“Who were these men?” I asked. “Danes? Norse? Saxon?”

“Saxon,” my son answered miserably, knowing how thin his tale now sounded. “They said they held land from the monks at Cair Ligualid.”

Cair Ligualid was at the far end of the great wall. I had been there often enough and had wondered whether the coming of so many Norse to the coast of Cumbraland had meant the destruction of the monastery and the town surrounding it. Nothing my son could tell me provided an answer to that, though the Saxons who had misled him had claimed that their families had taken shelter behind the monastery’s high walls.

“So how many men were in this settlement?”

“Six,” my son said.

“And they knew where Sköll lived?”

“They said he lived at Heahburh.”

“Heahburh?” I had never heard of such a place. The name meant “high fort,” and that could have been a description of any one of the hundreds of ancient hill forts that crowned Britain’s heights.

“They couldn’t describe just where it was,” my son said, “but offered to take us there.”

“And they were certain Sköll wasn’t there,” Redbad said, “they said he’d gone south, lord, to fight off raiders.”

“I thought that sounded likely,” my son went on, “because Sigtryggr has men in southern Cumbraland.”

“He does,” I said.

“Only Sköll hadn’t gone south,” my son said unhappily.

Sköll had been waiting on either side of a steep valley, his men concealed behind both crests, and, when my son’s horsemen were at the valley’s center, the úlfhéðnar had attacked. They swarmed down both slopes, gray-cloaked men in gray mail on gray horses, and my son’s smaller troop stood no chance. He flinched as he described the scene. “You didn’t think,” I asked bitterly, “to have scouts on the high ground?”

“I believed the men who led us,” he said, “and they said Sköll and most of his men were gone south.”

“They were convincing, lord,” Redbad added loyally.

“And I reckoned any scouts we sent to the hill crests would be seen by the men he’d left to garrison Heahburh,” my son went on, “and I wanted to approach unseen.”

“And the men who led you,” I asked, “were Sköll’s men?”

My son nodded. “They turned uphill to join the attackers.”

In some ways I could understand why my son had been deceived. If the men who had betrayed him had been Danes or Norsemen he would have been far more cautious, but he had assumed that Saxon Christians would be his allies. Yet Sköll had clearly suborned the six men, a reminder that the leader of the úlfhéðnar was a subtle man. Rumor said he hated the Christians and took a delight in killing priests, but he evidently knew how to seduce and use them too.

My son had only escaped because Sköll had attacked a moment too late. The úlfhéðnar had ridden recklessly down the valley’s slopes, but instead of striking the head of my son’s column, the horsemen had severed it in half. The men at the rear had stood no chance, but my son and those who survived with him had spurred away. They had been pursued, of course, and two more were lost in that wild chase, but Bebbanburg’s horses were good, and my son had come home.