Often words are cheap, throwaway remarks or, as with Deormund’s reassurance that they were ready for the Vikings, calculated only to raise morale. After the Yuletide festivities, the persistence of the winter gloom transformed the estuary landscape into an unbroken heron grey continuum of water and sky. The damp penetrated the islanders’ bones; everything dripped water and people yearned for the onset of spring—except for Deormund. The arrival of spring, he knew, would lift the woe but would replace that emotion with worry. If the Norsemen arrived on Sceapig, would his youths and greybeards have any chance of stopping them? In his heart and, worse, his head, he knew that there was little hope.
Thankfully, he did not have time to spend every waking hour brooding and fretting. The elrick wa
