“They want to settle here?”

“Sköll promised them wealth and land. So if they find good land? Yes, lord, I think they might bring their women too.”

I was not surprised. I had been to Snæland, and life there was hard, the winters were cruel, and rich enemies were few, which meant plunder was scarce, and so the Skallagrimmrson brothers were restless, bored, eager for the sea and for new lands. Sköll had beckoned, they had come, and at Heahburh they had found their younger brother. “And you persuaded them they were fighting for the wrong side?”

“Yes, lord,” Berg said, “but I think what really persuaded them was Snorri’s defeat. Egil said that was a sign from the gods.” He hesitated, plainly about to add something, then decided it was best left unsaid.

I guessed what he was reluctant to say. “And you promised your brothers I’d give them land and wealth if they fought for me?”

He had blushed. “I just said you were generous, lord.”

Egil Skallagrimmrson’s men had been charged with defending the northern section of the wall, from the gate to the tower, and they had let the úlfhéðnar loose by opening the gate after Snorri’s defeat. “If the wolf-men defeat your Lord Uhtred,” Egil had told Berg, “we will know what the gods want.” And it had become clear that the gods did not want the úlfhéðnar to win, and so Egil had shut the gate and kept it barred as my son’s men hacked and speared their way through the survivors of the crazed charge. Sköll realized too late what was happening, but as soon as he understood that Egil’s men had turned on him he began the fight I had seen on the ramparts. And while Egil fought off Sköll’s men, Thorolf Skallagrimmrson opened the gate to mine.

We were inside Heahburh. My son was first. His men pulled away the bodies that blocked the gate, then helped to haul the great gates open before bursting into the fortress. We followed, climbing over the úlfhéðnar corpses that were strewn on the causeway, then going into the narrow lanes between the Roman barracks. I could hear women screaming, children crying, dogs barking, and horses whinnying. The barracks still mostly had stone walls, though the walls were much patched with timber and all were now roofed with turf rather than tiles. Some were being used as stables, others were sleeping quarters, one was a storehouse of grain, another was heaped with silver ingots, and we now fought past all the buildings and through some, though Sigtryggr, his left arm lamed, and I with my blurred sight and wounded leg could not keep up with the younger men who were surging through the alleys and screaming like fiends as they cut down an enemy who had never expected us to pierce their defenses. I found one of Sköll’s men dying in a doorway, his guts spilled onto horse dung. “Lord, lord,” he called to me, and I saw that his sword, a cheap blade, had fallen from his hand. I edged it nearer him with my foot and his hand closed around the hilt. “Thank you, lord,” he said. Oswi, coming behind me, slashed his sword across the man’s throat.