*Who are you?' I asked the girl, but she was still and silent.

*Dress yourself, Lord Uhtred!' aelfadell ordered, and I obeyed her. I pulled on my jerkin, my boots, my mail and strapped my swords at my waist, and still the girl gazed at me with her quiet, dark eyes. She was as beautiful as the summer dawn and as silent as the winter night. She did not smile, her face showed nothing. I walked towards her and sensed something strange. The Christians say we have a soul, whatever that is, and it seemed to me this girl had no soul. There was an emptiness in her dark eyes. It was frightening, making me approach her slowly.

*No!' aelfadell called. *You cannot touch her! You have seen Erce in the daylight. No other man has.'

*Erce?'

*Go,' she said, *go.' She dared to stand in front of me. *You dreamed last night,' she said, *and in your dream you found truth. Be content with that, and go.'

*Speak to me,' I said to the girl, but she was unmoving and silent and empty, yet I could not take my eyes from her. I would have looked on her for all the rest of my life. The Christians talk of miracles, of men walking on water and raising the dead, and they say those miracles are proofs of their religion, though none of them can do a miracle or show us a miracle, yet here, in this damp cave beneath the hilltop grave, I saw a miracle. I saw Erce.

*Go,' aelfadell said, and though she spoke to me it was the goddess who turned and vanished into the underworld.

I did not kill the old woman. I went. I dragged the dead monks into some brambles where perhaps the wild beasts would feast on them, and then I stooped to the stream and drank like a dog.

*What did the witch tell you?' Osferth asked me when I reached the widow's farm.

*I don't know,' I said, and my tone discouraged further questions, all except one. *Where are we going, lord?' Osferth asked.

*We're going south,' I said, still in a daze.

And so we rode towards Sigurd's land.

Four.

I had told aelfadell my name, and what else? Had I told her my idea for revenge on Sigurd? And why had I talked so much? Ludda gave me an answer as we rode south. *There are herbs and mushrooms, lord, and there's the blight you find on ears of rye, all kinds of things can give men dreams. My mother used them.'

*She was a sorceress?'

He shrugged. *A wise-woman, anyway. She told fortunes and made potions.'

*And the potion aelfadell gave me, that made me speak my name?'

*Maybe it was rye-blight? You're lucky to be alive if it was. Get it wrong and you kill the dreamer, but if she knew how to make it then you'll have gabbled like an old woman, lord.'

And who knows what else I had revealed to the aglaecwif? I felt like a fool. *Does she really speak to the gods?' I had told Ludda about aelfadell, but not about Erce. I wanted to hold that secret close, a memory to haunt me.

*Some folk claim to talk to the gods,' Ludda said uncertainly.

*And see the future?'

He shifted in his saddle. Ludda was not accustomed to riding a horse, and the journey had given him a sore arse and aching thighs. *If she really saw the future, lord, would she be in a cave? She'd have a palace. Kings would crawl to her feet.'

*Maybe the gods only talk to her in the cave,' I suggested.

Ludda heard the anxiety in my voice. *Lord,' he said earnestly, *if you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that the wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that the thunder will deafen us then one of those things will turn out to be true and you'll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future.' He gave me a swift smile. *Folk don't buy rusty iron because I'm persuasive, lord, but because they desperately want to believe it will turn to silver.'

And I desperately wanted to believe his doubts about aelfadell. She had said Wessex was doomed and that seven kings would die, but what did that mean? What kings? Alfred of Wessex, Edward of Cent, Eohric of East Anglia? Who else? And who was the Saxon? *She knew who I was,' I said to Ludda.

*Because you had drunk her potion, lord. It was as if you were drunk and saying anything that came into your mind.'

*And she tied me up,' I told him, *but didn't kill me.'

*God be praised,' Ludda said dutifully. I doubted he was a Christian, at least not a good one, but he was too clever to fall foul of the priests. He frowned in puzzlement. *I wonder why she didn't kill you.'

*She was frightened to,' I said, *and so was the abbot.'

*She tied you up, lord,' Ludda said, *because someone had told her you were Jarl Cnut's enemy. So she knew that much, but she didn't know what Jarl Cnut wanted done with you. So she sent for the monks to find out. And they were too scared to order your death, too. It's no small thing to kill a lord, especially if his men are close by.'

*One of them wasn't scared.'

*And he's regretting that now,' Ludda said happily, *but it's strange, lord, very strange.'

*What is?'

*She can talk to the gods. And the gods didn't tell her to kill you.'

*Ah,' I said, seeing what he meant and not knowing what else to say.

*The gods would have known what to do with you and they would have told her what to do, yet they didn't. That tells me she's not taking commands from the gods, lord, but from Jarl Cnut. She's telling men what he wants them to hear.' He shifted in the saddle again, trying to relieve the pain in his arse. *There's the road, lord,' he said, pointing. He was leading us south and east and had been looking for a Roman road that crossed the hills. *It goes to some old lead mines,' he had told me, *but once past the mines there's no road.' I had told Ludda to take us to Cytringan where Sigurd had a feasting-hall, though I had not said what I planned to do there.

Why had I gone to find aelfadell? To find a road, of course. The three Norns sit at the roots of Yggdrasil where they weave our fates, and at some time they will take the shears and cut our thread. We all want to know where that thread will end. We want to know the future. We want to know, as Beornnoth had said to me, how the story ends, and that was why I had gone to see aelfadell. Alfred must die soon, maybe he was already dead, and everything would change, and I was not such a fool as to think that my part in that change would be small. I am Uhtred of Bebbanburg. Men feared me. In those days I was no great lord in terms of land or wealth or men, but Alfred had known that if he wanted victory he must lend me men, and that was how we had broken Haesten's power at Beamfleot. His son, Edward, seemed to trust me, and I knew Alfred wanted me to swear loyalty to Edward, but I had gone to aelfadell to catch a glimpse of the future. Why ally myself to a man destined to fail? Was Edward the man whom aelfadell called the Saxon and who was doomed to destroy Wessex? What was the safe road? Edward's sister, aethelflaed, would never forgive me if I betrayed her brother, but perhaps she was doomed too. All my women would die. There was no great truth in that, we all die, yet why had aelfadell said those words? Was she warning me against Alfred's children? Against aethelflaed and Edward? We live in a world fading to darkness and I had sought a light to shine on a sure road and I had found none, except a vision of Erce, a vision that would not leave my memory, a vision to haunt me. *Wyrd bi ful raed,' I said aloud.

Fate is inexorable.

And under the influence of aelfadell's bitter drink I had babbled my name, and what else? I had told none of my men what my plan was, but had I told aelfadell? And aelfadell lived on Cnut's land and under his protection. She had told me that Wessex would be destroyed and that the Danes would win everything, and of course she would say that because that was what Cnut Longsword wanted men to hear. Jarl Cnut wanted every Danish leader to visit the cave and hear that victory would be theirs because men inspired to battle by a foreknowledge of victory fought with a passion that gives them victory. Sigurd's men, attacking me on the bridge, had really believed they would win and that had encouraged them into a trap.

Now I led a few men towards what could be our deaths. Had I told aelfadell I was planning to attack Cytringan? Because if I had blurted out that idea then she would surely be sending a message to Cnut, and Cnut would move fast to protect his friend Sigurd. I had been planning to ride home by way of Cytringan, Sigurd's feasting-hall, and had hoped to find it empty and unprotected. I had thought to burn it to the ground, then ride on fast to Buccingahamm. Sigurd had tried to kill me and I wanted him to regret that and so I had gone to Ceaster to lure him away from his heartland, and if my deceit had worked then Sigurd was going there now, thinking to trap and kill me, while I planned to burn his hall. But his friend Cnut might be sending men to Cytringan and turning that feasting-hall into a trap for me.

So I must do something different. *Forget Cytringan,' I told Ludda, * take me to the valley of the Trente instead. To Snotengaham.'

So we rode south beneath the wild flying clouds and after two days and nights came to the valley that brought back so many memories. The very first time I was ever in a warship I had come to this place, rowing up the Humbre and then the Trente, and it was in this valley that I had first seen Alfred. I had been a boy and he had been a young man and I had spied on him, hearing his anguish about the sin that had brought Osferth into the world. It was on the banks of the Trente that I had first encountered Ubba who was known as Ubba the Horrible, and I had been awed and terrified by him. Later, beside a distant sea, I was to kill him. I had been a boy when I was last on the banks of this river, but now I was a man and other men feared me as I had once feared Ubba. Uhtredaerwe, some men called me, Uhtred the Wicked. They called me that because I was not a Christian, but I liked the name, and one day, I thought, I would take the wickedness too far and men would die because I was a fool.

Maybe here, maybe now, for I had abandoned the idea of destroying Cytringan's feasting-hall and instead would attempt a foolish thing, but one that would have my name spoken all across Britain. Reputation. We would rather have reputation than gold, and so I left my men in a steading and rode down the river's southern bank with just Osferth for company, and I said nothing until we came to the edge of a coppiced wood from where we could see the town across the wide river's swirls. *Snotengaham,' I said. *It was here I first met your father.'

He grunted at that. The town lay on the river's northern bank and it had grown since I had last seen it. There were buildings outside the ramparts and the air above the roofs was thick with smoke from the kitchen fires. *Sigurd's possession?' Osferth asked.

I nodded, remembering what Beornnoth had told me, that Sigurd had laid up his war-fleet in Snotengaham. I also remembered Ragnar the Elder's words that he had spoken to me when I was a child, that Snotengaham would be Danish for ever, yet most of the folk who lived inside the walls were Saxons. This was a Mercian town, right on the northern edge of that kingdom, yet for nearly all my life it had been ruled by the Danes and now its merchants and churchmen, its whores and its tavern-keepers paid silver to Sigurd. He had built a hall on a great rock outcrop in the town's centre. It was not his main dwelling, which lay far to the south, but Snotengaham was one of Sigurd's strongholds, a place he felt safe.

To reach Snotengaham from the sea a boat went up the great Humbre, then followed the Trente. That was the voyage I had made as a child in Ragnar's Wind-Viper and, from the coppice on the southern bank, I could see there were forty or fifty boats drawn onto the far bank. Those were the ships Sigurd had taken south to Wessex the previous year, though in the end he had achieved nothing except to lay waste a few farmsteads outside of Exanceaster. Their presence suggested he did not plan another seaborne invasion. His next attack would be overland, a lunge into Mercia and then Wessex to take the Saxon land.

Yet a man's pride is not just his land. We measure a lord by the number of crews he leads, and those ships told me Sigurd commanded a horde. I commanded one crew. I dare say I was as famous as Sigurd, yet all my fame had not translated into wealth. I should, I thought, be called Uhtred the Foolish. I had served Alfred all these years, and to show for it I had a borrowed estate, a single crew of men and a reputation. Sigurd owned towns, whole estates and led an army.

It was time to taunt him.

I talked with each of my men. I told them they could become rich by betraying me, that if just one of them told some whore in the town that I was Uhtred then I would probably die, and that most of them would die with me. I did not remind them of the oath they had taken to me because not one of them would need reminding, nor did I think any of them would betray me. I had four Danes and three Frisians in that group, yet they were my men, tied to me as much by friendship as by oath. *What we're about to do,' I told them, *will have men talking all over Britain. It will not make us rich, but I promise you reputation.'

My name, I told them, was Kjartan. It was the name I had used with aelfadell, a name from my past, a name I did not like, the name of Sihtric's foul father, but it would suffice for the next few days, and I would only survive those days if none of my men revealed the truth and if no one in Snotengaham recognised me. I had only met Sigurd twice, and both times briefly, but some of the men who had accompanied him to those meetings might be in Snotengaham and that was a risk I had to take. I had let my beard grow, I was wearing old mail, which I had allowed to rust, and I looked, as I wished to look, like a man on the edge of failure.

I found a tavern outside the town. It had no name. It was a miserable place with sour ale, mouldy bread and worm-riddled cheese, but it had sufficient room for my men to sleep on its filthy straw, and the tavern's owner, a surly Saxon, was satisfied by the small amount of silver I gave him. *Why are you here?' he wanted to know.

*To buy a ship,' I said, then told him we had been part of Haesten's army and that we had become tired of starving in Ceaster and only wanted to go home. *We're going back to Frisia,' I said, and that was my tale and no one in Snotengaham thought it strange. The Danes follow leaders who bring them riches, and when a leader fails, his crews melt away like frost in the sun. Nor did anyone think it strange that a Frisian would lead Saxons. The crews of the Viking ships are Danish, Norse, Frisian and Saxon. Any masterless man could go Viking, and a shipmaster did not care what language a man spoke if he could wield a sword, thrust a spear and pull an oar.

So my tale was not questioned and, the day after we reached Snotengaham, a full-bellied Dane called Frithof came to find me. He had no left arm beneath the elbow. *Some Saxon bastard cut it off,' he said cheerfully, *but I sliced off his head so it was a fair exchange.' Frithof was what a Saxon would call the Reeve of Snotengaham, the man responsible for keeping the peace and serving his lord's interests in the town. *I look after Jarl Sigurd,' Frithof told me, *and he looks after me.'

*A good lord?'

*The very best,' Frithof said enthusiastically, *generous and loyal. Why don't you swear to him?'

*I want to go home,' I said.

*Frisia?' he asked, *you sound Danish, not Frisian.'

*I served Skirnir Thorson,' I explained. Skirnir had been a pirate on the Frisian coast and I had served him by luring him to his death.

*He was a bastard,' Frithof said, *but had a pretty wife, I hear. What was his island called?' The question had no suspicion in it. Frithof was an easy, hospitable man.

*Zegge,' I said.

*That was it! Nothing but sand and fish shit. So you went from Skirnir to Haesten, eh?' he laughed, his question implying that I had chosen my lords badly. *You could do a lot worse than serve the Jarl Sigurd,' Frithof assured me. *He looks after his men and there'll be land and silver soon.'

*Soon?'

*When Alfred dies,' Frithof said, *Wessex will fall into pieces. All we have to do is wait and then pick them up.'

*I have land in Frisia,' I said, *and a wife.'

Frithof grinned. *There are plenty of women here,' he said, *but if you really want to go home?'

*I want to go home.'

*Then you need a ship,' he said, *unless you plan to swim. So let's go for a walk.'

Forty-seven ships had been pulled from the river and were now propped by oak shafts on a meadow close to a small shelving cove that made launching and recovering easy. Six other ships were floating. Four of those were trading boats, and two were long, sleek war boats with high prows and sterns. *Bright-Flyer,' Frithof pointed to one of the two fighting ships afloat in the river, *she's Jarl Sigurd's own craft.'

Bright-Flyer was a beauty with a flat sleek belly and a high prow and stern. A man was squatting on the wharf and painting a white line along her topmost strake, a line that would accentuate her sinuously threatening shape. Frithof led me down to the timber wharf and stepped over the boat's low midships. I followed him, feeling the small shiver in Bright-Flyer as she responded to our weight. I noted her mast was not on board, there were no oars or tholes, and the presence of two small saws, an adze and a box of chisels showed that men were working on her. She was afloat, but she was not ready for any voyage. *I brought her here from Denmark,' Frithof said wistfully.

*You're a shipmaster?' I asked.

*I was, maybe I will be again. I miss the sea.' He ran his hand along the smooth wood of her top strake. *Isn't she lovely?'

*She's beautiful,' I said.

*Jarl Sigurd had her built,' he said, *and only the best for him!' He rapped the hull. *Green oak from Frisia. Too big for you, though.'

*She's for sale?'

*Never! Jarl Sigurd would rather sell his only son into slavery! Besides, how many oars do you want? Twenty?'

*No more,' I said.

*She needs fifty rowers,' Frithof said, rapping the Bright-Flyer's planks again. He sighed, remembering her at sea.

I looked at the carpenter's tools. *You're readying her for sea?' I asked.

*The jarl hasn't said, but I hate to see ships out of the water for too long. The timbers dry and shrink. I want to float that one next,' he pointed to the head of the cove where another beauty was propped on thick oak shafts. *Sea-Slaughterer,' Frithof said, *Jarl Cnut's ship.'

*He keeps his ships here?'

*Just the two,' he said, *Sea-Slaughterer and Cloud-Chaser.' Men were caulking the Sea-Slaughterer, stuffing the plank joints with a mix of wool and pine-tar. Small boys helped, or else played on the river bank. The tar braziers smoked, drifting their pungent smell across the slow river. Frithof stepped back onto the wharf and patted the head of the man who was painting the white line onto the strake. Frithof was obviously popular. Men grinned and called out respectful greetings, and Frithof responded with generous pleasure. He had a pouch at his waist filled with scraps of smoked beef that he handed to the children, all of whose names he knew. *This is Kjartan,' he introduced me to the men caulking the Sea-Slaughterer, *and he wants to take a boat off our hands. He's going back to Frisia because his wife is there.'

*Bring the woman here!' a man called to me.

*He's got more sense than letting you scum ogle her,' Frithof retorted, then led me further down the bank past a huge heap of ballast stones. Frithof had Sigurd's authority to buy or sell ships, but only a half-dozen were for sale, and of those only two would suit me. One was a trading ship, broad in the beam and well made, but she was short, her length only about four times her beam, and that would make her slow. The other ship was older and much used, but she was at least seven times longer than her beam, and her sleek lines were sweet. *She belonged to a Norseman,' Frithof told me, *who got himself killed in Wessex.'

*Made of pine?' I asked, rapping the hull.

*She's all spruce,' Frithof said.

*I'd prefer oak,' I said grudgingly.

*Give me gold and I'll have a ship built for you out of the best Frisian oak,' Frithof said, *but if you want to cross the sea this summer you'll do it in pine. She was well made, and she has a mast, sail and rigging.'

*Oars?'

*We've plenty of good ash oars.' He ran his one hand down the stem-post. *She needs a little work,' he admitted, *but she was a sweetheart in her day. Tyr's Daughter.'

*That's her name?'

Frithof smiled. *It is.' He smiled because Tyr is the god of the warriors who fight in single combat and, like Frithof, Tyr is one-handed, having lost his right hand to the sharp fangs of Fenrir, the crazed wolf. *Her owner liked Tyr,' Frithof said, still stroking the stem-post.

*She has a beast-head?'

*I can find you something.'

We haggled, though good-naturedly. I offered what little silver I had left, along with all our horses, saddles and bridles, and Frithof at first demanded a sum at least double the worth of those things, though in truth he was glad to be rid of Tyr's Daughter. She might have been a fine ship once, but she was old and she was small. A ship needs fifty or sixty men to be safe, and Tyr's Daughter would have been crowded by thirty men, but she was perfect for my purpose. If I had not bought her I suspect she would have been broken up for firewood and, in truth, I got her cheap. *She'll get you to Frisia,' Frithof assured me.

We spat on our palms, shook hands, and so I became the owner of Tyr's Daughter. I had to buy pine-tar to caulk her, and we spent two days on the river bank forcing a thick mix of hot tar, horsehair, moss and fleece into the planking. Her mast, sails and hemp rigging were brought from storage to the meadow where the boats were grounded, and I insisted my men leave the filthy tavern and sleep with the ship. We rigged the sail as a tent over her and slept either in or beneath her hull.

Frithof seemed to like us, or else he just approved of the notion that one of his ships was going back into the water. He would bring ale to the meadow, which lay some four or five hundred paces from the nearest part of Snotengaham's ramparts, and he would drink with us and tell old stories of long ago fights, and in return I told him of the voyages I had made. *I miss the sea,' he said wistfully.