War of the Wolf

by Bernard Cornwell

  I had left my son in command of the troops garrisoning Bebbanburg. “He’s a lucky boy,” I said. Mus, her real name was Sunngifu, was small like a mouse, and had been married to Bishop Leofstan. “I wonder where Mus is now?” I asked. I was still gazing at Ceaster’s northern wall, trying to estimate how many men stood guard on the ramparts. “More than I expected,” I said.

  “More?”

  “Men on the wall,” I explained. I could see at least forty men on the ramparts, and knew there must be just as many on the eastern wall, which faced the bulk of the enemy.

  “Maybe they were reinforced?” Finan suggested.

  “Or the monk was wrong, which wouldn’t surprise me.”

  A monk had come to Bebbanburg with news of Ceaster’s siege. We already knew of the Mercian rebellion, of course, and we had welcomed it. It was no secret that Edward, who now styled himself King of the Angles and Saxons, wanted to invade Northumbria and so make that arrogant title come true. Sigtryggr, my son-in-law and King of Northumbria, had been preparing for that invasion, fearing it too, and then came the news that Mercia was tearing itself apart, and that Edward, far from invading us, was fighting to hold onto his new lands. Our response was obvious; do nothing! Let Edward’s realm tear itself into shreds, because every Saxon warrior who died in Mercia was one less man to bring a sword into Northumbria.

  Yet here I was, on a late winter’s afternoon beneath a darkening sky, coming to fight in Mercia. Sigtryggr had not been happy, and his wife, my daughter, even unhappier. “Why?” she had demanded.

  “I took an oath,” I had told them both, and that had stilled their protests.

  Oaths are sacred. To break an oath is to invite the anger of the gods, and Sigtryggr had reluctantly agreed to let me relieve the siege of Ceaster. Not that he could have done much to stop me; I was his most powerful lord, his father-in-law, and the Lord of Bebbanburg, indeed he owed me his kingdom, but he insisted I take fewer than a hundred warriors. “Take more,” he had said, “and the damned Scots will come over the frontier.” I had agreed. I led just ninety men, and with those ninety I intended to save King Edward’s new kingdom.

  “You think Edward will be grateful?” my daughter had asked, trying to find some good news in my perverse decision. She was thinking that Edward’s gratitude might persuade him to abandon his plans to invade Northumbria.

  “Edward will think I’m a fool.”

  “You are!” Stiorra had said.

  “Besides, I hear he’s sick.”

  “Good,” she had said vengefully. “Maybe his new wife has worn him out?”

  Edward would not be grateful, I thought, whatever happened here. Our horses’ hooves were loud on the Roman road. We still rode slowly, showing no threat. We passed the old worn stone pillar that said it was one mile to Deva, the name the Romans had given Ceaster. By now we were among the hovels and campfires of the encampment, and folk watched us pass. They showed no alarm, there were no sentries, and no one challenged us. “What’s wrong with them?” Finan growled at me.

  “They think that if relief comes,” I said, “it’ll come from the east, not the north. So they think we’re on their side.”

  “Then they’re idiots,” he said. He was right, of course. Cynlæf, if he still commanded here, should have sentries posted on every approach to the besiegers’ camp, but the long cold weeks of the siege had made them lazy and careless. Cynlæf just wanted to capture Ceaster, and had forgotten to watch his back.

  Finan, who had the eyes of a hawk, was gazing at the city wall. “That monk was full of shit,” he said scornfully. “I can see fifty-eight men on the north wall!”

  The monk who had brought me the news of the siege had been certain that the garrison was perilously small. “How small?” I had asked him.

  “No more than a hundred men, lord.”

  I had looked at him skeptically. “How do you know?”

  “The priest told me, lord,” he said nervously. The monk, who was called Brother Osric, claimed to be from a monastery in Hwite, a place I had never heard of, but which the monk said was a few hours’ walking south of Ceaster. Brother Osric had told us how a priest had come to his monastery. “He was dying, lord! He had gripe in his guts.”

  “And that was Father Swithred?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  I knew Swithred. He was an older man, a fierce and sour priest who disliked me. “And the garrison sent him to get help?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “They didn’t send a warrior?”

  “A priest can go where warriors cannot, lord,” Brother Osric had explained. “Father Swithred said he left the city at nightfall and walked through the besiegers’ camp. No one challenged him, lord. Then he walked south to Hwite.”

  “Where he was taken ill?”

  “Where he was dying as I left, lord,” Brother Osric had made the sign of the cross. “It is God’s will.”

  “Your god has a strange will,” I had snarled.

  “And Father Swithred begged my abbot to send one of us to reach you, lord,” Brother Osric had continued, “and that was me,” he finished lamely. He had been kneeling in supplication, and I saw a savage red scar crossing his tonsure.

  “Father Swithred doesn’t like me,” I said, “and he hates all pagans. Yet he sent for me?”

  The question had made Brother Osric uncomfortable. He had blushed, then stammered, “He . . . he . . .”

  “He insulted me,” I suggested.

  “He did, lord, he did.” He sounded relieved that I had anticipated an answer he had been reluctant to say aloud. “But he also said you would answer the garrison’s plea.”

  “And Father Swithred didn’t carry a letter?” I asked, “a plea for help?”

  “He did, lord, but he vomited on it.” He had grimaced. “But it was nasty, lord, all blood and bile.”

  “How did you get the scar?” I had asked him.

  “My sister hit me, lord.” He had sounded surprised at my question. “With a reaping hook, lord.”

  “And how many men in the besieging force?”

  “Father Swithred said there were hundreds, lord.” I remember how nervous Brother Osric had been, but I put that down to his fear at meeting me, a famous pagan. Did he think I had horns and a forked tail? “By God’s grace, lord,” he went on, “the garrison fought off one assault, and I pray to God that the city hasn’t fallen by now. They beseech your help, lord.”

  “Why hasn’t Edward helped?”

  “He has other enemies, lord. He’s fighting them in southern Mercia.” The monk had looked up beseechingly. “Please, lord! The garrison can’t last long!”

  Yet they had lasted, and we had come. We had left the road by now, and our horses walked slowly through the besiegers’ encampment. The luckiest folk had found shelter in the farm buildings that had been made by the Romans. They were good stone buildings, though the long years had destroyed their roofs, which were now untidy heaps of thatch on beams, but most people were in crude shelters. Women were feeding the fires with newly gathered wood, readying to cook an evening meal. They seemed incurious about us. They saw my mail coat and silver-crested helmet, saw the silver ornaments on Tintreg’s bridle, and so realized I was a lord and dutifully knelt as I passed, but none dared ask who we were.

  I halted in an open space to the northeast of the city. I gazed around, puzzled because I could see few horses. The besiegers must have horses. I had planned to drive those horses away to prevent men using them to escape, as well as to capture the beasts to defray the costs of this winter journey, but I could see no more than a dozen. If there were no horses then we had the advantage, and so I turned Tintreg and walked him back through my men until I reached the packhorses. “Unbundle the spears,” I ordered the boys. There were eight heavy bundles tied with leather ropes. Each spear was about seven feet long with an ash shaft and a sharpened steel blade. I waited as the bundles were untied and as each of my men took one of the weapons. Most also carried a shield, but a few
preferred to ride without the heavy willow boards. The enemy had let us come into the center of their encampment and they must have seen my men taking their spears, yet still they did nothing except watch us dully. I waited for the boys to coil the leather ropes, then climb back into their saddles. “You boys,” I called to the servants, “ride east, wait out in the fields till we send for you. Not you, Rorik.”

  Rorik was my servant, a good boy. He was Norse. I had killed his father, captured the boy and now treated him like a son, just as Ragnar the Dane had treated me as a son after his forces had cut my father down in battle.

  “Not me, lord?” he asked.

  “You follow me,” I told him, “and have the horn ready. Stay behind me! And you don’t need that spear.”

  He pulled the spear out of my reach. “It’s a spare one for you, lord,” he said. He was lying, of course, he could not wait to use the weapon.

  “Don’t get yourself killed, you idiot,” I growled at him, then waited to see that the boys and the packhorses were safe beyond the encampment’s edge. “You know what to do,” I called to my men, “so do it!”

  And it began.

  We spread into a line, we spurred forward.

  Smoke from the campfires was acrid. A dog barked, a child cried. Three ravens flew eastward, wings dark against gray clouds, and I wondered if they were an omen. I touched spurs to Tintreg’s flanks and he leaped forward. Finan was on my right, Berg on my left. I knew they were both protecting me, and I resented that. Old I might be, but weak no. I lowered the spear-point, nudged Tintreg with a knee, then leaned from the saddle and let the spear-point slide into a man’s shoulder. I felt the blade jar on bone, relaxed the thrust, and he turned with eyes full of pain and astonishment. I had not tried to kill him, just terrify. I rode past him, felt the blade jerk loose, swung the spear back, raised the blade, and watched the panic begin.

  Imagine you are cold, bored, and hungry. Maybe weak with sickness too, because the encampment stank of shit. Your leaders are telling you nothing but lies. If they have any idea how to end the siege, short of waiting, they have not revealed it. And the cold goes on, day after day, a bone-biting chill, and there is never enough firewood, despite the women going every day to forage. You are told that the enemy is starving, but you are just as hungry. It rains. Some men slip away, trying to reach home with their wives and children, but the real warriors, the household troops who man the great barricades outside the city gates, patrol the eastward road. If they find a fugitive he is dragged back, and, if he is lucky, whipped bloody. His wife, if she is young, vanishes to the tents where the trained warriors live. All you can think of is home, and even though home is poor and your work in the fields is hard, it is better than this endless hunger and cold. You were promised victory and have been given misery.

  Then, on a late afternoon of lowering clouds, as the sun sinks in the west, the horsemen come. You see big horses carrying mail-clad men with long spears and sharp swords, helmeted men with wolf heads on their shields. The men are screaming at you, the thump of the big hooves is loud in the muck of the encampment, your children are screaming and your women cowering, and the brightest thing in the winter afternoon is not the shine of the blades, not even the silver that crests the helmets nor the gold hanging at the attackers’ necks, but blood. Bright blood, sudden blood.

  No wonder they panicked.

  We drove them like sheep. I had told my men to spare the women and children, even most of the men too, because I did not want my horsemen to stop. I wanted to see the enemy running and to keep them running. If we paused to kill then we gave that enemy time to find their weapons, snatch up shields, and make a defense. It was better to gallop through the hovels and drive the enemy away from their piled shields, away from their spears, away from their reaping hooks and axes. The order was to strike and ride, strike and ride. We came to bring chaos, not death, not yet. Death would come.

  And so we wheeled those big horses through the encampment, our hooves hurling up clods of mud, our spears sharp. If a man resisted, he died, if he ran, we made him run faster. I saw Folcbald, a huge Frisian, spear a flaming log from a campfire and toss it onto a shelter, and others of my men copied him. “Lord!” Finan shouted to me. “Lord!” I turned to see he was pointing south to where men were running from the tents toward the clumsy barricade that faced the city’s eastern gate. Those were the real warriors, the household troops.

  “Rorik!” I bellowed. “Rorik!”

  “Lord!” He was twenty paces away, turning his horse ready to pursue three men wearing leather jerkins and carrying axes.

  “Sound the horn!”

  He spurred toward me, curbing his horse as he fumbled with the long spear and tried to retrieve the horn that was slung on his back by a long cord. One of the three men, seeing Rorik’s back turned, ran toward him with a raised ax. I opened my mouth to shout a warning, but Finan had seen the man, twisted his horse, spurred, and the man tried to run away, Soul-Stealer flashed, her blade reflecting the flames of a fire, and the axman’s head rolled off. The body slewed along the ground, but the head bounced once, then landed in the fire where the grease that the man had rubbed into his hair while cleaning his hands flared into sudden and bright flame.

  “Not bad for a grandfather,” I said.

  “Bastards don’t count, lord,” Finan called back.

  Rorik blew the horn, blew it again, and kept blowing it, and the sound, so mournful, insistent, and loud, drew my horsemen back together. “Now! Follow me!” I shouted.

  We had wounded the beast, now we had to behead it.

  Most of the folk fleeing our rampage had gone south toward the big tents, which evidently housed Cynlæf’s trained warriors, and it was there that we rode, together now, knee to knee, spears lowered. Our line of horsemen only split to avoid the fires that spewed their sparks into the coming darkness, then, as we spurred into a wide open space between the miserable shelters and the tents, we quickened. More men appeared among the tents, one carrying a standard that stretched out as he ran toward the barricade that was supposed to deter the defenders from sallying out of the city’s eastern gate. The barricade was a crude thing of overturned carts, even a plow, but it was still a formidable obstacle. I saw that the standard-bearer was holding Æthelflaed’s banner, the daft goose holding a cross and a sword.

  I must have laughed, because Finan called to me over the sound of hooves on turf, “What’s funny?”

  “This is madness!” I meant fighting against men who fought under a banner I had protected all my grown life.

  “It is mad! Fighting for King Edward!”

  “Fate is strange,” I said.

  “Will he be grateful?” Finan asked the same question my daughter had asked.

  “That family never was grateful,” I said, “except for Æthelflaed.”

  “Maybe Edward will take you to his bed then,” Finan said happily, and then there was no more time to talk because I saw the standard-bearer suddenly turn away. Instead of running to the barricade, he was hurrying south toward the arena, followed by most of the household warriors, and that struck me as strange. They numbered as many as we did, or almost as many. They could have formed a shield wall, using the barricade to protect their backs, and we would have been hard put to defeat them. Horses would not charge an obstacle like a well-formed shield wall. Our stallions would veer away rather than crash into the boards, so we would have been forced to dismount, make our own wall, and fight shield to shield. And the besiegers north of the fort, the men we had not yet attacked, could have come to assault our rear. But instead, the enemy ran, led by their standard-bearer.

  And then I understood.

  It was the Roman arena.

  I had been puzzled by the lack of horses, and now realized that the besiegers’ beasts must have been placed in the arena rather than in one of the thin-hedged paddocks to the east. The vast building lay outside the city’s southeastern corner, close to the river, and was a great circle of stone inside w
hich banks of seats surrounded an open space where the Romans had enjoyed savage displays featuring warriors and fearsome animals. The arena’s central space, ringed by a stone wall, made it a safe, even an ideal, place for horses. We had been riding toward the tents, thinking to trap the rebel leaders, but now I shouted at my men to spur toward the great stone arena instead.

  The Romans had puzzled me when I was a child. Father Beocca, who was my tutor and was supposed to turn me into a good little Christian, praised Rome for being the home of the Holy Father, the Pope. The Romans, he said, had brought the gospel to Britain, and Constantine, the first Christian to rule Rome, had declared himself emperor in our own Northumbria. None of that inclined me to like Rome or the Romans, but that changed when I was seven or eight years old and Beocca walked me into the arena at Eoferwic. I had stared amazed at the tiers of stone seats climbing all around me to the outer wall where men were using hammers and crowbars to loosen masonry blocks that would be used to make new buildings in the growing city. Ivy crawled up the seats, saplings sprang from cracks in the stone, while the arena itself was thick with grass. “This space,” Father Beocca told me in a hushed voice, “is sacred.”

  “Because Jesus was here?” I remember asking.

  Father Beocca hit me around the head. “Don’t be stupid, boy. Our lord never left the holy land.”

  “I thought you told me he went to Egypt once?”

  He hit me again to cover his embarrassment at being corrected. He was not an unkind man, indeed I loved Beocca even though I took a delight in mocking him, and he was easy to mock because he was ugly and crippled. That was unkind, but I was a child, and children are cruel beasts. In time I came to recognize Beocca’s honesty and strength, while King Alfred, who was no one’s fool, valued the man highly. “No, boy,” Beocca went on that day in Eoferwic, “this place is sacred because Christians suffered for their faith here.”

  I smelled a good story. “Suffered, father?” I had asked earnestly.

  “They were put to death in horrible ways, horrible!”