Yet fear of the nailed god did not prevent a revolt, and so the fighting had begun. Saxon against Saxon, Christian against Christian, Mercian against Mercian, and Mercian against West Saxon. The rebels fought under Æthelflaed’s flag, declaring that it had been her will that her daughter, Ælfwynn, succeed her. Ælfwynn, Queen of Mercia! I liked Ælfwynn, but she could no more have ruled a kingdom than she could have speared a charging boar. She was flighty, frivolous, pretty, and petty. Edward, knowing his niece had been named to the throne, took care to have her shut away in a convent, along with his discarded wife, but still the rebels flaunted her mother’s flag and fought in her name.

They were led by Cynlæf Haraldson, a West Saxon warrior whom Æthelflaed had wanted as a husband for Ælfwynn. The truth, of course, was that Cynlæf wanted to be King of Mercia himself. He was young, he was handsome, he was brave in battle, and, to my mind, stupid. His ambition was to defeat the West Saxons, rescue his bride from her convent, and be crowned.

But first he must capture Ceaster. And he had failed.

“It feels like snow,” Finan said as we rode south toward the city.

“It’s too late in the year for snow,” I said confidently.

“I can feel it in my bones,” he said, shivering. “It’ll come by nightfall.”

I scoffed at that. “Two shillings says it won’t.”

He laughed. “God send me more fools with silver! My bones are never wrong.” Finan was Irish, my second-in-command, and my dearest friend. His face, framed by the steel of his helmet, looked lined and old, his beard was gray. Mine was too, I suppose. I watched as he loosened Soul-Stealer in her scabbard and as his eyes flicked across the smoke of the campfires ahead. “So what are we doing?” he asked.

“Scouring the bastards off the eastern side of the city,” I said.

“They’re thick there.”

I guessed that almost two thirds of the enemy were camped on Ceaster’s eastern flank. The campfires were dense there, burning between low shelters made of branches and turf. To the south of the crude shelters were a dozen lavish tents, placed close to the ruins of the old Roman arena, which, even though it had been used as a convenient quarry, still rose higher than the tents above which two flags hung motionless in the still air. “If Cynlæf’s still here,” I said, “he’ll be in one of those tents.”

“Let’s hope the bastard’s drunk.”

“Or else he’s in the arena,” I said. The arena was built just outside the city and was a vast hulk of stone. Beneath its banked stone seating were cave-like rooms that, when I had last explored them, were home to wild dogs. “If he had any sense,” I went on, “he’d have abandoned this siege. Left men to keep the garrison starving, and gone south. That’s where the rebellion will be won or lost, not here.”