“To me?” I asked, with a snort. “They did nothing to me.” I felt a dreadful shame. “And I did nothing to stop them…” I could not bring myself to complete the thought, to recount how Ljósberari had slit Leofstan’s throat as easily as if he had been a hog ready for roasting. And how I had sat by motionless and watched as he drank the old monk’s blood. I closed my eyes, trying to rid myself of the image, but it was burnt into my mind. I would never be free of it. I still see it now sometimes, when my nightmares are particularly bad. On such nights I sleep no further. I use up more fuel than I should, stoking the fire until it blazes, so that I can sit in the firelight and await the dawn. I pray for forgiveness and to be rid of the memory of Leofstan’s dying eyes. Perhaps God has forgiven me, but in His infinite wisdom He has not seen fit to remove the vision from my mind, and I am sure that it will haunt me till I follow my old mentor into the vale of death.

Runolf placed a strong hand on my shoulder. I flinched and made to shrug it off, but he gripped me firmly.

“Do not blame yourself,” he said.

“That is easy to say, but not so easy to do,” I hissed. “I should have saved him.”

“You cannot walk again the path already trod,” Hereward said with a sigh. “None of us can. All you can do is live the rest of your life well. Do not despair, Hunlaf. Live. For Leofstan, and Os, and the others.”

At the mention of Os, I shivered.

“Os?” I said. “Has he…?” I could not bring myself to say the words.

There was a brief silence, and then Hereward’s voice came quietly from the shadows.

“He breathed his last shortly after sunset.”

I had never been close to the warrior. His brash humour and loud jesting was often annoying. But he was one of us, and to learn of his death in this stinking hovel, hit me with almost physical force. The tears I had been holding back flowed freely down my cheeks now, and I was glad it was dark so that the warriors around me would not witness my weakness.