I am old now, so old I lose count of how old sometimes, but it must be 80 years since my mother died giving birth to me, and few men live that long and very few stand in the shield wall live half that many years. I see folk watching me, expecting me to die, and outless I will oblige them soon. They drop their voices when they are near me in case they disturb me, and that is an annoyance for I do not hear as well as I did, and I do not see as well as I did an up-piss all night and my bones are stiff, my old wounds ache, and each dusk when I lie down. I make certain that serpent breath or another of my swords is beside the bed, so that I can grip the hilt if death comes for me. And in the darkness, as I listen to the sea beat on the sand and the wind fret at the touch, I remember what it would like to be young, and tall, and strong, and fast, and arrogant. I was all those things, I was Utred killer of Uba, and in 878 the year that Alfred defeated Goothroom, and the year in which Goothred came to the throne of Northumbria, I was just 21, and my name was known wherever men sharpen swords. I was a warrior, a sword warrior, and I was proud of it. Take ill knew it. He was good, he had fought a score of battles, but when he stepped across the Hazel branch, he knew he was dead. All not say I was not nervous. Men have looked at me on battlefields across the island of Britain, and they have wondered that I had no fear, but of course I had fear. We all have fear. It crawls inside you like a beast. It claws at your guts, it weakens your muscles. It tries to loosen your bowels, and it wants you to cringe and weep. But fear must be thrust away, and craft must be loosed. The savagery will see you through, though many men have tried to kill me, and so earn the boast that they killed Uttred, so far that savagery has let me survive, and now I think I am too old to die in battle, so will dribble away to nothingness instead. Word beeth full arand, we say, and it is true. Fate is inexorable.