His son sits apart, as he has done for the last three nights since they left Kattegat, in the shadows outside the fire. The others talk of fishermen who find whales in their nets or women who sound like sheep when they are on their backs, but Torstein more than once looks over at Bjørn, or at Ragnar.

Ragnar sighs and drops the stick that he has been scratching his beard with. He goes to his son. 'Are you going to sit there all night?'

Bjørn looks up. 'What is wrong with that?'

It is so much easier when they are small, before they think they are men. Ragnar drops his voice. 'You are making yourself look weak.'

The fire bristles. His son rises and stands close to him, a hand taller. 'You think I look weak, Father?'

Ragnar can feel the anger in him, anger dipped in sadness. Each one the kindling for the other.

'Weak is letting women tell you what to do,' Bjørn says. 'Weak is giving up one woman for another as quick as rain dries on the ground. Weak is -' He looks as if he would like to break Ragnar, crack him open like an egg. 'I will never love another,' he says through teeth jammed together.

You will, Ragnar thinks, and perhaps sooner than you know. He looks at his palms. 'Come and sit by the fire. The nights are still cold.'

Bjørn goes to his knees, a sack of potatoes sagging to the ground. 'I will sit here.'

It is easier when they are small. They run to you, and they demand stories, and they believe what you tell them.

Ragnar leaves his son alone with his shadows.

V*V*V*V*V*V

Athelstan was honing an axe-blade with one hand, sitting on a step by the fish market-table. The town was busier than ever, full of slaves and men from the near villages. For now, you were the one that everyone answered to. Playing at king – though Ragnar would snatch that crown back as soon as he returned.

'What are you sharpening that for?' you said.

The priest looked up. 'Does an axe-blade not need to be sharpened?' Every mouthful of words like a bloody riddle.

You leaned against the post. 'Who is your next battle against?'

He rested it on his knees, put his hand alongside his injured one in his lap and gazed at you. 'It makes me feel calm.'

You sniffed a little and shut an eye up at the sky. Sunna was in a fierce mood today. 'It makes you feel calm to sharpen it, it makes me feel calm to use it.'

'There's no need to do that.'

You glanced down at him. 'Do what?'

He gave a small breath through his nose and folded his fingers together. 'We all know you are the great man. The warrior. You have what you wanted.' He spoke more quietly. 'And it is what she wants.'

'If you want to fight, I will fight.'

'You know as well as I who would win that battle.' His eyes were the eyes of a weasel, a shrew, an owl, and they looked past you. Sansa was there, sitting on that boulder by the edge of the water. Clutching her knees, looking out to sea. 'I would never fight over her. It would belittle her to do so.' He picked up the blade and the whetstone again, put his head down.

And you realised then, as Ragnar already knew, that fighting was not always the way. That talking, using carefully-sharpened words and honed deeds was sometimes a stronger method.

You chewed down your pride and nodded at him. After two steps, you halted. 'Athelstan.'

Surprise in his eyes as his head flitted up. You had probably never called him anything other than priest before.

'That arm. It will get stronger through training, not resting. It will take patience, but -' you waved your hand at your own leg. Sometimes you still felt the horses' hooves, as if they had got stuck there in the bone. 'I know about this.'

His look was almost curious, pale as bloody winter. He nodded and you left him.

Sansa's sword and shield were on the sand beside her. She looked as if she had forgotten everything she had been taught.

'Do you need someone to fight?' You leant down, scooped your hand around her waist. 'Perhaps you will slice my arm off properly this time.' As she turned, you saw how red and stained her eyes were. An albino fox. 'What is it?'

She turned back around to the sea. Oarweed pushing up against the rock at her feet.

It had been good, these last few days. During Sunna's journeys across the sky, you had been busy overseeing the boats now being made on the beach as well as at Floki's, and trying to bribe Floki and other men into not hurting the damned slaves, priests or otherwise. Rollo the peacekeeper. You would never have thought you would care too much but – even you could see that getting this work done was more important. But at night you had always been together, and there were new ways to explore her. Simple ways, too, like counting her freckles, or the little stones of her spine. And you had twice not pushed your seed inside her, like you were damned Sinfiötli. She did not want your child. This was clear. But last night – she had let you continue, asked you to. Perhaps she rued it again now.

You put your nose in her neck. It was hot and cold at once and you wanted to lick the salt from her. 'Tell me.'

She blinked at you, wetness on the ends of her eyelashes. 'I just wish Thorunn was here.' Her voice was the voice of a child, or a much older woman. 'It is not the same. Without her. And then I think of everyone.'

Part of you burned a little that you were not enough for her, before you thought of Torstein and Ragnar and Floki and Bjørn and the others, and all the times you had got drunk and fought and pissed together. 'I am sorry, raf refr. Do not forget your training. She would not want you to.'

'I know.' She slid off the rock and picked up her shield, slinging it onto her arm as if she had done it for longer than you knew she had, and went on fighting the air.

V*V*V*V*V*V

Sansa couldn't help feeling alone at the centre of all these people. Thorunn's death had only brought her own family's to the surface again – bodies released by the sea-bed. And she and Athelstan were distant, for now. Though he had let her go with such grace, slipping into a just-friendship was not so simple. They had passed each other awkwardly, and had not talked since she had told him about Rollo.

She gave Ivar her finger to grip again. She had found herself spending more time with Ivar and Sigurd if she wasn't training - playing with them, singing to Ivar when he raged his storms in his cot-bed. She wondered desperately how Bjørn was - Ragnar seemed to wear the fatherhood of his eldest son as an itchy cloak in winter, something he had to wear but would rather not. She hoped they were able to talk together.

Every night she walked to Rollo's house and he would be there, waiting for her, half her clothes off before she even blinked. But she found solace in him, and in the way she could lightly scratch her nails down his back and make a sigh like a long sinew come from him. He had done as she had asked, too, though she had acquired the lily root tea Helga had spoken of from a healer-woman, and felt brave enough to keep him moving inside her once.

He was warm, and he was dangerous, but she trusted him. He would tell her what he had done that day, and she heard the man he could be, if he could ever shrug off Ragnar's shadow.

V*V*V*V*V*V

Two more days and they reach Thisted, which clutches its lake-side, houses right up to the spiked grass of the dunes. Earl Olesen, a man the size of a great brown bear, has made Ragnar's life easier by coming to this village from Struar. He and Earl Edman greet their king warmly, and bring the men food and ale.

Ragnar eats his roast deer-leg and watches them through side-eyes. They look close, as if they were once joined at the head. Bjørn slumps as he eats, ear resting on his fist. Ragnar kicks his leg, tells him with his eyes to sit up straight. To look like a prince.

'King Ragnar.'

Ragnar straightens and smiles a pretend-smile. 'Earl Edman.'

Earl Edman has a thin scar all the way down his nose, like the scored lines Floki makes on wood to be cut. 'We are grateful for the riches you have brought us from England. Such fine things. I would like to see this land for myself some day.'

Ragnar chews and smiles. This man is not brave enough to see past the end of his own arm.

'But -' he glances at Earl Olesen, who nods, deeply. 'We have questions. Many questions, before we can give you the men you ask for.'

Ragnar lifts a shoulder. 'I am ready for them.'

V*V*V*V*V*V

You followed the tracks of a deer – a big one, a stag even, into the darker skull-hollows of the forest. The smell of its scat filled your nose. You became like the bow you carried at these moments, lean, stretched, ready.

Víðarr was always close to you here. The silent one of the forest. He followed you, a shadow on your back as heavy as a cloak. Sometimes you felt as if you were him, fighting your own Fenrir-self.

You crouched down, put your finger into a hoof-print like a giant beetle, or two wings. It was nearby.

Then – a whimper, tiny, less than a bird-call. Distressed. Not quite animal. You stood, made yourself a stone, listened.

Again.

Leaving the prints, you picked your way over the roots, up a small slope. Feeling the small cries tugging at you like a thin thread.

There. Sitting on a pillow of moss. A little thing. Trembling.

When you approached, she did not run. She looked up at you, blinking. Black, wet eyes. 'What are you doing here?' you said.

Her tongue came out a little. A shiver.

There was no one around. No one at all. Leaves hugging tightly together, a few gnats and flies.

Black around her ears, too, which made you think of Floki. She looked like she had been out here, alone, for some time. There were no footprints.

Víðarr, lurking behind the ghosts of trees, watching. Old roots, new roots.

Fine. 'Come on, then,' you said, and picked her up into your arms.

V*V*V*V*V*V

They ask much – of Sansa, more of West-er-os. Distances, sizes. Ragnar answers, though he makes some of it up. But he tells of the boats that Sansa drew, gives details of their shape, the way they sail. Floki would be proud.

'Then they are already seaworthy, these people of West-er-os,' Earl Edman asks. 'How do we know they are not approaching us, to attack us?'

So worried, so safe. 'They have not made it yet. Do you think we should wait for them?' He widens his eyes. 'Perhaps I should have waited for Englishmen to come, so that we could defend our lands.'

'We are not saying that we do not believe you, King Ragnar,' says Earl Olesen. 'But how do we know that this girl you speak of is who she says she is? That she is not a spy from a land to the east? Or sent by Loki?'

'She is who she says she is.'

Ragnar looks at his son in surprise. It is the first time he has spoken in the whole meal.

Bjørn puts down his deer-bone and glares at them. 'You must take the word of your king. You disrespect him to do otherwise.'

Earl Olesen folds his great hands. 'So this is the Bjørn Ironside we have heard so much of. He limps more than I imagined he would.'

Bjørn puts his hand flat on the table. There is life in him, suddenly. 'It is an injury. It will heal.'

'So tell us, Bjørn son-of-Ragnar, why we should give so many men – most of the men of our villages, to sail blindly into the west.'

Bjørn pushes his plate away, stands, his head near the roof-beam. 'Ragnar Lothbrook was told by a wanderer about England. That is the only reason he knew. This was enough for him to sail to lands you have not even dreamt of. To build boats that penetrated seas that no one here had ever done before. And now there are bigger boats. More lands, full of riches and rich earth. Sansa is his next wanderer.' Bjørn glances at his father. 'That is all you need to know.'

Earl Olesen and Earl Edman join their heads together. Twins at last. It is some time before they address him again. 'We will give you what you need. But we ask this first. That we meet this princess and see her truths for ourselves.'

V*V*V*V*V*V

'I have brought someone to meet you.' Rollo was standing above her, blocking out the sun. Sansa put down her sewing – she was trying to fix the elbow of a dress that she had torn while training with one of Thorunn's shieldmaiden friends. Keira was a small, black-haired girl with a disarming smile and a very vicious axe-arm. Sansa would bear new bruises tomorrow.

For a moment, she had no idea what he might mean. There seemed to be no one with him. Was it a boat-builder he knew? Had he befriended one of the priests? A relative she did not know that he had?

'I found her in the woods. Abandoned, I think. I thought you might like her.' An inky amusement in his voice. 'Seeing as you are one.'

There was movement at his ankles and she realised that he was holding a rope in his hands, and that his arm was being pulled. And at the end of the thin rope was a wolf cub.

Sansa froze. The little wolf lifted a front paw up, testing the air, before headbutting Rollo's ankle.

It was the shape of a tiny barrel, the colour of dry bark and wet bark. It nosed up to Sansa's feet, looked at her and, quick as a little lightning strike, a bright pink tongue flashed out and touched its own nose before disappearing again just as quickly.

The wolf cub went very still, legs rigid, body quivering. Alert, tufted ears and raisin-dark eyes, the fur a little lighter where the bone rose up. Dark eyes meeting hers again. A blink of wiry lashes.

Sansa took a breath. She hardly dared move. Carefully, she put her hand out, palm upwards. The wolf cub blinked again, tar-black nose twitching. It – she - started forwards, halted, and took two careful steps towards her. Sniff. Another sniff. Lick.

Sansa felt something deep in her stomach knot and unknot. Found alone in these mountains, like her. Terrified, like her. Brave. Like her. She looked up at Rollo, still amazed.

He was watching the wolf cub, and he was watching her.

'There's one thing we need to do first,' she said, putting her hand out.

His eyebrows came together.

She tugged the rope out of his hands, and slowed her arms as she loosened it from around the wolf cub's neck. 'She doesn't need this.'

V*V*V*V*V*V

Another campfire, with others around them now as the twin-earls and some of their men rest nearby. If they like what they see, they will send for more. Ragnar hopes that the princess will convince them. He will make sure she does.

Bjørn sits next to his father this time, though he still looks at the fire as if waiting for it to rise up against him with swords and axes.

'I am sorry,' Ragnar says. His son looks up. 'About Thorunn.'

Bjørn's eyes flicker with fire. Flame and shadows.

'I am not sorry that I let her come. It was her will. But I am sorry that I was not fighting by her side, as you would have done.'

Bjørn takes one slow, night-breath. 'That is all I ever wanted you to say.' His words are doughy, like bread not quite ready.

Ragnar puts his lips together, tries to smile like the father he should be to all of his sons.

Bjørn hugs his knees. 'Tell me about West-er-os.'

He knows all that Ragnar does. 'The princess can tell you more than I.'

'Sansa is not here.' He raises his eyebrows, and Ragnar sees Lagertha there, in the warmth and the scolding and the wanting. 'You will have to do.'

And Ragnar tells him all that he knows, all that he thinks of now, about the land and its kings and its wars and its riches, and his son listens as if it is a bedside story.

V*V*V*V*V*V

'Do you know how long I have wanted you?'

They were sitting on the bed, Rollo between Sansa's legs, leaning his back into her. She had an arm over his chest and was kissing his neck. She could kiss his neck all night. Salt and animal hide.

'Yes,' she said. He half-turned, surprised. 'You asked me to have sex with you.' She laid her hand flat on his side, over the coiled tattoo there. 'Don't you remember?' She didn't mention Siggy.

She could see that he did remember. He picked up a lock of her hair and drew it in front of him, turning it in his fingers. 'That was different.'

There was a snuffling noise. A whine. Rollo shifted and scooped the little wolf up onto the bed. She tried to gnaw at his ankle until he brushed her off, and then she sat down and yawned, her teeth snapping together. Sansa had called her Ylva. Little girl-wolf.

It meant so much that he had brought her here. She put her hand on the boulder-ripple of his shoulder. 'Thank you.'

He twisted. 'What for?'

'For giving her to me.'

'Perhaps it was not me.' When he saw her furrowed brow, he made his face open. 'Perhaps it was a gift from the gods, and they just put her there for me to find. A wolf without a mother.'

'A sign.' It was only partly a question, as the memory wandered in. Her father coming home grim-faced after executing a deserter, and Theon, Jon and Robb following him, their arms full of direwolf cubs. Lady, snow-drift pale with opal eyes. Lady. They had been found nestling on their mother, the stag nearby. Stags and direwolves. 'I don't like signs,' she said, her words cloudy.

'Not all signs are bad,' Rollo said, leaning back into Sansa with a sound that was half a grumble and half a yawn himself, and she loved this feeling of holding him, this man as warm as bale of hay left out in the sun. Ylva sat on her haunches, looking at them both, and gave a tiny yowl. 'You washed ashore, after all.'

V*V*V*V*V*V

NOTES

Sunna is the goddess of the sun, riding her chariot across the sky.

Sinfiötli is a son of Sigmund, father of Sigurd, and who learns shamanistic gifts. Rather marvellously, his father teaches him how to shapeshift and he and Sinfiötli live as wolves for a while. At some point, Sinfiötli is castrated by troll-maidens.

Víðarr is the brother of Vali, and the son of Odin and Grid. He is known as the Silent God and will avenge Odin's death by slaying the Fenris wolf at Ragnarok. He is a minor forest god. Víðarr has his home in Landvidi (the wide land), a palace decorated with green boughs and fresh flowers, situated in the midst of an impenetrable primeval forest where reigns the deep silence and solitude which he loves. He not only personifies imperishability of Nature, but is also a symbol of resurrection and renewal, proving that new shoots and blossoms are always ready to replace those which have fallen into decay.

Keira = little dark girl

Ylva = female wolf