‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but that’s where the enemy will look for us.’

She thought about that as we climbed the last few paces to the low crest. ‘But they are behind us, yes?’

‘They’re behind us,’ I said confidently, then turned and pointed east to where the road came from the woods. ‘We’ll see them come from there.’

‘You’re sure now?’ Finan asked.

‘I’m sure,’ I said, and then suddenly I was not sure at all. I still stared at where the road came from the stunted beeches, but I was thinking of Waormund. What would he do? I despised the man, knew him to be cruel and brutal, but had that opinion made me think him stupid? Waormund knew we had escaped up the River Ligan, and he knew too that we could not have gone too far upriver on the low tide before our ship grounded. But when we had abandoned the Brimwisa I had not known how close we were to Werlameceaster. I had left the ship on the eastern bank, hoping to mislead Waormund, but now I doubted that he had even bothered to search upriver for us. It did not need a clever man to work out where we would be going. Waormund knew we needed allies and he knew too that I could not expect to find any in East Anglia, but westwards, scarcely a morning’s walk from the river, lay an army of Æthelstan’s men. Why would Waormund bother to follow us when he could lay in wait for us? I had been searching the eastern and southern ground for any sight of a scout, looking for the glint of sunlight glancing off a helmet or spear-point, but I should have been staring westwards. ‘I’m a fool,’ I said.

‘And is that supposed to surprise us?’ Finan asked.

‘He’s ahead of us,’ I said. I did not know why I sounded so certain, but the instinct of too many years, of too many battles, and of too much danger was convincing me. Or perhaps it was simply that of all the possibilities the one that scared me most was to have Waormund readying an ambush ahead of us. Prepare for the worst, my father had liked to say, though on the day of his death he had ignored that advice and been cut down by a Dane.

I halted. To my right was the hedgerow, to my left the big field of barley that was almost ready for harvest, while ahead was a long, gentle slope that dropped to another belt of woodland. It all looked so peaceful. Buntings flew among the barley, a hawk soared high overhead, and a small breeze stirred the leaves. Far to the north a drift of smoke showed where a village lay in a hazed hollow. It seemed impossible that death stalked this summer land.

‘What is it?’ Father Oda had joined us.

I did not answer. I was gazing at the belt of woodland that lay like a wall across our path, and I felt despair. I had seven men, a priest, four women, some freed slaves, and a group of frightened children. I had no horses. I could send no scouts to search our path, I could only hope to hide, yet here I was on the high swell of sunlit land, in a field of barley, and my enemy was waiting for me.