The man had been looking down at Brihtwulf, but now glanced at us to see that I had only paused for a heartbeat and then kept climbing and had now reached the ramparts. He frowned, but I gave him a friendly nod. His shield, showing Æthelhelm’s leaping stag, was propped against the inner parapet. The men below, I thought, might be from the East Anglian fyrd, but the shield betrayed that the spearmen on the ramparts were West Saxons and probably fiercely loyal to Æthelhelm. ‘Hot day!’ I said to the older man, my voice muffled by the laced cheek-pieces, then walked to the outer parapet. I leaned on the sun-warmed stone and for a moment everything to the north appeared as I remembered it. Beneath the walls was a scum-covered ditch crossed by a stone bridge. A small crowd had gathered beyond the bridge. There were merchants come from the north with packhorses, folk from the villages with eggs or vegetables to sell, all of them barred from entering the city, but unwilling to leave. Small hovels lined the road, and a graveyard had spread into parched pastureland, beyond which were woods thick with summer leaves. A village lay a mile or so to the north where smoke rose into the west wind. Then more woods before the land climbed to a bare hilltop. Other villages, betrayed by smoke, lay hidden in the woods to the west. A small child drove a flock of geese across the pasture and I fancied I could hear her singing, but perhaps that was my imagination. A man, seeing me appear on the wall, shouted that he wanted to bring his packhorses into the city, but I ignored him, gazing instead into the heat-hazed distance. And then I saw them. I saw horsemen shadowed by trees, scores of horsemen.

‘Merewalh?’ Finan suggested.

‘Æthelstan, I hope,’ I said fervently, but whoever the far horsemen were, they were just watching.

‘So will you please open the damned gate?’ Brihtwulf demanded loudly and angrily from beneath us.

‘Twenty-eight men up here,’ Finan said, still talking low. He meant twenty-eight men on the gate’s parapet, most of them crowded onto the half-circles of the twin bastions that jutted out to the ditch’s edge. I nodded.

Wihtgar and his men had reached the parapet at the far side of the gate. The older man looked at them, frowned, turned back to me, then saw that Immar was carrying the furled banner. ‘Is that a banner, boy!’ he demanded.

‘Will you open the gate?’ Brihtwulf called.

‘Show me the banner, boy!’

I turned and held out a hand to Immar. ‘Give it to me,’ I said. I took the staff and unrolled a foot or so of the flag, then tossed it at the older man’s feet. ‘Look for yourself,’ I said, ‘it’s the dragon of Wessex.’ And so it would be, I thought, if the gods were with me today. The man leaned down to the staff and I took a step towards him.