is a good boy,’ Kjartan said stoutly, ‘and in time he will serve at your oars and fight in your shield wall.’
‘He has offended me.’
‘He meant no harm, lord.’
‘He has offended me,’ Ragnar repeated harshly. ‘He looked on my daughter’s nakedness and showed her his own.’
‘And he was punished for it,’ Kjartan said, giving me a malevolent glance. ‘Blood was shed.’
Ragnar made an abrupt gesture and the hazel branches were dropped to the ground. That was evidently Ragnar’s answer, which made no sense to me, but Kjartan understood, as did Rorik who leaned over and whispered to me. ‘That means he must fight for Sven now.’
‘Fight for him?’
‘They mark a square on the ground with the branches and they fight inside the square.’
Yet no one moved to arrange the hazel branches into a square. Instead Kjartan walked back to his house and summoned Sven who came limping from under the low lintel, his right leg bandaged. He looked sullen and terrified, and no wonder, for Ragnar and his horsemen were in their war glory, shining warriors, sword-Danes.
‘Say what you have to say,’ Kjartan said to his son.
Sven looked up at Ragnar. ‘I am sorry,’ he mumbled.
‘I can’t hear you,’ Ragnar snarled.
‘I am sorry, lord,’ Sven said, shaking with fear.
‘Sorry for what?’ Ragnar demanded.
‘For what I did.’
‘And what did you do?’
Sven found no answer, or none that he cared to make, and instead he shuffled his feet and looked down at the ground. Cloud shadows raced across the far moor, and two ravens beat up to the head of the valley.
‘You laid hands on my daughter,’ Ragnar said, ‘and you tied her to a tree, and you stripped her naked.’
‘Half naked,’ Sven muttered, and for his pains took a thump on the head from his father.
‘A game,’ Kjartan appealed to Ragnar, ‘just a game, lord.’
‘No boy plays such games with my daughter,’ Ragnar said. I had rarely seen him angry, but he was angry now, grim and hard, no trace of the big-hearted man who could make a hall echo with laughter. He dismounted and drew his sword, his battle-blade called Heart-Breaker, and he held the tip towards Kjartan. ‘Well?’ he asked, ‘do you dispute my right?’
‘No, lord,’ Kjartan said, ‘but he is a good boy, strong and a hard worker, and he will serve you well.’
‘And he has seen things he should not see,’ Ragnar said, and he tossed Heart-Breaker into the air so that her long blade turned in the sun and he caught her by the hilt as she dropped, but now he was holding her backwards, as if she were a dagger rather than a sword. ‘Uhtred!’ Ragnar called, making me jump. ‘He says she was only half naked. Is that true?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Then only half a punishment,’ Ragnar said, and he drove the sword forward, hilt first, straight into Sven’s face. The hilts of our swords are heavy, sometimes decorated with precious things, but however pretty they appear, the hilts are still brutal lumps of metal, and Heart-Breaker’s hilt, banded with silver, crushed Sven’s right eye. Crushed it to jelly, blinding it instantly, and Ragnar spat at him then slid his blade back into its fleece-lined scabbard.
Sven was crouching, whimpering, his hands clasped over his ruined eye.
‘It is over,’ Ragnar said to Kjartan.
Kjartan hesitated. He was angry, shamed and unhappy, but he could not win a trial of strength with Earl Ragnar and so, at last, he nodded. ‘It is over,’ he agreed.
‘And you no longer serve me,’ Ragnar said coldly.
We rode home.
The hard winter came, the brooks froze, snow drifted to fill the streambeds, and the world was cold, silent and white. Wolves came to the edge of the woods and the midday sun was pale, as though its strength had been leeched away by the north wind.
Ragnar