A few fights made him their unquestioned leader, while he never owned any man his lord. In the course of the next ten years or so, he gathered more ruffians to him. By their raids they gained skill and weapons, as well as plunder which they could trade for whatever else they wanted. When king’s men came after them, sometimes they threw back the attack on a camp of theirs, sometimes they withdrew to another. Deep woods, misty fens, trackless moors were full of lairs for them.

Bit by bit Tosti began selling his strength too. Outlaw he was at home. No king anywhere wanted beasts like this in his guard. Yet when the war-arrow went around, the robbers could be useful hirelings—or better than useful, raging ahead to rip the throat out of the foe.

Afterward they would go back to the stronghold they now had. It stood alone on a high heath, looking widely over ling, gorse, tussocks, scattered thickets, and murky meres. The frame of its stockade was a ring of standing stones left by the giants of old. Tosti gibed at their ghosts. Thralls died hauling the timbers, digging the turf, breaking the rocks that went to build it. When they were done it crouched as a thorp, bulky, filthy, unruly, but his. Kine lowed around it, grazing in summer, fed in winter on hay cut wherever grass grew. This and all other work fell to the thralls, some reaved from their homes, some bought in marts where nobody kenned the buyers. More than half of them were women, who trudged about their tasks, spread their legs when a warrior bade, and seldom lived long. Nor did any children they bore.

Other needs, such as grain, cloth, and iron, came from outside. Tosti’s gang had won the means to pay for it when paying was easier than snatching. He had, in truth, become a kind of chieftain in his own right. Any one or two of the little Jutish kings could have raised a host too-big for him, and taken the time to hound him down. But he shrewdly furthered wariness among them. Thus he said once to Orm of Donlund, “If ever you go up against me, that will leave your own land open to Svengir of Hrossmark. You know well what grudges he nurses. Would you not both do better to stay on the good side of me? Make me a yearly payment and we brothers will leave you alone. Well, maybe once in a while there’ll be some small raid, but nothing much. Besides, all Jutes should remember that the Anglians are always watchful. Tempt them not.”

So it was that Tosti waxed in might. Maybe he would have grown greater than he did, were it not that his faithlessness and cruelty shocked too many hardened men. They came to call him Tosti the Wicked. That delighted him.