I drew Serpent-Breath and walked towards the scouts. Nothing good would come to me, but fate had led me to this moment and a man must endure his fate. There is no choice, and I had invited this fate. I had tried to keep an oath made to Æthelstan, and I had been impetuous and foolish. That was the thought that would not leave my mind as I walked between the summer-bright hedge and the tall stand of barley. A field of barley, I thought. And I thought that I was a fool and I was walking towards a fool’s end.

And maybe, I thought, this foolish decision would not save my men. It would not save Benedetta. It would not save the girls or the children. But it was the last slender hope. If I had fled with them then the horsemen would have pursued us all and cut down every man. Waormund wanted me, he did not want them, and so I had to stay in the barley field to give Finan, Benedetta and all the rest their one slender hope. Fate would decide, and then I stopped beside a patch of blood-bright poppies because the scout’s horn had drawn the enemy from the road and they were spurring up the slope towards me. I touched the hammer about my neck, but I knew the gods had deserted me. The three Norns were measuring my life’s thread and one of those cackling women held a pair of shears. Everything ends.

And so I waited. The horsemen filed through a gap in the hedge, but rather than ride straight to me they swerved into the tall barley, the big hooves trampling the stalks. I had my back to the hedge and the horsemen made a wide half circle around me. Some held spears that they pointed at me as if they feared I would charge them.

And the last horseman to come was Waormund.

I had met him only once before that fight in the old house beside Lundene’s river, and at that first meeting I had humiliated him by slapping his face. It was an ugly face, a flat face slashed from his right eyebrow to his lower left jaw by a battle scar. He had a bristling brown beard, eyes dead as stone, and a thin-lipped mouth. He was a huge man, taller even than me, a man to place at the centre of a shield wall to terrify an enemy. This day he rode a great black stallion, the bridle and saddle trimmed with silver. He leaned on the pommel, staring at me, then smiled, except the smile looked more like a grimace. ‘Uhtred of Bebbanburg,’ he said.

I said nothing. I gripped Serpent-Breath’s hilt. I prayed that I would die with the sword in my hand.

‘Lost your tongue, lord?’ Waormund asked. I still said nothing. ‘We’ll cut it out before you die,’ he promised, ‘and cut your balls off too.’

Everything dies. We all die. And all that is left of us is reputation. I hoped I would be remembered as a warrior, as a just man, and as a good lord. And perhaps this miserable death by a hedge would be forgotten. My screams would fade, and reputation would echo on in the songs men sang in the hall. And Waormund? He had a reputation too, and his renown was cruelty. He would be remembered as a man who could dominate a shield wall, but who delighted in making men suffer and in making women suffer. Yet just as I was known as the man who had killed Ubba by the sea and as the warrior who had slain Cnut, so Waormund would be known as the man who had killed Uhtred of Bebbanburg.