The two Englishmen edged forward, swords drawn, facing the bearlike figure which stood grinning, waiting for them, the blood and water still surging round his feet.

Then he was in motion, heading straight for Wulfgar, moving with the speed and ferocity of a charging boar. Wulfgar sprang back in shock, landed awkwardly, a foot twisting under him. The Viking missed with a lefthand slash, poised the right arm for a downward killing thrust.

Something jerked the redbeard off his feet, hurled him backward, struggling helplessly to free an arm, twisted him round and threw him heavily into the wet sand. A net. A fisherman’s net. The reeve and two more jumped forward, seized handfuls of tarry cordage, jerked the net tighter. One twitched the sax from an enmeshed hand, another stamped savagely on the fingers holding the spear, breaking shaft and bones in the same movement. They rolled the helpless man quickly, expertly, like a dangerous dogfish or herring-shark. They straightened, looking down, and waited for orders.

Wulfgar limped over, exchanging glances with Godwin. “What have we caught here?” he muttered. “Something tells me this is no two-ship chieftain out of luck.”

He eyed the garments of the netted man, reached down and felt them.

“Goatskin,” he said. “Goatskin with pitch on. He called himself Ragnar. We’ve caught Lothbrok himself. Ragnar Lothbrok. Ragnar Hairy-Breeks.”

“We can’t deal with him,” said Godwin in the silence. “He’ll have to go to King Ella.”

Another voice broke in, the voice of the dark boy who had questioned the reeve.

“King Ella?” he said. “I thought Osbert was king of the Northumbrians.”

Godwin turned to Wulfgar with weary politeness. “I don’t know how you discipline your people in the North-folk,” he remarked. “But if he were mine and said something like that - I’ d have his tongue torn out. Unless he’s your kin, of course.”

In the lightless stable no one could see him. The dark boy leaned his face on the saddle and let himself slump. His back was like fire, the wool tunic sticky with blood, rasping and pulling free at every movement. The beating had been the worst he had ever suffered, and he had suffered many, many thrashings from rope and leather, bent over the horse-trough in the yard of the place he called home.

It was that remark about kin that had done it, he knew. He hoped he had not cried out so that the strangers would hear him. Toward the end he hadn’t been able to tell. Pained memories of dragging himself out into the daylight. Then the long ride across the Wolds, trying to hold himself straight. What would happen now they were in Eoforwich? Once upon a time the fabled city, home of the long-departed but mysterious Rome-folk and their legions, had stirred his fervent imagination more than the songs of glory of the minstrels. Now he was here, and he only wanted to escape.