“It is,” I agreed.

He paused. “Svart’s dead.”

“I know, I saw.”

Sigtryggr’s one good eye gleamed. “He was a good man. The best.”

“He was.”

“He died holding his ax.”

“So we’ll meet in Valhalla.”

“We will,” he said, “and maybe sooner than we want.” He offered me a skin. “There’s no ale left, so it’s water.” He watched me drink. “So what do we do?”

I winced as a pain seared through my skull. “Try again?”

“The northern corner? As your madman suggested?”

“If you bring your men around to this side,” I suggested, “I can take mine to the northern corner.”

“Not many arrows left,” my son muttered.

Sigtryggr looked at the bodies we had left in the ditch. He grimaced. A Norseman, to taunt us, was standing on the rampart pissing on our dead. “The bastard,” Sigtryggr said quietly. Behind us, on the rising ground, our wounded were lying in pain. A boy, one of those who had helped carry the ladders up to the fort, was weeping over his dying father. Sigtryggr flinched, then looked back to the ramparts. “He has too many men,” he said, “and he hasn’t moved anyone from that far corner.” Which meant our efforts to persuade Sköll to weaken the north to reinforce the west had failed.

“We can’t leave,” I said, “they’ll cut us down like sheep.”

“They will,” he agreed, “but we might have to.”

“No,” I said as forcefully as I could, “we have to attack.”

Sigtryggr tried to move his shield arm and flinched at the pain. “And if another attack fails?” he asked.

“It mustn’t fail,” I said, “because if it does we’re doomed.”

Sigtryggr appeared not to hear those words, which were, I admit, little more than dutiful. I might sound defiant, but at that moment both of us knew we were doomed. He had turned to look back the way we had come in the morning’s fog, a fog that had utterly vanished. “I’m thinking,” he said, “that if we make a shield wall across the track then we can send away the men we want to save. Like your son.”

“No—” my son began.

“Quiet!” Sigtryggr snarled at him and turned back to me. “We make one long shield wall, and that should hold up their pursuit long enough.”

“You should leave too,” I said.

He scoffed at that suggestion. “I’ve failed. I can’t run away and leave my men to die.” He looked again at the fort. “I’ll send a dozen good men to take my children to Bebbanburg. Your son can protect them there.”

“He will,” I said. I remember the chill wind blowing across the spur as I realized that this was the place where my life thread would be severed. Two kings must die, and I, the king without a crown, was one of them. I touched the hammer and thought how I had let down my daughter. I had come for revenge and I was failing. I could see my men gazing at me, wanting me to lead them to a surprise victory. They had an absurd faith in me. “We’ve been at the arse end of fate before,” I had heard Eadric telling Immar Hergildson, the young man I had saved from hanging at Mameceaster, “and he always gets us out. Don’t worry, lad, we have Lord Uhtred. We’ll win!”