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bird augury, and Hild knew there would be few rooks by those elms at this time of day. It would be a cold wait, and her mother’s joints had been more painful than usual. But then they were all moving and there wasn’t time.
    Auguries and sacrifice: crude tools of toothless petitioners. Or so her mother said, even as she’d rehearsed Hild in every variation. But she said, over and over, there was no power like a sharp and subtle mind weaving others’ hopes and fears and hungers into a dream they wanted to hear. Always know what they want to hear—not just what everyone knew they wanted to hear but what they didn’t even dare name to themselves. Show them the pattern. Give them permission to do what they wanted all along.
    What did Edwin want to hear?
    By the time the king, swathed in a blue cloak ( With our hair colour, blue is better ), stood by the elms, almost forty people, including Coifi and his assistants—free of all edged iron, as befitted servants of the god—leading a calf, were assembled. Twenty or more were gesiths. They’d been bored at Sancton, nothing to do but play knucklebones, fight over women, and burnish their chain mail, and they loved a good prophecy. They stood about, smelling of iron and strong drink, spears resting on their shoulders, sword hilts jutting from the waist at their left hand, for the warrior gesith did not wear cloaks, except on a hard march. One was throwing his knife, a pretty jewelled thing, at the burr partway up the trunk of the closest elm, yanking it free, pacing, throwing. Soon there would be jeers, then boasts, then bets, then more ale, then a fight.
    At least it had stopped raining.
    A man, the head drover, trotted up the rise, fell to one knee in the wet grass, and spoke to the king. The king nodded, then shouted out to the old woman. “The wagons are ready, Mother. Will your gods speak?”
    “I will call the gods to speak, if you lend me a war horn.”
    “A war horn? Very well.” He gestured to Lilla, who handed him the great horn of the Yffings. He held it up for all to see. “Will this do?” The gold filigree around the rim and tip shone as yellow as the absent sun. “Mind now, Mother, even if the omens are the right ones, you don’t get to keep this one.” He handed it back to Lilla, who walked it over to the old woman.
    She weighed it in her hands. “You are familiar, lords, with omens of black-winged birds.” Hild, who had been watching the gesith with the dagger—it would be Cian’s birthday soon and she was wondering where she could get him a pretty thing like that—focused on the old woman. Her mother straightened subtly. They didn’t look at each other. Black-winged bird. Why not just say rook? “If the birds fly from the southwest during undern, it portends numerous offspring. If they fly overhead, the fulfilment of wishes.”
    Hild ran through the portents her mother had schooled her in. If the birds flew from the southeast during morgen, the first quarter of the day, the enemy will approach. From the east was more difficult: relatives coming, or battle to arise, or death by disease. During æfen, and on into sunset, if they flew in the southeast, treasure would come, and overhead meant the petitioner would obtain the advantages hoped for. Then there were the more ominous single-bird sightings, and the opposite meanings assigned to two birds. But now it was undern, the quarter day before the sun stood at its height, and they were interested in rooks, many rooks, flying from the southwest or overhead, because it was rooks that roosted in the undern elms and the elm wood beyond. What did Edwin want to hear? He wanted a peaceweaver, yes, but what else?
    The old woman lifted the horn and blew a blast that surprised everyone. Below, in the fenced settlement, two warhorses screamed. War hounds bayed and other dogs barked. The gesiths all dropped spears to the ready. One, with a shield, brought it to the defence position. And then Hild understood. A