It was too great. Such losses could not be borne.

Far away, a hundred and fifty miles to the south, the same growing light reached the eyes of a woman, snuggled deep in a nest of down mattress and woolen rugs piled high against the cold. She stirred, shifted. Her hand touched the warm, naked thigh of the man next to her. Recoiled as if it had touched the scales of a mighty adder.

He is my half brother, she thought for the thousandth time. Son of my own father. We are in mortal sin. But how could I tell them? I could not tell even the priest who married us. Alfgar told him we had sinned carnally while fleeing from the Vikings and now prayed God’s forgiveness and blessing on our union. They think he is a saint. And the kings, the kings of Mercia and of Wessex, they listen to all he says of the menace of the Vikings, of what they did to his father, of how he fought at the Viking camp to set me free. They think he is a hero. They say they will make him an alderman and set him over a shire, they will bring his poor, tormented father home from York, where he is defying the heathens still.

But what will happen when our father sees us together? If only Shef had lived …

As she thought the name, Godive’s tears started to leak slowly, as they did every morning, through closed eyelids onto the pillow.

Shef marched down the muddy street, between the lines of booths which the Vikings had set up to keep out the winter weather. His halberd rested on his shoulder, and he wore his metal gloves, but the helmet remained at Thorvin’s forge. Mail and helmets may not be worn in holmgang, they had told him. The duel was fought as a matter of honor, so mere expediencies, like surviving and killing your enemy, were not the point.

That did not mean you would not be killed.

And a holmgang was a four-man affair. Each of the two principals took turns to strike at the other. But each principal was covered from the blows of the other by his second, the shieldbearer, who carried a shield for him and intercepted the strokes. Your life depended on the skill of your second.