nd I said:

"When the warriors have dispersed, come to the house on the green
that was Gurth's. The king and I shall be there. We have much to
say to one another, father."

So I had to leave him at that time, for now Olaf would take eight
score of our men in haste to Sudbury, which is but five miles away,
and call on the townsfolk to rise for Ethelred and drive out any
Danes who were left there.

We went away quickly, and took all our mounted men, for we could
hear of no Danish force afield yet. It is likely that word of our
force had gone from Maldon, losing nothing on the way.

We rode to Sudbury gates and called on the townspeople to open
their gates. Then was some tumult and fighting inside the town, but
they opened to us, and we rode in. There were some slain men in the
street, for what Danes had been there had resisted the surrender to
so small a force.

But the Sudbury folk rejoiced to see us, and hailed Ethelred as
king very gladly. Then Olaf bade them raise what men they could and
join him at Bures on the morrow with the first light. Thereat the
old sheriff of Sudbury, whom I knew well, promised that we should
have all the men whom he could raise.

"Nor will they be your worst fighters, King Olaf," he said, "for we
have many wrongs to avenge."

It was late evening when we went back. And in the road where it
winds between the river and the hill before one comes into Bures
street waited Rani and some men with news. The Danes had come from
Colchester, and already their watch fires were burning along the
heath some four miles to eastward of us. It had fallen out, as Olaf
wished, that they would try to bar our way into Suffolk, and we
should have work to hand on the morrow.

Now men had gone with some thralls who could take them safely near
the host, to spy what they could of the number and the plans of the
Danes.

So it came to pass that I went no more into the village that night,
but slept by a fire that burnt where our own hearthstone had been,
amid the ruins of my home. And that was a sad homecoming enough.
Moreover, in the first hours of the night a wonderful thing
happened which seemed to be of ill omen, and was so strange that
maybe few will believe it.

There was a bit of broken wall near the fire, and I laid me down in
my cloak under its shelter, setting the sword that Eadmund had
given me against it close to my head, so that I could reach it
instantly if need were. After a while I slept, for