What could be wrong? Sigvarth was not a man given to self-examination, but he had also lived a long time, and had learned not to ignore the prickles of oncoming danger.

There had been no trouble coming back from the raid. He had taken the column of wagons and booty, not back along the Ouse, but down the channel of the Nene. The ship-guards, meanwhile, had waited on their mudbank till an English force appeared, had traded jeers and stray arrows with them for a while, watched them slowly assemble a force of rowing-boats and fishercraft, and then at the appointed time had kedged themselves off on the tide and sailed gently up-coast to the rendezvous, leaving the English behind fuming.

And the march to the rendezvous had gone well. The most important thing was that Sigvarth had done exactly what the Snake-eye had said. Torches in every thatch and every field. Every well with a few corpses down it. Examples too, brutal ones. Nailed to trees or mutilated, not dead, to tell their tale to everyone they knew.

Do it like Ivar would do it, the Snake-eye had said. Well, Sigvarth had no illusions about being in the Boneless One’s class when it came to brutality, but no one could say he hadn’t tried. He had done well. That countryside would not recover for years.

No, it wasn’t that disturbing him; that had been a good idea. If there was anything wrong it was further back. Reluctantly, Sigvarth realized that it was the memory of the skirmish that was troubling him. He had fought in the front for a quarter of a century, killed a hundred men, taken a score of battle-wounds. That skirmish should have been easy. It hadn’t been. He had broken through the English front line like so many times before, brushed the fair-haired thane out of his way almost with contempt, and got through to the second line, as ragged and disorganized as ever.

And then that boy had come out of the ground. He hadn’t even a helmet or a proper sword. Only a freedman, or the poorest of the cottagers’ children. Yet two parries and Sigvarth’s own sword was in pieces and he himself off balance with his guard too high. The fact was, Sigvarth concluded, if that had been single combat he would have been a dead man. It was the others coming up on each side who had saved him. He did not think anyone had noticed, but if they had—if they had, some one of the bolder heads, the frontmen or the duelers, might be thinking of calling him out even now.

Could he face them? Was his son Hjörvarth strong enough yet for his vengeance to be feared? Maybe he was getting too old for the business. If he couldn’t settle a half-armed boy, and an English boy at that, then perhaps he was.