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Taking this turn and that without any obvious pattern, they found the a tickle of breeze on their faces The torch fla a wisp of s lowered until they were forced to crawl, and now Ivar felt dirt under his hands, twining roots and, once, a

Baldwin, at the fore, shouted Ivar heard the others in reply, and then it was his turn to tu, into hard sunlight He clapped his hands over his eyes, only to reers Yet the wound no longer hurt White scar tissue sealed the lowest knuckles where the fingers had been shorn off right at the hand, as though it had been a year or two since the wound was taken After a while he dared lower his hands froh it see drowned in darkness He laughed weakly into the grass

Baldwin caht?" he demanded in a low voice

"How did you know the way?" Everything still seeht to see, so he kept his eyes under a tent made by his hands

"I don’t know I just wanted to get out of there"

Lying there in tall grass, swept by breeze and taking in heady lungfuls of air, Ivar had a revelation: Everything Baldwin had done, frorave Judith, all of which had seemed so purposeful and clever and forcefully planned, had actually bubbled up out of a siet away It was only luck that Baldwin had succeeded when he had Truly, God had granted him beauty and luck, but he had been filled so full of those that evidently there hadn’t been rooht, Baldwin," said Ivar wearily, sitting up His whole body ached, and he blinked away tears as he lowered his hands for his first good look at their surroundings "I don’t kno, but I think we escaped the Qulearay The seven co ed by tall trees of a kind that did not grow in the eastern borderlands, where grasslands lapped a thinning forest The leaves had turned red, or yellow, or orange, aforest The air se of battle, and it had the sharp clarity of late autuht the battle at that old tumulus Yet by the evidence of his eyes, weeks had passed instead of a single night

There was a long silence in which he heard Baldwin breathing and, behind hi a hy with frenzied passion while Er to cal so excitedly to each other that he couldn’t h the hazecertain words Theyover the trees and the sky The two Lions had been so direly wounded, and he’d thought for sure that Dedi was as good as dead How could they be charging around now as fresh as spring la back to him The old Lion was alh light had been poured into it "Do you knohere we are?"

"As long as we’re well away froot to his feet, rubbing his backside

"It’s a miracle, my lord! God has delivered us from the Quman This is the hill above Hersford Monastery, in western Saony We can see into the duchy of Fesse from here"

"Hersford Monastery?" Ermanrich came forward "That’s impossible We were in the gedly "And he still walked a us"

"All of our wounds are healed," added Sigfrid diffidently, sliding up beside Ivar to examine his mutilated hand "Look at your hand, Ivar It looks as if you took that wound o"

"I’ to drink?"

"Hush" Ivar surveyed his six co in which they stood The low earthen reat tumulus with its embankments Hadn’t there been a ruined stone circle at the top of that ancient hill? Yet obviously they no longer stood there For one thing, Ivar had never before seen a stone circle in as perfect repair as this one was, each stone upright and all the lintels intact Soht, they had traveled from the marchlands all the way to the center of Wendar In the space of one night, they had traveled from summer into autumn