“Why hasn’t Edward helped?”

“He has other enemies, lord. He’s fighting them in southern Mercia.” The monk had looked up beseechingly. “Please, lord! The garrison can’t last long!”

Yet they had lasted, and we had come. We had left the road by now, and our horses walked slowly through the besiegers’ encampment. The luckiest folk had found shelter in the farm buildings that had been made by the Romans. They were good stone buildings, though the long years had destroyed their roofs, which were now untidy heaps of thatch on beams, but most people were in crude shelters. Women were feeding the fires with newly gathered wood, readying to cook an evening meal. They seemed incurious about us. They saw my mail coat and silver-crested helmet, saw the silver ornaments on Tintreg’s bridle, and so realized I was a lord and dutifully knelt as I passed, but none dared ask who we were.

I halted in an open space to the northeast of the city. I gazed around, puzzled because I could see few horses. The besiegers must have horses. I had planned to drive those horses away to prevent men using them to escape, as well as to capture the beasts to defray the costs of this winter journey, but I could see no more than a dozen. If there were no horses then we had the advantage, and so I turned Tintreg and walked him back through my men until I reached the packhorses. “Unbundle the spears,” I ordered the boys. There were eight heavy bundles tied with leather ropes. Each spear was about seven feet long with an ash shaft and a sharpened steel blade. I waited as the bundles were untied and as each of my men took one of the weapons. Most also carried a shield, but a few preferred to ride without the heavy willow boards. The enemy had let us come into the center of their encampment and they must have seen my men taking their spears, yet still they did nothing except watch us dully. I waited for the boys to coil the leather ropes, then climb back into their saddles. “You boys,” I called to the servants, “ride east, wait out in the fields till we send for you. Not you, Rorik.”

Rorik was my servant, a good boy. He was Norse. I had killed his father, captured the boy and now treated him like a son, just as Ragnar the Dane had treated me as a son after his forces had cut my father down in battle.

“Not me, lord?” he asked.

“You follow me,” I told him, “and have the horn ready. Stay behind me! And you don’t need that spear.”

He pulled the spear out of my reach. “It’s a spare one for you, lord,” he said. He was lying, of course, he could not wait to use the weapon.

“Don’t get yourself killed, you idiot,” I growled at him, then waited to see that the boys and the packhorses were safe beyond the encampment’s edge. “You know what to do,” I called to my men, “so do it!”