Something thudded into his back, a hard punch that sent him sprawling and knocked the air from his lungs. He tried to push himself up but found his arms weren’t working as well as they should, felt a dull ache in his back, a tingling numbness. He managed to get his right elbow under him, push up, but his left arm wasn’t doing what it was told.

Must get up. To stay is to die.

He coughed, saw blood speckle the ground close to his face.

What?

Then there was a pressure upon his back – someone’s boot? – an unpleasant tugging sensation, closely followed by a wet ripping sound. The pressure on his back disappeared, replaced by a tingling pain, a boot slipping under his chest and flipping him over.

He gasped, looked up into a bearded face.

‘Well, well,’ the face said, ‘I was hoping I’d run into you.’

It was Wulf, and he was smiling.

He was holding an axe in his fist, blood dripping from its edge. He raised it high, above his head, and Ulfilas screamed.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

HAELAN

Haelan watched the battle from the walls of Drassil.

It had been Swain’s idea, but Haelan had not been difficult to persuade. He felt proud that Corban had asked him to watch over Storm’s cubs, but as the horns rang out from Drassil’s walls, announcing the arrival of Jael’s warband, he had felt a desperate need just to see. So when Swain suggested a way of him doing both of those tasks. Well . . .

So here they were, Haelan, Swain and Sif, standing upon a deserted patch of the western wall, each of them with a wolven cub under either arm, Pots was sitting at his feet, looking up at him like he felt a little left out. They’d put the cubs in a wide, deep basket of willow, the three of them carrying it all the way to the battlements. The cubs had become restless, though, so they’d decided to get them out for a while and let them watch the battle too.

They liked it, or at least seemed to, they were quiet enough.

Haelan was finding it hard to breathe, at various moments had felt that his heart was lurching out of his chest, that despair would overwhelm him, closely followed by sheer joy that he was sure would cause him to explode.

They’d reached the wall just as Corban had begun his duel with the black-clothed warrior, one of the Jehar obviously. Within moments Haelan was certain that Corban was going to die. Tears had blurred his eyes long before the end, and then he had cried fresh tears, these ones of joy when Corban had sent his enemy’s head spinning through the air.

And then such treachery, Jael setting his shieldmen to ride Corban down, after what he had just survived, just achieved.

And then the running mount.