War of the Wolf

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Edward?”

  “Sigtryggr. He won’t go.”

  “But if he does, lord, will you speak to Wynflæd?” She hesitated. “Please, lord, for me?”

  “For you, Mus,” I growled, “yes. But I’m still leaving for Eoferwic in two days.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Sigtryggr won’t submit to Edward.”

  And at nightfall a messenger came to the hall from Æthelstan in Ceaster.

  The message merely confirmed that Æthelstan was attending the Witan in Tamweorthin, and that, by the grace of God, King Sigtryggr of Northumbria had accepted King Edward’s summons to attend. The message requested that the priests, monks, nuns, and laity of Mameceaster pray for the success of the Witan’s deliberations.

  So Sigtryggr was ready to grovel, and I had to talk to the squirrel.

  There are two ways to hang a man, a quick way and a slow way, the first gives a merciful death, and the second provokes a dance of agony.

  On the morning after our arrival, Osferth gave judgment in Mameceaster’s great hall, a gaunt and dark building of oak and thatch built on a Roman floor of stone. There were few prisoners, most of whom were accused of thievery, and those were condemned to a whipping in the square that stood between the hall and the new church. Father Oda promised to pray for each man, though much good that does when the lash is ripping the flesh off the bones.

  The last prisoners were the cattle-raiders, six of them, including Hergild, who proved to be a burly, red-faced man of middle age. They were accused of thievery and rape, they were asked if they denied the accusations, and the only response was from one man who spat on the floor. Father Oda served as translator, and, when Osferth pronounced all six guilty, the priest offered them a chance to be baptized, an offer they did not understand. “You will be washed,” the Danish priest said, “and go before the judgment seat of Almighty God.”

  “You mean Thor?” Hergild asked.

  Another man wanted to know whether being judged by the Christian god meant they would live. “Of course not,” the priest said, “you must die first.”

  “And you want to wash us?”

  “In the river,” the priest said.

  I had insisted that Wynflæd, the squirrel, watch the trial, all two or three minutes of it. She was shivering. I crouched beside her. “Did they all rape you?”

  “All except that one, lord.” She pointed a wavering finger at the youngest of the six men. I guessed he was about sixteen or seventeen, a broad-shouldered, straw-haired boy, who, like Wynflæd, looked close to tears.

  “He didn’t touch you?”

  “He was kind.”

  “He tried to stop the rape?”

  She shook her head. “But he gave me a coat afterward and said he was sorry and gave me something to drink.”

  Osferth was impatient. “Do they wish to convert?” he demanded of the priest.

  “They do not, lord,” Oda said severely.

  “Then take them away. Hang them.”

  I stood. “Lord!” It seemed strange to call Osferth lord, even though he was the son of a king, but as the commander of the burh he deserved the title. “I have a favor to ask.”

  Osferth had also stood, but now paused, one hand on the arm of the chair he had been using. “Lord Uhtred?” He sounded suspicious.

  “These men are Northumbrians. And I ask that they be put to death by Northumbrians.”

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “My men need the practice,” I said, which was entirely untrue.

  “How?” Osferth asked.

  “Just as you decreed,” I said, “by hanging.” I saw him hesitate. “You can send men to make sure we hang them all.” I could see he was fearful that I would release them. “And their crime,” I added, “was committed against a Northumbrian,” I put my arm around the squirrel’s thin shoulders. As far as I knew she was Mercian, but I doubted Osferth knew or cared where the squirrel came from. “So it is only fit,” I finished, “to allow Northumbrians to punish Northumbrians for a crime committed in Northumbria.”

  “This is Mercia,” he said stiffly, “and they must suffer Mercian justice.”

  “The rope will be Mercian,” I promised, “and I ask you the favor of knotting it around their necks.”

  I had stressed the word “favor.” Osferth might disapprove of me, but he knew full well that I had nurtured and protected him when he was younger. He paused, then nodded. “Hang them by midday, Lord Uhtred,” he said, and, accompanied by two other priests who served as his clerks, he strode away, pausing at the door to point to Father Oda.

  “Father! Go with Lord Uhtred. Bring me news of their deaths.”

  “I shall, lord.” Father Oda bowed.

  “You’re also coming, girl,” I told Wynflæd.

  “Lord—” she began to protest.

  “You’re coming!”

  Bettic the steward found me a half-dozen ropes made of twisted leather, we borrowed a dozen horses, then took the prisoners to their death. The six men already had their hands bound, and we just had to walk them out of the southern gate and through the shallow ford of the Mædlak. On the far bank there were some small houses, a barn, and a cattle shed, and beyond that were oak trees. I had put Wynflæd on a docile mare, which scared her anyway, and I led her by the bridle. “There are two ways,” I told her, “to hang a man. A quick way and a slow way.” She looked at me with wide eyes and was too scared to say anything.

  “The quick way,” I went on, “is the merciful way. They’re dead before they know it.” She was clutching the saddle’s pommel with both hands. “Have you ever ridden a horse before?” I asked her.

  “Only when we traveled with you,” she said in a voice so frightened I could hardly hear her.

  “This mare won’t throw you,” I said. “Relax, push your feet down. Now, as I was saying, there’s a quick way and a slow way. To kill a man the quick way you have to find a long branch that’s about two spears’ length above the ground. Are you listening?”

  “I am, lord.”

  “It has to be a long branch because you need to pull the end of the branch down. You loop a rope over the end and you haul it down till it’s only a spear’s length above the ground. What did I just say?”

  “Haul the branch down until it’s only a spear’s length away, lord.”

  “Good girl. Now, once you’ve hauled it down you hold it down, then you tie another rope around the same branch and you tie the other end of that new rope around the prisoner’s neck. It seems to work best if you have the knot under one of his ears. Do you understand me?”

  “I do, lord.” She was trying to push her feet down to reach the stirrups. Father Oda, riding behind us, was leaning forward to listen.

  “So you have the branch bent down close to the ground,” I went on, “and the man is tied by the neck to the same branch, and all you do is let go of the first rope. What do you think happens?”

  She frowned at me, thinking. “The branch goes up, lord?”

  “It flies up!” I said. “It springs up! Like the horn of a bow when you loose the string. And it breaks the bastard’s neck, just like that!” I snapped the fingers of my right hand, causing my horse to flick his ears back. “Sometimes,” I went on, “it rips the man’s head clean off!”

  The squirrel flinched, but she was listening.

  “So the quick way is merciful, I said, “and usually messy. Then there’s the slow way. That’s much simpler and much more painful. You simply throw a rope over any branch that’s high enough, tie one end around the prisoner’s neck, and haul him up! He chokes to death. It takes a long time! He’ll piss himself while he’s dying, and his legs will jerk, and you hear him struggling for breath. Have you ever seen a man hanged?”

  She shook her head. “No, lord.”

  “Now,” I went on, “I have a decision to make.” I nodded at the six prisoners who were trudging ahead of us. “Do I hang them quickly? Or slowly?” I looked at her expectantly, but she just gaze
d back wide-eyed. “What do you think we should do?” I asked.

  For a moment I thought she would not answer. She was looking at the prisoners, then suddenly turned back to me. “The slow way, lord.”

  “Good girl.”

  “But not him,” she pointed at the youngest man.

  “Not him,” I agreed, then turned in the saddle. “Do you agree, Father Oda?”

  “They are pagans, why should I care how they die? Kill them how you please, lord.”

  “It’s not what pleases me,” I said, “it’s what Wynflæd wants.” I looked back to her. “You’re sure now? The slow way?”

  “The very slow way,” she said vengefully.

  And revenge is sweet. The Christians preach some utter nonsense about revenge. I have heard their priests solemnly advise folk to meekly accept a beating, to even offer the other cheek so the beating can continue, but that is merely to grovel. Why would I grovel to Sköll? I wanted revenge, and only revenge would satisfy Stiorra’s spirit. Revenge is justice, and I gave Wynflæd justice.

  Most of the men who had raped her were already dead, left to rot in whatever place Osferth’s men had found them, and now the others died before her eyes. I stripped them naked, then made her watch as they danced on the ropes and pissed themselves and as their bowels loosened and as they choked, and by the time the second one died she was smiling, and the last noise the fifth one heard was her laughter. Good little squirrel.

  That left the youngest. I waited till the last of the five was dead, then put a rope around the boy’s neck. He was shivering, despite still being clothed. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Immar Hergildson.”

  “You just watched your father die.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “You know why he died?”

  Immar glanced at Wynflæd. “Because of her, lord.”

  “You didn’t protest when they raped her.”

  “I wanted to, lord, but my father . . .” He started to cry.

  I hauled on the rope, making Wynflæd gasp. I hauled again, pulling Immar Hergildson a fingernail’s breadth above the leaf mold. “Can you wield a sword, Immar?”

  “Yes, lord,” he choked.

  “Father Oda!” I called.

  “Lord?” the Danish priest seemed unmoved by anything he had seen beneath the oak trees.

  “How many men have you seen hanged here today?”

  “Six,” he said calmly.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Lord Osferth will ask if I saw six men hanged. I shall say yes, but if you want that one to live,” he nodded at Immar, “I should let his feet touch the ground, lord.”

  I dropped Immar to the ground and untied the rope from his neck. Father Oda deliberately looked away, and so far as I know he never did tell anyone that I had spared the boy’s life. Not, I think, that Oda the Dane cared. In time he became a bishop, and long before that he had gained the reputation of being a stern and unbending leader of the church, but on that day in Mameceaster he let me use mercy.

  “You are now one of my men,” I told Immar, and we made him kneel, made him put his hands over mine that were clasped about Serpent-Breath’s hilt, and then, still gasping for breath, he swore he would be my man to death.

  “I talked to Wynflæd,” I told Mus that night.

  “I know,” she said, “thank you.”

  And later we fell asleep.

  Seven

  Osferth was not invited to Tamweorthin. “King Edward,” he had told me stiffly, “would prefer I did not attend.”

  “Or even exist?”

  “That too,” he admitted with a tight smile.

  “Look after Mus,” I told him the night before we left Mameceaster.

  “Mus?”

  “Sunngifu.”

  He grimaced. “She’s a capable woman,” he said distantly.

  “And looking for a husband, I think.”

  That got no reaction except from Mus, who laughed when I told her. “Oh, I couldn’t marry Lord Osferth,” she said, “it would be like marrying a priest!”

  “You were married to a priest,” I reminded her.

  “But Leofstan was a gentle and kind man. Lord Osferth is troubled. He doesn’t think God loves him, poor man.” Mus, I thought, was a gentle and kind woman. I gave her the last two of my gold coins.

  “You can ride with us,” I suggested.

  “To where? Bebbanburg? I don’t think your wife would approve.”

  “She wouldn’t,” I agreed.

  “I’m happy here,” she said, sounding anything but happy, “and I’ll find a husband.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  She stood on tiptoe to kiss me. “Kill Sköll, lord.”

  “I shall.”

  “I know.”

  Mus did not come with us, but Brother Beadwulf and Wynflæd rode with the boys and servants who led our spare horses and who herded the pack animals with their burdens of spears and shields. Wynflæd had gone on her knees to me, begging that she and her husband serve me. “I don’t want to stay here, lord,” she said, meaning Mameceaster.

  “Too many sad memories?” I asked her.

  “Yes, lord,” she said, and so I agreed.

  We left by the southern gate, and once across the river we passed the five bodies still hanging from the branches of a spreading oak. Their eyes were gone, their skin was blackening, and ravens had ripped the flesh down to bone. Immar Hergildson, equipped now with a mail coat, an old helmet, and a sword, forced himself to look at his father. “You have no father now,” I told him. “This is your family,” I gestured toward my men, “and when we have time,” I went on, “we must let your mother know you’re alive.”

  “Thank you, lord,” he said, and I reflected that the valley of the three brothers had lost all three of them.

  Then I forgot the dead brothers as we rode south through fields showing the first signs of the new year’s crops, beside pastures where fresh-born lambs bleated, and by woods hazed with new leaves. A fat land, I thought, which is why men fought for it. The Romans had captured it, then we Saxons took it, and after us came the Danes, and now the Norse were strengthening their hold on the wilder lands of Cumbraland and casting greedy eyes on these plump fields. I touched Serpent-Breath’s hilt. “They’ll always need us,” I said to Finan.

  “They?”

  “Whoever needs a sword.”

  He chuckled. “Who are we fighting for these days?”

  “Sigtryggr, of course.”

  “And he’s making peace.”

  I shrugged. “We’ll find out,” I said. At the Mercian town of Tamweorthin.

  That the Easter meeting of the Witan was to be held at Tamweorthin was proof that the rebellion in Mercia was over. Osferth, before I left, had told me that every ealdorman, every bishop, and a good number of abbots had been summoned, and Edward, before issuing the invitations, must have been certain that the Mercian roads were safe for travel. And this meeting of the Witan was notable because it was the first where men from Wessex, Mercia, and East Anglia were to be brought together to hear the king’s decrees, to make laws, and to seal Edward’s claim that he was Anglorum Saxonum Rex. The only Angles or Saxons who were not part of Edward’s kingdom were those who lived in Northumbria, and that, I reckoned, was why Sigtryggr had been summoned. He was to submit to Edward’s authority, or at least I assumed that was why Edward had demanded his presence.

  We did not ride all the way to Tamweorthin. If Osferth was right, and I was sure he was, then the burh would be crammed with ealdormen and churchmen, all with their retinues, and every tavern, barn, store, and house would be full. There would be tents in the fields, there would be fights in the streets, there would be stale bread, sour ale, and vomit, so we found a steading a half-day’s ride north of the burh where my men could stay. I paid hacksilver for their keep, then rode south with just Finan, Rorik, and Berg for company. Finan looked alarmed at such a small group. “That bastard Æthelhelm will be there,” he warned me.r />
  “So will Sigtryggr,” I said, “and he’ll have men. Besides, we’re not invited, so turning up with a war-band will look like a threat.”

  It was still two days before Easter, but already the pastures outside the burh were thick with tents. Wagons loaded with barrels of salted fish and smoked meat were lumbering toward the gates, other wagons were heaped with barrels of ale or wine. “If we’re not invited,” Finan asked, “why are we here?”

  “Because Sigtryggr would want us here, and because Æthelstan asked me to come. I doubt Edward even knows I’m here.”

  He laughed. “Which means they won’t be happy to see us.”

  Nor were they. The guards at the burh’s northern gate let us through without a challenge, despite the hammer hanging from my neck, but when I found the steward in the gatehouse of the palace the welcome turned sour. He was a bald, middle-aged man with a red face and gray mustache, helped by three clerks who sat at a table heaped with lists. “Who are you, lord?” he asked. The “lord” was grudging, provoked by the gold chain around my neck. He saw the hammer too and grimaced.

  “Ealdorman Uhtred,” I said, “of Bebbanburg.”

  That, at least, drew a satisfying reaction. He stiffened, looked frightened, then flapped a hand at the clerks. “Find Lord Uhtred,” he said, then bowed to me, “a moment, lord.”

  Two of the three clerks were priests, which was to be expected. King Alfred had started schools throughout Wessex and encouraged them in Mercia, hoping that folk would learn to read and write. Some had, but almost all the literate men became priests, and so they were the men who codified the laws, copied the charters, wrote the king’s letters, and drew up the countless lists of royal property.

  The youngest priest, a scrawny boy with a boil on his cheek and a dirty mark on his forehead, cleared his throat. “There’s no Lord Uhtred on the lists,” he said, frightened out of his wits. He held up a sheaf of papers with a quivering hand. “I know,” he said weakly, “because I copied all the lists, and there’s no . . .” his voice faded away.