Behind her, up on the cliff, the elders were lighting the beacon and she could hear the crackle of the tinder and the low shout of approval from the men as she caught the first sparks reflected in the frothing sea’s edge. Within minutes the fire would be ablaze, sending out its burnished path across the water like a miniature sun to call the Arnassons’ people to feast. Glancing nervously up the cliffs, Tora saw three heavy figures silhouetted against the nascent flames. In the centre was her uncle, Jarl Finn, the man who had taken command of the Arnasson family when her own father, Thorberg, had been lost to an enemy sword. Already widowed, Finn had raised Tora and her siblings, Otto and Johanna, with his own daughters, Idonie and Sigrid. He was a tough man but Tora had always found him fair and certainly far more so than his hot-headed younger brother, Jarl Kalv, stood brooding dangerously to his right. She shivered and looked the other way, but there was no comfort to be found there either, for to Finn’s left was the equally dangerous Einar Tambarskelve, the only great landholder in the north who was not of her father’s kin.
