War of the Wolf

by Bernard Cornwell

  “And a Christian!” Æthelstan was mocking me.

  “I said he was good, not perfect.”

  Æthelstan crossed himself. “Tomorrow we must all be good,” he said, “and spare the life of a Welshman.”

  And discover the name of an enemy. I was fairly sure I already knew that name, though I could not be certain of it, though I was certain that one day I would have to kill the man. So a Welshman must live so that a Saxon could die.

  Edling, a Welsh title, the same as our ætheling, meaning the son of the king who would be the next king. Gruffudd of Gwent, who I assumed was a chieftain of some kind, even maybe a minor king himself, had used the title to flatter Æthelstan, because no one knew who would succeed King Edward. Æthelstan was the oldest son, but malicious rumor, spread by the church, insisted he was a bastard, and almost all the ealdormen of Wessex supported Ælfweard, Edward’s second son, who was indubitably legitimate. “They should make me King of Wessex,” I told Æthelstan next morning.

  He looked shocked. Perhaps he was not fully awake and thought he had misheard. “You!”

  “Me.”

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  “I just think the best-looking man in the kingdom should be king.”

  He understood I was joking then, but he was in no mood for laughter. He just grunted and urged his horse on. He led sixty of his warriors, while I led all of mine who were not already guarding the arena where Father Bledod was waiting for us. I had told the Welsh priest to join us. “How else will we know who Gruffudd’s boy is?” I had explained. Away to our left, many of Cynlæf’s defeated men were already walking eastward with their wives and children. I had sent Finan with twenty men to spread the news that they should leave or else face my warriors, and Finan’s small force had met no opposition. The rebellion, at least in this part of Mercia, had collapsed without a fight.

  “Father Swithred,” Æthelstan said as he watched the beaten men walk away, “thought we should kill one man in ten. He said it was the Roman way.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “You think I should?” he asked.

  “No,” I said firmly, “I think you should let them go. Most of them aren’t warriors. They’re the folk who tend the fields, raise the cattle, dig ditches, and plant the orchards. They’re carpenters and fullers, leather-workers and plowmen. They came here because they were ordered to come, but once home they’ll go back to work. Your father needs them. Mercia is no use to him if it’s hungry and poor.”

  “It’s little use to him if it’s rebellious.”

  “You’ve won,” I said, “and most of those men wouldn’t know a rebellion from a wet fart. They were led here. So let them go home.”

  “My father might disagree.”

  I scoffed at that statement. “So why didn’t your father send a relief force?”

  “He’s ill,” Æthelstan said, and made the sign of the cross.

  I let Tintreg walk around an unburied corpse, one of Cynlæf’s house-warriors we had killed the previous day. Snow had settled on the body to make a soft shroud. “What’s wrong with the king?” I asked.

  “Tribulations,” Æthelstan said curtly.

  “And how do you cure that?”

  He rode in silence for a few paces. “No one knows what ails him,” he finally said, “he’s grown fat, and short of breath. But he has days when he seems to recover, thank God. He can still ride, he likes to hunt, he can still rule.”

  “The problem,” I said, “sounds like an old sword in a new scabbard.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It sounds as if his new bride is wearing him out.”

  Æthelstan bridled at that, but did not argue. Instead he looked up at the sky that had cleared overnight. A bright sun glinted from the snow. It would melt quickly, I thought, as quickly as the siege had ended. “I suppose he’s waiting for the weather to improve,” Æthelstan went on, “which means he might be coming soon. And he won’t be happy that the rebels are leaving unpunished.”

  “So punish their leaders,” I said. The leaders of the rebellion, at least in northern Mercia, had trapped themselves in the arena.

  “I intend to.”

  “Then your father will be happy,” I said, and urged Tintreg on to the arena entrance where Finan waited. “Any trouble?” I called out to him. Finan had relieved Berg in the middle of the night, taking fresh troops to guard the arena. Æthelstan had also sent a score of men, and, like Finan, they all looked cold and tired.

  Finan spat, evidently a gesture of scorn for the men trapped in the arena. “They made one feeble effort to get out. Didn’t even get past their own barricade. Now they want to surrender.”

  “On what terms?” Æthelstan asked. He had heard Finan, and had spurred his horse forward.

  “Exile,” Finan said laconically.

  “Exile?” Æthelstan asked sharply.

  Finan shrugged, knowing what Æthelstan’s answer would be. “They’re willing to surrender their lands and go into exile, lord Prince.”

  “Exile!” Æthelstan exclaimed. “Tell them my answer is no. They can surrender to my justice, or else they fight.”

  “Exile them to Northumbria,” I said mischievously. “We need warriors.” I meant we needed warriors to resist the inevitable invasion that would engulf Northumbria when the Mercian troubles were over.

  Æthelstan ignored me. “How are you talking to them?” he asked Finan. “Are you just shouting through the entrance?”

  “No, you can go inside, lord Prince,” Finan said, pointing to the closest staircase leading up to the tiered seating. It seemed that at first light Finan had ordered the barricade removed from that entrance and had led a score of men up to the arena’s seats from where they could look down on the trapped enemy.

  “How many are there?” Æthelstan asked.

  “I counted eighty-two, lord Prince,” Finan said, stepping forward to hold Æthelstan’s bridle. “There may be some we haven’t seen inside the building. And some of those we saw are servants, of course. Some women too.”

  “They’re all rebels,” Æthelstan snarled. He dismounted and strode toward the staircase, followed by his men.

  Finan looked up at me. “What does he want to do?”

  “Kill the lot.”

  “But he’s letting the Welsh live?”

  “One enemy at a time.”

  Finan turned to watch as Æthelstan and all his warriors filed into the nearest staircase. “He’s changed, hasn’t he?”

  “Changed?”

  “Become stern. He used to laugh a lot, remember?”

  “He was a boy then,” I said, “and I tried to teach him how to be a king.”

  “You taught him well, lord.”

  “Too well,” I said softly, because Æthelstan had come to resemble his grandfather, and Alfred had never been my friend. I thought of Æthelstan as a son. I had protected him through boyhood, I had trained him in the skills of a warrior, but he had hardened in the last few years, and now believed his destiny led to a throne despite all the obstacles that ambitious men would place in his way. And when he was king, I thought, he would lead swords and spears into Northumbria, he would be our conqueror, he would demand my homage, and he would require my obedience. “If I had any sense,” I said to Finan as I dismounted, “I would side with Cynlæf.”

  He laughed. “It’s not too late.”

  “Wyrd bið ful āræd,” I said, and that is true. Fate is inexorable. Destiny is all. We make oaths, we make choices, but fate makes our decisions.

  Æthelstan was my enemy, but I had sworn to protect him.

  So I told Finan that he should stay outside the arena, told him what he was to do there, then followed my enemy up the stairs.

  “You will throw down your weapons,” Æthelstan called to the men in the arena, “and you will kneel!” He had taken off his helmet so that the trapped men would have no trouble recognizing him. He usually wore his dark hair cropped very short, but it had grown du
ring the siege and the cold morning wind lifted it and swirled his dark blue cloak around his mailed figure. He stood in the center of a line of warriors, all implacable in mail and helmets, all with shields painted with Æthelstan’s symbol of a dragon holding a lightning bolt. Behind them, standing on one of the snow-covered stone tiers, Father Swithred was holding a wooden cross high above his head.

  “What is our fate?” a man called up from the arena floor.

  Æthelstan made no answer. He just stared at the man.

  A second man stepped forward and knelt. “What is our fate, lord Prince?” he asked.

  “My justice.” That answer was said in a voice as cold as the snow-shrouded corpses we had passed on our way to the arena.

  Silence. There had to be a hundred horses in the arena. A score of them had been saddled, perhaps readied for a desperate dash through the entrance tunnel, and in front of them, huddled like the horses, were Cynlæf’s men. I looked for Cynlæf himself and finally saw him at the back of the crowd, close to the saddled stallions. He was a tall, good-looking man. Æthelflaed had been fond of him and had chosen him as her daughter’s husband, but if there was such a place as the Christian heaven and she was looking down now she would approve of Æthelstan’s grim resolve to kill Cynlæf.

  “Your justice, lord Prince?” the kneeling man, who had the sense to use Æthelstan’s title, asked humbly.

  “Which is the same as my father’s justice,” Æthelstan said harshly.

  “Lord Prince,” I said softly. I was standing barely two paces behind him, but he ignored me. “Lord Prince,” I said again, louder.

  “Silence, Lord Uhtred,” Æthelstan said without turning. He also spoke softly, but with a trace of anger that I had dared to intervene.

  I wanted to tell him that he should offer mercy. Not to all of them, of course, and certainly not to Cynlæf. They were, after all, rebels, but tell close to a hundred men that they will face grim justice and you have close to a hundred desperate men who would rather fight than surrender. But if some thought they would live, then those men would subdue the others, and none of our men need die. Yet it seemed Æthelstan had no use for mercy. This was a rebellion, and rebellions destroy kingdoms, so rebellions must be utterly destroyed.

  Father Bledod had joined me and now tugged nervously at my mail sleeve. “Gruffudd’s son, Cadwallon, lord,” he said, “he’s the tall beardless boy. The one in the dun cloak.” He pointed.

  “Quiet!” Æthelstan growled.

  I took the Welsh priest away from Æthelstan, leading him around the lowest tier until we were out of earshot. “Half of them have dun cloaks,” I said.

  “The boy with reddish hair, lord.”

  He pointed, and I saw a tall young man with long dark red hair tied at the nape of his neck. He wore mail, but had no sword, suggesting that he was indeed a hostage, though any value he possessed as a hostage had long since vanished.

  Only one man in Cynlæf’s band had knelt, and he only because he had understood that Æthelstan would not talk unless he was shown respect. That man glanced around uncertainly and, seeing his companions still standing, began to rise.

  “I said kneel!” Æthelstan called sharply.

  The answer came from a tall man standing close to Cynlæf. He pushed men aside, bellowed a challenge, and hurled a spear at Æthelstan. It was a good throw. The spear flew straight and fast, but Æthelstan had time to judge its flight and he simply stepped one pace to his left and the spear crashed harmlessly into the stones at Father Swithred’s feet. And then Cynlæf and his immediate companions were hauling themselves into saddles. More spears were thrown, but now Æthelstan and his men were crouching behind their shields. I had brought just two men with me, Oswi and Folcbald, the first a Saxon, lithe and serpent-quick, the second a Frisian built like an ox. They put up their shields, and Father Bledod and I crouched with them. I heard a blade thump into a willow board, another spear flew over my head, then I peered between the shields to see Cynlæf and a dozen men spurring into the entrance tunnel. The makeshift barricade had been pulled aside, and the way out looked clear because I had told Finan to hide his men at either side of the outer entrance to let Cynlæf believe he had a way to escape.

  The rest of Cynlæf’s men started to follow their leader into the tunnel, but suddenly stopped, and I knew that Finan had made his shield wall across the arena’s entrance the moment he heard the commotion. It would be two shields high, bristling with spears, and no horse would charge it. Some of Cynlæf’s men were retreating back into the arena’s open space, where a few knelt in surrender while a handful of stubborn men threw their last spears at Æthelstan and his men. “Down!” Æthelstan shouted to his warriors, and he and his men jumped into the arena.

  “Fetch the Welshman,” I told Oswi and Folcbald, and they also leaped down. Folcbald landed awkwardly and limped as he followed Oswi. It was a good long way down, and I was content to stay high and watch the fight that promised to be as brief as it would be brutal. The floor of the arena had once been fine sand, now it was a slushy mix of sand, horse dung, mud, and snow, and I wondered how much blood had soaked it over the years. There was more blood now. Æthelstan’s sixty men had made a shield wall, two ranks deep, that advanced on the panicking rebels. Æthelstan himself, still without a helmet, was in the front rank that kicked the kneeling men out of their way, sparing their lives for the moment, then hammered into the panicked mass crowding at the entrance. Those rebels had no time to make a shield wall of their own and there are few slaughters as one-sided as a combat between a shield wall and a rabble. I saw the spears lunge forward, heard men screaming, saw men fall. There were women among the mob, and two of them were crouching by the wall, covering their heads with their arms. Another woman clutched a child to her breast. Riderless horses panicked and galloped into the arena’s empty space where Oswi was darting forward. He had thrown his shield aside and carried a drawn sword in his right hand. He used his left to snatch Cadwallon’s arm to tug him backward. A man tried to stop him, lunging a sword at Oswi’s belly, but there were few men as quick as Oswi. He let go of the Welshman, leaned to one side so that the sword slid a finger’s breadth from his waist, then struck up with his own sword. He hit the man’s wrist and sawed the blade back. The enemy’s sword dropped, Oswi stooped, picked up the fallen blade, and held it to Cadwallon, then lunged his own sword to tear open his opponent’s cheek. That man reeled away, hand half severed and face pulsing blood as Oswi again tugged Cadwallon backward. Folcbald was with them now, his huge size and the threat of his heavy war ax sufficient to deter any other foe.

  That enemy was beaten. They were being driven back out of the entrance tunnel, which meant Finan and his men were advancing. More and more of Cynlæf’s men were kneeling, or else being kicked aside and told to wait, weaponless, in the arena’s center. There were enough corpses heaped on the arena floor to check Æthelstan’s advance, and his shield wall had stopped by the tangled bodies, and one of the horsemen, coming from the entrance, turned his stallion and spurred it at Æthelstan himself. The horse stumbled on a body, slewed sideways, and the rider struck down with a long-handled ax that crashed onto a shield, then two spears were savaged into the stallion’s chest and the beast screamed, reared, and the rider fell backward to be slaughtered by swords and spears. The horse fell and went on screaming, hooves thrashing until a man stepped forward and silenced it with a quick ax blow to the head.

  “You must be happy, father,” I said to the priest, Bledod, who had stayed with me.

  “That Cadwallon is safe, lord? Yes.”

  “No, that Saxons are killing Saxons.”

  He looked at me in surprise, then gave a sly grin. “I’m grateful for that too, lord,” he said.

  “The first man I killed in battle was a Welshman,” I told him, taking the grin off his face. “And the second. And the third. And the fourth.”

  “Yet you’ve killed more Saxons than Welshmen, lord,” he said, “or so I hear?”

  “
You hear right.” I sat on the stone seats. Cadwallon, safe with Oswi and Folcbald, was beneath us, sheltering beside the arena’s inner wall, while Cynlæf’s men were surrendering meekly, letting Æthelstan’s warriors take their weapons. Cynlæf himself was still mounted and still carrying a sword and shield. His horse stood in the entrance, trapped between Finan’s shield wall and Æthelstan’s men. The sun broke through the leaden clouds, casting a long shadow on the bloodied ground. “I’m told Christians died here,” I said to Bledod.

  “Killed by the Romans, lord?”

  “That’s what I was told.”

  “But in the end the Romans became Christians, lord, God be thanked.”

  I grunted at that. I was trying to imagine the arena as it had been before Ceaster’s masons broke down the high stone seating for useful building blocks. The upper rim of the arena was jagged, like a mountain range. “We destroy, don’t we?” I said.

  “Destroy, lord?” Bledod asked nervously.

  “I burned half this city once,” I said. I remembered the flames leaping from roof to roof, the smoke thick. To this day the masonry walls of the streets were streaked with black. “Imagine what this city was like when the Romans were here.”

  Father Bledod said nothing. He was watching Cynlæf, who had been driven to the arena’s center, where he was now surrounded by a ring of spearmen, some of them Finan’s men and some Æthelstan’s. He turned his horse as if seeking a way out. The horse’s rump showed a brand, a C and an H. Cynlæf Haraldson.

  “White-walled buildings,” I said, “with red roofs. Statues and marble. I wish I could have seen it.”

  “Rome must have been a wonder too,” Bledod said.

  “I hear it’s in ruins now.”

  “Everything passes, lord.”

  Cynlæf spurred his horse toward one side of the ring, but the long spears came up, the shields clashed as they were braced together, and Cynlæf swerved away. He carried a drawn sword. The scabbard at his left hip was bound in red leather and studded with small gold plaques. The scabbard and sword had been a gift from Æthelflaed, last ruler of independent Mercia, and soon, I thought, they would belong to Æthelstan, who would doubtless give them to the church.