We took sixty men, half Sigtryggr’s and half mine, and, led by Eadric, spurred up into the hills. It seemed strange to be riding across the fells toward an enemy who was making no attempt to stop us. We had scouts ahead of us, but those riders saw nothing threatening. The fort, I thought, even if it was overlooked by a hill, had to be formidable if Sköll was content to let us approach it unchallenged, and the country we rode invited such an ambush because, though the rolling hills were bare, they were cut by steep valleys where streams, dark from the peat bogs, had worn down their beds as they tumbled to the Tine. It was a hard country, bleak and high, and perhaps the only reason the Romans had built their fort here was to protect the pits where their slaves had dug for lead and the furnaces where they had smelted the silver from the ore. There had to be a road, I thought, how else could the Romans carry away their ingots? And where, I wondered, had those ingots gone? All the way to distant Rome? And I thought of British lead and British silver being dragged across a whole world, through Frankia and whatever countries lay beyond. I had met men who had journeyed to Rome, and they had told me the road was long and hard, it crossed mountains, only to end at a ruined city where wild dogs roamed and where great pillars and towering arches stood amidst the weeds. King Alfred had made the journey twice, both times to meet the Pope, and the king had told me how guards had been hired at the foot of the mountains to protect the travelers from the savages who lived in the high places. But the journey, he had told me, was worth the hardships and the dangers. “The city must have been glorious once,” Alfred had recounted, “a wonder! But it was brought low by sin.” As so often, he had been in a melancholy mood, regretting a fallen world. “We must make a new Rome,” he had said, and I had imagined trying to build a great city from clay, wattles, timber, and thatch, but knew, as Alfred himself knew, that the world of glory was gone and we were sinking into a darkness of smoke, fire, savagery, and blood.

“Lord,” Eadric startled me from my thoughts. “There, lord.”

And I looked across the valley to see Heahburh. At last.

Then did Uhtred, hoary in winters,

Summon his men, eager for battle-slaughter,

Their swords keen-edged, their shields bound tight,

They prayed to the Measurer . . .

“There’s that measurer again,” I accused Father Selwyn.

“It’s a poem, lord,” he said weakly.

“And tell me,” I spoke threateningly, “what does ‘hoary in winters’ mean?”

“That you’re an experienced warrior, lord,” he said promptly, he had obviously expected the question.

“Old, you mean.”

“Experienced, lord, and your beard . . .” his voice faltered.