“We go east.”

“I’ll lead a half-dozen scouts,” he said.

“Just make sure we can reach the road,” I said, “because that’s probably the fastest way back to Eoferwic.”

“And we leave tomorrow?”

“We leave tomorrow,” I agreed.

But we left at midday because we were still being hunted.

Sköll Grimmarson wanted revenge. When I had first heard about Stiorra’s slaughter my immediate thought had been to confront her killers, but sense had stopped me. Sköll, discovering his son’s wounding, must have had the same impulse; to ride after the men who had dared insult his family and then to kill them in as imaginative a way as his foul mind could devise.

I had let sense rule me because I knew we were outnumbered, and that to attack Sköll was to invite our own defeat, but Sköll had no such restraints. He knew how many we were, he knew he had the advantage of numbers, so all he needed to do was find us, fight us, and kill us.

Except that in the fading twilight of the previous day, in the murk of the rainswept dusk, Sköll’s scouts had seen our tracks going eastward, but they had not spotted the place where we had turned south. They must have spent a cold wet night under the bare trees, expecting to continue the pursuit at dawn, and, luckily for us, they had continued eastward until, somehow, they deduced that we had changed direction. Finan and his men had seen them as they retraced their steps. “I reckon they saw the smoke here and are coming to find out what causes it. And they’ll be here soon, lord.”

“How many?”

“I’m guessing three crews. It was hard to see them under the trees. But a lot. Too many. And Sköll was with them.”

“I didn’t see him yesterday.”

“He’s here, right enough. You can’t miss that white cloak, lord. And he’s got three crews at least.”

Three crews would be around a hundred and twenty men, and we had seen far more than that on the road, which suggested Sköll had split his force, sending some men back home with the captured cattle and the slaves, and brought a fighting force to find us.

And now he was to the east of us, but coming toward us, which meant we could not return to the road, nor travel eastward, and so I had no choice but to go farther south. “I wonder how far Mameceaster is,” I asked Finan as we left the steading.

“Your woman there reckoned two days.”

“She didn’t sound very sure.”

“It can’t be too far.”

We would go south, looking for Mameceaster, and we would be safe if we could persuade the garrison to open its gates. I hated the thought of running for safety and begging for shelter, but I liked the idea of dying even less, so south we went. I had my usual scouts ahead, but this time I had six good men following us with orders to keep their eyes skinned for any pursuit. I tried to remember the name of the commander at Mameceaster, the man who had denied us entrance on our way to Ceaster. Treddian! Æthelstan had told me that Treddian was being replaced and I hoped the new man, if he had already been appointed, was more welcoming, because if Sköll continued his relentless pursuit I would need the shelter of Mameceaster’s walls.