He took a deep breath of the salt-fresh air and felt the urge to howl with the sheer pleasure of being alive. Instead he turned to Ulli, reached out, cuffed his ear and shouted, 'Tig! You're it.'
He turned and ran before Ulli had a chance to realise what was going on. Seeing that the game had started the other Wolfbrothers scattered, dashing among the huts and the busy people, sending chickens squawking skyward. Ulli raced after him, shouting challenges. Ragnar turned on the spot, almost tripping from his own momentum as he did so and made a face at Ulli. His friend bounded towards him arm outstretched. Ragnar let him get almost within reach before turning once more and racing on. He ducked right and raced down a narrow street. He bounded left to avoid slamming into one of the brewers' barrels and as he did so, his foot slid on a slick piece of turf and he fell. Before he could recover Ulli was on him and they wrestled on the ground pitting muscle against muscle like playful puppies. They rolled over and over down the slope until they heard girlish shrieks and bumped into something. Ragnar opened his eyes and found himself looking up into Ana's long pretty face. She tugged her braid as she looked down at him and then she smiled. Ragnar smiled back and then felt his face flush. "What are you two doing?' Ana asked in her soft husky voice. 'Nothing,' Ragnar and Ulli replied simultaneously, then burst out laughing. Strybjorn Grimskull stood at the prow of the dragonship and glared ferociously at the horizon. He hawked a huge gob of phlegm into his mouth and then spat it contemptuously into the sea. Inside him he could feel the battle lust starting to build. He hoped that combat would come soon.
Ahead of the fleet lay the home island of the Grimskulls, site of their sacred runestone, the place from which they had been driven twenty long years ago by the accursed Thunderfists. Of course, that had been before Strybjorn had been born but that did not matter. He had grown up hearing all about the island's beauty and he felt that he already knew it. Its image was clear in his mind from his father's tales. This was the sacred land from which they had been driven by Thunderfist treachery all those years ago and which today, on the anniversary of their ancient loss, they would at last reclaim. Anger at the interlopers filled him. He felt it as keenly as any of the survivors of the attack and the massacre when the Thunderfists had arrived from the sea to claim the land in force. Ten dragonships had overwhelmed the outnumbered Grimskull force while the vast majority of the warriors had been at sea following the orca herds. Those brave warriors had returned home to find their own land fortified against them, and their women and children enthralled by the Thunderfists. After a brief struggle on the beaches they had been driven back to their ships and out to sea, there to endure the misery of the Long Search.

Strybjorn shared their bitterness on that terrible voyage. The hopeless attacks on other
settlements, the fruitless efforts to find a new home.