‘So you’ll do a son’s duty?’ he asked, then shrugged as if my answer would be obvious. ‘Earl Ragnar raised me,’ I said, ‘and I loved him like a father.’ ‘Because this is your bloodfeud, isn’t it? Kjartan’s life in revenge for Earl Ragnar’s death?’ ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it? For me to tell you all about Dunholm? Its strengths, its weaknesses, how many men are there and how you can break the place?’ He kennels them in a hall at Dunholm and he uses them for two things.’ He stopped then and looked at me quizzically. They have to fight each other and he only keeps the strongest. Dogs howled in the ruins and Tekil turned his head to listen to the noise. He grimaced at that, then leaned against the wall and gazed up at the clouds drifting beside the crescent moon. ‘But there have to be eight heads,’ he said. ‘Because you want to frighten him even more?’ ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you’ve cut off the heads of four of my men and you’re going to give those heads back to Kjartan, aren’t you?’
‘That’s what the swordsman intended,’ I said. ‘The dead swordsman scared Kjartan and his son halfway to death, but that’s what you intended, isn’t it?’ ‘I know the dead swordsman wore a helmet with a silver wolf on the crown, and I saw the same helmet on you,’ he shrugged, ‘or perhaps he lends you his helmet?’ ‘You were the dead swordsman,’ he said after a while. He seemed amused by my inspection of him. He had a good face, a strong face, and I thought that I might have liked Tekil if we had been comrades instead of enemies. He sat at the far end of the old room and I sat across the fire from him and he just stared at me. His face was bruised and his wrists and ankles were joined by the slave manacles he had intended for me. Tekil had lost his armour and was now dressed in a grubby jerkin. Rypere and Clapa brought Tekil to me, and they wanted to stay and watch whatever I did to him, but I sent them away. A wan light came through the windows when clouds slid away from the moon. I made a fire on the biggest remaining patch of tile and the flames threw a lurid flicker on the old walls. The floor was made of tiny black and white tiles that had once made a pattern, but the pattern had long been broken.
The tall walls were made of dressed stone and were broken by three high windows. Abbot Eadred wanted to hang the four remaining prisoners, but I persuaded him to give me Tekil, at least for a night, and I had him brought to me in the ruins of an old building which I think must have been made by the Romans.
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