He was being prudent, but was not alarmed. Shore parties met people, incidents happened, sometimes deaths. This was a raid, wasn't it? What did people expect? Jormsvik had been doing this, over the known world, for a long time. Erlings had been coming in longships to these shores for more than a hundred years. Yes, the Anglcyn lands had become harder to raid over the last while, but that had happened at times, too. There were always other places. Three ships had gone last spring out through the straits and down the sea lanes to Al-Rassan, to raid and run before the khalif's men could be there with their curved swords and bows. That would have been a fight to be part of, Brand had thought, hearing the tale. He wanted to go there, see for himself. There was, word had it, wealth beyond description among those desert-born star-worshippers. He wanted to see their women, behind the veils they wore.

It was the life he knew, raiding. The northlands offered no refuge for anyone. Vinmark was a hard place, sent forth hard men. And how else could a man of spirit make his fortune, claim a place by winter hearths and in the skalds' songs, and then the gods' meadhalls? It wasn't as if every man could fish, or find land to farm, or make ale or barrels for ale. It wasn't as if every man wanted to.

You hoped that if you killed someone on a raid you gained something from it, and if some of your own died, that you'd taken even more, to compensate. Then you sacrificed to Ingavin and Thünir, and rowed back out to sea if you had to, or pushed forward inland, depending on where you were and what you were facing. Brand had lost count of the number of times he'd had decisions like this to make.

They had five fully manned ships here, allowing room for horses. Five ships was a large group. This incident might even be useful before it ended, Brand thought. Forty Jormsvik fighters could overwhelm any hasty Anglcyn pursuit of Guthrum from a burh; take the leaders hostage—for security first, then gold. Safety and a reward. The oldest tactics of all, just about. Some things never changed, he thought. He kept his own ship as one of the two on shore.

He was wrong, in fact, about a number of things, but had no real way of knowing it. From the bay where the ships were hidden, they hadn't seen the signal fires. A great deal had changed in these lands in the twenty-five years since Aeldred, son of Gademar, had come out from Beortferth and reclaimed his father's throne.

The party dispatched from the ships, guided by two of the (by now exhausted) riders Guthrum had sent back, did find a group of men. Not their returning companions. By then Guthrum and his men were lying dead beside the pyre that would burn them, across a stream from a village mill.

Nor did Brand's relief contingent meet some overextended, too-quick pursuit from Drengest on the coast. Instead, forty Erlings from the ships, most of them on foot, encountered the mounted fyrd of King Aeldred in a field east of the River Thorne, a little past midday.

From the moment he'd heard the name again—Ivarr Ragnarson—spoken by the Jormsvik leader just before he was killed at the king's saddle, Ceinion of Llywerth had felt a terrifying surmise taking shape within him.

He was not a man inclined to flinch from thoughts, or truths, whether of spirit and faith or having to do with the earthly world in which men lived and died. But this growing awareness, as the sun rose and the day wore on, caused him an almost physical pain, a constriction of the heart.

The last of the Volgans had hired this company. Hired them, it seemed, for a raid near Esferth, at the very end of the season. But that made no sense. Aeldred had these lands far too well defended, especially with the fair about to begin. But what if you hadn't really meant to stay here? If you'd lied to the mercenaries about your purpose? What if you'd killed a lucrative hostage to stop them from claiming a vast ransom and happily turning home?

There were compelling reasons why Ivarr Ragnarson might want to lead mercenaries to Cyngael shores, and to a particular farmhouse.

The Jormsvik leaders would regard it as a waste of time, too far to go this time of year. They'd have to be tricked, persuaded. This was a man, Ceinion remembered, who had blood-eagled a girl and a farmhand during his flight last spring. He was said to be deformed in body and spirit, for the two went together, always.

Ceinion had led the dawn prayers south of the meadow where they'd killed the Erlings, had kept them brisk for there was need for haste. He'd mounted with the others and rode again beside the king with the god's sun rising behind them. Aeldred said nothing as they went. Only rasped quick orders to some riders who peeled away from the company and headed east. It was difficult to see this grim-faced, death-dealing figure as the man who'd talked about translated manuscripts and ancient learning in the night just past.

Ceinion kept his distance from Alun ab Owyn as they went. He didn't even want to exchange a glance with the prince, fearful that he might give his thoughts away. If Owyn's son learned what the cleric was thinking he might go wild with helpless panic.

Which was not, in truth, far from a good description of what Ceinion was feeling himself as the morning passed and the countryside rolled beneath horses' hooves. The sun was overhead now. If the dragon-ships of Jormsvik were not found, if they had already cast off with Ragnarson aboard and gone west… there would be nothing he or anyone else could do but pray.

Ceinion of Llywerth, high cleric of the Cyngael, believed in his god of light and in the power of holy prayer for almost everything that could be, except the most potent matter of all: the life and death of those he loved. There was a woman lying in a sanctuary graveyard by the sea, within sound of the surf, beneath a pale grey stone with a simple sun disk carved upon it, and her dying had taken that belief from him. A wound, a rip in the fabric of the world. He had gone a little mad as she died, had done things that still kept him awake some nights. This was not a matter of which he'd written in his long correspondence with Rhodias and the Patriarch.

He was also thinking, in this bright sunlight, of another woman, loved, and her husband, loved, and their daughter, coming into her glory, all of whom might or might not be at Brynnfell now, and he had no way of knowing, and no way of helping them.

Unless they got to the ships in time:

"Can we not go faster?" he asked the king of the Anglcyn.

"No need. He said he sent for help, remember? They will be coming this way," Aeldred said, looking briefly at him. "I am sure of it. We'll stop soon to rest and eat. The river's ahead. I want the fyrd fresh for a fight."

"Some of them will be coming," said Ceinion. "But we must reach the longships before they get them off from shore."

"They've done that already. Jormsvik knows how to do these things. We'll try to block their way home with the fleet in Drengest. I have six ships. I sent riders to them—they'll be in the water before sundown. Fishing boats out, too, to watch for them. If we find this rescue party, the Erlings will be undermanned at sea. They have horses, which means the wide, slow boats, not the fighting ones. I mean to take them all, Ceinion."

"If they go home, my lord," Ceinion said quietly.

Aeldred threw him a glance.

"What is it I don't know?" the king asked.

The cleric was about to tell him when the horns blew. Then the great grey dog, Alun's dog, sounded his own warning, and ahead of them Ceinion saw the Erlings, with the river just beyond.

One of the outriders was galloping back; he reined hard beside them. "Forty or fifty, my lord! Mostly on foot."

"We have them, then. Get the mounted ones first," the king ordered. "No messages back. Athelbert!"