'Raudi's daughter?' grunted the broken-necked berserker. 'Which Raudi? There are so many these days.'

'Shut up, Brak,' Varg snarled. 'I know now! Inghen, daughter of Raudi of Trondheim.'

'Raudi of Trondheim?' demanded another berserker, an obese, hot-eyed man with black hair. 'Didn't you use to sail with him?'

Varg nodded. 'Until I decided I wanted to be a free berserker. I broke his neck with this.'

He raised his left hand. Inghen smiled cruelly, and raised her sword.

'Then that's where I'll begin my vengeance,' she replied. Her blade glittered again as it arched through the air towards the berserker's upheld arm.

But the sword bounced off Varg's wrist as if his arm was made of iron.

Inghen's face fell. The berserker grinned, showing how few teeth were left in his head.

'Ouch,' he said reproachfully. 'That hurt.' He looked closely at his wrist. 'There'll be a bruise there, you know,' he added.

The others laughed unpleasantly. Inghen glowered with fury, and launched herself at her foe in a frenzy. He did nothing to protect himself from the hacks and slashes which she rained upon his body; enough to cut any normal man into collops. But each angry blow bounced off the berserker's hide as if from rock. Gasping, Inghen stopped her attack after a few seconds, and stared open-mouthed at the man. He was completely unharmed. Not a single blow had harmed him.

Varg laughed harshly.

'Now you know why your brother refused to go against me,' he said, grinning horribly again. He came up close to her, glaring down at her slight figure, and took her chin in his massive hand.

'Give your dad's old mate a kiss, then,' he leered, and forced her lips up to meet his.

She tore herself away as quick as possible, and spat into his face. He snarled angrily, wiping the spittle from his rough skin, his mad eyes hot with fury. Then he raised his hand.

'Bad little girls who misbehave need to be punished,' he growled, and slapped her across the face so hard that she fell to the ground, her head ringing.

She lay motionless in the mud for a few seconds. Faintly, she heard Varg shout towards the nunnery;

'We're not happy with this woman, bitch. Send out your prettiest nun, not one of those buck-toothed bints you keep palming off on us, give us the treasures you have in your chapel, and we'll leave.'

There was a silence, during which Inghen struggled feebly to rise. The humiliation of it! She wasn't just some common woman for this man to slap around - she was a shield-maiden! No man could beat her! She swore to herself that she'd have her revenge, she swore it!

She raised her head.

A frightened nun stood in the entrance to the nunnery. The berserkers loomed over her.

'Where's the treasure?' roared Varg. 'We want your gold!'

'You may not have our holy relics,' the nun said quietly. 'Now, in God's name, leave us!'

'I'll get something out of this,' growled the berserker. He reached forward, and roughly grabbed her by the front of her habit, then tore it open and flung her towards the others.

'We'll take this one with us,' he laughed. 'Back to the camp!'

Laughing harshly, and forcing the nun forward with savage kicks, the berserkers swaggered out of the circle of huts. Painfully, Inghen rose to her knees and glared after them. She heard a noise from behind her and turned to see Thorir rushing out from the nunnery.

She pushed him away as he tried to help her up, snarling.

'I saw what he did to you,' he said, his face white.

Inghen's face suddenly went crimson with wrath.

'I'm going to kill him!' she snarled venomously. She felt violated. She was the Red Daughter! No-one crossed her and lived to tell the tale. Still, how could she kill a man when iron refused to bite on him? 'But you saw him, though?' Inghen demanded. 'I couldn't cut him! It was as if he had blunted my sword!' Wonderingly, she picked up the weapon and tested its edge. Still as sharp as ever. She turned to Thorir in bewilderment. He shrugged.

'That's berserkers for you,' he replied. 'Fire and iron don't affect them. You've heard all the old songs - you've seen Gunnholm in battle. They're invincible. It's magic. They're wizards, they can make their skin immune to weapons. You won't be able to kill this one.'

Inghen shook her head.

'There must be some way to kill them,' she muttered.

Thorir shrugged.

'Look, the ship's repaired now. Why don't we just sail away and leave them to starve on this island?'

Inghen shook her head again.

'There's three reasons why we won't do that,' she declared. 'To begin with, these nuns have helped us. We owe them something, and the berserkers are ill-treating them. The second is that Varg the Black slew my own father. And the third is that no one treats the Red Daughter like that and gets away with it. If this got out, I'd no longer be the scourge of the Irish Sea, but a laughing stock! I was humiliated! And that berserker will pay a wergild of pain for his treatment of me.'

'But how can you get vengeance - for yourself or your father - if Varg is invincible?' Thorir demanded. 'This must be why Thrond refused to go against him.'

'No one is immortal,' Inghen muttered. 'Even the Gods of Asgard will die one day. Nothing in the universe lasts for ever; everything is subject to dissolution. There must be some way to kill a berserker.

'And I know just the man to tell me.'

Without any further ado, Inghen turned and strode out of the yard. Thorir followed her, shaking his head with dismay. He could understand why she was so eager to find vengeance - Varg had done her unbearable wrong on two separate occasions. But if no blade would bite on his hide because of his magic, how could she kill him? Surely it would be better to leave him on this treeless rock to starve than to go futilely against him and find only pain, humiliation and undignified death awaiting?

But Inghen had always allowed her pride to get the better of her. Despairing, he followed her as she marched down to the rocky shore.