Trigg and Odbart led her along the lakeshore to a stockade. Blond guards with short, bowl-shaped haircuts, sandy mustaches and naked chins challenged them. Odbart said a password, and the guards opened the gate.

“Henrik!” one of them called. “Take these people to the graf.”

“Ja, min Herr.”

He appeared from within the stockade. His shaggy hair had been trimmed to match the bowl-haircuts of the guards and his beard shaved off, but Rotaida recognized him—the young man who had helped Morag steal her from the Frankish camp, and later helped her escape from the witch. Henrik.

He led them to a large round house built of vertical log slabs. It looked like Kobold houses, but roofed with grass thatching instead of planks, and a tree grew through it.

They stepped inside. The tree’s trunk grew from the center of a single round room. A bench surrounded it. Tabletops and their props leaned against the wall with other benches stacked beside them.

A tall, red-faced man with light brown braids rose from a fur-covered bench. He wore a knee-length wool tunic. Each shoe was made from a single piece of leather, laced on top. His mustache bracketed his mouth and its ends hung below his shaven chin.

Trigg said, “We have brought the goods you ordered, Herr Graf. We brought you also a monk for sacrifice to Uo-dan, and Freya’s daughter for the Wise Woman.”