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dread chilled his bones to the core, he turned and ran along the track toward his father’s hall. He was a man and yet he was also a boy, and there, waiting outside the door, was his mother. Shadows spun by the gathering storm fell across her face, but her golden hair shone beneath her white headdress. Behind her, just inside the hall, a figure loomed, silhouetted against the ruddy glow from the hearth. Hereward’s heart began to pound.
    What have you done? What have you done? The words swirled around him, the ravens cawing their accusations.
    His hands felt wet, but he dared not look down at them. “Do not worry,” he whispered, “Redwald will avenge us.”
    The Mercian’s eyes snapped open. Fingers of early morning light reached under the door. He lay on the thinly spread straw, his bones aching from the cold radiating through the beaten-mud floor. By the glowing embers in the hearth, the old woman snored under her filthy woolen blanket, but Alric was gone, probably to empty his bladder, the warrior guessed.
    Redwald will avenge us, he thought, as the last of the troubling dream drifted away.
    Rising, he stretched. Though his wounds still ached, the witch’s balm had stripped the edge off the pain, and his limbs felt stronger after the night’s sound sleep. Would he be well enough to reach Eoferwic? The woods were rife with wolves, and outlaws stalked the old straight tracks, if they were even passable after the heavy snows. He fought back his doubts, knowing that the King’s life, and his own, depended on his flight reaching its end.
    Thoughts of the court reminded him of Tidhild, dead at his feet, her black eyes looking up at him, and in a surge of grief and guilt he swept out into the cold morning. The glare of the sun off the dense white snow blinded him. When his vision began to clear, a shape among the trees a stone’s throw from the house coalesced into the form of the young monk. Yet the man was naked, Hereward saw with shock, with a noose round his neck, a gag across his mouth, and his hands tied behind his back. Precariously, Alric was balanced on the tips of his toes on a wobbling chopping block. His eyes were wide with fear. Another rope ran from the block across the frozen ground and into the trees.
    Redteeth, Hereward thought. A trap to lure him out into the open. He silently cursed himself: Brainbiter still lay on the straw where he had been sleeping. And then he cursed the monk for failing to keep his wits about him. “Kill him! I care not!” he shouted.
    With a snap, the rope across the snow was yanked taut and the block flew out from beneath Alric’s feet. He kicked and flailed as his full weight dragged the noose tight round his neck.
    Defiance forgotten, Hereward raced from the house and flung his arms round the monk’s waist, raising him up so the noose loosened. Supporting him with one arm, he tore the rope from Alric’s neck, and together they collapsed into a drift. Hereward yanked away the monk’s gag and bonds. “You are a fool,” he snapped.
    â€œThey took me unawares—” Alric’s words died as the shadows fell across them.
    Standing up, Hereward looked into the wind-lashed face of Harald Redteeth, the Viking’s pupils so dilated that his eyes appeared all black. Wrapped in furs over their mail, bristling with axes and spears, the band of six warriors clustered around their leader.
    â€œStranger,” Redteeth said with a whimsical wave of his hand, “you have caused me no little trouble.”
    â€œI have given you a taste of hell. There is more to come.”
    Redteeth laughed without humor. “Your time is over.” He held Hereward’s gaze for a long moment, sifting what he saw there, and then he nodded to his men.
    While two Vikings grabbed an arm each and dragged Hereward back to the house, a third tossed Alric his clothes and bundled the monk along behind. The rest of the