I needed to go into the wild lands.

We did not leave at once. We could not. Our horses needed more rest, a half-dozen of the beasts were lame, and even more required reshoeing. So we waited three days, then left to go north, though the first part of our journey took us east toward the brine pits that soured the land around the River Wevere. Great fires burned where men boiled the brine in iron vats and where salt made heaps like snowdrifts. The Romans, of course, had made the saltworks, or at least had expanded them so they could supply all Britain with salt, and to make that easy they had embanked a road across the water meadows, raising it on a great causeway of gravel.

I had scouts ranging ahead, though there was small need of them on the wide flat plain across which the road ran like a spear. I expected no trouble, though only a fool traveled Britain’s roads without taking precautions. In places we passed through thick woodland and it was possible that stragglers from Cynlæf’s forces might be looking for unarmed travelers, but no hungry or desperate men would dare attack my men, who wore mail and helmets and were armed with swords.

But hungry, desperate men might have attacked our companions, who were eighteen women on their way to establish the convent that Æthelstan wanted in Mameceaster and a dozen merchants who had been stranded in Ceaster by the siege. The merchants, in turn, had servants who led packhorses laden with valuable goods; tanned hides, silverware from Gleawecestre, and fine spearheads forged in Lundene. One packhorse carried the corpse of a man who had followed Cynlæf. The head was separately wrapped in canvas, and both head and body would be nailed to Mameceaster’s main gate as a warning to others tempted to rebel against King Edward’s rule. Æthelstan, his manner cold and distant after I had refused to give him my oath, had asked me to protect the merchants, packhorses, nuns, and corpse all the way to Mameceaster. “I’m not going that far,” I told him.

“You’re going to the Ribbel,” he had pointed out, “going by Mameceaster is your easiest route.”

“I don’t want the settlers on the Ribbel to know I’m coming,” I said, “which means I can’t use the roads.” Roman roads would lead us to Mameceaster and another road left that fortress and went north to Ribelcastre, a Roman fort on the Ribbel. Following such roads made travel easy; there was little chance of getting lost in endless tracts of wooded hills, and, at least in the larger settlements, there were barns to sleep in, smithies to shoe horses, and taverns accustomed to feeding travelers. But Arnborg, who I suspected might have occupied the old Roman fort at Ribelcastre, would have men watching the road. So I planned to approach him from the west, through land settled by Norsemen.

“The nuns need protection,” Æthelstan had protested.

“So protect them,” I had said, and so twenty-two of Æthelstan’s spearmen rode to guard the travelers on the last part of their journey.