I turned and pointed to the hill across the river. 'What is that hill called?'
He shrugged. 'The hill,' he said, 'just the hill.'
'It must become a fort,' I said, 'and it must have walls of logs and a gate of logs and a tower so that men can see a long way down river. And then I want a bridge leading to the fort, a bridge strong enough to stop ships.' .
'You want to stop ships?' Haswold asked. He scratched his groin and shook his head. 'Can't build a bridge.'
'Why not?'
'Too deep.' That was probably true. It was low tide now and the Pedredan flowed sullenly between steep and deep mud banks.
'But I can block the river,' Haswold went on, his eyes still on Iseult.
'Block the river,' I said, 'and build a fort.'
'Give her to me,' Haswold promised, 'and you will have both.'
'Do what I want,' I said, 'and you can have her, her sisters and her cousins. All twelve of them.'
Haswold would have drained the whole swamp and built a new Jerusalem for the chance to hump Iseult, but he had not thought beyond the end of his prick. But that was far enough for me, and I have never seen work done so quickly. It was done in days. He blocked the river first and did it cleverly by making a floating barrier of logs and felled trees, complete with their tangling branches, all of them lashed together with goat hide ropes. A ship's crew could eventually dismantle such a barrier, but not if they were being assailed by spears and arrows from the fort on the hill that had a wooden palisade, a flooded ditch and a flimsy tower made of alder logs bound together with leather ropes. It was all crude work, but the wall was solid enough, and I began to fear that the small fort would be finished before enough West Saxons arrived to garrison it, but the three priests were doing their job and the soldiers still came, and I put a score of them in ?thelingaeg and told them to help finish the fort.
When the work was done, or nearly done, I took Iseult back to ?thelingaeg and I dressed her as she had been dressed before, only this time she wore a deerskin tunic beneath the precious fur, and I stood her in the centre of the village and said Haswold could take her. He looked at me warily, then looked at her.
'She's mine?' he asked.
'All yours,' I said, and stepped away from her.
'And her sisters?' he asked greedily, 'her cousins?
'I shall bring them tomorrow.'
He beckoned Iseult towards his hut. 'Come,' he said.
'In her country,' I said, 'it is the custom for the man to lead the woman to his bed.'
He stared at Iseult's lovely, dark-eyed face above the swathing silver cloak. I stepped further back, abandoning her, and he darted forward, reaching for her, and she brought her hands out from under the thick fur and she was holding Wasp-Sting and its blade sliced up into Haswold's belly. She gave a cry of horror and surprise as she brought the blade up, and I saw her hesitate, shocked by the effort required to pierce a man's belly and by the reality of what she had done. Then she gritted her teeth and ripped the blade hard, opening him up like a gutted carp, and he gave a strange mewing cry as he staggered back from her vengeful eyes. His intestines spilled into the mud, and I was beside her then with Serpent-Breath drawn. She was gasping, trembling. She had wanted to do it, but I doubted she would want to do it again.
'You were asked,' I snarled at the villagers, 'to fight for your king.'
Haswold was on the ground, twitching, his blood soaking his otter skin clothes. He made a mewing noise again and one of his filthy hands scrabbled among his own spilt guts.
'For your king!' I repeated. 'When you are asked to fight for your king it is not a request, but a duty!
Every man here is a soldier and your enemy is the Danes and if you will not fight them then you will fight against me!'
Iseult still stood beside Haswold who jerked like a dying fish. I edged her away and stabbed Serpent-Breath down to slit his throat.
'Take his head,' she told me.
'His head?'
'Strong magic.'
We mounted Haswold's head on the fort wall so that it stared towards the Danes, and in time eight more heads appeared there. They were the heads of Haswold's chief supporters, murdered by the villagers who were glad to be rid of them. Eofer, the archer, was not one of them. He was a simpleton, incapable of speaking sense, though he grunted and, from time to time, made howling noises. He could be led by a child, but when asked to use his bow he proved to have a terrible strength and uncanny accuracy. He was ?thelingaeg's hunter, capable of dropping a full-grown boar at a hundred paces, and that was what his name meant; boar.
I left Leofric to command the garrison at ?thelingaeg and took Iseult back to Alfred's refuge. She was silent and I thought her sunk in misery, but then she suddenly laughed. 'Look!' she pointed at the dead man's blood matted and sticky in ?lswith's fur.
She still had Wasp-Sting. That was my short sword, a sax, and it was a wicked blade in a close fight where men are so crammed together that there is no room to swing a long sword or an axe. She trailed the blade in the water, then used the hem of ?lswith's fur to scrub the diluted blood from the steel.
'It is harder than I thought,' she said, 'to kill a man.'
'It takes strength.'
'But I have his soul now.'
