When would he be free of his father’s guilt? Of his stepfather’s hate?

Shef pulled himself together and began to unbuckle the girth, dragging at the heavy leather. Wulfgar, he was sure, would soon formally enslave him, put the iron collar round his neck, ignore the faint protests of his mother, and sell him in the market at Thetford or Lincoln. He would get a good price. In childhood Shef had hung around the village forge, drawn by the fire, hiding from the abuse and the thrashings. Slowly he had come to help the smith, pumping the bellows, holding the tongs, beating out the iron blooms. Making his own tools. Making his own sword.

They would not let him keep it once he was a slave. Maybe he should run now. Slaves sometimes got away. Usually not.

He pulled off the saddle and groped round the unfamiliar stable for a place to stow it. The door opened, bringing in light, a candle, and the familiar cold, scornful voice of Alfgar.

“Not finished yet? Then drop it, I’ll send a groom. My father is called to council with the king and the great ones. He must have a servant behind his chair to pour his ale. It is not fitting for me to do it and the companions are too proud. Go, now. The king’s bower-thane waits to instruct you.”

Shef plodded out into the courtyard of the king’s great wooden hall, new-built within the square of the old Roman ramparts, into the dim light of the spring evening, almost too tired to walk straight. And yet, inside him, something stirred, something hot and excited. Council? Great ones? They would decide the fate of the prisoner, the mighty warrior. It would be a story to tell Godive, one that none of the wiseacres of Emneth could match.

“And keep your mouth shut,” a voice hissed from inside the stable. “Or he will have your tongue torn out. And remember: Ella is king in Northumbria now. And you are no kin to my father.”

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“We think he’s Ragnar Lothbrok,” King Ella asked his council. “How do we know?”