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Prologue
CHAPTER 1 – The Spears of Stiklestad
CHAPTER 2 – Bolverk's Bargain
CHAPTER 3 – Sword from the Summerbird
CHAPTER 4 – Fur-train to Novgorod
CHAPTER 5 – Jaroslav's Yuletide Feasting
CHAPTER 6 – The Tax Gathering
CHAPTER 7 – Over the Weirs
CHAPTER 8 – Burnt Longship
CHAPTER 9 – Flight of the Summerbird
Epilogue
Although it was the end of September, the weather up in Yorkshire did not seem to know it, and the sun beat down from a cloudless blue sky for all the world as if it was mid-summer. In a broad green meadow beside the river Derwent, a host of men lay under the sunshine, laughing and joking like merry feasters at the end of Lent; or like resting pilgrims on the way to Santiago's distant shrine, forgetting their long journey for a while. Listening to the din they made, a man would hardly know where they came from, for the air was laden with the sounds of Norwegian and Icelandic, of Flemish and French, of Scotch Gaelic and English. There were upwards of two thousand men in the great field, so it is little wonder that the birds were silent and the sunlit sky above them empty. That is, empty save for three carrion crows who circled curiously back and forth, crying discordantly from time to time; and, higher in the upper air, a broad-winged goshawk which hovered at times, almost motionless in the sky, noting everything with his cold sharp eye. Unlike the crows, this hawk was silent, for he was a warrior-bird and knew what manner of men sprawled out below him on the green turf. His watchful eye had told him that this was no crowd of pilgrims, for he had noted the swords and axes, the shields and mail coats, the helmets and javelins that lay everywhere beside the men, on the trampled turf, cast down because of the sun's warmth.
And especially the hawk noticed a broad banner that lay, spread over a hillock to keep its white silk unwrinkled, for on this banner was pictured another great bird, the black raven with its wings outspread, Odin's bird.
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'On, Emma, on!' he grunted that hot day. 'Let us have no woman's treachery about you. Keep the arrows out, that is all I ask.'
As he spoke, two strange things happened. First, an angry cry went up from the tight-packed Norse carles in the foremost ranks. 'Ljot is down!' one said. 'Now the English are coming over the bridge.'
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