Octavia Randolph · 2020 · sea

Duty against desire, in an Angle-land where the Peace has collapsed and the war-lord Haesten strikes at will across borders. Having watched his son Hrald hold Four Stones and win the garrison fortress of Turcesig, Sidroc undertakes the perilous return to Gotland - a voyage shadowed by the spirit of his long-dead uncle Yrling. Ceric rides with Aelfred's ambitious son Eadward in wild pursuit of the invaders, and is sent to Four Stones by the King's own order, where Ashild and her mother Aelfwyn each come face to face with their past. The book reaches further north than any before it: Randolph gives it a Gulf of Bothnia sheet for the Sami country of Tindr's wife Seara.

1. 1
   Four Stones

   Sidroc has seen his son hold the hall and take Turcesig, and there is nothing left for him in Angle-land but the leaving of it. He goes down the Trent and the Humber to his ship, bound east, with Yrling's ghost at his shoulder the whole way.

2. 2
   Gotland

   The perilous return: out into the North Sea, round the Skaw, down through the Danish islands and into the Baltic proper - the same water on which he and Ceridwen were once carried off as slaves, run down here by a Danish drekar.

3. 3
   Tyrsborg

   Home to the hall above the bay, and to Ceridwen. Away in Angle-land his son holds a fortress and the King's men ride the borders; Sidroc has chosen the island, and the choosing costs him.

4. 4
   Seara's Village

   The northernmost point in the whole saga - the Sami country at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, home of Seara, whom Tindr weds. Randolph drew a separate Bothnia sheet for this book alone. Her wide Scandinavian sheets are the loosest ground in the saga (neither an equirectangular nor a Mercator fit gets past about half agreement with the real coastline), so this village is sited from the head of the bay her map plainly points to rather than measured off it.