“We have stores hidden in here that we don’t want the guards to know about.”

“Where is everyone?”

“We had to retreat to the amphitheater, at the head of the valley. It was too dangerous to stay here.”

“Why?”

She stared at him as if he had said something particularly stupid. “Because of the sickness, of course!” Her lips quivered. She burst into tears. “So many dead we couldn’t bury them decently. And we were all feared we would die, too.”

“Who still lives? What of Sigfrid and Ermanrich? What of the biscop?”

“Th-they live. Th-they aren’t the ones… . It’s been so awful.” She tried to gulp down her sobs. She rubbed angrily at her face, but she could not stop crying. His intense relief at discovering that some still lived made him furious.

“Take me to them! We have only until nightfall.”

“F-for what?”

“To free you.”

She wailed, bawling.

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Hathumod! We must go quickly!”

“I—if only you’d come last autumn. Half our number are dead.”

“Hurry!”

He grabbed her wrist and she followed him meekly outside. Hugo’s men had fanned out to explore the compound, but Ivar called them back.

“There are stores hidden behind a loose board in the courtyard. Get those, and abandon the rest. There was a terrible sickness here. The demons who cause it might still be lurking. Sergeant, stay here and make ready. Half your men and the mounts come with us.”

They rode down the path that led past the vegetable garden and the grain fields. Hathumod wept, unable to stop herself.

“Who feeds them?” asked one of the soldiers. “Ground’s not been broken up or even ploughed.”

“The guards are feared to come in,” Hathumod sobbed, “on account of the sickness.”

They had built a pair of huts within the hollow of the amphitheater, protected somewhat by the high ridgeline. Four scrawny goats grazed in brambles at the limit of their tethers. Six sheep mowed the amphitheater slope; none had lambed or were even pregnant. Ivar did not see the community’s ram.

The monastics had heard the sound of horses and were waiting, clustered around the seated biscop. Like the others, Constance had grown thin, and thinness made her look old, frail, and weary. No more than a dozen huddled fearfully with the forest at their back. Ivar recognized Sigfrid’s impossibly petite form at once, but Ermanrich seemed to be missing. Nay, that was him standing next to Sigfrid, only he was shrunken in girth, a stick looking none the healthier for having lost his energetic stoutness. His face was pale and his chin scumbled with a half grown beard, but it was his features that lit first.

“Ivar! It’s Ivar! I knew he would come back!” He hobbled forward; something was wrong with his right foot, and as soon as Ivar dismounted he flung his arms around him in a warm embrace.

“No time.” Ivar pushed him away. He gauged the heavens and the shifting light that marked the waning afternoon. “We must leave now, while we have the chance. We have an order, sealed by Lady Sabella’s seal and thereby binding. You are exiled from Varre, free to go as long as you cross into Wendar and do not return.”