The Price of Blood. Patricia Bracewell

      Dead, she could do no more than haunt him.

      He paused at his work-table to finger a pile of scrolls and wax tablets that bore news from Kent, where the Danes continued to burn and plunder. His fyrds were doing exactly as he had ordered, shepherding his people into the burhs to protect them. From within the safety of their fortress walls, though, they had to watch as their homes were torched and their livestock driven away. They were powerless to stop it, for they had not the numbers to confront the better-armed shipmen and their savage leader – some bastard, he saw scrawled on one of the tablets, named Tostig.