War of the Wolf

by Bernard Cornwell

  It was the girl, of course. Her name was Wynflæd, she might have been thirteen or fourteen. She was a Saxon slave, and as skinny as a peeled willow wand. She had large and timid eyes, a pointed nose, reddish hair, and prominent upper teeth. She looked like a half-starved squirrel, and Brother Beadwulf was in love with her. He had taken an oath of celibacy, which is one of the more stupid things that Christians demand of their monks, but squirrel-faced Wynflæd had proven far stronger than Beadwulf’s solemn promises to his nailed god. “I married her, lord,” he confessed as he crouched at my feet.

  “So you’re no longer a monk?”

  “I’m not, lord.”

  “But you’re dressed as a monk,” I said, nodding at his scorched habit with its grubby black cowl and rope belt.

  He shivered, whether out of fear or cold I could not tell. Probably both. “I have no other clothes, lord.”

  The squirrel crept out of the hut’s ruins to kneel beside her lover. She lowered her head, then put out a small pale hand and Beadwulf took it. Both of them were shaking in fear. “Look at me, girl,” I ordered her, and the timid eyes, pale blue, gazed at me fearfully. “You’re Saxon?” I asked.

  “Mercian, lord.” Her voice was scarce above a whisper.

  “A slave?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  She had been scaring birds away from a newly sown field when the Norse raiders had found her. She said it had happened a year before. I asked where she came from, and she seemed confused by the question. “Home, lord,” was all she could say. She started crying, and Beadwulf put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Give me one good reason,” I said to him, “why I should not take your head from your shoulders.”

  “They were going to kill her, lord,” Beadwulf said.

  “Wynflæd?”

  “Arnborg said he would kill her if I didn’t do what he wanted.” He lowered his head and waited. I said nothing. “They said they would drown her, lord,” Beadwulf muttered, “just as they drowned Brother Edwin.”

  “He was the other missionary?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “You say they drowned him?”

  “You can see him, lord,” Beadwulf said with a sudden pleading energy. He pointed northward. “He’s still there, lord!”

  “Where?”

  “Out there, lord.”

  He had pointed toward a smaller gate that led, I assumed, to the long wharf where the ships were moored. I was curious. “Show me,” I said.

  Berg pushed the gate open and we went onto the timber wharf. The tide was low and the three ships were canted on the mud, their mooring lines slack. “There, lord,” Beadwulf said, and pointed across the nearest ship’s deck, and I saw a thick stake had been driven into the mudbank on the creek’s further side. A skeleton hung there, held in place by twisted ropes. The skull had fallen off, the ribs were mangled, and the flesh had long been torn away by beaks.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Jarl Arnborg tied him there at low tide, lord.”

  “Why?”

  “The jarl said we had no need to pay tribute to Mercia, lord, and he had no need of driveling missionaries. That’s what he said, lord.”

  That made some sense. The Mercian rebellion would have persuaded Arnborg that the Saxons were weakened and he must have reckoned he no longer needed to pay tribute, nor keep Christian missionaries, and so Brother Edwin had been lashed to the stake, and I imagined the strong tide swirling up the creek, flooding the mudbank, and rising slowly for the amusement of the watching Norse. The monk would have cried out, praying to either his god or the Norse to spare him, to save him. And still that great tide rose, and he would have strained upward, gasping for every last breath, and in his ears would have been the laughter of his enemies. “Why didn’t Jarl Arnborg kill you too?” I asked Beadwulf.

  He gave me no answer so I seized his robe and pushed him to the wharf’s edge where I made him gaze down into the rippled water that just covered the creek’s muddy bed. “Why,” I snarled, “did Jarl Arnborg not kill you too?”

  He made a sound, half whimper, half moan, and I nudged him as though I was about to let him fall. “Tell me,” I said.

  “He thought I could be useful, lord,” he whispered.

  “By telling me lies.”

  “Yes, lord,” he said. “I’m sorry, lord. Please, lord.”

  I held him above the shallow water for a few heartbeats, then pulled him back. “Why?” I asked. He was shaking so much that he seemed incapable of answering, and so I threw him hard against the palisade that edged the landward side of the wharf. He slid down to the planks. Wynflæd started toward him, then stopped when I drew Serpent-Breath.

  “No!” she cried aloud.

  I ignored her. Instead I pushed the sword’s tip against Beadwulf’s throat. “Why,” I asked, “did Arnborg want me at Ceaster?”

  “So you would not be at Jorvik, lord.”

  He had spoken so softly that I thought I had misheard. “So I would not be where?” I demanded.

  “At Jorvik, lord. Eoferwic.”

  Jorvik? That was the name that the Danes and Norse used for Eoferwic. I stared at Beadwulf, puzzled. “Why would I be at Eoferwic?” I asked, more to myself than to the miserable excuse of a man who groveled at my feet.

  “You were there at Christmas, lord,” he answered, “and it’s known that you’re . . .” his voice dribbled away to silence.

  “What is known?” I asked, lifting the sword-blade to touch the stubble on his chin.

  “That you are often at Jorvik, lord.”

  “Where my son-in-law rules and where my daughter lives,” I said, “so of course I visit Eoferwic.” And suddenly I understood. Maybe the cold had dulled my wits, because I had been gaping at Beadwulf like an idiot, his answers making no sense. But now it all made sense, too much sense. “Are you telling me,” I asked him, “that Sköll has gone to Jorvik?”

  “Yes, lord,” his voice was so faint I could scarcely hear him.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Finan said.

  “Lord, please?” Wynflæd was crying.

  “Quiet, girl!” I snapped. I pulled the sword back. “How many men does he lead?”

  “Jarl Arnborg took sixty-three, lord.”

  “Not Arnborg. You fool! Sköll!”

  “I don’t know, lord,” Beadwulf said.

  I rammed the sword forward, checking it as the tip pressed on his throat. “How many men did Sköll lead to Jorvik?” I asked. Beadwulf had pissed himself, and a yellow stain showed on the frost-covered planks of the wharf. “How many?” I asked again, keeping the blade at his gullet.

  “They all went, lord!” Beadwulf said, gesturing across the cold estuary.

  “All?”

  “The Norse, the Danes, all of them, lord.” He gestured northward again. “All, lord! From here to the Hedene!”

  The land north of the Ribbel was called Cumbraland, a wild land. It was supposedly a part of Northumbria, but Æthelstan had been right when he claimed that Cumbraland was lawless. Sigtryggr claimed it, but he did not control it. Cumbraland was a savage region of mountains and lakes where the strongest ruled and the weakest were enslaved. The River Hedene was the frontier with Scottish land, and between that border and the Ribbel were scores of Danish and Norse settlements. “How many rode to Eoferwic?” I asked.

  “Hundreds, lord!”

  “How many hundreds?”

  “Three? Four?” It was plain Beadwulf did not know. “They all rode, lord, all of them! They believed no one would be ready for an assault in the winter.”

  And that was true, I thought. The fighting season began in the spring, because the winter was when folk crouched by the fire and endured the cold. “So why,” I asked, “has Sköll gone to Eoferwic?” I knew the answer, but wanted Beadwulf to confirm it.

  Beadwulf crossed himself, plainly terrified. “He would be King of Northumbria, lord.” He dared look up at me, desperation on his face. “And he is terrible, lord!”
<
br />   “Terrible?”

  “Lord, he has a powerful sorcerer, and Sköll is an úlfheðinn.”

  Until that moment the curse had been a vague fear, as formless as the serpent-breath whorls on my sword’s blade, but now the fear congealed into something as hard, cold, and terrifying as the blade itself.

  Because my enemy was a wolf-warrior, and he would be King of all Northumbria.

  I was cursed.

  Eerika, Arnborg’s wife, was laughing at us. “Sköll’s men are the úlfhéðnar,” she said, “and they will slaughter you. You are sheep, they are wolves. Your blood will soak the hillsides, your skin will make saddles, your flesh will feed pigs! They are the úlfhéðnar! You hear me, Saxon? They are the úlfhéðnar!”

  We had gone to Arnborg’s hall, where a dozen of my men raked through the bedding and the wooden chests in search of plunder. I had taken nothing but food and ale from Hallbjorn’s steading, and even that I had paid for with hacksilver, but Eerika was determined to defy me, insult me, and frighten me, so I allowed my men to ransack her goods. I let her rant for the moment, stooping instead to one of the hearthstones and picking up an oatcake. I took a bite. “Good!” I said.

  “May it choke you,” Eerika snarled.

  “Lord! Look!” Rorik, my servant, had dragged down the flag from above the gate. It was a pale gray banner on which was embroidered a black ax. He spread it wide and I saw that it was a careful piece of work, lovingly sewn through the long winter evenings, a fine flag edged with a border of black linen. “Shall I burn it, lord?”

  “No! Keep it!”

  “Take one thing from me,” Eerika spat, “and your death will be slow. Your screams will echo in the underworld, your soul will go to the death-worm and writhe in timeless agony.”

  I took another bite from the oatcake. “Your husband is úlfheðinn?” I asked.

  “He is a wolf-warrior, Saxon. He feeds on Saxon livers.”

  “And was thrown out of Ireland,” I sneered. “Finan!”

  “Lord?”

  I smiled at Eerika. “Finan is from Ireland,” I told her, then turned to him. “Tell me, Finan, what do the Irish do to the úlfhéðnar?”

  He smiled too. “We kill them, lord, but only after we’ve blocked our ears with wool.”

  “And why do you do that?” I asked, still looking at Eerika.

  “Because their screams are like the crying of babies,” Finan said.

  “And no one likes that sound.”

  “So we dull our ears, lord,” Finan went on, “and when the baby úlfhéðnar are all dead we enslave their women.”

  “What do you think of this one?” I asked, gesturing with the oatcake toward Eerika. “Too old for slavery?”

  “She can cook,” he said grudgingly.

  Eerika turned on him. “May you die like a rat,” she began, then stopped suddenly because I had rammed the rest of the oatcake onto her mouth.

  I held it there, crumbling it against her stubbornly closed lips. “There is a slave market two days south of here,” I told her, “and if I hear one more word from you I shall carry you there and sell you to some hungry Mercian. And it will not be your food he hungers for. So be quiet, woman.”

  She stayed quiet. In truth I rather admired her. She was a proud woman, her eyes were full of defiance, and she had the courage to confront us, but I had seen that her words were scaring some of my men. “Berg!” I shouted.

  “Lord?” Berg was on one of the high sleeping platforms, searching through piles of fleeces.

  “You told me once your brother is an úlfheðinn?”

  “Both my brothers, lord.” Berg was a Norseman, one of the many who followed me. I had saved him from execution on a Welsh beach, and he had been loyal to me ever since. “I have been an úlfheðinn too, lord,” Berg said proudly. He touched a finger to his cheek where he had inked a wolf’s head. That wolf mask was my symbol, painted on my men’s shields, though the inked heads on Berg’s cheeks looked more like a pair of half-decayed pigs.

  “So tell us,” I said, “what an úlfheðinn is.”

  “A wolf-warrior, lord!”

  “We’re all wolf-warriors,” I said. “We carry the wolf head on our shields!”

  “A wolf-warrior, lord, is given the spirit of the wolf before battle.”

  “He becomes a wolf?”

  “Yes, lord! A wolf-warrior fights with the savagery of a wolf because he becomes a wolf in his spirit. He howls like a wolf, runs like a wolf, and kills like a wolf.”

  “But we men kill wolves,” I said. I could see my Saxons, the few in the hall, were listening carefully.

  “We don’t kill Fenrir, lord,” Berg said, “and Fenrir is the wolf who will slaughter Odin in the final chaos of Ragnarok.”

  I saw Eadric cross himself. “So the wolf-warrior,” I asked, “is given the spirit of a great wolf?”

  “The greatest wolf, lord! Which means that an úlfheðinn fights with the anger of the gods in his heart!”

  “So how do we, mere men, defeat the úlfhéðnar?” I asked, hoping that Berg would be clever enough to understand why I was asking him these questions.

  He was. He laughed and tossed a wolf pelt down from the platform. “We become úlfhéðnar ourselves, lord! And you have already killed the úlfhéðnar in battle after battle! You are a wolf-warrior, lord, maybe the greatest of all the wolf-warriors, and we are your pack.”

  I had killed úlfhéðnar. They were men who often howled like wolves, while other warriors called out insults. They liked to wear wolf skins. They fought like madmen, but madmen do not fight well. They have savagery and seem careless of danger, but the skill of war starts with the hours and days and weeks and months and years of practice; it is sword-skill, shield-craft, and spear-skill, the endless learning of the crafts of slaughter. I have seen enemies screaming like wild beasts, spitting as they charge with glazed eyes, but they died like other men, and they were often the first to die, yet still the úlfhéðnar scared many warriors. Some men claimed that the úlfhéðnar fought drunk, but so did other warriors, while Ragnar, who had adopted me, said that the wolf-warriors drank the piss of horses that had been fed the mushrooms that give a man strange dreams, and maybe he was right. Berg, sensibly, had mentioned none of that. Ragnar had feared the úlfhéðnar, saying they were stronger, quicker, and more savage than other fighters, and even the Christians, who claimed they did not believe in Odin or Fenrir or Ragnarok, were frightened by the madness of the úlfhéðnar.

  “But we are better than the úlfhéðnar,” I insisted. “We are the wolves of Bebbanburg, and the úlfhéðnar fear us! You hear me?” I called out to the whole hall. “They fear us! Why else send the monk to lie to us? The úlfhéðnar fear us!”

  We had been lured across Britain. There was a compliment in that, though I was in no mood to appreciate it. Sköll Grimmarson had led an army east to Eoferwic, and the only reason for that journey was to take the throne of Northumbria from Sigtryggr, my son-in-law, and Sköll had taken care to make certain I was nowhere near that throne. Evidently the úlfhéðnar feared the wolves of Bebbanburg.

  And, despite all I had tried to tell my men, I feared the úlfhéðnar.

  And now we must ride east to meet them.

  Beadwulf and his squirrel rode with us. I had thought to kill him in revenge for his treachery, but the squirrel had pleaded with me, and Beadwulf, on his knees, had promised to show me a great treasure if I spared him. “What’s to stop me killing you after I take the treasure?” I had asked him.

  “Nothing, lord,” he had said.

  “So show me.”

  He had led me to what I had thought was a small granary, a wooden hut raised on four stone pillars that were meant to keep rodents from entering. Beadwulf unbolted the door and climbed inside. I had followed to see dim shelves on which were stored pots, each about the size of a man’s head. He took one down, placed it on a table, and used a small knife to cut through the wax that sealed the wooden lid. “This is the only one left, lord,
” he had said as he pulled the lid free and handed me the pot.

  The pot held the chopped roots of some plant mixed with a host of small brown seeds. I had looked at Beadwulf in the hut’s gloom. “Seeds and roots?”

  “It’s the secret of the úlfhéðnar, lord,” he had said.

  I took out a handful and sniffed. It stank. “What are they?”

  “Henbane, lord.”

  I had let the seeds and roots fall back. Henbane was a weed, and we feared it because it could poison pigs, and pigs were valuable. “The úlfhéðnar eat this?” I had asked, dubiously.

  Beadwulf shook his head. “I pound the mixture, lord,” he showed me a pestle and mortar on the shelf, “then make an ointment of wool grease and the crushed plant.”

  “And Arnborg trusted you?”

  “I was a herbalist in the monastery, lord. I know things that Arnborg’s folk never discovered. When his wife was sick I cured her with celandine. You use the roots and you must say the Pater Noster ten times as you mix—”

  “I don’t care about celandine,” I had snarled, “tell me about the henbane.”

  “I made the ointment for Jarl Arnborg, lord, and it was better than the paste Snorri made.”

  “Snorri?”

  “Sköll’s sorcerer, lord. He is a powerful sorcerer, lord,” Beadwulf had made the sign of the cross when he said that, “but he used the leaves and petals of the plant to make his ointment. The seeds and roots have more power.”

  “So you make an ointment?”

  “And the warriors smear it on their skin, lord.”

  “And what does that do?”

  “The men think they can fly, lord. They stagger, they howl. Sometimes they just fall asleep, but in battle it turns them into madmen.”

  I sniffed the pot again and almost retched. “Have you tried it?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “And?”