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mood for games, friend.”
    “What games? That’s his house there.”
    Now the second rider spoke again. “That house is far too meager to be the seat of a knight.”
    “Well, to be fair, Wulfric also owns this field, and that one there, and that one over there,” said the peasant, pointing. “All rich soil, good crops. Not bad if you ask me.”
    “Sir Wulfric, peasant!” the first rider scolded him. “Be mindful how you refer to a Knight of the Realm.”
    “And not just any knight,” added the second. “The greatest of all knights.”
    “Yes, I’ve heard the stories,” said the peasant, who seemed to be growing tired of this conversation himself. “Greatly exaggerated, for the most part.”
    The first rider had finally had enough. He dismounted and marched over to the man, giving him a black look.
    “Now look, peasant. I’ve had about enough—”
    The sun, still setting over the hill, now cast its light upon the silver pendant, wrought in the shape of a scarab beetle, that hung on a loop of leather around the peasant’s neck. It was a simple design, but one familiar to every man and boy sworn to the King’s service. That same medallion had been seen by all who had ever passed through the army barracks at Winchester, in a painting that hung in its main hall. It was depicted hanging around the neck of Sir Wulfric the Wild. Knight of all knights. The man who had saved King Alfred’s life and turned the tide at the Battle of Ethandun, and with it the entire war against the Norse.
    The rider’s legs quaked, and for a moment he thought they might give way entirely. Instead he sank to one knee, bowing hishead before the dirt-faced peasant. “Sir Wulfric, please accept my most humble apology.”
    “Oh,
shit
,” the second rider exclaimed under his breath. He hurriedly dismounted and knelt at his comrade’s side.
    “This field is too muddy for kneeling,” said Wulfric, who despite his station had never grown comfortable at the sight of any man subjugating himself before another. All men were equal in God’s eyes, so why not also in the eyes of men themselves? “Rise.”
    And they rose, now regarding this grubby farmworker with the kind of reverent awe normally reserved for gods and kings.
    “I apologize,” said Wulfric as he pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped the dirt from his hands. “But the long days in the field can grow dull, and I must find my amusements where I can. Now, what does Alfred want?”

    Wulfric left the plow in the field and made his way back to the house as the King’s riders departed the way they had come. It was still early in the day and there was much land left to sow, which now would have to wait. As a rule, he had little time for the commands of kings—but Alfred was more than just a king. He was a friend, and one who had done more for Wulfric than he could ever repay. And so Wulfric, though he detested the thought of picking up a weapon ever again—and that was certainly the only purpose for which Alfred would call upon him—knew he could not refuse.
    As a young man Wulfric had been a smith’s apprentice, learning how to forge a sword and make it strong, but not how to wield one. That was for others. The very thought of violence made his stomach roil like a live fish writhing in his belly. Like all Englishmen, he had been raised Christian, but his father had also encouraged Wulfric to think for himself, and so to take from the holy teachings what he would. Of what he knew of the Bible, a single verse had always spoken to Wulfric more than any other:
Lovethy neighbor as thyself
. He wished no man to raise a hand against him, and so he would not against another.
    That was until the Norse came.
    He was raised in the town of his birth, a small place called Caengiford. London lay just a few miles to the southwest, and it was there, when Wulfric was seventeen, that the Danish marauders had come, smashing the great walls the Romans had built centuries ago, claiming the