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guarded him. They too were fair-haired and blue-eyed, and they shouted in a

strange accent.
    'Come and fight the heathen! Three pennies to make the bastard bleed! Come and fight!'
    'Who is he?' I asked.
    'A Dane, lord, a pagan Dane.' The man tugged off his hat when he spoke to me, then turned

back to the crowd. 'Come and fight him! Get your revenge! Make a Dane bleed! Be a good

Christian! Hurt a pagan!'
    The three men were Frisians. I suspected they had been in Alfred's army and, now that he

was talking to the Danes rather than fighting them, the three had deserted. Frisians come

from across the sea and they come for one reason only, money, and this trio had somehow

captured the young Dane and were profiting from him so long as he lasted. And that could have

been some time, for he was good. A strong young Saxon paid his three pence and was given a

sword with which he hacked wildly at the prisoner, but the Dane parried every blow, wood

chips flying from his stave, and when he saw an opening he cracked his opponent around the

head hard enough to draw blood from his ear. The Saxon staggered away, half stunned, and the

Dane rammed the stave into his belly and, as the Saxon bent to gasp for breath, the stave

whistled around in a blow that would have cracked his skull open like an egg, but the Frisians

dragged on the rope so that the Dane fell backwards. 'Do we have another hero?' a Frisian

shouted as the young Saxon was helped away. 'Come on, lads! Show your strength! Beat a Dane

bloody!'
    'I'll beat him,' I said. I dismounted and pushed through the crowd. I gave my horse's reins

to a boy, then drew Serpent-Breath. 'Three pence?' I asked the Frisians.
    'No, lord,' one of them said.
    'Why not?'
    'We don't want a dead Dane, do we?' the man answered.
    'We do!' someone shouted from the crowd. The folk in the Uisc valley did not like me, but

they liked the Danes even less and they relished the prospect of watching a prisoner being

slaughtered.
    'You can only wound him, lord,' the Frisian said. 'And you must use our sword.' He held out

the weapon. I glanced at it, saw its blunt edge, and spat.
    'Must?' I asked.
    The Frisian did not want to argue. 'You can only draw blood, lord,' he said.
    The Dane flicked hair from his eyes and watched me. He held the stave low. I could see he was

nervous, but there was no fear in his eyes. He had probably fought a hundred battles since

the Frisians captured him, but those fights had been against men who were not soldiers, and he

must have known, from my two swords, that I was a warrior. His skin was blotched with bruises

and laced by blood and scars, and he surely expected another wound from Serpent-Breath,

but he was determined to give me a fight.
    'What's your name?' I asked in Danish.
    He blinked at me, surprised.
    'Your name, boy,' I said. I called him 'boy', though he was not much younger than me.
    'Haesten,' he said.
    'Haesten who?'
    'Haesten Storrison,' he said, giving me his father's name.
    'Fight him! Don't talk to him!' a voice shouted from the crowd. I turned to stare at the man

who had shouted and he could not meet my gaze, then I turned fast, very fast, and whipped

Serpent-Breath in a quick sweep that Haesten instinctively parried so that Serpent-Breath

cut through the stave as if it was rotten. Haesten was left with a stub of wood, while the rest

of his weapon, a yard of thick ash, lay on the ground.
    'Kill him!' someone shouted.
    'Just draw blood, lord,' a Frisian said, 'please, lord. He's not a bad lad, for a Dane. Just

make him bleed and we'll pay you.'
    I kicked the ash stave away from Haesten. 'Pick it up,' I said.
    He looked at me nervously. To pick it up he would have to go to the end of his tether, then

stoop, and at that moment he would expose his back to Serpent-Breath. He watched me, his eyes

bitter beneath the fringe of dirty hair, then decided I would not attack him as he bent

over. He went to the stave and, as he