“What will you do with the child?” the man asked.

“Have no fear for him.  I shall take him westward, where my own people are.  He shall be my son, and I think that all will be well with him hereafter.”

“I wit that you are not what you have seemed, Master,” Stuf said.  “It will be well if you say so.”

Then Owen bade him farewell also, and went to find me and get me hence before the ale and mead of the house was broached by the spoilers.  And, as I have said, I was already dressed, and I ran to his arms and asked what all the trouble was, and where my father had gone, and the like.  I think that last question was the hardest that Owen ever had put to him, and he did not try to answer it then.  He told me that he and I must go to Chichester at once, at my father’s bidding; and I, being used to obey without question, was pleased with the thought of the unaccustomed night journey.  And then Owen bethought him, and left me for a moment, going to the chest where my father had his store of money.  It was mine now, and he took it for me.

It seemed strange to him that there was no ransacking of the house, as one might have expected.  Had the foe fired it he would not have been surprised at all, but all was quiet in the hall, and the voices of the men came mostly from the storehouses, whence he could hear them rolling the casks into the courtyard; so he told me to bide quietly here in the chamber for a few minutes, and went out on the high place swiftly, closing the door after him, that I might see nothing in the hall.

There he found Erpwald himself close at hand, sitting in my father’s own chair while the wound that Owen himself had given him was being dressed.  At the side of the great room sat the rest of our men, downcast and wondering, and half a dozen of the foe stood on guard at the door.  It was plain that nought in the house was to be meddled with.

Erpwald turned as he heard the sliding door open.

“Get you gone as soon as you may,” he said sullenly.

“There is one thing that I must ask you, Erpwald,” Owen said.  “It is what one may ask of one brave man concerning another.  Let Aldred’s people bury him in all honour, as they will.”

“There you ask too much, Welshman.  But I will bury him myself in all honour in the way that I think best.  He shall have the burial of a son of Woden for all his foolishness.”

At least, there would be no dishonour to his friend in that, and Owen thought it best to say no more, but he had one more boon, as it were, to ask.

“Let me take a horse from the stable for the child,” he said.  “We may have far to go.”

He thought that he would have been met with rage at this, but it was worth asking.  However, Erpwald answered somewhat wearily, and not looking at him: 

“Take them all, if you will.  I am no common reiver, and they are not mine.  The farther you go the better.  But let me tell you, that it will be safer for you not to make for Winchester and the king.  I shall have you watched.”