War of the Wolf

by Bernard Cornwell

  I might not trust Edward, but I trusted Æthelstan. He was like his grandfather, King Alfred, a man of his word. If he said he would not fight against me, he would not. “Do we tell anyone of this pact?” I had asked.

  “I think it best if we keep it between ourselves, lord,” he had said, “and perhaps our closest advisers.” He had hesitated. “Can I ask what Eadgifu wanted of you?”

  “My support.”

  He had shuddered. “She’s ambitious,” he made it sound unpleasant, “and of course she has the king’s ear.”

  “More than his ear.”

  “And you told her what, lord?”

  “I told her nothing. I just looked at her tits and listened to her.”

  He had grimaced at that. “Nothing?”

  “She was too clever to ask me for anything because she knew what I’d say. That whole conversation was merely a show to convince Æthelhelm that I was her ally.”

  “She’s a clever woman,” he said quietly.

  “But her eldest son is too young to become king,” I said.

  “But half the West Saxons claim I’m a bastard,” he said, “and the other half knows that Ælfweard is unfit to be a ruler, so perhaps her infant son would be a safer choice.” He glanced at the wooden cross. “Maybe he’s the right choice?”

  “He’s too young. Besides, you’re the eldest son. The throne should be yours.”

  He nodded. “I feel unworthy,” he said softly, “but my prayers have convinced me that I would be a better king than Ælfweard.” He made the sign of the cross. “May God forgive my pride in saying that.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” I said harshly.

  “Ælfweard must not inherit the throne,” he said, still speaking softly. “He is rotten with corruption!”

  “Men say that of me too, lord Prince,” I said, “they call me priest-killer, pagan, and worse, but you still want my oath.”

  He had been silent for a moment, with his eyes lowered and his hands clasped almost as if in prayer, then he had looked at me. “I trust you, lord. The Lady Æthelflaed, before she died, told me to trust you, to put my faith in you as she had done. So yes, lord, if I am to fulfill my God’s commands then I want your oath, and you may swear it on any god you please.”

  So I gave it to him. I knelt, took the oath, and he knelt and gave me his oath, and I thought that by giving him a promise and in turn receiving his promise that we had shaped the future together. And though it is true that we have both kept the promises we made that night, the future still made itself. Wyrd bið ful āræd.

  “What I don’t understand,” Sigtryggr asked as we rode home, “is why they went to all that trouble? Why not simply invade now?”

  “Because they’re squabbling like stoats in a sack,” I said. “Edward wants to invade, but he needs the support of Æthelhelm. If he doesn’t have Æthelhelm’s troops, then his army is cut in half.”

  “Why doesn’t Æthelhelm support him?”

  “Because Æthelhelm wants to lead the invasion himself,” I guessed, “and end up owning most of Northumbria. Edward doesn’t want that. He wants Northumbria for himself.”

  “Why doesn’t he just kill the bastard?”

  “Because Æthelhelm is powerful. Attacking Æthelhelm means civil war. And Æthelhelm won’t support Edward till Edward declares Ælfweard as the next king.”

  Sigtryggr snorted. “Easy then, just make the declaration!”

  “But anyone of sense in Wessex and Mercia knows that Ælfweard is a piece of shit. If Edward names Ælfweard as his heir then he could provoke another rebellion. The Mercians want Æthelstan, probably. The sensible West Saxons want anyone except Ælfweard, but not Æthelstan. They might side with Eadgifu, I don’t know.”

  “Why not just support Æthelstan? He’s the eldest son!”

  “Because their goddamned priests preach that Æthelstan is a bastard. And he’s spent most of his life in Mercia, which means that most West Saxons don’t know him and don’t know if they’ll prosper under his rule. The fervent Christians support him, of course, at least those who don’t believe he’s a bastard, but most of the bishops and abbots are in Æthelhelm’s pay, so they want Ælfweard. Eadgifu doesn’t want either, because she thinks her son ought to be king, and I don’t doubt she’s recruiting followers by spreading her legs. It’s a royal mess.”

  “So my queen is a bastard?”

  “She’s not,” I said firmly.

  “But they say she is?”

  “The church says so.”

  “So why marry her to me?”

  “Because they think you’re stupid enough to believe that a bastard royal is a pledge of their sincerity. And because it confuses the Scots.”

  “Them too? How?”

  “Because making Eadgyth your queen,” I suggested, “tells the Scots that you’re allied with her father, and that might make the hairy bastards think twice before they try to take Northumbria as their own. The West Saxons don’t want you to lose half of Northumbria before they take it all for themselves.”

  “Even so,” he said, “Eadgyth’s not much of a prize, is she?”

  “She’s a good woman,” I said firmly, “and I like her.”

  He laughed at that, then spurred on. I did like Eadgyth. She had her twin brother’s good sense and her own gentle demeanor. Her marriage had come as a complete surprise to her. She had resigned herself to a life of prayer as a virtual prisoner in a convent, then just six days before the Witan, she had been plucked from the cloister, given cast-off clothes that had belonged to Edward’s previous wife, and brought north to Tamweorthin. The speed with which Edward had made that decision was impressive, and I wondered why, then decided that the marriage was not really intended as a gesture to Sigtryggr. My daughter’s death had offered Edward, or more probably his closest advisers, an unexpected opportunity to give Æthelhelm a subtle warning. Edward, by acknowledging Eadgyth as his child and by making her a queen, was suggesting he might make her twin brother into a king, and that threatened the future of Ælfweard, Æthelhelm’s nephew. Yet Edward had also made sure that Ælfweard alone sat in a place of honor at the Witan, and so had preserved Æthelhelm’s hopes. The West Saxon court, I reflected, was a wasp’s nest, and I had secretly added my own sting to that royal mess.

  And so we rode north, going to war.

  Part Three

  Fortress of the Eagles

  Nine

  At Bebbanburg the sea kept up its ceaseless beat and the wind brought the smell of salt with the sea birds’ cries. I had been away too long.

  And at Bebbanburg I had to listen to the sympathy folk felt for Stiorra and the anger they harbored against her killers, and all I could do was promise revenge.

  Taking revenge was another matter. Sköll, I knew, was somewhere in Cumbraland. That was all I knew. Whether he was on the coast or in the hills, I did not know. Brother Beadwulf, who had stayed in Eoferwic with the squirrel, had told me that Sköll had captured a silver mine in the hills, but when I had pressed him for more he confessed he knew almost nothing. “I heard men speak of him, lord, that’s all. He lived far to the north of Arnborg’s hall, I know that much.”

  “And he has a silver mine?”

  “I heard men say that, lord.”

  I had heard rumors of a silver mine in Cumbraland, but such tales were common, and the mines elusive. My father had once become excited at the report of a gold mine in the hills, and for weeks he talked of the wealth we would have and the coins he would strike, but his search parties found nothing. It was far easier to risk the dragons and the ghosts by tearing apart the burial mounds of the ancient people, though usually the graves yielded nothing but cheap pottery and dry bones.

  I had shared the rumor of a silver mine with Sigtryggr, and knew he had men crossing the hills to search for both silver and Sköll. I too sent out war-bands, usually a score of men who were told to avoid a fight with Sköll’s followers. “I just need to know where he lives,” I insisted to them, “dis
cover that and then come home.”

  Sigtryggr’s first instinct, like mine, had been to assemble an army and ride westward without delay, but sense had made us both pause. Lindcolne, like Eoferwic and Bebbanburg, had to be garrisoned, as did the lesser fortresses of Northumbria. Wessex might have signed a peace treaty, but if we stripped our garrisons of our best troops then the temptation might have been too great, and I did not trust Edward to pass up such an opportunity. Besides, the Scots were also eyeing our land, and the strong garrisons in the northern forts helped to dissuade them from invasion. If we left adequate men in the fortresses then we could only lead some three hundred and fifty household warriors to Cumbraland, and that strength, such as it was, would be whittled down if we were to wander from settlement to settlement, fighting skirmishes and with no aim but to find our enemy, who would be watching us and ambushing us. I had persuaded Sigtryggr that our best course was to discover the wolf’s lair and then march straight there and crush him, but that meant finding an enemy who was evidently well hidden.

  The largest war-band that I dispatched west was led by my son, who took forty-three warriors to follow the great wall that the Romans had built across Britain. The old stone-built forts of the wall had attracted settlers, and I reckoned it was worth inquiring of them if they had news of Sköll. “But if you find him,” I warned my son, “do not pick a fight.”

  “You want me to run away?”

  “If my elder brother had run away,” I told him, “he’d be the Lord of Bebbanburg now, not me. Sometimes the cleverest thing to do in war is to run.”

  And so I waited, and, while I waited, I had one unpleasant duty; to talk with Ælswyth, my son’s wife. She was Æthelhelm the Younger’s sister, and had accompanied her father when he was my prisoner in Bebbanburg, and, while she was staying at her father’s side through his final illness, she had become pregnant.

  I could not blame my son. Ælswyth was a fragile, delicate, and beautiful girl with hair like fairy gold, skin pale as milk, and a face that could drive a man crazed with desire. “She’s a goddamned elf,” Finan had decided when he first saw her, and my fear was that the elf would prove too delicate for childbirth, but she had survived her firstborn and now carried a second child. The wise women in the village and among my men’s wives declared that she was healthy, though to make certain they burned mandrake root, powdered the ashes that they mixed with cow’s milk, then smeared the paste on her belly. She was a Christian, of course, but when I gave her a necklace from which hung a little golden cat, one of the symbols of Freya who protected women in childbirth, she wore it. She was wearing it on the day that my son led his war-band south and west and, when he was gone from sight, I walked with her on Bebbanburg’s seaward ramparts. It was a blustery day and the sea was flecked with restless white, the breakers roared on the sand beneath us, and the wind lifted strands of her fair hair as we walked. “I love this place,” she said.

  “Do you?”

  “Of course, lord.”

  “Your home in Wessex was surely more comfortable?”

  “Oh yes, lord,” she said brightly, “but I feel free here, lord.” She offered me a smile that could have dimmed the sun. She had been thirteen when she came to Bebbanburg and, before my son ruined her father’s plans, had been reckoned as one of the most desirable brides in all the Saxon lands. Her father’s immense wealth and power would have ensured a dowry of royal proportions, and kings from across the sea had sent emissaries to her father’s hall, and those emissaries had carried back reports of her beauty. Her father had guarded her carefully because he planned to marry her to a man who would increase his power. He had intended that Ælswyth would be the bride of a great lord, or even a king’s wife, to be hung with jewels and crowned with gold, yet such had been his hatred of me that he had been prepared to offer her to my cousin to ensure that I never regained Bebbanburg, and, better still, died in the attempt. Instead my cousin was dead, Æthelhelm the Older was in his grave, and his prized daughter was walking the ramparts of Bebbanburg in a woolen dress, a sealskin cloak, and wearing a pagan amulet.

  “You know,” I said carefully, “that I met your brother in Tamweorthin?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “We hardly spoke.”

  “You told me, lord,” she said meekly.

  “What I didn’t tell you,” I added brutally, “is that he tried to kill me.” She was, I thought, too young to know how to respond, and merely uttered an elfin squeak of either surprise or shock. We walked on. “And I have to tell you,” I continued, “that I have made an oath.”

  “An oath, lord?”

  “To kill your brother.”

  She again made the small noise, then turned and stared at the great gray waters where the whitecaps rippled to the horizon. There were no ships in sight, just wind-shredded waves that broke in bright spray against the Farnea Islands. I looked down at her face, expecting to see tears in her blue eyes, but instead she was half smiling. “My brothers,” she said, still gazing at the sea, “were never kind to me, lord, and Æthelhelm was always the cruelest.”

  “Cruel?”

  “He’s much older than I am,” she said, “much older! And he didn’t like me.”

  “Did he beat you?”

  “Not badly, not often, but he was spiteful. Mother once gave me a necklace of jet. It was beautiful, and Æthelhelm took it. He took whatever he wanted and if I cried he would slap me, but only slap.” She shook her head. “He gave the necklace to one of the kitchen slaves.”

  “Who doubtless earned it on her back,” I said.

  She looked up at me, surprised, then laughed. “She did,” she said, “and nine months later she gave birth to a little girl, but the baby died.” She instinctively put a hand on the golden cat, then put her arm through mine. “When I was eight my father gave me a pony, and I called him Stifearh because he looked like a fat little pig.” She laughed, remembering her pony. “And the first time I tried to ride Stifearh my brother put thistles under the saddle. He thought it was funny! And of course poor Stifearh bucked and I was thrown. I broke my leg!”

  “Didn’t your father punish him?”

  “He laughed too.” She looked up at me earnestly. “Father wasn’t always unkind. He could be generous.”

  I drew her on, walking north on the high fighting platform. “So will you be angry with me if I kill your brother?” I asked.

  “He’s your enemy, lord, I know that.” She hesitated, then frowned. “But I’m your daughter now,” she added fiercely, “so I’ll pray for you.”

  It seemed that telling my daughter-in-law that I had sworn to slaughter her brother was not so difficult after all, but finding Sköll was proving more than difficult. For a start he must have known we were searching for him because two of my search parties had been pursued and one man killed, and none of the scouts returned with any useful news. A messenger came from Eoferwic to tell me that Sigtryggr’s men were being equally unsuccessful. “It’s as if Sköll is a ghost, lord,” the messenger told me. “Everyone has heard of him, no one knows where he is.”

  “Or they’re too frightened to speak,” I suggested.

  “King Sigtryggr believes the sorcerer can hide Sköll’s home, lord. That he can wrap it in cloud.”

  I touched my hammer and feared for my son. We were not just fighting Sköll, and he was formidable enough, but his sorcerer too. I had told Uhtred the Younger to be back within ten days, but two weeks passed and still he had not returned. Ælswyth spent hours praying in Bebbanburg’s small chapel, while Finan, more usefully, led thirty men south and west, seeking news in every settlement, but folk had heard nothing of any fight in the far hills. “He’ll come back,” Eadith assured me. She had found me on Bebbanburg’s landward rampart, gazing into the hills.

  “He can be headstrong,” I said.

  “Like you,” she responded with a smile and put her arm through mine. “He’ll come back, I promise.”

  “You see the future?” I asked skeptically.r />
  “You tell me to trust my instinct,” she said, “and I tell you he’ll be back.”

  Eadith had once been my enemy and now was my wife. She was a clever woman, skilled in the intricate dance of ambitious men, the steps of which she had learned as the mistress of Æthelred, Æthelflaed’s husband, who had been the ruler of Mercia and another enemy of mine. I had told Eadith of my pact with Æthelstan, and she had approved. “He’ll be the next king,” she said.

  “Æthelhelm will fight to prevent that.”

  “He will, but the men of Mercia will fight for Æthelstan.” And that, I thought, was probably true. Edward, when he had inherited the throne, had been embarrassed by the brand of bastardy that was attached to his eldest son, and so had sent the boy Æthelstan into Mercia to be raised by Æthelflaed, which is how I had become his protector. Æthelstan might be a West Saxon by birth, but to most Mercians he was one of their own. “And you say Archbishop Athelm is opposed to Æthelhelm?” Eadith asked.

  “I think he is.”

  “Then the church will support Æthelstan,” she said.

  “Not the churchmen who take Æthelhelm’s bribes. Besides, the church has no warriors.”

  “But most warriors fear for their souls, so they listen to the church.”

  “And the moment I’m dead,” I said bleakly, “the church will encourage Æthelstan to invade Northumbria.”

  She smiled. “Then it’s a good thing that your son is a Christian.”

  “Damn him,” I said, touching the hammer. “If he’s even alive.”

  Eadith touched the cross at her breast. “He is alive,” she said, “I know it.”

  She was right, my son was alive, and lucky that he was. He had left with forty-three men and returned with just twenty-seven, and six of those were wounded. They came through Bebbanburg’s Skull Gate looking like beaten men, which they were. My son could barely meet my eyes. “We were ambushed,” he said bitterly.

  It had been a carefully designed ambush. My son had almost reached the far end of the great Roman wall, and as he went he had inquired at every steading and settlement for news of úlfhéðnar or for rumors about Sköll, and he learned nothing until he reached the settlement beneath the largest fort of the long wall, a fort built above the River Irthinam. We called that fort Spura, because its walls stood on a commanding hill spur, and the settlement was built beneath it on the Irthinam’s southern bank. “A man told us he knew where Sköll lived,” my son explained, “he said Sköll had captured his two daughters and he claimed he’d followed the raiders south afterward.”