True to Audun’s word, the three men returned soon after, and before the fire had burnt down to embers. Audun, with practised efficiency, sliced the animal’s throat, and Scurfa, ever practical, caught the blood in a bowl. The sun had set by then, and the blood seemed almost black in the gloom. The animal struggled briefly in the old man’s grasp as its life pumped from it. The instant it was dead, without pause, Audun flipped the dead goat onto its back and with his sharp knife set about gutting it. I looked away from the glistening offal that slipped steaming from the carcass, and turned to Runolf. His face was dark and set in a scowl. I wondered if he too was thinking of the men and women, his friends and family, who had died here. I could not forget the memories of the slaughter on Lindisfarnae. I had saved Aelfwyn from death then, but now, I could not shake the feeling that it had all been for nought, that we had arrived here too late.

Scurfa mixed the blood he’d collected with oats and later placed the bowl in the coals, where it cooked into a thick, meaty, black pudding that gave us another meal the following day. He then skewered the goat’s kidneys, liver and heart onto sticks and handed them to others to be held over the fire. Arcenbryht, Beorn and Audun spitted the freshly gutted and skinned beast and lifted it to hang over the flames between two tripods of spears that Mantat and Alf had fashioned.

The smell of roasting meat filled the air, and I wondered at the beasts the scent might attract. Though surely we were too many, and our fire too bright for us to be troubled by wolves or bears.

With the onset of night, the land had grown calm and muted. The men, still subdued, whispered and murmured from the shadows. Hereward set guards. Like the rest of us, he was on edge and wary of what enemies might be out there in the vast land of mountains, water and trees that surrounded us.

While the goat was cooking, nobody spoke to Runolf. In turn, he said nothing. Audun busied himself with turning the spitted goat. He seemed content not to talk, but to wait for Runolf. Questions boiled up within me, rising to the surface like scum on a broth. I was desperate to speak, but Leofstan, knowing me well and sensing my mood, placed a hand on my shoulder and shook his head. So I waited until the meat was sliced from the goat and everyone had been given a piece.

Eventually, I could hold in my questions no longer.