At the crest of the hill, we saw that the land spreading into the distance was not flat, but undulating and heavily wooded. The stream I had seen from the ship was wider here, but not by much. It was rugged and coursing and clear enough for me to see its brown stony bed.
'This stream will take us to our dinner,' Sigurd said as we knelt to drink the fresh water from gourds or cupped hands. And we knew he was right, for men will always make their homes near such streams. They are like the veins in our flesh and we cannot live without them.
'I want you to offer a sacrifice, Sigurd,' Asgot the godi said, wide-eyed. He looked agitated. 'I told you I saw blood.'
'You always see blood, Asgot,' Sigurd said, waving the words away, 'you were born with a ship's rivet in each eye.' He stooped to fill his leather water bottle. 'We are far from our gods, you old sea urchin. What would you have me sacrifice?'
The godi turned to fix me with his stare. 'Are you blind, Sigurd?' he asked, clutching his sword grip. 'You drink from the stream but you do not see the stream.'
'Be careful, godi,' Sigurd warned, standing and slapping down the wooden stopper. 'Your tongue writhes like a worm.'
'Speak plain, Asgot,' Olaf said. 'We don't have time for your riddles.'
Asgot sneered and turned back to Sigurd. 'The stream is alive,' he hissed. 'It sleeps now, but it lives.' The men stopped drinking and backed away from the water's edge, stepping lightly. 'The dragon sleeps, Sigurd. If you intend to follow his course, you must make an offering. If he wakes to find that you have not . . .' He broke off and began praying to Óðin in hushed tones whilst the others looked to their jarl with grim faces.
Sigurd stared into the stream for a long time and then raised his head, his eyes marking the water's course into the distance. The pebbly shallows twisted through the landscape and I thought I saw the bony spine of a serpent or dragon lying asleep and hidden, waiting for unsuspecting men to cause offence.
'Well?' Sigurd asked, looking at each of his men in turn. 'Any of you volunteer to put himself beneath Asgot's knife? Come now. One of you must have woken this morning hoping the godi would bleed you for an English river spirit?'
Bjarni moved back to the stream, dropped his breeches and pissed into the water. 'Let the bastard feed on this,' he said, and the men took courage from his daring, except Asgot who looked horrified.
'There's your sacrifice, Asgot,' Sigurd said, as scar-faced Sigtrygg moaned at Bjarni for pissing in the stream before he'd had a chance to fill his water bottle.
'Fill it upstream, you witless fool,' Bjarni said. Sigtrygg's coarse reply was stopped short by his jarl.
'Dragon or not, we go on,' Sigurd said, 'unless you want to explain to the others why they'll be eating cheese and spitting mackerel bones again tonight.'
'The boy will do, Sigurd!' Asgot pleaded, his eyes wild. 'Let me have the boy. That should be enough. As you say, we are far from home. We must appease the local spirits, or at least try to make our own gods hear us.'
The other Norsemen turned to continue. Sigurd gestured to them as an end to the matter. 'I promised the boy his life, Asgot,' he said. He grinned. 'You know the gods, old man – you likely knew them when they were just men like us. But I do not think that Óðin wants Osric's blood. I would feel it if he did.'
Asgot shook his head. 'You walk a dangerous path, my jarl,' he warned, the bones in his greasy hair rattling.
'I know no other, Asgot,' Sigurd replied, looking at me, 'and none of my line ever died a straw death.' I nodded thanks, wondering about the men of my line, whoever they were, and whether they had died grey-haired and feeble, or with a sword in their hands. Then on we went, keeping our distance from the stream, and the Norsemen held their sword scabbards and kit to keep them from rattling as we followed the sleeping dragon onwards, hoping not to wake it with our passing.
Ivar led us. He was a tall, thin man renowned for his eyesight and it was not long before he spotted a brown smear against the light grey sky beyond the mound before us. Sigurd raised a hand and we crouched among the thickets and bracken. The jarl crawled to Ivar, his sword and mail jangling. The dark leaves of an elm rustled in the breeze. I inhaled the scent of hornbeam catkins wafting across the lowlands.
After a brief conversation Sigurd stood. 'On your feet, men. You wouldn't trust a snake sliding through the grass on its belly and neither will the English. Easy now.' We tramped up the hillock, through heather and gorse peppered with silver birch, always following the stream, which grew wider amongst a copse of budding beech and oak at the hill's plate. It was from this cover that we looked across at a clutter of thatched dwellings spilling off three rolling hills. The houses were well constructed, their roofs pointing to the sky like arrowheads running almost to the ground on either side. It was a busy place, maybe four times the size of Abbotsend, and this meant enough men to ruin Sigurd's day if things went wrong. It also meant there would be at least one butcher, and more likely several.