As the cart shrieked its way toward the pavilion, a thane of Burgred’s guard stepped across. Shef heard his snarl of challenge, heard his spear-shaft crack across some unfortunate’s shoulder. Wails of complaint, expostulation. As the thane stepped closer to find out what the men were doing he caught the reek of the cart and stepped back again, gagging and waving a hand in front of his face. Dropping his crutches, Shef slid past behind his back and into the maze of the pavilion guy-ropes. From there he could see again the thane ordering Cwicca’s gang back, Cwicca cringing but sticking to his litany of explanation: “Clean out them pots now, they said. Chamberlain said he don’t want no shit-shoveling in daylight. Nor no shit-shovelers disturbing no ladies. We don’t want to do it, lord, we’d sooner be in bed, but we got to do it, it’s our hides if it ain’t done by morning; chamberlain told me he’d have the skin off me for sure.”

The whine of the slave was unmistakable. As he spoke he kept pushing the cart forward, making sure the aged reek of twenty years of human dung got well to the thane’s nostrils. The thane gave up, walked away still waving a hand in front of his face.

It would be hard to make this a story for poets, Shef reflected. No poet had ever found a place for the likes of Cwicca. yet the plan could never work without him. Slaves, freemen, and warriors looked different from each other, walked and talked differently. No thane could ever doubt that Cwicca was a slave on an errand. How could an enemy warrior be so undersized?

The gang reached the door of the women’s privy, at the rear of the great quarter-acre pavilion. In front of it stood the permanent sentry, one of Burgred’s hearth-companions, six feet tall and fully armed from helmet to studded boots. From his place in the shadows Shef watched intently. It was a critical moment, he knew. Cwicca had blocked as much of the view as possible with his cart, but just the same a watchful eye might be there in the darkness.

The gang surrounded the companion-sentry, pressing round him, deferential but determined, pawing at his sleeve as they tried to explain. Catching his sleeve, catching his arm, pulling him down as a skinny arm shut off his throat. A momentary heave, a strangled half-cry. Then a spurt of blood black in the moonlight as Cwicca passed a razor-sharp knife across vein and artery and windpipe, cutting down to the neckbone with the force of one slash.