'What do you expect, if you...' Erik started.

‘Can we save this till later?’ Bjorn broke in. ‘The hill ahead - that’s where the drow’s barrow lies.’

Erik and Halldor stopped glaring at each other, and turned sullenly away. They stared up at the hummock at the top of the hill. A large archway gaped in the base of it, flanked by two menhirs.

‘One question,’ said Erik. ‘What exactly are we going to do?’

‘We are going to take up defensive positions up on its’ own barrow,’ replied Bjorn. ‘Chances are, it’ll be slow to attack us up there, where it seems the ground is sacred to it.’

‘Come on, then!’ said Halldor. They hurried up the hill.

Standing before the yawning mouth of the barrow a couple of minutes later, Erik felt his heart clenched by trepidation. What lay within, in that darkness? Would Bjorn’s plan work? What if it merely angered the creature? He noticed that the crewmen had paused, and were staring back down the hill.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ demanded Erik.

‘Look!’ said Sverting.

Erik gazed down the hill to see the moor beneath them swarming with dark figures. The nameless creatures, whatever they were, were crawling slowly up towards them.

‘Gudrun!’ shouted Erik. ‘Unsling your bow and take the other archers up on top of the mound. When these things get close, pick them off. Halldor, you take the main body of the men. Wait till our attackers get close, and then charge them.’ He turned to the crewmen. ‘You, you, you, you and you - follow me!’

As Gudrun led four archers up to the top of the barrow, Erik and five men hurried up the hill and disappeared over the rise, leaving Halldor and Bjorn at the head of the main body of crewmen.

At that, the creatures began to stumble up the hill, shrieking and howling.

‘What now?’ asked Bjorn.

Halldor glanced up at the top of the mound.

‘Gudrun!’ he shouted.

Gudrun and the archers raised their bows and loosed in one fluid motion. A flight of arrows hummed over the heads of the crewmen to pitch into the advancing horde. A few of the creatures collapsed into the heather, but the main group kept advancing, undeterred.

‘Gudrun!’ yelled Halldor. ‘Again!’

Another arrow-shower shot over their heads to swoop down on the creatures. More fell to the unerring accuracy of the archers. Then Halldor drew his sword.

‘Charge!’ he yelled.

This was life as he liked it, he thought, as he ran full-pelt across the heather, his men at his back - short and sharp, clear and well-defined. A warrior’s life, a Viking’s life, not the ill-disciplined drudgery of a greasy merchant.

He rushed forward with his sword, and engaged the central creature in combat. On either side of him, Sverting and Bjorn were fighting the other creature, and the rest of them still blundered up towards them. The crew collided with them, and the heather-clad hills echoed with the clangour of combat.

The thing - a tall, bulky creature with the face of a dead ape or a drowned corpse - was a skilled swordsman, and it parried Halldor’s attack with ease. Their blades screamed with fury as the duo battled, as they hacked and slashed, retreated and attacked.

Halldor ducked a cut from the creature, and stabbed forward, under its guard. But it leapt back, and brought its own blade crashing down. With a split second dodge, Halldor evaded the attack, and knocked his attacker’s blade backwards. The thing snarled, and came at Halldor in a whirlwind of steel. He found himself forced back towards the barrow. And around him, the rest of his men were retreating. Where was Erik?

Soon Halldor was between the two menhirs. A third crossed them like a lintel, and Halldor, gauging his moment, used the impetus from another dodge to leap up and grab the lintel stone. The phantom figure glared up at him, and he sprang, bringing his sword straight down.

Cold steel passed through the creature like a hot iron through butter. Halldor tumbled to the ground as the creature fell apart in two tarry halves. Below him, the crew were fighting a desperate battle. Occasional arrows shot down from above to pin creatures to the ground, but clearly Gudrun was wary of sending too many arrows into the seething mass, for fear of hitting her own men.

Then the entire battle shuddered like a living thing, as, with an ancient battle-cry, Erik led his own contingent up the side of the hill, to crash into the creatures at their back. Yowls and cries split the air as the apparently invincible things began to fall. Halldor mustered his last vestiges of strength.

‘Attack!’ he shouted, and his men forced themselves back into the fray. Halldor plunged in, hacking and stabbing wildly about him, sobbing with exertion, sending the putrid, stinking creatures flying. He hacked the head clean off one, gutted another with a disembowelling slash, sent a third tumbling to the soil lacking an arm… and then his next opponent fell to someone else, and Halldor found himself facing Erik.

‘Calm yourself, Halldor,’ said the man, grinning. Erik was bloody from head to foot, and his blade was black with the gore of the creatures. He shrugged, and glanced around the battlefield. ‘There’re no more of them left,’ he added.

Halldor glared around him, his blood still burning with the killing-joy, only to see the moor empty apart from him and his companions. On top of the mound, Gudrun gazed wildly around her, in apparent amazement. Halldor gaped.

‘Where did they all go?’ he asked.

Erik scratched his head. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The things!’ exclaimed Gudrun, jumping down from the mound-top. ‘The creatures! They’ve gone - vanished! We’d slain most of them, but they’ve gone. Even their corpses! Like phantoms...’

‘Drows have the power to take on any number of shapes at the same time,’ said Bjorn Axehand from close by. ‘When it was clear that we were winning, Erik, they all vanished.’

‘You mean we’ve killed the drow?’ asked Erik, frowning.

Bjorn shook his head sombrely.

‘Merely banished it,’ he said. ‘It won’t return here in a hurry - especially not if we destroy the burial mound.’ But then he grinned, and Erik felt his own mood lighten.

‘Now we have all the gold of the barrow!’ he exclaimed. He turned abruptly, and vanished beneath the lintel stone. Soon he was back, his arms overflowing with gold and treasure. He dumped it at their feet. ‘I say we split it between us. I’ll give my share to my people - they could use money to repair the damage the drow has done to their homes. And I will accompany you on your voyage through the isles.’

‘If we are going to go on with it,’ said Gudrun wryly. Erik shot her a puzzled glance. She saw it, and grabbed hold of a pile of gold rings, and let the glinting metal run through her fingers.

‘We’re rich!’ she said gleefully. ‘Rich!’

That had been the object of their voayage, of course. But Fortune is a fickle goddess, Erik mused to himself. How long would their good luck last?