LITMIR.BIZ

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wedding?’

      ‘They were dancing,’ he growled, ‘and the devil turned them to stone.’

      ‘Why did the devil do that?’ I asked cautiously.

      ‘Because they wed on a Sunday, of course. Folk never should wed on a Sunday, never! Everyone knows that.’ We rode on in silence, then, surprising me again, he began to talk about his mother and father and how they had been serfs of Odda the Elder. ‘But life was good for us,’ he said.

      ‘It was?’

      ‘Ploughing, sowing, weeding, harvest, threshing.’

      ‘But Ealdorman Odda didn’t live back there,’ I said, jerking my thumb towards Steapa’s destroyed homestead.

      ‘No! Not him!’ Steapa was amused I should even ask such a question. ‘He wouldn’t live there, not him! Had his own big hall. Still does. But he had a steward there. Man to give us orders. He was a big man! Very tall!’

      I hesitated. ‘But your father was short?’

      Steapa looked surprised. ‘How did you know that?’

      ‘I just guessed.’

      ‘He was a good worker, my father.’

      ‘Did he teach you to fight?’

      ‘He didn’t, no. No one did. I just learned myself.’

      The land was less damaged the farther we went south. And that was strange, for the Danes had come this way. We knew that, for folk said the Danes were still in the southern part of the shire, but life suddenly seemed normal. We saw men spreading dung on fields, and other men ditching or hedging. There were lambs in the pastures. To the north the foxes had become fat on dead lambs, but here the shepherds and their dogs were winning that ceaseless battle.

      And the Danes were in Cridianton.

      A priest told us that in a village hard under a great oak-covered hill beside a stream. The priest was nervous because he had seen my long hair and arm rings and he presumed I was a Dane, and my northern accent did not persuade him otherwise, but he was reassured by Steapa. The two talked, and the priest gave his opinion that it would be a wet summer.

      ‘It will,’ Steapa agreed. ‘The oak greened before the ash.’

      ‘Always a sign,’ the priest said.

      ‘How far is Cridianton?’ I broke into the conversation.

      ‘A morning’s walk, lord.’

      ‘You’ve seen the Danes there?’ I asked.

      ‘I’ve seen them, lord, I have,’ he said.

      ‘Who leads them?’

      ‘Don’t know, lord.’

      ‘They have a banner?’ I asked.

      He nodded. ‘It hangs on the bishop’s hall, lord. It shows a white horse.’

      So it was Svein. I did not know who else it could have been, but the white horse confirmed that Svein had stayed in Defnascir rather than try to join Guthrum. I twisted in the saddle and looked at the priest’s village that was unscarred by war. No thatch had been burned, no granaries emptied and the church was still standing. ‘Have the Danes come here?’ I asked.

      ‘Oh yes, lord, they came. Came more than once.’

      ‘Did they rape? Steal?’

      ‘No, lord. But they bought some grain. Paid silver for it.’

      Well-behaved Danes. That was another strange thing. ‘Are they besieging Exanceaster?’ I asked. That would have made a sort of sense. Cridianton was close enough to Exanceaster to give most of the Danish troops shelter while the rest invested the larger town.

      ‘No, lord,’ the priest said, ‘not that I know of.’

      ‘Then what are they doing?’ I asked.

      ‘They’re just in Cridianton, lord.’

      ‘And Odda is in Exanceaster?’

      ‘No, lord. He’s in Ocmundtun. He’s with Lord Harald.’

      I knew the shire-reeve’s hall was in Ocmundtun that lay beneath the northern edge of the great moor. But Ocmundtun was also a long journey from Cridianton and no place to be if a man wanted to harry the Danes.

      I believed the priest when he said Svein was at Cridianton, but we still rode there to see for ourselves. We used wooded, hilly tracks and came to the town at mid afternoon and saw the smoke rising from cooking fires, then saw the Danish shields hanging from the palisade. Steapa and I were hidden in the high woods and could see men guarding the gate, and other men standing watch in a pasture where forty or fifty horses were grazing on the first of the spring grass. I could see Odda the Elder’s hall where I had been reunited with Mildrith after the fight at Cynuit, and I could also see a triangular Danish banner flying above the larger hall that was the bishop’s home. The western gate was open, though well guarded, and despite the sentries and the shields on the wall the town looked like a place at peace, not at war. There should be Saxons on this hill, I thought, Saxons watching the enemy, ready to attack. Instead the Danes were living undisturbed. ‘How far to Ocmundtun?’ I asked Steapa.

      ‘We can make it by nightfall.’

      I hesitated. If Odda the Younger was at Ocmundtun then why go there? He was my enemy and sworn to my death. Alfred had given me a scrap of parchment on which he had written words commanding Odda to greet me peaceably, but what force did writing have against hatred?

      ‘He won’t kill you,’ Steapa said, surprising me again. He had evidently guessed my thoughts. ‘He won’t kill you,’ he said again.

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because I won’t bide him killing you,’ Steapa said and turned his horse west.

      We reached Ocmundtun at dusk. It was a small town built along a river and guarded by a high spur of limestone on which a stout palisade offered a refuge if attackers came. No one was on the limestone spur now and the town, which had no walls, looked placid. There might be war in Wessex, but Ocmundtun, like Cridianton, was evidently at peace. Harald’s hall was close to the fort on its hill and no one challenged us as we rode into the forecourt where servants recognised Steapa. They greeted him warily, but then a steward came from the hall door and, seeing the huge man, clapped his hands twice in a sign of delight. ‘We heard you were taken by the pagans,’ the steward said.

      ‘I was.’

      ‘They let you go?’

      ‘My king freed me,’ Steapa growled as though he resented the question. He slid from his horse and stretched. ‘Alfred freed me.’

      ‘Is Harald here?’ I asked the steward.

      ‘My lord is inside,’ the steward was offended that I had not called the reeve ‘lord’.

      ‘Then so are we,’ I said, and led Steapa into the hall. The steward flapped at us because custom and courtesy demanded that he seek his lord’s permission for us to enter the hall, but I ignored him.

      A fire burned in the central hearth and dozens of rushlights stood on the platforms at the hall’s edges. Boar spears were stacked against the wall on which hung a dozen deerskins and a bundle of valuable pine-marten pelts. A score of men were in the hall, evidently waiting for supper, and a harpist played at the far end. A pack of hounds rushed to investigate us and Steapa beat them off as we walked to the fire to warm ourselves. ‘Ale,’ Steapa said to the steward.

      Harald must have heard the noise of the hounds for he appeared at a door leading from the private chamber at the back of the hall. He blinked when he saw us. He had thought the two of us were enemies, then he had heard that Steapa was captured, yet here we were, side by side. The hall fell silent as he limped towards us. It was only a slight limp, the result of a spear wound in some battle that had also taken

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