The battle was over, Edmund thought. And he had lost. He had broken the Vikings’ last ring, sure enough, thanks to that rabble of churls that had sprung from nowhere with the half-naked youth in their midst. In the last few minutes he had done crippling execution among the Great Army’s hardest of hard cores, so much that the Army would never be quite the same again. Or remember the camp on the Stour without a shudder. But he had not yet seen a Ragnarsson dead. There were little knots of men still fighting back-to-back and the Ragnarssons must be among them. Only if he held this place of slaughter, defeated and killed every one of them, could he be sure of lasting victory.

He would not get the chance to do it. Edmund felt the blood-rage inside him cooling, cooling to a slow and wary calculation. Ominously, the noise from the main camp above the Ragnarssons’ tents by the river had lessened. Stung by arrows from the palisades, harassed by mock assaults and parties of running knifemen in their rear, the Vikings had let the Ragnarssons deal with their own troubles in their own way. But you could not fool these veterans for long; they would not stand by forever while their leaders were destroyed.

Edmund sensed that men were gathering beyond the reach of the flames. Those were orders being given. Someone was getting ready to come down like a warhammer on a hazelnut, with a thousand men together. How many had he left on their feet and not escaped into the night? Fifty?

“Time to go, lord,” muttered Wigga.

Edmund nodded, knowing that he had reached the absolute last instant. His escape route was still clear, and he had a handful of champions round him to brush aside any scattered interceptors there might be between him and the east stockade.

“Back,” he ordered. “Back to where we broke in. We’ll run for the stockade from there. But kill everyone, everyone on the ground, ours as well as theirs. Don’t leave them for Ivar. And make certain every single one is dead!”

Ivar felt consciousness returning. Yet it would not come back all at once; it was there and not there. He had to grasp it, grasp it quickly. Something terrible was coming toward him. He could feel the thump, thump, thump of heavy footsteps. It was a draugr—giant, swollen, blue as a three-day corpse, strong as ten men, with all the strength of those who live in the Halls of the Mighty, but come back to earth to vex their descendants. Or to avenge their deaths.