“What happens when a warmer wind blows over wet land?” I asked.

He gazed at me for a heartbeat. “Fog, lord?”

Fog. The dawn brought a dense fog that shrouded the hills, and it was in that fog that men hefted the shields that had served as pillows, loosened swords in damp scabbards, drank ale, and stamped warmth into wet feet. We marched before sunrise, or at least we moved away from the place we had spent the night, filing up and around the hill, seeing nothing that was farther than twenty or thirty paces away. We startled a deer that bounded away down the slope, and I tried to find the omen in that sudden flight.

Fog, thicker than any smoke in the hall, wrapped about us and we hoped it deadened the sounds we made because, though we had ordered our troops to be silent, the gray light was filled with scabbards banging on shields, footfalls, the curses of men tripping, and the tearing of grass and heather. Yet the gods loved us that morning because somehow we did not get lost on the hill. Eadric, with his poacher’s skill, led us, but it took time, so much time, to make the short journey uphill. At first we followed the remnants of a Roman road, but as we neared the fort we turned left, making for the gentler slope above Sköll’s ramparts. I had hoped, like Sigtryggr, to make the assault in the half darkness, but the sun was glowing through the eastern fog by the time we were in place. Shapes shifted in the fog, the fog itself drifted, and I had a glimpse of a wall and of spearmen lining the rampart. Our silence had been wasted, because the enemy was awake and ready for us. They would have woken anyway as Sigtryggr and Svart began shouting at their men to make a shield wall, and the enemy, hearing the orders, began to bellow insults. An arrow flew from the fortress to bury itself in the turf, well short of any man.

“Bebbanburg!” I shouted, not as a challenge, but to rally my men. Finan and my son echoed the shout, and slowly my warriors appeared from the fog.

“Shield wall!” Finan bellowed. “Here!” He was standing to the left of Sigtryggr’s men, who were still making their own wall as stragglers came from the wind-stirred fog.

“Move! Move! Move!” my son was yelling. Some of Sigtryggr’s warriors joined my men by mistake and there was confusion as they left to find their own ranks. The fog was thinning. I had climbed a small hummock to see over the shambles of our half-formed shield wall and could see helmeted men watching us from Heahburh’s wall. They were watching and jeering, telling us we were all doomed men.

Rorik brought my standard. “Plant it here, boy,” I told him, “and—”

“Stay out of the fight, lord?” he interrupted me.

“Stay out of the fight,” I said, helping him thrust the banner’s staff into the hummock’s turf. “And if it all goes wrong,” I added, “you run like the wind.” Why did I tell him that? I think even at that moment as the fog thickened again and as Sköll’s men jeered us I knew we had made the wrong choice. We should have fought Sköll anywhere except at this high place where he had wanted us to fight him.