The great Lord Uhtred! I felt a vast weight on my heart when I heard those words. Reputation! We seek it, we prize it, and then it turns on us like a cornered wolf. What did Rumwald expect? A miracle? We were three hundred in a city of three thousand, and the great Lord Uhtred had a battered body and a fearful heart. Yes, we might open a gate, and we might even hold it long enough to let Æthelstan’s men into the city, but what then? We would still be outnumbered. “It’s an honor to fight beside you,” I told Rumwald, merely saying what he would like to hear, “and we need a horse.”
