I took one precaution before we left the hall. I gave Wiburgh some hacksilver and told her to take all her people, all her valuables, and all the livestock up into the woods behind the steading. “Sköll Grimmarson will be coming,” I said, “and he’ll ask if you’ve seen me. You’d best not be here to answer him. And warn the other halls in the valley.”

She had shuddered. “He’ll like as not burn the place down.”

“Then you’ll rebuild,” I said, “as we all do. And I’m sorry.”

And I was sorry. Sorry for her, sorry for Northumbria, sorry for myself. My daughter was dead. The thought beat through me, a deep sorrow and a spur for revenge. But to take revenge I needed men. I needed Sigtryggr’s troops, or more of my own men, who were at Bebbanburg, and when I had those men I vowed I would carry fire and slaughter through Cumbraland, and the prospect of that revenge was my only consolation.

We had ridden the length of the valley that headed south and west, and at its far end we followed a wider valley southward. Wiburgh had told me which way to ride. In the second valley, she said, we would find a drove road going south. “It’s an old road, lord, Been there forever. Since long before we came,” she had been talking to us at her steading’s gate, “and if you meet Hergild and his brothers,” she had continued, “warn him about Sköll.” Hergild was her husband and I had promised I would warn him. I guessed that the road had been made by drovers herding their cattle and flocks south to feed the Roman settlements around Mameceaster. “You can’t miss the road,” Wiburgh had said, and she proved right. We made good progress. The weather was kind, the ground was drying after the hard rain, and the scouts who followed us did not raise any alarm, and so I began to hope we had evaded Sköll’s war-band. Maybe we would not need Mameceaster’s shelter, maybe we could turn east again and ride to Bebbanburg.

Then one of the scouts ahead of us came racing back, his horse flinging up clods of damp turf. “God help us,” Finan said quietly, watching the far figure.

“They’ve seen Wiburgh’s husband,” I suggested, “coming back home?” That seemed the obvious explanation. We knew that the Danes from the valley of the brothers had gone south to raid the country around Mameceaster, and I had been half expecting to meet them as they returned.

Eadric, the scout who was riding back with the news, reined in his horse. “Trouble, lord,” he said, “horsemen a mile or so ahead. We don’t know how many.” There was no excitement in his voice, let alone enthusiasm. It was as if the trouble ahead was both inevitable and unavoidable.

“How many have you seen?” I asked.

“Only a dozen, lord. But I think there were more of them in the trees.” He turned in his saddle to look north. “The road runs beside a big wood, lord, and those trees could hide an army.”