“Beacons, lord jarl! Beacons for a fleet at sea. Forty ships at least. The men on watch, they say it can only be—it can only be Ivar.”

As Shef watched the consternation on the face of King Alfred, something cold inside him drew a conclusion. Alfgar on one side. Ivar on the other. And what have they in common? I took a woman from one. The other took the same woman from me. At least I can be sure now that it was a true dream the god sent me, whoever he may be. Godive is the key to this. Someone is telling me to use her.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Early in his experience of being jarl, Shef had discovered that news was never quite as good or quite as bad as it was made to seem on first hearing. So it proved again. Beacons were a good way of signaling danger, and direction, and even—with care—number. They said nothing about distance. The beacon-chain started far up the coast, in Lincolnshire. It could mean only that Ivar—if Ivar it was—had left the Humber with, as Brand had immediately pointed out, the wind dead in his teeth. He could be three days off, or even more.

As for King Burgred, with Alfgar and Wulfgar in his train, Alfred was sure that he was in pursuit and that he meant, on the urgings of his bishops, nothing less than the entire destruction of the land of the Way, and the submission of the whole of England south of the Humber to his rule. But Alfred was a young man who rode hard, and who had only his personal bodyguard with him. Burgred was famous for the splendor of his camp-furniture and the number of ox-wagons needed to carry it. Forty miles to him was four days’ march.

Shef might expect a heavy stroke from each of his enemies. Not a sudden one.

It would have made no difference in any case. As Shef dealt with the immediate necessities of the situation, he thought only of what he knew he must do—and who he could trust in this situation to help him. There was only one answer to the latter. As soon as he could get rid of all his council-members on one errand or another, he slipped through the gates of his burg, sent back the troubled guards who had tried to accompany him, and made his way as unobserved as possible through the crowded streets surrounding it.

Hund was, as he expected, busy in his booth, treating a woman whose evident terror at the sight of the jarl suggested a guilty conscience: a drab or a hedge-witch. Hund continued to treat her as if she were a thane’s lady. Only after she had gone did he sit down by his friend, unspeaking as usual.