The Evening and the Morning

CHAPTER 1 Thursday, June 17, 997

t was hard to stay awake all night, Edgar found, even on the most important night of your life.

He had spread his cloak over the reeds on the floor and now he lay on it, dressed in the knee-length brown wool tunic that was all he wore in summer, day and night. In winter he would wrap the cloak around him and lie near the fire. But now the weather was warm: Midsummer Day was a week away.

Edgar always knew dates. Most people had to ask priests, who kept calendars. Edgar’s elder brother Erman had once said to him: “How come you know when Easter is?” and he had replied: “Because it’s the first Sunday after the first full moon after the twenty-first day of March, obviously.” It had been a mistake to add “obviously,” because Erman had punched him in the stomach for being sarcastic. That had been years ago, when Edgar was small. He was grown now. He would be eighteen three days after Midsummer. His brothers no longer punched him.

He shook his head. Random thoughts sent him drifting off. He tried to make himself uncomfortable, lying on his fist to stay awake.

He wondered how much longer he had to wait.

He turned his head and looked around by firelight. His home was like almost every other house in the town of Combe: oak-plank walls, a thatched roof, and an earth floor partly covered with reeds from the banks of the nearby river. It had no windows. In the middle of the single room was a square of stones surrounding the hearth. Over the fire stood an iron tripod from which cooking pots could be hung, and its legs made spidery shadows on the underside of the roof. All around the walls were wooden pegs on which were hung clothes, cooking utensils, and boatbuilding tools.

Edgar was not sure how much of the night had passed, because he might have dozed off, perhaps more than once. Earlier, he had listened to the sounds of the town settling for the night: a couple of drunks singing an obscene ditty, the bitter accusations of a marital quarrel in a neighboring house, a door slamming and a dog barking and, somewhere nearby, a woman sobbing. But now there was nothing but the soft lullaby of waves on a sheltered beach. He stared in the direction of the door, looking for telltale lines of light around its edges, and saw only darkness. That meant either that the moon had set, so the night was well advanced, or that the sky was cloudy, which would tell him nothing.

The rest of his family lay around the room, close to the walls where there was less smoke. Pa and Ma were back-to-back. Sometimes they would wake in the middle of the night and embrace, whispering and moving together, until they fell back, panting; but they were fast asleep now, Pa snoring. Erman, the eldest brother at twenty, lay near Edgar, and Eadbald, the middle one, was in the corner. Edgar could hear their steady, untroubled breathing.

At last, the church bell struck.

There was a monastery on the far side of the town. The monks had a way of measuring the hours of the night: they made big, graduated candles that told the time as they burned down. One hour before dawn they would ring the bell, then get up to chant their service of Matins.

Edgar lay still a little longer. The bell might have disturbed Ma, who woke easily. He gave her time to sink back into deep slumber. Then, at last, he got to his feet.

Silently he picked up his cloak, his shoes, and his belt with its sheathed dagger attached. On bare feet he crossed the room, avoiding the furniture: a table, two stools, and a bench. The door opened silently: Edgar had greased the wooden hinges yesterday with a generous smear of sheep’s tallow.

If one of his family woke now and spoke to him, he would say he was going outside to piss, and hope they did not spot that he was carrying his shoes.

Eadbald grunted. Edgar froze. Had Eadbald woken up, or just made a noise in his sleep? Edgar could not tell. But Eadbald was the passive one, always keen to avoid a fuss, like Pa. He would not make trouble.

Edgar stepped out and closed the door behind him carefully.

The moon had set, but the sky was clear and the beach was starlit. Between the house and the high-tide mark was a boatyard. Pa was a boatbuilder, and his three sons worked with him. Pa was a good craftsman and a poor businessman, so Ma made all the money decisions, especially the difficult calculation of what price to ask for something as complicated as a boat or ship. If a customer tried to bargain down the price, Pa would be willing to give in, but Ma would make him stand firm.

Edgar glanced at the yard as he laced his shoes and buckled his belt. There was only one vessel under construction, a small boat for rowing upriver. Beside it stood a large and valuable stockpile of timber, the trunks split into halves and quarters, ready to be shaped into the parts of a boat. About once a month the whole family went into the forest and felled a mature oak tree. Pa and Edgar would begin, alternately swinging long-handled axes, cutting a precise wedge out of the trunk. Then they would rest while Erman and Eadbald took over. When the tree came down, they would trim it then float the wood downriver to Combe. They had to pay, of course: the forest belonged to Wigelm, the thane to whom most people in Combe paid their rent, and he demanded twelve silver pennies for each tree.

As well as the timber pile, the yard contained a barrel of tar, a coil of rope, and a whetstone. All were guarded by a chained-up mastiff called Grendel, black with a gray muzzle, too old to do much harm to thieves but still able to bark an alarm. Grendel was quiet now, watching Edgar incuriously with his head resting on his front paws. Edgar knelt down and stroked his head. “Good-bye, old dog,” he murmured, and Grendel wagged his tail without getting up.

Also in the yard was one finished vessel, and Edgar thought of it as his own. He had built it himself to an original design, based on a Viking ship. Edgar had never actually seen a Viking—they had not raided Combe in his lifetime—but two years ago a wreck had washed up on the beach, empty and fire blackened, its dragon figurehead half smashed, presumably after some battle. Edgar had been awestruck by its mutilated beauty: the graceful curves, the long serpentine prow, and the slender hull. He had been most impressed by the large out-jutting keel that ran the length of the ship, which—he had realized after some thought—gave the stability that allowed the Vikings to cross the seas. Edgar’s boat was a lesser version, with two oars and a small, square sail.

Edgar knew he had a talent. He was already a better boatbuilder than his elder brothers, and before long he would overtake Pa. He had an intuitive sense of how forms fitted together to make a stable structure. Years ago he had overheard Pa say to Ma: “Erman learns slowly and Eadbald learns fast, but Edgar seems to understand before the words are out of my mouth.” It was true. Some men could pick up a musical instrument they had never played, a pipe or a lyre, and get a tune out of it after a few minutes. Edgar had such instincts about boats, and houses, too. He would say: “That boat will list to starboard,” or: “That roof will leak,” and he was always right.

Now he untied his boat and pushed it down the beach. The sound of the hull scraping on the sand was muffled by the shushing of the waves breaking on the shore.

He was startled by a girlish giggle. In the starlight he saw a naked woman lying on the sand, and a man on top of her. Edgar probably knew them, but their faces were not clearly visible and he looked away quickly, not wanting to recognize them. He had surprised them in an illicit tryst, he guessed. The woman seemed young and perhaps the man was married. The clergy preached against such affairs, but people did not always follow the rules. Edgar ignored the couple and pushed his boat into the water.

He glanced back at the house, feeling a pang of regret, wondering whether he would ever see it again. It was the only home he could remember. He knew, because he had been told, that he had been born in another town, Exeter, where his father had worked for a master boatbuilder; then the family had moved, while Edgar was still a baby, and had set up home in Combe, where Pa had started his own enterprise with one order for a rowboat; but Edgar could not remember any of that. This was the only home he knew, and he was leaving it for good.

He was lucky to have found employment elsewhere. Business had slowed since the renewal of Viking attacks on the south of England when Edgar was nine years old. Trading and fishing were dangerous while the marauders were near. Only the brave bought boats.

There were three ships in the harbor now, he saw by starlight: two herring fishers and a Frankish merchant ship. Dragged up on the beach were a handful of smaller craft, river and coastal vessels. He had helped to build one of the fishers. But he could remember a time when there had always been a dozen or more ships in port.

He felt a fresh breeze from the southwest, the prevailing wind here. His boat had a sail—small, because they were so costly: a full-size sail for a seagoing ship would take one woman four years to make. But it was hardly worthwhile to unfurl for the short trip across the bay. He began to row, something that hardly taxed him. Edgar was heavily muscled, like a blacksmith. His father and brothers were the same. All day, six days a week, they worked with ax, adze, and auger, shaping the oak strakes that formed the hulls of boats. It was hard work and it made strong men.

His heart lifted. He had got away. And he was going to meet the woman he loved. The stars were brilliant; the beach glowed white; and when his oars broke the surface of the water, the curling foam was like the fall of her hair on her shoulders.

Her name was Sungifu, which was usually shortened to Sunni, and she was exceptional in every way.

He could see the premises along the seafront, most of them workplaces of fishermen and traders: the forge of a tinsmith who made rustproof items for ships; the long yard in which a roper wove his lines; and the huge kiln of a tar maker who roasted pine logs to produce the sticky liquid with which boatbuilders waterproofed their vessels. The town always looked bigger from the water: it was home to several hundred people, most making their living, directly or indirectly, from the sea.

He looked across the bay to his destination. In the darkness he would not have been able to see Sunni even if she had been there, which he knew she was not, since they had arranged to meet at dawn. But he could not help staring at the place where she soon would be.

Sunni was twenty-one, older than Edgar by more than three years. She had caught his attention one day when he was sitting on the beach staring at the Viking wreck. He knew her by sight, of course—he knew everyone living in the small town—but he had not particularly noticed her before and did not recall anything about her family. “Were you washed up with the wreck?” she had said. “You were sitting so still, I thought you were driftwood.” She had to be imaginative, he saw right away, to say something like that off the top of her head; and he had explained what fascinated him about the lines of the vessel, feeling that she would understand. They had talked for an hour and he had fallen in love.

Then she told him she was married, but it was already too late.

Her husband, Cyneric, was thirty. She had been fourteen when she married him. He had a small herd of milk cows, and Sunni managed the dairy. She was shrewd, and made plenty of money for her husband. They had no children.

Edgar had quickly learned that Sunni hated Cyneric. Every night, after the evening milking, he went to an alehouse called the Sailors and got drunk. While he was there, Sunni could slip into the woods and meet Edgar.

However, from now on there would be no more hiding. Today they would run away together; or, to be exact, sail away. Edgar had the offer of a job and a house in a fishing village fifty miles along the coast. He had been lucky to find a boatbuilder who was hiring. Edgar had no money—he never had money, Ma said he had no need of it—but his tools were in a locker built into the boat. They would start a new life.

As soon as everyone realized they had gone, Cyneric would consider himself free to marry again. A wife who ran away with another man was, in practice, divorcing herself: the Church might not like it, but that was the custom. Within a few weeks, Sunni said, Cyneric would go into the countryside and find a desperately poor family with a pretty fourteen-year-old daughter. Edgar wondered why the man wanted a wife: he had little interest in sex, according to Sunni. “He likes to have someone to push around,” she had said. “My problem was that I grew old enough to despise him.”

Cyneric would not come after them, even if he found out where they were, which was unlikely at least for some time to come. “And if we’re wrong about that, and Cyneric finds us, I’ll beat the shit out of him,” Edgar had said. Sunni’s expression had told him that she thought this was a foolish boast, and he knew she was right. Hastily, he had added: “But it probably won’t come to that.”

He reached the far side of the bay, then beached the boat and roped it to a boulder.

He could hear the chanting of the monks at their prayers. The monastery was nearby, and the home of Cyneric and Sunni a few hundred yards beyond that.

He sat on the sand, looking out at the dark sea and the night sky, thinking about her. Would she be able to slip away as easily as he had? What if Cyneric woke up and prevented her leaving? There might be a fight; she could be beaten. He was suddenly tempted to change the plan, get up from the beach and go to her house and fetch her.

He repressed the urge with an effort. She was better off on her own. Cyneric would be in a drunken slumber and Sunni would move like a cat. She had planned to go to bed wearing around her neck her only item of jewelry, an intricately carved silver roundel hanging from a leather thong. In her belt pouch she would have a useful needle and thread and the embroidered linen headband she wore on special occasions. Like Edgar, she could be out of the house in a few silent seconds.

Soon she would be here, her eyes glistening with excitement, her supple body eager for his. They would embrace, hugging each other hard, and kiss passionately; then she would step into the boat and he would push it into the water to freedom. He would row a little way out, then kiss her again, he thought. How soon could they make love? She would be as impatient as he. He could row around the point, then drop the roped rock he used as an anchor, and they could lie down in the boat, under the thwarts; it would be a little awkward, but what did that matter? The boat would rock gently on the waves, and they would feel the warmth of the rising sun on their naked skin.

But perhaps they would be wiser to unfurl the sail and put more distance between themselves and the town before they risked a halt. He wanted to be well away by full day. It would be difficult to resist temptation with her so close, looking at him and smiling happily. But it was more important to secure their future.

When they got to their new home, they would say they were already married, they had decided. Until now they had never spent a night in bed. From today they would eat supper together every evening and lie in each other’s arms all night and smile knowingly at each other in the morning.

He saw a glimmer of light on the horizon. Dawn was about to break. She would be here at any moment.

He felt sad only when he thought about his family. He could happily live without his brothers, who still treated him as a foolish kid and tried to pretend that he had not grown up smarter than both of them. He would miss Pa, who all his life had told him things he would never forget, such as: “No matter how well you scarf two planks together, the joint is always the weakest part.” And the thought of leaving Ma brought tears to his eyes. She was a strong woman. When things went wrong, she did not waste time bemoaning her fate, but set about putting matters right. Three years ago Pa had fallen sick of a fever and almost died, and Ma had taken charge of the yard—telling the three boys what to do, collecting debts, making sure customers did not cancel orders—until Pa had recovered. She was a leader, and not just of the family. Pa was one of the twelve elders of Combe, but it was Ma who had led the townspeople in protest when Wigelm, the thane, had tried to increase everyone’s rents.

The thought of leaving would be unbearable but for the joyous prospect of a future full of Sunni.

In the faint light Edgar saw something odd out on the water. He had good eyesight, and he was used to making out ships at a distance, distinguishing the shape of a hull from that of a high wave or a low cloud, but now he was not sure what he was looking at. He strained to hear any distant sound, but all he picked up was the noise of the waves on the beach right in front of him.

After a few heartbeats he seemed to see the head of a monster, and he suffered a chill of dread. Against the faint glow in the sky he thought he saw pointed ears, great jaws, and a long neck.

A moment later he realized he was looking at something even worse than a monster: it was a Viking ship, with a dragon head at the tip of its long, curved prow.

Another came into view, then a third, then a fourth. Their sails were taut with the quickening southwesterly breeze, and the light vessels were moving fast through the waves. Edgar sprang to his feet.

The Vikings were thieves, rapists, and murderers. They attacked along the coast and up rivers. They set fire to towns, stole everything they could carry, and murdered everyone except young men and women, whom they captured to sell as slaves.

Edgar hesitated a moment longer.

He could see ten ships now. That meant at least five hundred Vikings.

Were these definitely Viking ships? Other builders had adopted their innovations and copied their designs, as Edgar himself had. But he could tell the difference: there was a coiled menace in the Scandinavian vessels that no imitators had achieved.

Anyway, who else would be approaching in such numbers at dawn? No, there was no doubt.

Hell was coming to Combe.

He had to warn Sunni. If he could get to her in time, they might yet escape.

Guiltily he realized his first thought had been of her, rather than of his family. He must alert them, too. But they were on the far side of the town. He would find Sunni first.

He turned and ran along the beach, peering at the path ahead for half-hidden obstacles. After a minute he stopped and looked out at the bay. He was horrified to see how fast the Vikings had moved. There were already blazing torches approaching swiftly, some reflected in the shifting sea, others evidently being carried across the sand. They were landing already!

But they were silent. He could still hear the monks praying, all oblivious to their fate. He should warn them, too. But he could not warn everyone!

Or perhaps he could. Looking at the tower of the monks’ church silhouetted against the lightening sky, he saw a way to warn Sunni, his family, the monks, and the whole town.

He swerved toward the monastery. A low fence loomed up out of the dark and he leaped over it without slowing his pace. Landing on the far side, he stumbled, regained his balance, and ran on.

He came to the church door and glanced back. The monastery was on a slight rise, and he could view the whole town and the bay. Hundreds of Vikings were splashing through the shallows onto the beach and into the town. He saw the crisp, summer-dry straw of a thatched roof burst into flames; then another, and another. He knew all the houses in town and their owners, but in the dim light he could not figure out which was which, and he wondered grimly whether his own home was alight.

He threw open the church door. The nave was lit by restless candlelight. The monks’ chant became ragged as some of them saw him running to the base of the tower. He saw the dangling rope, seized it, and pulled down. To his dismay, the bell made no sound.

One of the monks broke away from the group and strode toward him. The shaved top of his head was surrounded by white curls, and Edgar recognized Prior Ulfric. “Get out of here, you foolish boy,” the prior said indignantly.

Edgar could hardly trouble himself with explanations. “I have to ring the bell!” he said frantically. “What’s wrong with it?”

The service had broken down and all the monks were now watching. A second man approached: the kitchener, Maerwynn, a younger man, not as pompous as Ulfric. “What’s going on, Edgar?” he asked.

“The Vikings are here!” Edgar cried. He pulled again at the rope. He had never before tried to ring a church bell, and its weight surprised him.

“Oh, no!” cried Prior Ulfric. His expression changed from censorious to scared. “God spare us!”

Maerwynn said: “Are you sure, Edgar?”

“I saw them from the beach!”

Maerwynn ran to the door and looked out. He came back white-faced. “It’s true,” he said.

Ulfric screamed: “Run, everyone!”

“Wait!” said Maerwynn. “Edgar, keep pulling the rope. It takes a few tugs to get going. Lift your feet and hang on. Everyone else, we have a few minutes before they get here. Pick something up before you run: first the reliquaries with the remains of the saints, then the jeweled ornaments, and the books—and then run to the woods.”

Holding the rope, Edgar lifted his body off the floor, and a moment later he heard the boom of the great bell sound out.

Ulfric snatched up a silver cross and dashed out, and the other monks began to follow, some calmly collecting precious objects, others yelling and panicking.

The bell began to swing and it rang repeatedly. Edgar pulled the rope frantically, using the weight of his body. He wanted everyone to know right away that this was not merely a summons to sleeping monks but an alarm call to the whole town.

After a minute he felt sure he had done enough. He left the rope dangling and dashed out of the church.

The acrid smell of burning thatch pricked his nostrils: the brisk southwesterly breeze was spreading the flames with dreadful speed. At the same time, daylight was brightening. In the town, people were running out of their houses clutching babies and children and whatever else was precious to them, tools and chickens and leather bags of coins. The fastest were already crossing the fields toward the woods. Some would escape, Edgar thought, thanks to that bell.

He went against the flow, dodging his friends and neighbors, heading for Sunni’s house. He saw the baker, who would have been at his oven early: now he was running from his house with a sack of flour on his back. The alehouse called the Sailors was still quiet, its occupants slow to rise even after the alarm. Wyn the jeweler went by on his horse, with a chest strapped to his back; the horse was charging in a panic and he had his arms around its neck, holding on desperately. A slave called Griff was carrying an old woman, his owner. Edgar scanned every face that passed him, just in case Sunni was among them, but he did not see her.

Then he met the Vikings.

The vanguard of the force was a dozen big men and two terrifying-looking women, all in leather jerkins, armed with spears and axes. They were not wearing helmets, Edgar saw, and as fear rose in his throat like vomit, he realized they did not need much protection from the feeble townspeople. Some were already carrying booty: a sword with a jeweled hilt, clearly meant for display rather than battle; a money bag; a fur robe; a costly saddle with harness mounts in gilded bronze. One led a white horse that Edgar recognized as belonging to the owner of a herring ship; one had a girl over his shoulder, but Edgar saw gratefully that it was not Sunni.

He backed away, but the Vikings came on, and he could not flee because he had to find Sunni.

A few brave townsmen resisted. Their backs were to Edgar so he could not tell who they were. Some used axes and daggers, one a bow and arrows. For several heartbeats Edgar just stared, paralyzed by the sight of sharp blades cutting into human flesh, the sound of wounded men howling like animals in pain, the smell of a town on fire. The only violence he had ever seen consisted of fistfights between aggressive boys or drunk men. This was new: gushing blood and spilling guts and screams of agony and terror. He was frozen with fear.

The traders and fishermen of Combe were no match for these attackers, whose livelihood was violence. The locals were cut down in moments, and the Vikings advanced, more coming up behind the leaders.

Edgar recovered his senses and dodged behind a house. He had to get away from the Vikings, but he was not too scared to remember Sunni.

The attackers were moving along the main street, pursuing the townspeople who were fleeing along the same road; but there were no Vikings behind the houses. Each home had about half an acre of land: most people had fruit trees and a vegetable garden, and the wealthier ones a henhouse or a pigsty. Edgar ran from one backyard to the next, making for Sunni’s place.

Sunni and Cyneric lived in a house like any other except for the dairy, a lean-to extension built of cob, a mixture of sand, stones, clay, and straw, with a roof of thin stone tiles, all meant to keep the place cool. The building stood on the edge of a small field where the cows were pastured.

Edgar reached the house, flung open the door, and dashed in.

He saw Cyneric on the floor, a short, heavy man with black hair. The rushes around him were soaked with blood and he lay perfectly still. A gaping wound between his neck and shoulder was no longer bleeding, and Edgar had no doubt he was dead.

Sunni’s brown-and-white dog, Brindle, stood in the corner, trembling and panting as dogs do when terrified.

But where was she?

At the back of the house was a doorway that led to the dairy. The door stood open, and as Edgar moved toward it he heard Sunni cry out.

He stepped into the dairy. He saw the back of a tall Viking with yellow hair. Some kind of struggle was going on: a bucket of milk had spilled on the stone floor, and the long manger from which the cows fed had been knocked over.

A split second later Edgar saw that the Viking’s opponent was Sunni. Her suntanned face was grim with rage, her mouth wide open, showing white teeth, her dark hair flying. The Viking had an ax in one hand but was not using it. With the other hand he was trying to wrestle Sunni to the ground while she lashed out at him with a big kitchen knife. Clearly he wanted to capture her rather than kill her, for a healthy young woman made a high-value slave.

Neither of them saw Edgar.

Before Edgar could move, Sunni caught the Viking across the face with a slash of her knife, and he roared with pain as blood spurted from his gashed cheek. Infuriated, he dropped the ax, grabbed her by both shoulders, and threw her to the ground. She fell heavily, and Edgar heard a sickening thud as her head hit the stone step on the threshold. To his horror she seemed to lose consciousness. The Viking dropped to one knee, reached into his jerkin, and drew out a length of leather cord, evidently intending to tie her up.

With the slight turn of his head, he spotted Edgar.

His face registered alarm, and he reached for his dropped weapon, but he was too late. Edgar snatched up the ax a moment before the Viking could get his hand on it. It was a weapon very like the tool Edgar used to fell trees. He grasped the shaft, and in the dim back of his mind he noticed that handle and head were beautifully balanced. He stepped back, out of the Viking’s reach. The man started to rise.

Edgar swung the ax in a big circle.

He took it back behind him, then lifted it over his head, and finally brought it down, fast and hard and accurately, in a perfect curve. The sharp blade landed precisely on top of the man’s head. It sliced through hair, skin, and skull, and cut deep, spilling brains.

To Edgar’s horror the Viking did not immediately fall dead, but seemed for a moment to be struggling to remain standing; then the life went out of him like the light from a snuffed candle, and he fell to the ground in a bundle of slack limbs.

Edgar dropped the ax and knelt beside Sunni. Her eyes were open and staring. He murmured her name. “Speak to me,” he said. He took her hand and lifted her arm. It was limp. He kissed her mouth and realized there was no breath. He felt her heart, just beneath the curve of the soft breast he adored. He kept his hand there, hoping desperately to feel a heartbeat, and he sobbed when he realized there was none. She was gone, and her heart would not beat again.

He stared unbelievingly for a long moment, then, with boundless tenderness, he touched her eyelids with his fingertips—gently, as if fearing to hurt her—and closed her eyes.

Slowly he fell forward until his head rested on her chest, and his tears soaked into the brown wool of her homespun dress.

A moment later he was filled with mad rage at the man who had taken her life. He jumped to his feet, seized the ax, and began to hack at the Viking’s dead face, smashing the forehead, slicing the eyes, splitting the chin.

The fit lasted only moments before he realized the gruesome hopelessness of what he was doing. When he stopped, he heard shouting outside in a language that was similar to the one he spoke but not quite the same. That brought him back abruptly to the danger he was in. He might be about to die.

I don’t care, I’ll die, he thought; but that mood lasted only seconds. If he met another Viking, his own head might be split just like that of the man at his feet. Stricken with grief as he was, he could still feel terror at the thought of being hacked to death.

But what was he to do? He was afraid of being found inside the dairy, with the corpse of his victim crying out for revenge; but if he went outside he would surely be captured and killed. He looked about him wildly: where could he hide? His eye fell on the overturned manger, a crude wooden construction. Upside down, its trough looked big enough to conceal him.

He lay on the stone floor and pulled it over him. As an afterthought he lifted the edge, grabbed the ax, and pulled it under with him.

Some light came through the cracks between the planks of the manger. He lay still and listened. The wood muffled sound somewhat, but he could hear a lot of shouting and screaming outside. He waited in fear: at any moment a Viking could come in and be curious enough to look under the manger. If that happened, Edgar decided, he would try to kill the man instantly with the ax; but he would be at a serious disadvantage, lying on the ground with his enemy standing over him.

He heard a dog whine, and understood that Brindle must be standing beside the inverted manger. “Go away,” he hissed. The sound of his voice only encouraged the dog, and she whined louder.

Edgar cursed, then lifted the edge of the trough, reached out, and pulled the dog in with him. Brindle lay down and went silent.

Edgar waited, listening to the horrible sounds of slaughter and destruction.

Brindle began to lick the Viking’s brains off the blade of the ax.

He did not know how long he remained there. He began to feel warm and guessed the sun must be high. Eventually the noise from outside lessened, but he could not be sure the Vikings had gone, and every time he considered looking out he decided not to risk his life yet. Then he would turn his mind to thoughts of Sunni, and he would weep all over again.

Brindle dozed beside him, but every now and again the dog would whimper and tremble in her sleep. Edgar wondered whether dogs had bad dreams.

Edgar sometimes had nightmares: he was on a sinking ship, or an oak tree was falling and he could not get out of the way, or he was fleeing from a forest fire. When he woke up from such dreams he experienced a feeling of relief so powerful that he wanted to weep. Now he kept thinking that the Viking attack might be a nightmare from which he would wake at any moment to find Sunni still alive. But he did not wake.

At last he heard voices speaking plain Anglo-Saxon. Still he hesitated. The speakers sounded troubled but not panicked; grief-stricken rather than in fear of their lives. That must surely mean the Vikings had gone, he reasoned.

How many of his friends had they taken with them to sell as slaves? How many corpses of his neighbors had they left behind? Did he still have a family?

Brindle made a hopeful noise in her throat and tried to stand up. She could not rise in the confined space, but clearly she felt it was now safe to move.

Edgar lifted the manger. Brindle immediately stepped out. Edgar rolled from under it, holding the Viking ax, and lowered the trough back to the floor. He got to his feet, limbs aching from prolonged confinement. He hooked the ax to his belt.

Then he looked out of the dairy door.

The town had gone.

For a moment he was just bewildered. How could Combe have disappeared? But he knew how, of course. Almost every house had burned to nothing. A few were still smoldering. Here and there masonry structures remained standing, and he took awhile to identify them. The monastery had two stone buildings, the church and a two-story edifice with a refectory on the ground floor and a dormitory upstairs. There were two other stone churches. It took him longer to identify the home of Wyn the jeweler, who needed stonework to protect him from thieves.

Cyneric’s cows had survived, clustering fearfully in the middle of their fenced pasture: cows were valuable, but, Edgar reasoned, too bulky and cantankerous to take on board ship—like all thieves, the Vikings would prefer cash or small, high-priced items such as jewelry.

Townspeople stood in the ruins, dazed, hardly speaking, uttering monosyllables of grief and horror and bewilderment.

The same vessels were anchored in the bay, but the Viking ships had gone.

At last he allowed himself to look at the bodies in the dairy. The Viking was barely recognizable as a human being. Edgar felt strange, thinking that he had done that. It was hardly believable.

Sunni looked surprisingly peaceful. There was no visible sign of the head injury that had killed her. Her eyes were half open, and Edgar closed them again. He knelt down and again felt for a heartbeat, knowing it was foolish. Her body was already cool.

What should he do? Perhaps he could help her soul get to heaven. The monastery was still standing. He should take her to the monks’ church.

He took her in his arms. Lifting her was more difficult than he expected. She was slender, and he was strong, but her inert body unbalanced him and, as he struggled to stand, he had to crush her to his chest harder than he would have wished. Holding her in such a rough embrace, knowing she felt no pain, harshly accentuated her lifelessness and made him cry again.

He walked through the house, past the body of Cyneric, and out the door.

Brindle followed him.

It seemed to be midafternoon, though it was hard to tell: there were ashes in the air, along with the smoke from embers, and a disgusting odor of burned human flesh. The survivors looked around them perplexedly, as if they could not take in what had happened. More were making their way back from the woods, some driving livestock.

Edgar walked toward the monastery. Sunni’s weight began to hurt his arms, but perversely he welcomed the pain. However, her eyes would not remain closed, and somehow this distressed him. He wanted her to look as if she were asleep.

No one paid him much attention: they all had their own individual tragedies. He reached the church and made his way inside.

He was not the only person to have this idea. There were bodies lying all along the nave, with people kneeling or standing beside them. Prior Ulfric approached Edgar, looking distraught, and said peremptorily: “Dead or alive?”

“It’s Sungifu, she’s dead,” Edgar replied.

“Dead people at the east end,” said Ulfric, too frantically busy to be gentle. “Wounded in the nave.”

“Will you pray for her soul, please?”

“She’ll be treated like all the rest.”

“I gave the alarm,” Edgar protested. “I may have saved your life. Please pray for her.”

Ulfric hurried away without answering.

Edgar saw that Brother Maerwynn was attending to a wounded man, bandaging a leg while the man whimpered in pain. When Maerwynn finally stood up, Edgar said to him: “Will you pray for Sunni’s soul, please?”

“Yes, of course,” said Maerwynn, and he made the sign of the cross on Sunni’s forehead.

“Thank you.”

“For now, put her down at the east end of the church.”

Edgar walked along the nave and past the altar. At the far end of the church twenty or thirty bodies were laid in neat rows, with grieving relatives staring at them. Edgar lay Sunni down gently. He straightened her legs and crossed her arms on her chest, then tidied her hair with his fingers. He wished he were a priest so that he could take care of her soul himself.

He stayed kneeling for a long time, looking at her motionless face, struggling to understand that she would never again look back at him with a smile.

Eventually thoughts of the living intruded. Were his parents alive? Had his brothers been taken into slavery? Only a few hours ago he had been on the point of leaving them permanently. Now he needed them. Without them, he would be alone in the world.

He stayed with Sunni a minute longer, then left the church, followed by Brindle.

Outside, he wondered where to start. He decided to go to his home. The house would be gone, of course, but perhaps he might find the family there, or some clue as to what had happened to them.

The quickest way was along the beach. As he walked toward the sea he hoped he would find his boat on the shore. He had left it some distance from the nearest houses, so there was a good chance it had not burned.

Before he reached the sea he met his mother walking into town from the woods. At the sight of her strong, resolute features and her purposeful stride he felt so weak with relief that he almost fell down. She was carrying a bronze cooking pot, perhaps all she had rescued from the house. Her face was drawn with grief but her mouth was set in a line of grim determination.

When she saw Edgar her expression changed to joy. She threw her arms around him and pressed her face into his chest, sobbing: “My boy, oh, my Eddie, thank God.”

He hugged her with his eyes closed, more grateful for her than he had ever been.

After a moment he looked over her shoulder and saw Erman, dark like Ma but mulish rather than determined, and Eadbald, who was fair and freckled, but not their father. “Where’s Pa?” he said.

Erman answered: “He told us to run. He stayed behind to save the boatyard.”

Edgar wanted to say: And you left him? But this was no time for recriminations—and, in any case, Edgar too had left.

Ma released him. “We’re going back to the house,” she said. “What’s left of it.”

They headed for the shore. Ma strode quickly, impatient to know the truth, good or bad.

Erman said accusingly: “You got away fast, little brother—why didn’t you wake us?”

“I did wake you,” Edgar said. “I rang the monastery bell.”

“You did not.”

It was like Erman to try to start a squabble at a time like this. Edgar looked away and said nothing. He did not care what Erman thought.

When they reached the beach, Edgar saw that his boat was gone. The Vikings had taken it, of course. They would recognize a good vessel. And it would have been easy to transport: they could simply have tied it to the stern of one of their ships and towed it.

It was a grave loss, but he felt no pain: it was trivial by comparison with the death of Sunni.

Walking along the shore they came across the mother of a boy of Edgar’s age lying dead, and he wondered if she had been killed trying to stop the Vikings taking her son into slavery.

There was another corpse a few yards away, and more farther along. Edgar checked every face: they were all friends and neighbors, but Pa was not among them, and he began cautiously to hope that his father might have survived.

They reached their home. All that was left was the fireplace, with the iron tripod still standing over it.

To one side of the ruin was the body of Pa. Ma gave a cry of horror and grief, and fell to her knees. Edgar knelt beside her and put his arm around her shaking shoulders.

Pa’s right arm had been severed near the shoulder, presumably by the blade of an ax, and he seemed to have bled to death. Edgar thought of the strength and skill that had been in that arm, and he wept angry tears at the waste and loss.

He heard Eadbald say: “Look at the yard.”

Edgar stood up and wiped his eyes. At first he was not sure what he was seeing, and he rubbed his eyes again.

The yard had burned. The vessel under construction and the stock of timber had been reduced to piles of ash, along with the tar and rope. All that remained was the whetstone they had used to sharpen their tools. In among the cinders, Edgar made out charred bones too small to be human, and he guessed that poor old Grendel had burned to death at the end of his chain.

All the family’s wealth had been in that yard.

Not only had they lost the yard, Edgar realized; they had lost their livelihood. Even if a customer had been willing to order a boat from three apprentices, they had no wood with which to build it, no tools to shape the timber, and no money to buy any of what they needed.

Ma probably had a few silver pennies in her purse, but the family had never had much to spare, and Pa had always used any surplus to buy timber. Good wood was better than silver, he had liked to say, because it was harder to steal.

“We’ve got nothing left, and no way to make a living,” Edgar said. “What on earth are we going to do?”