The door burst open and eleven swords pointed at a sopping-wet priest who took two steps into the room and then fell to his knees. “God’s mercy!” he called.

Svart stepped into the rain. “No one else here,” he growled.

Eleven swords slid into eleven scabbards. Svart locked the door again. “Get up,” I told the priest, “and who are you?”

“Father Lucus, lord.” He looked fearfully at the mail-clad men who surrounded him, noticed Sigtryggr’s thick gold chain, and bowed to him. “Lord King,” he said.

“Why are you here?” I demanded.

“The king sent me, lord.” Father Lucus bowed again, this time to me. “He demands,” he hesitated, “desires your attendance, lord.” Rainwater dripped from his black robes and cloak.

“Just mine?” I asked.

“Yes, lord. And at once, lord. If you please, lord.”

“How do we know you’re the king’s messenger?” Finan demanded.

Father Lucus’s expression of sheer incredulity was answer enough. “I can assure you I am,” he stammered.

“Does Ealdorman Æthelhelm know I’m summoned?” I asked.

Father Lucus’s puzzlement at the question was obvious, but he answered anyway. “He was in the hall, lord,” he said, “but I don’t know if he knows, lord.”

“He knows,” Sigtryggr spoke enough of the Saxon tongue to follow what was being said. “The king was at supper?” he asked the priest.

“Yes, lord King.”

“If a king summons a man, then news of it is whispered through the hall.” Sigtryggr spoke from experience. “So Æthelhelm knows.”

“The king desired your presence swiftly, lord,” Father Lucus insisted nervously.

“Finan,” I said, “Berg, you two come with me.”

“We’re coming too,” Sigtryggr said eagerly. There was the prospect of a fight, and that always thrilled him. He might be King of Northumbria, but at heart he was still a Norse raider.

“But stay back from us,” I told him, “well back.”

He opened his mouth to argue, then saw what I meant. He grinned. “You won’t even know we’re there.”

I put on a helmet, then a hooded cloak that hid the armor. We were already wearing our mail coats. I had insisted on that from the moment we returned from seeing Æthelhelm. “We’re ready,” I told Father Lucus, and the three of us followed the priest out into the pelting rain. A wash of lantern light from the tavern’s open door showed a stream running down the street’s center, then the door closed and we walked uphill, our way lit by the small leakage of fire or candlelight from the chinks of shutters. “Do you know what the king wants?” I shouted to Father Lucus. I had to shout because the wind and rain were so loud.

“He didn’t say, lord.”

The Bullock was built opposite the burh’s outer wall that was a black shadow to our right, and suddenly another shadow moved in that darkness, and Berg’s sword was halfway out of his scabbard when a voice spoke. “Alms, lord, alms?”

A beggar. “I thought all the beggars had been thrown out of the burh,” I said to the priest.