Figures all round him, stinking, clutching. Shef snarled abuse in English, pushed them away. With the longsword he slashed the leather bonds between one pair of hand manacles, did the same for the man’s foot fetters, pushed the sword into the freed hands.

“Start cutting them free,” he hissed, turning instantly to the next man and drawing his own sword from its scabbard. The slaves saw what was happening, thrust their hands out, then snatched their leg-bonds, held them up for an easy cut. In twenty heartbeats half a score of slaves were free.

The palisade gate creaked open, the guards deciding to come in and catch the intruder. As the first Viking came through, hands caught his arms and legs, a fist slammed into his face. In seconds he was on the ground, his axe and spear snatched away, blows swinging at his fellows who crowded after him from the light into the darkness of the pen. Shef slashed furiously at leather, then saw suddenly the hands of his half brother Alfgar, a face staring at him in amazement and twisted rage.

“We have to get Godive.”

The face nodded.

“Come with me. You others, there’s weapons at the gate, cut yourselves free. Those with weapons, who want to strike a blow for Edmund, over the wall and follow me.”

Shef’s voice rose to a bellow. He sheathed sword, stepped to the wall, caught the top of the logs and heaved himself over in a second powerful roll. Alfgar was with him a moment later, staggering from the shock of release, a score of half-naked figures swarming after him and more pouring over the wall. Some ran instantly into the friendly dark, others turned in rage toward their guards, still embroiled in their struggle round the gate. Shef ran back through the leveled tents with a dozen men behind him.

Weapons lay everywhere for the snatching, dropped where their owners had died or still lying where they had been piled for the night. Shef hauled aside a tent flap, rolled over a corpse, seized a spear and a shield. For a long, hard-breathing pause he studied the men who had followed him as they armed themselves too. Peasants mostly, he judged. But angry and desperate ones, maddened by what had happened to them in the pens. The one in the front, though, staring at him intently, rolls of muscle on arm and shoulder, he carried himself like a warrior.

Shef pointed ahead, to the struggle still going on round the untouched command tents of the Viking Army. “There is King Edmund,” he said, “trying to kill the Ragnarssons. If he succeeds the Vikings will break and flee and never recover. If he fails they will hunt us all down again and no village of any shire will be safe. We are fresh, and armed. Let us join them, break through together.”

The released slaves surged as one toward the fighting.