Gods of War

by C. R. May

  Eofer and Swinna exchanged a look of incredulity as the ceorls choked out their lives only yards away. Æmma’s duguth was the first to recover his wits, and Eofer gasped in disbelief as the guda threw back his head and laughed at the big man’s retort: ‘after you.’

  ‘Oh, indeed I envy you,’ the priest replied as they stood and gaped, ‘I really do. But it is not my wyrd to go to the Allfather quite yet.’

  Guttural cries carried to them from the outer compound, shouts and the familiar sound of steel clashing on steel as the wolf warriors celebrated the sacrifices. To Eofer’s surprise the noise drew the guda’s attention from them, his eyes narrowing as a look of puzzlement briefly flashed across his features. As the guards around them clutched their spears a little tighter and started to drift towards the sounds, the priest pressed on with a shrug. ‘Has anyone explained what is expected of you?’

  Eofer attempted to remember what Ulf had called the death which awaited him but the surreality of the moment fogged his mind. It was, he decided, like talking to a kindly uncle rather than the man who was about to oversee his killing, a death that was almost certain to prove slow and painful. Finally it came, and the priest beamed with pleasure as he gave the hesitant reply. ‘A blood-winding?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, it is!’ he exclaimed. ‘Come across and we will get things started.’

  The Englishmen exchanged a look which confirmed to each other that they had both already grown weary of the priest’s joviality. They were about to die in a gruesome fashion; it was not a laughing matter. Swinna turned to Eofer. ‘I will go first, my thigh is half eaten away and there is something which I plan to do before I travel on. The three sisters are already poised to cut my life thread.’ He pulled a tight smile. ‘Remember though lord. Until the moment some bastard spills your guts, your wyrd is not yet set.’

  As Eofer narrowed his eyes, puzzled at his friend’s words, the priest reached a line of wooden stakes and turned back. ‘Here we are, the blood-winding. I will use this knife to slit you up the middle, and then nail your gizzard to the Allfather. All you have to do,’ he beamed, ‘is weave your way between those posts, feeding your guts out as you go. I shall wait for you at the end with your sword. Touch the hilt and…’ he made a slashing move across his throat with his thumb, ‘I will finish you off and you are on the way to Valhall.’ He grinned again: ‘got that?’

  Swinna shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not how it is going to happen at all.’

  The guda blinked in surprise, but quickly recovered. ‘Oh, I assure you,’ he replied as the mask of geniality fell away and he regarded the Engle with eyes as hard and cold as ice. ‘That is how it always happens.’

  Swinna leaned in as his hand dropped to his belt. ‘Oh,’ he said as he held the priest’s stare, ‘that might have been how it always happened before. But this time it’s going to be different. Have you got that?’

  As the priest’s face began to register surprise at his words, the Englishman’s hand shot up between them. Taken unawares, Eofer jumped back as Swinna’s fist punched into the man’s throat. As his head shot back and shouts of alarm filled the air around them Eofer recognised the end of the wooden shaft, reddened now by the blood which gushed from the wound, as the one from the compound back in Hroar’s Kilde. They had intended to use it on Ulf’s dog, Freki, but Eofer’s lips curled into a smile despite the mayhem which surrounded them as he saw that Swinna had found a use for the crude weapon on a very different mad dog. Staggering under the blow the priest looked back at the pair, and Eofer saw the bloody shaft of the weapon filling the void as the man’s mouth gaped in horror. A brief look of incomprehension came into his eyes before a red mist of blood veiled them and he began to collapse to the ground. As the guda clasped at Eofer’s leg and choked out the last few breaths of his life the sounds of running men came to them, and the eorle bent to snatch the ceremonial dagger from the dying man’s belt as he prepared to sell his life dearly. The avenging wolf warriors were almost upon them, and Eofer and Swinna went back-to-back, lowering themselves into a fighting crouch as they prepared to go down fighting under the dispassionate gaze of the Allfather.

  The first warrior reached them, the big man an unnerving sight with a body the size of a bear and the snarling head of a wolf, and Eofer felt a brief kick of pride and gratitude that Woden had sent such a man to take his life.

  Swinna had retrieved the gore soaked splinter from the corpse of his victim, and the pair snarled their defiance as more wolf-men came up and clustered around their leader.

  The thegn tensed his muscles as he awaited the stabbing spears, get inside their reach, a voice told him, show Woden your worth one last time, but at the moment he prepared to launch himself forward he hesitated as he began to realise that the wolf-men were laughing. As he hung back, the bear-wolf gripped the snout of his mask, pulling it up and clear of his head, and it was the turn of Eofer’s jaw to gape in surprise as the familiar face before him creased into a grin and spoke: ‘woof.’

  Hemming sniffed the air, shooting Eofer a look as the men of his hearth troop grinned in their wake; ‘smelling like a week old turd and as tatty as a thræl.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘And to think of all the trouble we went through to get you back.’ They shared a laugh as they rode south, a group of men with spirits as high as the gull grey clouds which drifted away to the North.

  Eofer twisted in the saddle, shooting Grimwulf a question as the riders trotted on. ‘Where to now?’

  The youth indicated up ahead with a nod. ‘The road forks about a mile ahead, lord. The pathway which leads away to the South branches off there.’

  Eofer smiled his thanks. The young Engle’s time spent as a slave in Daneland was providing them with an invaluable stock of information.

  The track made a curve as it neared the crest of the ridge, swinging back to the East, and Eofer caught his breath as the others gathered at his rear. The wide valley below them was awash with Danes, sword Danes, spear Danes as the leding, the great levy of Daneland moved south to strike back at the men who had burned their farms and razed their villages. Bright spots showed within the dun coloured mass as sunlight reflected from mail and spearpoint, each glittering star a huscarl or a jarl, gathered beneath their banners of gold and red. Hemming had moved to his side and the duguth spoke as the others watched the host in silence. ‘We had best get a move on, lord. The king will need to know they are on their way as soon as possible.’

  He nodded and guided his mount on without a word, some of the humour of the moment drawn from the others, but not from him, not today. He really should be dead, lying gutless at the end of the blood-winding, tossed into the lake or hanging from Woden’s oak but his men had appeared from nowhere and saved him. The same men he now knew, who had recovered from his loss at the river crossing, leading some of the finest warriors in Daneland on a weeklong trek through the wilderness as their homeland burned. Hemming, Octa and Osbeorn had remained resolute in the face of adversity, carrying out his last orders with intelligence and guile as he knew that they would. Finn, Spearhafoc and Grimwulf had outshone the other youth in the victory and he would need to think on their position in the hearth troop once they were back on the ships and safely away. He turned to Hemming as the road switched back to the West. ‘Tell me about Weohstan again, Thrush,’ he said with a proud smile.

  Hemming chuckled as the tongue-lashing from the boy came back into his mind. ‘Your son appeared from the tree line at the side of his uncle, lord,’ he started, ‘shining like a star beneath the white boar herebeacn of Geatland. King Heardred greeted me as a brother, but Weohstan pinned me with a terrible stare,’ he said as Eofer chuckled with a mixture of pride and amusement at his side. ‘Hemming, says he. Your lord is taken, yet you stand before me. Explain how that can be?’

  They shared a laugh as Grimwulf called out from the side of the track. ‘This is the place, lord.’ He pointed away to the West as they craned their necks to see. ‘You see that hedgerow a mile yonder,
heading away to the South? That flanks a sunken lane, it leads directly to the coast.’

  Eofer unstopped a water skin as he followed the line of the track. ‘We will stop for a drink and a piss before we head down there. With any luck we will back among friends by nightfall.’

  As they dismounted he noticed that Spearhafoc was already working on her charge. ‘How is our boy?’

  The Briton looked up from Swinna’s groin with a look of distaste. ‘He will live. The maggots I put in have eaten away most of the dead meat. Once they have finished their work I can soak it with willow pulp and pack it with honey. It would be nice though,’ she added with a curl of her lip. ‘If one of you boys could manage to catch a wound which wasn’t a couple of inches from his bollocks, you know, just for a change.’ As laughter rolled around the group she continued with a wicked smile and a sharp flick which made Swinna yelp with surprise. ‘I have seen more cocks since I joined you lot than a fowler, although,’ she said with a look of mischief, ‘not too many that look like a baby’s arm.’

  As the laughter redoubled, Eofer felt his mood lighten as he marvelled that he was once again back where he belonged. The thegn shook his head as the men laughed at another quip and turned his head back to the South. From the top of the hill the woods, lakes and carefully tended fields of Daneland stretched away before them, and the men of his troop crossed to his side as they too regarded the land of their bitterest enemy. Hemming spoke as he offered his lord a pull from his canteen. ‘It’s a good land, lord,’ he said before throwing Eofer a look. ‘It makes you wonder why they covet ours so much.’

  A brawl of clouds, as thick and dark as a meaty stew was coming up from the south-west, its shadow sweeping across the land in a tidal rush. Spots of light flashed and flickered against the grey wall as swifts and martins twisted this way and that, cutting the air as they fed in the updraft. Away to the South the light still played upon the distant waters of the Beltic Sea, but Eofer’s gaze was nearer. Hauling himself back into the saddle he clicked his tongue. As the others hastened to follow he put back his heels as he picked the thing out from the fields and woodlands; wending his way down the back slope he led them into the vale.

  15

  The stench hit them first. As thick as honey in winter, it wormed its way in despite the cloaks which covered their mouths, sank its claws into their throats and refused to budge; made each breath, each reluctant sip of air a conscious effort. Finn had been scouting ahead and the war band reined in and waited as the youth cantered back towards them, his long hair teased out in a comet tail as the horse came on. He drew up in a shower of spinning turf, sliding his hand forward to calm the mount with a heavy pat of its neck. ‘Battlefield,’ he gasped out as the horse, as spooked by the miasma as any, flared its great nostrils and stamped the earth; ‘through the trees.’

  Eofer nodded as he slipped the woollen screen from his mouth with a grimace. ‘How many bodies?’

  Finn looked nonplussed but answered his lord as accurately as possible. ‘Twenty-five or thirty in the open, lord. There is also the remains of a small balefire on the far side of the field.’

  Eofer fixed him with a stare. ‘Finn you have seen battle before, and you know the difference between a battlefield and the site of a skirmish. You are not a scop and this is not a mead hall. I want hard facts, not histrionics in future.’

  He glanced across to the members of his hearth troop as the closeness to danger caused them to shift nervously in the saddle, their heads in constant motion as their eyes scanned the vale: ‘Grimwulf!’

  The youth raised his chin. ‘Yes, lord?’

  ‘Take Spearhafoc,’ he barked. ‘Ask those people if they know anything.’

  He indicated an isolated farmstead with a flick of his head, and the youth kicked back their heels, the horses cantering across the hillside before he could speak again. Eofer turned back to the scout. ‘Any sign of the living?’

  Already admonished, Finn shook his head and answered firmly. ‘No, lord. Just hoof prints leading away to the South, about fifty horsemen I would say.’

  Eofer nodded. ‘Spread out, let’s go and see if we can learn anything from the bodies there.’

  The troop moved into a skirmish line and trotted towards the trees. Soon they were there, and Eofer ducked beneath the low hanging branches as he led the men through. The stand of trees was only a few yards deep, sparse, the dappled light from above freckling the floor as they rode through the shadows and emerged onto a sunlit plain.

  The bodies which lay before them were clearly Danes. To the unpracticed eye very little could distinguish them from his own people, but Eofer knew the telltale signs which distinguished the warriors of one nation from another. Small differences, things which would go unnoticed to those unaccustomed to the idiosyncrasies which separated the sons of Ing, differences in hair style, brooch design, even the weave of the clothing, all these things added together told the experienced northern warrior that each and every body which lay sprawled on the meadow before them was from the Danish folk.

  ‘Well, it’s not recent at least,’ he murmured. ‘Thrush?’

  ‘Yes, lord?’

  ‘How long do you think that they have been here?’

  ‘Three days,’ the big man answered confidently, as he watched a rat slip out from a distended belly and scamper away with its prize. He cast a glance at the sky. ‘In this weather a body will swell to that size in three days; if it was hotter more like two.’ The cloying smell of death was almost overpowering and Eofer halted again before they reached the scene of slaughter. A scattering of pale humps covered the greensward, bloated and swollen in the weak spring sun like seedpods sown by a monstrous yeoman. Long since plundered by the local population, the pathetic remains of brave men looked macabre in their nakedness beneath a haze of crows, the dark sheen retreating like a shadow before light as they hopped away from the riders with a bad tempered craaak.

  Hemming spoke again. ‘There are our boys.’

  They looked across to see the charred timbers which were all that remained of the balefire of the Engles who had fallen in the fight. The pyre was ringed by a ridge of smoke blackened bosses and heat twisted edging, the metallic remains the only evidence remaining of the enemy shields which had been stacked against its sides.

  The sound of hooves made them reach for their weapons, but Grimwulf and Spearhafoc emerged into the sunlight and the men exchanged weak smiles, embarrassed at their nervousness. The pair guided their mounts through the body field and slipped their cloaks from their mouths.

  ‘It happened three days ago, lord,’ Grimwulf reported as Hemming allowed himself a smile of self-satisfaction at his side. ‘A strong party of our lads out foraging ran into a smaller group of Danes.’ He smiled. ‘We won.’

  Eofer nodded. ‘Then we are getting close.’

  There was a tall elm hard on to the skirmish site and Eofer guided his horse across, unfastening his baldric and handing Gleaming to his weorthman as he went. Hemming followed, grasping the reins to steady the mount as Eofer hauled himself into the lower branches and began to climb. Within a short while he was in the canopy, and he settled himself onto a stout bough and peered away to the South.

  He picked out the trail of the king’s sciphere straight away, a long dark scar which cut across the patchwork of greens mottling this fertile land. To the eye of an experienced warrior, the movements which the English ship army had undertaken were as detailed as any campaign report. Storming ashore on the western beaches, thousands of men and horses had formed up and struck out for distant Hleidre, singing their war songs as gaudy banners rippled overhead. At the same time that Ubba silk beard and his huscarls had chased the Hwælspere across Eyrarsund to Scania, the army had moved across the rich undefended lands of southern Daneland, crushing what little opposition there was and burning as it went. From his elevated position it looked as if a fyrdraca had visited the land, the great swathe marking the passage of the belly, the outliers of burned and ransacked
farmsteads where the fire dragon had turned its head, spewing death and destruction as it passed. Following the scar to the East he had them, a dark mass moving away under a cloud of banners five or six miles distant. Eofer turned his head, searching out the fields to the north-east, and was gratified to see that the Danish host was not yet in sight. He would be there by nightfall, reunited with his king and folk, and they could prepare to greet Danish steel with English.

  Shimmying down the bole he was soon back in the saddle, and he turned to his troop as he slipped Gleaming back into place at his side. ‘Come on,’ he said, as he raised the cloak back up to cover his mouth. ‘Let’s get going, before the Danes come to claim their own dead.’

  Within the hour they had picked up the trail, an unmistakable track beaten into the earth by thousands of feet, hooves and wheels. Soon they were in sight of the mighty host, and the little group shared smiles of homecoming after the trials and near-misses of the previous month. As the mounted rearguard turned their way, galloping down to identify this war troop which had appeared to the army’s rear, Eofer ordered the spears to be reversed and held upright in plain sight lest they be taken for Danes by a nervy rider.

  Finn spoke as the horsemen thundered down upon them, great clods spinning in their wake from the chewed up ground. ‘Shall I raise your banner, lord?’

  Eofer shook his head. ‘No, keep it lowered but in plain view. Even the most excitable horse guard should recognise that as a sign of peaceful intent, whether the design is familiar to him or not’ He reined in then, waiting patiently for his countrymen to come up. As the riders on the wings swept around to envelop the little group, the leading warrior drew up and growled a challenge. ‘Who are you?’

  Eofer laughed at the man’s bluff demand. It contained none of the flowery prose, the veiled threats, of a reeve or coast guardian trained in such matters and was all the more welcome for it. In an instant he felt back at home. ‘I am Eofer Wonreding, king’s bane, and this is my troop. We have been away doing the king’s work.’ He paused as he glanced at those around him with a smile. ‘And now we would like beef, ale and a place to rest our heads.’