Behind me my men were mounting their horses. I went back and joined them, pulling myself into Tintreg’s saddle. “Rorik!” I called. “You have that flag we took from Arnborg’s hall?”

“Of course, lord.”

“Put it on our staff!” One of our packhorses carried my wolf’s head banner on a pole, and Rorik now untied that flag and laced on the captured banner. I did not want to charge recklessly down the hill and so risk breaking a horse’s leg, but if we went slowly then the few men guarding the prisoners might send a warning to the warriors ahead. A familiar banner would reassure them that they had no need to raise the alarm. Or so I hoped. And, I thought, if I took just a handful of men, then the ruse would be even more convincing.

“Berg,” I called, “choose eight men.”

“Eight?”

“Just eight. All of them Norsemen or Danes! Rorik! Bring the flag.”

“What about me?” Finan asked, reluctant to be left out of any fighting.

“I need you up here. Wait till we’ve captured the bastards, then show yourself if you need to.” Finan was the only man I trusted to understand what I planned. If it all went wrong, if Sköll Grimmarson turned around and threatened us, then the sight of almost a hundred warriors on a hill crest might give him pause. It seemed he had failed to capture Eoferwic, so why would he want to lose more men? Warriors were valuable, even more valuable than the cattle and slaves he was driving westward.

“We go slowly,” I told Berg. “No shields. I want them to think we’re scouts returning to the road.”

“They didn’t have scouts, lord,” Berg pointed out.

“Maybe these men at the rear don’t know that,” I said, then nudged Tintreg up the slope and saw that the larger mass of horsemen had disappeared across the western crest, while the small group of prisoners, guarded by the nine horsemen, were alone on the road. “Let’s go,” I said.

And so we walked the horses up the slope and then along the skyline. The wind blew harder, but our captured flag was heavy with rainwater and did not unfurl, and so I ordered Rorik to wave the staff. One of the horsemen below looked up. I watched the man, but he showed no alarm. Scouts normally carry no flags because they do not want to be noticed, but the horseman who stared up at us appeared to see nothing strange. He did not spur his horse ahead, but just looked away and kept the same slow pace, and so we angled down the hill. “You and I get ahead of them,” I told Berg, knowing the other eight men, four of them Norsemen and four Danes, were listening. “The rest of you follow the captives. Don’t alarm their guards! We’re all friends.”

Henkil Herethson laughed. He was a Danish Christian, a rarity in Northumbria, who had served in my cousin’s garrison at Bebbanburg. He had fought us there, but had sworn allegiance to me and had proved himself loyal. He liked to fight with a double-bladed ax that now hung at his saddle. I noted that his cross was hidden.