"Don't forget your former comrades-in-arms, comrades shoulder to shoulder are better than a cellar full of gold." , Edgar said to the warriors around him.

After almost three months of training, at Easter, the English held a ceremony for the completion of their preliminary training, which was the idea of Prince Edgar. At the suggestion of the Count of Benicia, another race was held, including running, swimming, wrestling, armor jumping, and horse racing, for which a racecourse was built, modeled after the one in Kent. The evening's lavish drinking refreshed the spirits of the hard-trained English, and as he toasted all the veterans of last year's battles, Edgar uttered the words that had come before.

The Northumbrians are well aware of the dangers of the battle that lies ahead, and those who sit with them today may soon be left with nothing but remnants, as they have done in countless wars in the past. But so what, at least not this night, this night is happy. The counts, bishops, magistrates, and the Sains drank the frothy liquor in their glasses and saluted the prince. Bishop York was old, and his hair was as white as a swan, but he had drunk a glass of it. Edgar watched everyone quietly, although they came from different families and regions, and perhaps each had many generations of grudges and grudges between them, but after years of fighting, they were soon going to go to war, and the scene of soldiers enjoying peaceful times felt very familiar to him. Just as on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, when the Duke of Wellington and the officers and men of the Low Places drank at the Duke of Richmond's ball, the soldiers of the 92nd Highland Regiment danced the Scottish dance on the spot, many of whom had died the next day; Then there was Lieutenant Vickers, whom Edgar had known from his previous life, who was stationed in Delhi in 1857 and enjoyed ice cream and magic shows in the heat of India, the last quiet days before the Great Indian Revolt. And Edgar himself fought for half of his life in his previous life, and he can better appreciate the feelings and preciousness of the time of these English warriors.

A dusty messenger entered the hall, and he walked in the direction of the Earl of Benicia, who immediately stood up, and immediately came to Prince Edgar's side, and whispered to the prince: "My men have reported from the army of the Earl of Moca, that the Mercian and the Earl of Moka seem to be in secret contact with the Normans, and that York's enemies have not been attacked in any way. ”

Edgar asked quietly, "Do you know where King William is now?" ”

"Your Excellency, the King himself and all his troops have returned to London, and have heard from the messenger that there will be a coronation for Lady Maude in May, but no one knows exactly when the King will send his troops north."

Edgar nodded, the two earls who went south must have reached a tacit agreement with the Normans, and perhaps soon they would submit to the king again, and if York was in danger, the Normans would not sit idly by. However, the Northumbrians north of the Tyne had no need to rush south for the time being, and Edgar decided to gather his forces south after June, and if Moka and Earl Edwin chose to give in, cross the river to Durham, where they would establish a defense, and if the two Earls had not yet yielded, march on York.

Easter was followed by the season of war and the beginning of farming, when farmers were preparing to plough the land, sow wheat and, south of Lincolnshire, turn the grapes. In Essex, an Englishman returning from overseas came to Moulton with a kite-shaped shield painted on a Celtic cross, and he entered the town where the royal mint was located through the causeway over the Blackwater River, where he bought a horse in the bazaar. Nearby Norman cavalry passed by, with a group of prisoners of war tied to their horses, many of them women and children, whose houses and possessions might have been looted and burned by the Norman knights, and they walked through the market, as if they were ready to sell them. Hereward stepped aside, not wanting the men to see his horse's baggage. The swaggering knights soon disappeared behind them, and as Herry Ward walked west along the avenue, he saw heads with spear tips and flagpoles in some Saxon towns and cities, and in many places the Normans plundered and slaughtered even churches, and destroyed villages and towns were everywhere, and in some ruins, charred corpses were left unburied and exposed.

Herry Ward seemed accustomed to such a scene, and did not stop for a moment, but kept on his way, his home was in Lincolnshire, and from Cambridge to the north, passing through a swampy area in the middle of which was called Erie Island, and Herry Ward seemed familiar with it, and soon passed through it. This sparsely populated area was now too lazy for robbers to patronize, and it wasn't until Peterborough that he became a little angry. To the west of the swamp and woods, where the elm path bends north, a hillside village appears in front of him, and he looks at his hometown, which is no different from when he left fifteen years ago, and suddenly feels a sense of fear. The village called Wittem was dilapidated, with few oxen and horses on the roads, and no one recognized the tall traveler. Hereward returned to the house where he had been born, and tied up the horse named "Swallow", and when he entered, there was no servant, and there was dead silence everywhere, and there was a pile of beech wood by the fireplace, but the house was cold to the bone. Hereward still knew a lot of old furnishings, but the whole house was completely different from what he remembered, and he wanted to ask someone, so he went to St. Andrew's Church.

When he arrived at the church, where the patterns on the arches overhead were mottled and deepened in the pale sunlight, a priest took him before Father Leofrick and left quietly.

"My child, do you need anything?" The priest's voice was a little hoarse.

"I'm Helry Ward, son of Osrak, nephew of Dean Brand of Peterborough, and I wonder where my family has gone?"

Father Leofrick's eyes suddenly widened, as if he had seen some impossible sight, and a man who was said to be dead suddenly appeared in front of him?

After much confirmation, the priest finally identified the middle-aged warrior, and he replied with a little agitation: "Your father had died between the two feasts of St. Mary the year before, and your brother and mother had recently received a letter from Abbot Brand and had gone to Peterborough, and had not heard from them since. ”

When he heard the news of his father's death, he did not have the sadness he imagined, and although he no longer hated his biological father, who had exiled him, he had never felt warm for this stubborn old man. Perhaps subconsciously wanted to mend the absurdity of his youth, but now that the old man has died, this estrangement has always been left between the grave and himself.

Two days later, when Hereward arrived at Peterborough with the Swallow, he was about to enter the city, only to see his brother's head on the tip of the spear in front of the gate!