“Yes, Ivar,” repeated Shef. “Ivar and his machines. We cannot leave him behind us while we march to the South. He would grow stronger. For one thing, now Burgred is dead it will be only a matter of time till the Mercians elect a king to make peace with Ivar and save them from ravaging. Then Ivar will have their men and money to draw on, as he has already drawn on the money and the skills of York. He did not make those machines himself.

“So we must fight him. I must fight him. I think he and I are bound together now so that we cannot part till this is finished.

“But you, lord king.” The whetstone-scepter was cradled in Shef’s left arm while he stroked its stern, implacable faces. “You have your own people to consider. Maybe it is best for you to march to your own place and fight your own battle, while we fight ours. Each in our own way. Christian against Christian and pagan against pagan. And then, if your God and our gods will, we shall meet again, and set this country on its feet.”

“So be it,” said Alfred, his face flushing again. “I will call my men and be on my way.”

“Go with him, Lulla,” said Shef to the leader of the halberdiers. “And you, Osmod,” he added to the leader of the catapult-teams, “see the king has his pick of horses and remounts for his journey south.”

As the only Englishmen on the council left, Shef looked round at those who remained, and broke into fluent, rapid Norse, tinged with the thick Halogaland accent he had learned from Brand.

“What are his chances? If he fights his way? Against these Franks? What do you know of them, Brand?”

“A good chance, if he fights our way. Hit them when they’re not looking. Catch them when they’re asleep. Didn’t old Ragnar himself—bad luck to his spirit—did he not sack their great town back in our fathers’ day, and make their king pay tribute?

“But if the king fights in the English way, with the sun high in the sky and everyone forewarned …”

Brand grunted doubtfully. “The Franks had a king in our grandfather’s day: King Karl, Karl the Great—Chariemagne they call him. Even Guthfrith, king of the Danes, had to submit to him. The Franks can beat anybody, given time. You know why? It’s the horses. They fight on horseback. About once in a blue moon they’ll be there, with their saddles on, and their girthstraps tight, and their fetlocks plaited, or whatever it is they call them—I am a sailor, not a horseman, Thor be praised; at least ships never shit on your feet.

“But that day, that one day, you don’t want to stand up to them. And if King Alfred’s like all the other Englishmen, that’s the day he’ll choose.”