It was like this all across the land. Whichever way Orm looked he saw smoke rising, plumes of it dominated by the tremendous column that rose up from York itself, a few miles away. It was the Normans' intention to ensure that this country could not support any more rebellion, not even the furtive pinpricks of the wildmen, not for a generation or more. And the Normans pursued such goals with relentless efficiency.

At a command from his officer Orm dismounted and tied his horse's rein to a burned stump. The job of the mop-up party was to ensure the work was finished thoroughly. The heat from the smouldering fires made Orm sweat inside his heavy chain-mail coat, and the sooty air was gritty under his conical helmet. But he prodded at charred ruins with a stabbing-sword and kicked over bodies with the rest of them. It wasn't as bad as taking part in the slaughter itself.

He came to one ruined hovel, actually a little Christian chapel, devoted, he saw from the remnant of a dedication stone, to Saint Agnes, a Roman martyr. Orm kicked away the debris of the fallen walls, exposing an earth floor covered with a layer of straw. Here was a hearth, the stones still warm from the night's fire, a couple of wooden chests already broken open. Nothing left of value.

But something moved under the straw, a rustle in the dirt. Perhaps it was a rat. He stepped that way.

And he heard a voice, a woman, softly, rapidly chanting English words:

In the last days

To the tail of the peacock

He will come

The spider's spawn, the Christ-bearer

The Dove.

And the Dove will fly east…