“You’re fencing with me, young man,” broke in Cwichelm. “If you were strong enough to fight, you wouldn’t be talking. So I’ll tell you what you have to do if you want to see tomorrow’s dawn. First, we know you took treasure from the mound by Woodbridge. I must have it all, for my king. It comes from his realm.”

“Second,” cut in the black-robed priest, staring fixedly at Thorvin, “there are Christians among you who have deserted their faith and betrayed their masters. They must be handed over for punishment.”

“You included,” said Alfgar. “Whatever happens to the others, my father and I will not see you march away. I will put the collar on you with my own hands. Think yourself lucky we do not treat you as we did your father.”

Shef did not bother to translate for Guthmund.

“What did you to my father?”

Wulfgar had not spoken till then. He sprawled in his box, held by the straps. Shef remembered the yellow, pain-racked face he had last seen in the trough. Now Wulfgar’s face was ruddy, his lips showing red in the white-streaked beard.

“What he did to me,” he said, “I did to him. Only more skillfully. First we took the fingers, then the toes. Ears, lips. Not his eyes, so he could see what we did, nor his tongue, so he could still call out. Hands, feet. Knees and elbows. And never allowed to bleed. I whittled him like a boy whittling a stick. In the end there was nothing left but the core.

“Here, boy. A memorial of your father.”

He nodded and a servant threw a leather pouch in Shef’s direction. Shef loosed the strings, glanced inside, hurled it at Cwichelm’s feet.

“You are in poor company, warrior,” he remarked.

“Time to go,” said Guthmund.

The two sides backed away from each other, turned at safe distance. As they stepped briskly toward their own lines, Shef heard the Mercian warhorns bellow, heard a roar and a clash of mail as the English army came on.

Instantly, as prearranged, the Wayman line turned tail and ran. The first stage of its long, planned retreat.

Hours later, as the long winter twilight faded into dark, Brand muttered dry-throated to Shef, “I think we may have done it.”

“For the day,” Shef agreed. “I see no hope for the morning .”

Brand shrugged massively, called the orders to stand down, light fires, heat water, make food.