I thought of the black-haired girl, of what I had done that night. The memory sent a shiver down my spine and I hoped Sigurd could not see my shame. 'The world is stronger than any of us, my lord. It goes on,' I said, remembering that Ealhstan had conveyed as much to me once in his own way. 'It has always been so.'
'Yes, it has,' Sigurd said, turning to face me. 'And that is why we must do great things. I don't just mean killing. By all the gods, there must be greater things than sowing death amongst your enemies. No, we must achieve things that are beyond most men. Only by doing what seems impossible will we ensure men remember our names and sing of them around their fires when we are long gone.' He put a hand on my shoulder. 'I see something in you. I cannot explain it yet but I know I am bound to you.'
'Bound, lord?'
He nodded solemnly. 'The gods have marked you and my sword will honour their favour.' Something caught his eye, a shiny black beetle crawling from a pile of smoking, white ash. 'The world goes on,' he said, 'despite the chaos we make. May Óðin grant us the time to carve our names in the earth, Raven, so that others must watch where they tread.'
I touched the carving of the All-Father hanging round my neck and whispered a prayer that it be so.
After a breakfast of cold meats we prepared to set off back to Wessex. The men were in good spirits, if a little sore-headed. For the Wessexmen, though, the new day brought with it the harsh reality that they had lost many friends and neighbours whose wives and children they would soon have to face. Sons and apprentices would become millers and smiths and fletchers and farmers before their time. Perhaps some women would have to take on their dead husband's work to survive.
Weohstan was weak and pale as death, but refused the pony Penda offered him, saying he would walk out of Wales so as to remember the ground beneath his feet for when he returned with men and swords. He spoke little, saving his strength for the journey, but he did thank me for coming for him, and asked after Cynethryth. 'I will never forget what you have done for me, Raven,' he said, choosing the words carefully, his tone hard and unyielding. He showed little sign of the pain he was surely in and seemed a different man from the one who had walked into Coenwulf's church. It was as though his very soul had hardened like ice.
'Have you forgotten I'm a filthy heathen savage?' I asked, gripping his forearm to seal our friendship. 'Did the whoresons beat you round the head with iron bars?'
'I know what you are,' he said with a grimace, 'and I'm alive because of it.'
My muscles were raw with pain and my head was aching terribly from the ale, so I did not notice the rider when we came to King Offa's wall. Bjorn pointed out the figure standing motionless on the far bank of the river Wye, his cloak and the horse's brown coat concealing both against the dark wood of the palisade behind them.
'Could be one of the ealdorman's men come to see if we have the boy,' a grizzled Wessex warrior said, raising an arm in greeting.
'Could be a Welshman come to spit in our eye,' Penda warned. But the rider seemed to be alone, the treeless flat ground on this side of the wall affording few hiding places for anyone with bloody intent. We approached the river and the earthen bank with caution but without fear, and it was Weohstan who recognized the horse and the small, hooded figure on its back.
'Cynethryth!' he called, smiling so that his face looked hideous for the missing teeth and swollen eyes. 'It's Cynethryth!' The mare lowered her head to the ground, pulling Cynethryth forward and giving a screeching neigh, then the beast began to circle until Cynethryth pulled her sharply round with the reins.
Weohstan fell. 'Steady, lad,' Penda warned, putting his shoulder beneath the man's arm. 'We're nearly there. You'll be with your sister soon enough.'
The skins we had used to float across the river lay discarded further along the bank and Cynethryth must have seen them and hoped we would re-cross the river at the same point. But we did not need the skins now, because Olaf had a coiled rope over his shoulder and he threw one end across a narrow point to Cynethryth on the other side. She tied it to the half-buried roots of a fallen willow and one by one we slid into the Wye and pulled ourselves along the rope until we stood dripping on the far bank. Offa's wall was deserted. With luck we would cross the southern border of Mercia into Wessex without running into a Mercian levy. The Norsemen had begun to talk of their longships again, eager to put to sea after so long. But we would soon be made to forget about the blue sea and Rán's wind-stirred, white-haired daughters, and the silver promised us by Ealdred of Wessex.
Cynethryth wrapped her arms round Weohstan, the water from his clothes soaking her own as she clung to him. Tears rolled down her cheeks.