Swords of Good Men [antikvár]

PrologueSTENVIK, WEST NORWAY, SEPTEMBER AD 996A line of pale grey moonlight crawled across the water. The heavy clouds drifted apart and a faint outline of the coast shimmered into view.The man at the rudder broke the silence and pointed to shore. 'That's Stenvik there.'Ulfar heard it before he saw it. Voices, shouts and cries carried across the sea, skipped past the line of moonlight, over the deeper, darker swathes of water and blended to form the noise of a town at night. A year ago his heart would have lifted to hear it. Now he just ached and stretched, moving slowly to work the cramp out of his long legs. When he'd sat up he nudged the man who slept in the boat next to him. 'We're here.''. . . What?' his cousin Geiri mumbled and rubbed his face, still more than half asleep. 'When do we land? Where are we?' He clambered to a sitting position and winced. 'Next time I suggest sailing because it saves time'' I'll just punch you in the back a couple of times and find a horse, shall I?' Ulfar replied. Behind them the quiet sailor smirked. The merchant who owned the boat was sound asleep on all the furs he intended to sell in Stenvik. He'd left the two young men to squeeze in between sacks of wheat, planks of carved wood and blocks of amber. Geiri was shorter, so he'd had an