‘I did,’ I answered, ‘I just didn’t say how long you could live.’

He lived a few painful minutes longer, finally bleeding to death. Merewalh was shocked, not by Heorstan’s death, he had seen enough killing not to be worried by the spreading blood and choking breaths, but by the revelation that Heorstan had betrayed him. ‘I thought him a friend! How did you know?’

‘I didn’t know,’ I answered, ‘but if our plan was to be betrayed we needed to know. So I sent Finan south.’

‘But it is betrayed!’ Merewalh protested. ‘Why didn’t you stop the men?’

‘Because I wanted the men to reach Toteham,’ I said, cleaning Wasp-Sting’s blade on a scrap of cloth, ‘of course.’

‘You wanted them …’ Merewalh began. ‘But why? In God’s name why?’

‘Because the plan I told you and Heorstan was false. That was what I wanted the enemy to hear.’

‘Then how do we do it?’ Merewalh asked.

So I told him. And next day we rode to war.

PART FOUR

Serpent-Breath

Eleven

The dawn brought a mist that lingered above the meadows, drifted across the Roman walls, and was lost in the smoke from Werlameceaster’s hearths. Men walked horses in the town’s streets where a priest offered blessings outside a small wooden church. Scores of warriors knelt to receive a muttered prayer and a touch of his fingers on their foreheads. Women carried buckets of water from the town wells.

No one had tried to leave the town during the short summer night. Merewalh had doubled the number of sentries who guarded Werlameceaster’s gates and paced its walls. Those men would stay in the town as a small garrison while the rest of us, one hundred and eighty men under my command and two hundred led by Merewalh, assaulted the enemy in Lundene.

I had long been awake as the dawn silvered the mist. I had pulled on my mail coat, buckled the sword belt with its borrowed blade, and then had nothing better to do than sit and watch the men who must fight and the women they would leave behind.

Benedetta joined me on the bench, which stood in a street leading from the wide square in front of the great hall. She said nothing. Alaina, who now followed Benedetta everywhere, sat on the street’s far side and watched us both anxiously. She had found a kitten that she petted, though she never took her eyes from us.

‘So you will go today,’ Benedetta finally said.

‘Today.’

‘And tomorrow? The day after?’

I had no answer to her implied questions, so said nothing. A crow flew down from a rooftop, pecked at something in the square, and flew again. Was that an omen? I had tried to read every sign that morning, watched every bird in the mist, had tried to recall my dreams, but nothing made sense. I drew the borrowed sword and gazed at its blade, wondering if there was some message in the dull steel. Nothing. I lay the sword down. The gods were silent.