We had two prisoners. Enar was one. I dismounted and went to look at the young man whose sword had so nearly wounded me. He was either dead or unconscious. Serpent-Breath had opened the back of his helmet as if it were an eggshell, and there was a mess of bone and blood in the ragged gap. I kicked the fallen man in the chest to turn him over, but he showed no sign of feeling the blow. I stooped and ripped off a golden chain that hung at his neck, then took his sword, which had a hilt ringed with gold. I undid his sword belt, tugged it free, and the violence of the tug forced a groan from him. I sheathed the precious weapon and threw it to Rorik. “Look after it! It’s valuable.” I pulled myself back into the saddle and shouted at Berg to hurry. He had managed to drape Enar over a saddle and was tying his hands and feet to the girth strap. Rathulf was securing the second prisoner, a much younger man, while the women were begging us to take them away. One woman held her baby up to me. “Take her, lord! Take her!”

“We can’t take any of you!” I hated telling her that. The best we could do for the women was to give them food we had found in sacks tied to the captured saddles. Three of the women were searching the corpses, looking for coins or food.

“Lord, we must hurry!” Berg said to me. He was right. The three horsemen who had escaped our attack were almost at the western crest of the road. It would not be long before Sköll sent men back to punish us.

“Are the prisoners secure?”

“Yes, lord.”

“Then we go.”

“Lord!” a woman called. “Please, lord!”

It hurt to leave them, but I dared not take them. We kicked our horses off the road and up the slope, leading five captured stallions and the two prisoners. Once over the crest I planned to go south until I was sure any pursuit had been left behind, then we would return to the road and hurry back east to Eoferwic.

We so nearly reached the crest. Our horses were laboring up the heather-thick hillside with only yards to go when Kettil looked back. “Lord!” he called. “Lord!”

I looked behind. Sköll’s men had turned back, and now there was a line of horsemen on the western spur, and even as I watched more men joined that line. There were at least a hundred men, and, at their center, was the big man in the white fur cloak.

I turned again as we reached the crest and saw the enemy had started in pursuit.

We were being hunted.

CHAPTER FIVE

My plan had been to ride south, and, once out of sight of the road, turn east toward distant Eoferwic. I assumed the women we had left on the road would have told Sköll’s men they had seen us heading south, and I had hoped that misdirection would be sufficient to send our pursuers toward Mercia while we rode eastward, but that hope was gone now because Sköll’s scouts were already spurring up the slope and they would soon be close enough to see which way we headed. I had wanted time to escape and I was being given none.