He laughed. “It’s not too late.”

“Wyrd bið ful āræd,” I said, and that is true. Fate is inexorable. Destiny is all. We make oaths, we make choices, but fate makes our decisions.

Æthelstan was my enemy, but I had sworn to protect him.

So I told Finan that he should stay outside the arena, told him what he was to do there, then followed my enemy up the stairs.

“You will throw down your weapons,” Æthelstan called to the men in the arena, “and you will kneel!” He had taken off his helmet so that the trapped men would have no trouble recognizing him. He usually wore his dark hair cropped very short, but it had grown during the siege and the cold morning wind lifted it and swirled his dark blue cloak around his mailed figure. He stood in the center of a line of warriors, all implacable in mail and helmets, all with shields painted with Æthelstan’s symbol of a dragon holding a lightning bolt. Behind them, standing on one of the snow-covered stone tiers, Father Swithred was holding a wooden cross high above his head.

“What is our fate?” a man called up from the arena floor.

Æthelstan made no answer. He just stared at the man.

A second man stepped forward and knelt. “What is our fate, lord Prince?” he asked.

“My justice.” That answer was said in a voice as cold as the snow-shrouded corpses we had passed on our way to the arena.

Silence. There had to be a hundred horses in the arena. A score of them had been saddled, perhaps readied for a desperate dash through the entrance tunnel, and in front of them, huddled like the horses, were Cynlæf’s men. I looked for Cynlæf himself and finally saw him at the back of the crowd, close to the saddled stallions. He was a tall, good-looking man. Æthelflaed had been fond of him and had chosen him as her daughter’s husband, but if there was such a place as the Christian heaven and she was looking down now she would approve of Æthelstan’s grim resolve to kill Cynlæf.

“Your justice, lord Prince?” the kneeling man, who had the sense to use Æthelstan’s title, asked humbly.

“Which is the same as my father’s justice,” Æthelstan said harshly.

“Lord Prince,” I said softly. I was standing barely two paces behind him, but he ignored me. “Lord Prince,” I said again, louder.

“Silence, Lord Uhtred,” Æthelstan said without turning. He also spoke softly, but with a trace of anger that I had dared to intervene.

I wanted to tell him that he should offer mercy. Not to all of them, of course, and certainly not to Cynlæf. They were, after all, rebels, but tell close to a hundred men that they will face grim justice and you have close to a hundred desperate men who would rather fight than surrender. But if some thought they would live, then those men would subdue the others, and none of our men need die. Yet it seemed Æthelstan had no use for mercy. This was a rebellion, and rebellions destroy kingdoms, so rebellions must be utterly destroyed.