The swineherd raced along the field track that connected Willesden Lane to Wæcling Strete. Breathless, he looked up and down the road and saw three men approaching on horseback from the north. All three were dressed for battle and he ran to them, begging them to carry him on a fast horse to Hampstead, or his wife might die before their child was born. One of the men peered at him.

“It’s the monk!”

The swineherd’s throat became dry. It was him. Of all the people to meet in his hour of need, the man who had lost him everything. Running was futile. Fighting too was destined to fail.

“Forgive me sire, my wife is in great need.”

The pain sudden and burning. He fell to his knees as whipcord cracked around his torso a second time. Comfortable that a man who had once bettered him was suitably restrained, his attacker dismounted and locked eyes with him, his breath reeking of sour ale.

“This for the man who denied Athelstan Dunheld a woman.”

With that, he thrust his seax into the swineherd’s belly and pulled it out, still staring into his victim’s wide, horrified eyes.

“Die, shithead.”

The swineherd fell sideways onto the dirt.

“And so we will kill our Vikings!”

Dunheld wiping the blade on his tunic and sheathing it in its scabbard, his two companions hanging back, their faces drained of blood, staring at the corpse on the road as Dunheld mounted his horse and kicked it into action.

“Let the pigs eat him.”

A hawk alighted on his shoulder and he rode away to fall in with Ironside’s army as it marched south to defend the city.