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‘I cast the runesticks and learned my fate.’

‘What did you learn?’

‘I am to have two sons and a daughter.’

‘Good,’ I said.

‘They will be your sons,’ she said defiantly, ‘and your daughter.’

For a moment I did not speak. The night suddenly seemed fragile.

‘The runesticks told you that?’ I managed to say after a few heartbeats.

‘They have never lied,’ she said calmly.

“Do you ever look forward to King Alfred’s company? Do you brew special ale for him? Do you remember a joke to tell him? Does anyone ever sit by a fire and try him with riddles? Do we sing with him? All he ever does is worry about what his god wants, and he makes rules to please his god, and if you do something for him it’s never enough because his wretched god just wants more.”

But unmarried, black hair still unbound. I thought it was a face of dreams, a face to set the sky on fire, a face to haunt a man. I still see that face so many years later. It was long, long nosed, with dark eyes that sometimes seemed far away and other times were mischievous and when she looked at me that first time I was lost. The spinners who make our lives had sent her and I knew nothing would ever be the same.

'You want to kill the slaver?' I called back to Hild, gesturing at the swords.

'No, she said.

'Iseult would have killed him, I said. Iseult had been my lover and Hild's friend.

"Thou shalt not kill, Hild said.

It was a Christian commandment and about as fu-tile, I thought, as commanding the sun to go backwards.

'Bolti, I spoke in Danish now, 'kill the