“They creep back, lord. They’re like rats.”

We turned left down a street of metalworkers whose fires burned bright. Dogs barked. The door of a small church was open, casting dim rushlight into the street. A priest, a white cape half covering his black robes, was kneeling at the altar. Ahead of us, just beyond the big Mallard tavern, the lane turned right to climb through the turf ridge that was all that remained of the old fort, and beyond that ridge lay the arched entrance to the palace courtyard. Æthelflaed had loved this place, but I had never liked it, and I liked it even less when we came to the palace’s torchlit archway. “Weapons, lord,” Father Lucus muttered to me.

Guards had come from a shelter and were waiting for us to surrender our swords. Only the royal guards were allowed to carry weapons inside the king’s hall and so I dutifully unbuckled Wasp-Sting’s belt, then Serpent-Breath’s. I felt naked, but the guard commander, an older man with a scarred face and two fingers missing from his left hand, reassured me. “I was with you at Eads Byrig, lord. I promise your swords are safe.” I tried to remember his name, but could not place him. He rescued me before I needed to ask. “Harald, lord. I rode with Merewalh.”

I smiled. Merewalh was a good man, a Mercian who had often fought beside me. “How is Merewalh?”

“He does well, lord, he does well. He commands the Gleawecestre garrison now.”

“And you lost your fingers at Eads Byrig?” I asked.

“That was a woman with a corn sickle, lord.” Harald grinned. “You can’t win every time, can you?”

I gave him a shilling as was expected of me, then followed Father Lucus across the courtyard, through a great door, and so into the bright light of the royal hall. Candles burned on two rows of tables, more were hanging in heavy iron brackets suspended from the roof beams, while a fire burned fierce in the central hearth and a smaller one, though just as fierce, in a brazier on the raised platform that was illuminated by a score of candles as thick as a man’s arm. There must have been at least a hundred and fifty men on the hall’s benches, while the tables were piled with the remnants of a feast. There were the carcasses of geese and ducks, pigs’ heads flensed to the bone, ale jugs, bread, fish bones, oyster shells, and wine flasks; a feast, I thought sourly, to which neither I nor Sigtryggr had been invited. A harpist played close to the platform, but his music was drowned by talk and laughter, which died when men saw us come into the light. Even the harpist stopped playing for a few heartbeats. We must have looked grim, three men in mail and helmets, and the royal guards, arrayed along the hall’s sides, started toward us until one recognized me and held up a hand to check his fellows. “Finan, Berg,” I said to my companions, “find someone you know and get some food. And don’t get into an argument.”