“I heard men say that, lord.”

I had heard rumors of a silver mine in Cumbraland, but such tales were common, and the mines elusive. My father had once become excited at the report of a gold mine in the hills, and for weeks he talked of the wealth we would have and the coins he would strike, but his search parties found nothing. It was far easier to risk the dragons and the ghosts by tearing apart the burial mounds of the ancient people, though usually the graves yielded nothing but cheap pottery and dry bones.

I had shared the rumor of a silver mine with Sigtryggr, and knew he had men crossing the hills to search for both silver and Sköll. I too sent out war-bands, usually a score of men who were told to avoid a fight with Sköll’s followers. “I just need to know where he lives,” I insisted to them, “discover that and then come home.”

Sigtryggr’s first instinct, like mine, had been to assemble an army and ride westward without delay, but sense had made us both pause. Lindcolne, like Eoferwic and Bebbanburg, had to be garrisoned, as did the lesser fortresses of Northumbria. Wessex might have signed a peace treaty, but if we stripped our garrisons of our best troops then the temptation might have been too great, and I did not trust Edward to pass up such an opportunity. Besides, the Scots were also eyeing our land, and the strong garrisons in the northern forts helped to dissuade them from invasion. If we left adequate men in the fortresses then we could only lead some three hundred and fifty household warriors to Cumbraland, and that strength, such as it was, would be whittled down if we were to wander from settlement to settlement, fighting skirmishes and with no aim but to find our enemy, who would be watching us and ambushing us. I had persuaded Sigtryggr that our best course was to discover the wolf’s lair and then march straight there and crush him, but that meant finding an enemy who was evidently well hidden.

The largest war-band that I dispatched west was led by my son, who took forty-three warriors to follow the great wall that the Romans had built across Britain. The old stone-built forts of the wall had attracted settlers, and I reckoned it was worth inquiring of them if they had news of Sköll. “But if you find him,” I warned my son, “do not pick a fight.”

“You want me to run away?”

“If my elder brother had run away,” I told him, “he’d be the Lord of Bebbanburg now, not me. Sometimes the cleverest thing to do in war is to run.”

And so I waited, and, while I waited, I had one unpleasant duty; to talk with Ælswyth, my son’s wife. She was Æthelhelm the Younger’s sister, and had accompanied her father when he was my prisoner in Bebbanburg, and, while she was staying at her father’s side through his final illness, she had become pregnant.