War of the Wolf

by Bernard Cornwell

  Snorri suddenly moaned as if uttering prophecy hurt him. He had spoken distantly till now, but Sköll’s question roused his voice to an agonizing screech. “He is the king without a crown,” he pointed a wavering finger toward me, “and the Dane and the Saxon will join forces, and Uhtred will be betrayed. He will die by the sword, his fortress will fall, and his descendants will eat the dung of humility.” Snorri crouched, moaning, and I heard him mutter, “No more, lord King, no more. Please, lord King, no more.” The small dog licked his face as Snorri groped for the rope leash.

  I felt a shiver in my spine and said nothing. I had heard prophecies before, and some had come true and some had yet to come true and some seemed false, though translating the words of sorcerers always demanded skill. As often as not they spoke in riddles and any question about their meaning was usually answered by more riddles.

  “Did Snorri foretell that you’d conquer Jorvik?” Finan surprised me by asking.

  “He did,” Sköll surprised me even more by admitting it.

  “So he was wrong,” Finan sneered.

  “I was wrong,” Sköll said. “I asked the wrong question. I only asked him if I would capture the city, I did not ask how often I would need to try.” He still had his hand on the crouching sorcerer’s shoulder. “Now be brave,” he said to Snorri, “and tell Uhtred of Bebbanburg how he might escape the fate of the Norns.”

  Snorri raised his face so I was looking straight into those ravaged eye sockets. “He must sacrifice, lord King. The gods demand his best horse, his best hound, his best warrior. There must be sword, blood, and fire, a sacrifice.”

  There was a moment’s silence. The wind whipped the dune grass and lifted Snorri’s long hair. “And?” Sköll asked gently.

  “And he must stay inside his ramparts,” Snorri said.

  “And if he won’t sacrifice or stay?” Sköll asked, and the only reply was a cackling laugh from Snorri and another whine from the small dog. Sköll stepped back. “I came to tell you all this, Uhtred of Bebbanburg,” he said. “If you fight me, you die. The Norns have decided and the shears are ready to cut your life thread. Leave me alone and you live, fight me and you die.” He turned as if to walk away, but something caught his eye and he turned back to stare past me. I saw a shadow cross his face and I looked back to see that Ieremias, his long white hair blowing in the wind, had come from the Skull Gate and was watching us. He was wearing his bishop’s robes, and in the sunlight he looked as sorcerous as Snorri. “Who is that?” Sköll asked.

  Ieremias suddenly began capering, I had no idea why. He danced, turned, and lifted the bishop’s crozier high, and the rising sun flashed a bright reflection from the silver crook. “I see no one,” I said. “Do you see anyone, Finan?”

  Finan turned, looked, and shrugged. “Only spearmen on the wall.”

  “Your sorcerer!” Sköll insisted.

  Ieremias had stopped capering and now raised both arms to the heavens. I assumed he was praying. “My sorcerer died a year ago,” I said.

  “His ghost appears though,” Finan added.

  “But only to doomed men,” I finished.

  Sköll touched his hammer. “You don’t frighten me,” he snarled, though the expression on his face said otherwise. “Snorri,” he snapped, “come.”

  The small dog nudged Snorri to his feet and both men walked back toward the waiting horsemen.

  “What of my men?” I shouted after Sköll. “Your prisoners?”

  “You can have them,” he called without turning. “I captured twelve of your men. The other eight I killed.”

  He plucked Grayfang from the sand, turned, and pointed the blade toward me. “When I am king in Jorvik you will come to swear me loyalty. Till that day, Uhtred of Bebbanburg, farewell.” He slammed the long blade into its scabbard, mounted his gray horse, and rode away.

  The gods like sacrifice. If we give them something precious it tells them that we hold them in awe, that we fear their power, and that we are grateful to them. A generous sacrifice will gain their favor, while an inadequate offering will bring down their enmity.

  Sköll had come to Bebbanburg, and, instead of fighting, he had offered me prophecy and a truce. He had released the four prisoners unharmed, then left as he had come, quickly and without violence. And he and his sorcerer had unsettled me, which was why they had come.

  “So, you must sacrifice?” Finan asked me that evening. We were walking on Bebbanburg’s long sand, the endless sea roaring to our left, the looming ramparts gaunt above us. The sun had not yet set, but we were in the fort’s deep shadow, which stretched far across the restless waters.

  “Damn sacrifice,” I said, and touched the hammer.

  “You don’t believe the sorcerer?”

  “Do you?”

  Finan paused as a great breaker crashed on the shore. The white foam ran fast up the sand, and I thought that if the foam reaches me I would be damned, but it stopped a hand’s breadth from my foot, and then the water sucked back. “I have known sorcerers tell truth,” Finan said cautiously, “and known them lie through their teeth. But this one?” He left the question hanging.

  “He was convincing,” I said.

  Finan nodded. “He was. Until the end.”

  “The end?”

  “He forgot to say you must stay inside the ramparts. Sköll had to remind him.” He kicked some bladderwrack and frowned. “I think Snorri was saying what Sköll wanted him to say, what they had practiced saying.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. I was not so sure.

  “And what they practiced saying,” Finan went on, “would persuade you not to fight him. He might call you old, lord, but he fears you still.”

  “Perhaps,” I said again.

  “He fears you, lord!” Finan insisted. “Why else release the prisoners? Because he fears you. He doesn’t want you as an enemy.”

  “He killed my daughter. He knows that makes him my enemy.”

  “But Snorri has convinced him he shouldn’t fight you! He didn’t come to frighten us, he came to persuade you from fighting.”

  I wanted to believe that, but how could I know if it was true? I looked for an omen, but only saw the first stars showing above the shadowed sea. “You forget,” I said, “that the gods have cursed me.”

  “Damn your gods,” Finan said savagely.

  “And when the gods talk,” I went on as though he had not spoken, “we must listen.”

  “Then listen to Ieremias,” Finan said, still angry, “he and God talk to each other morning, noon, and night.”

  I turned and looked at him. “You’re right,” I said. Ieremias did speak with a god. That god was not my god, but I am not such a fool as to believe that the Christian god has no power. He does. He is a god! He has power, as do all the gods, but alone among the gods of Britain the Christian god insisted that he was the only god! He was like a mad jarl in his hall who refused to believe there were other halls where other jarls lived, yet for all his madness the Christian god had ordered the mad bishop to give me a stone.

  I felt in my pouch and brought out the sling-stone, which was little more than a large pebble. I rolled it in the palm of my hand and thought that if I carried the stone then the Christian god would reward me with victory. That was Ieremias’s promise. Yet surely, I thought, my own gods would be furious if I were to rely on the gift and on the promise of a god who hated them, who denied their existence, yet did all he could to destroy them. A curse, I realized, was a test, and the Christian promise of victory was a temptation to abandon my own gods. Two sorcerers had spoken to me; one promised victory, the other defeat, and I would defy them both to amuse the gods.

  And so I turned to the sea, to the fort-shadowed, wind-stirred, white-flecked sea, and I drew back my arm. “This is for Odin,” I shouted, “and for Thor,” and then I hurled the stone as far as I could. It flew above the waters and vanished into the curling foam of a breaking wave. I paused, staring at the ever-shifting sea, then looked at Finan. “We’re going to
Heahburh,” I said. The sorcerer be damned. We would fight.

  Ten

  We gathered at Heagostealdes, a large village just south of the great wall. The settlement lay on the Roman road that came north from Eoferwic, threaded the Roman wall, and ended at Berewic, the most northerly burh in Northumbria and a part of Bebbanburg’s estates. I was forced to keep warriors in Berewic to help the men of the settlement defend the earth and timber walls against the Scots who insisted it was in their land, but that springtime I left only five men, and those were old or half-crippled, because I would take as many warriors as I could to meet Sköll. I left another eighteen men, helped by the fishermen of the village, to guard Bebbanburg. That was a perilously small garrison, but enough to defend the Skull Gate. Merchants traveling south from Scotland had told me King Constantin was in the north of his country, skirmishing with the Norse who had settled there, and none spoke of men gathering for war near the southern border. King Constantin was doubtless watching Sköll, looking for an opportunity to take advantage of Northumbria’s quarrels, and he would have liked nothing more than to capture Berewic or Bebbanburg while I was gone, but by the time he heard I had stripped the fortresses of their usual garrisons I expected the war against Sköll to be over.

  It had taken long hard days to prepare; days of sharpening swords, cleaning and repairing mail, binding willow-board shields with iron, honing arrowheads, and riveting spear-blades to ash shafts. The smithy made new war axes and fixed the heavy blades to extralong hafts. The women of Bebbanburg baked bread and oatcakes, we packed boxes with hard cheese, smoked fish, dried mutton, and bacon, all from the stores left over from a frugal winter. We made ladders because, as far as Ieremias could remember, the old Roman walls still protected the fort. “They’re not high, lord,” he told me, “they’re not like the walls of Jericho! No higher than a man. You could take small horns?”

  “Small horns?”

  “The ramparts of Jericho required large horns, lord, but the walls of Halfdan the Mad’s fort will fall to lesser instruments.”

  I preferred to rely on ladders instead. We repaired saddles, wove seal-hide ropes for the packhorses, and brewed ale. We made two new wolf’s head banners and one day I had found Hanna, Berg’s young Saxon wife, busily embroidering a different banner, which showed an eagle with spread wings. She had used a large piece of pale linen onto which the eagle, cut from black cloth, showed bold. “I hate sewing, lord,” she greeted me.

  “You’re doing a good job,” I said. I liked Hanna. “Where did you get the black cloth?”

  “It’s one of Father Cuthbert’s cassocks,” she said. “He won’t miss it. He’s blind. Can’t count your cassocks if you’re blind.”

  “And why,” I asked, “are we making an eagle flag? We fight under the sign of the wolf’s head.”

  “Better ask Berg,” Hanna said, grinning. “I just do what I’m told.”

  “You have changed then,” I said, and went to find Berg, who was practicing with one of the long-hafted axes.

  “It’s clumsy, lord,” he said, hefting the long weapon, and he was right. The ax blade, with its deep beard, was heavy, and the whole weapon, with its sturdy ash shaft, was as long as a spear. “It needs two hands,” he went on, “so I can’t hold a shield while I use it.”

  “And it might just save your life. Tell me about eagles.”

  “Eagles?”

  “A flag.”

  He looked sheepish. “It was my father’s flag, lord. The banner of Skallagrimmr.” He paused, plainly hoping that was explanation enough, but when I said nothing he reluctantly continued. “And we’re going to fight against my people, the Norse.”

  “We are.”

  “And I would like them to know that the family of Skallagrimmr is their enemy, lord. It will frighten them!”

  I hid a smile. “It will?”

  “Lord,” he spoke earnestly, “my father was a great warrior, a famous warrior! My brothers are great warriors. Sköll knows this!”

  “You’re a great warrior,” I told him, pleasing him. “Is your father still alive?”

  “He went to sea, lord, and never returned. I think the goddess took him for her own,” he touched his hammer. “But I hear my brothers still live. And Egil and Thorolf are úlfhéðnar! When Sköll’s people see the banner of the eagle, lord, they will know fear!”

  “Then you’d better carry the banner,” I said. I was fond of Berg, whose life I had saved on the Welsh beach and who had rewarded me with utter loyalty ever since. “Why didn’t you stay with your brothers?” I asked him.

  “Egil said it was not their task to teach a boy how to fight. So they sent me viking with another jarl.”

  “Who led you to a slaughter on a foreign beach.”

  He smiled. “Fate was good to me, lord.”

  I did more than prepare weapons and pack supplies. I sent more strong patrols west into the hills searching for news. Those patrols brought back reports that Sköll had retreated into the higher ground, presumably to Heahburh, though I would not let any of my men go close to where we thought that fortress stood.

  Sköll knew we were searching for him and would be preparing for war, just as I was. He might hope that he had persuaded me to refuse battle, but even if I had taken his advice he would still have had to face an angry Sigtryggr, whose troops, I knew, were scouring southern Cumbraland. “Sigtryggr needs to leave troops south of Heahburh,” I had told Eadith on the night before we rode to Heagostealdes.

  “Why?”

  I gazed up at the smoke that drifted into our sleeping chamber from the great hall and tried to see an omen in its shifting shapes. I saw nothing. Earlier that day I had watched a cat stalking a mouse and knew that if the mouse died then Sköll would die, but the mouse had escaped. “Heahburh,” I said, “is a strong fort, but it’s evidently high in the hills and far from anywhere.” Sköll’s sorcerer had called it the fortress of the eagles, and eagles nested in remote high places. “We think Sköll’s staying in his fortress,” I explained. “None of our scouts have seen his troops moving, but if I was Sköll? I’d cross the hills and attack Eoferwic.”

  “Why?” she asked again.

  “Because Eoferwic is where the merchants are. It’s where the money is.”

  “And money is power,” she said.

  “And money is power,” I agreed, “and the land about Eoferwic is rich, and that means taxes and rents, and the money from taxes and rents becomes swords, spears, axes, and shields. And Sköll’s fastest road to Eoferwic is to go south.”

  “And you think he’ll do that?”

  “I fear he’ll do that,” I said.

  Knowing what the enemy is doing or planning is always the hardest thing in war. Sigtryggr’s messengers reported that the Norse steadings around the Ribbel estuary had been stripped of men, and that, so far as they could determine, all those men had gone north to wherever Sköll was gathering his army. Sköll’s lunge to Eoferwic at winter’s end had been his declaration of war, and it had very nearly succeeded. His ride to Bebbanburg had been an attempt to persuade me to sit that war out because he knew that the coming battle would decide who ruled in Northumbria, but where would that battle be? If I had been Sköll I would have crossed the hills and brought the war to the richer eastern side of Northumbria, forcing us to pursue him and fight him in a place of his choosing, and that was why Sigtryggr was compelled to guard the routes that led south across the hills. We planned to approach Heahburh from the east, but feared Sköll might escape southward before we brought him to battle, and also feared that the forces guarding those southern routes would prove too weak to delay him while we struggled to catch up. Those fears kept me awake at nights, but all the reports seemed to confirm Sköll was staying in the high hills where his fortress stood, and where he was inviting us, daring us even, to assault him.

  “What if he reaches Eoferwic?” Eadith asked.

  “He’ll capture it,” I said bleakly.

  “There’ll be a garrison? And the
men of the town?”

  “A small garrison,” I said, “and yes, the men of the town will help. But if you have úlfhéðnar climbing ladders you don’t want silversmiths and leather-workers waiting for them. You want warriors.”

  “And what if he comes here?” Eadith asked.

  “You don’t do what my daughter did,” I said grimly. “You hold the Skull Gate and wait for us to return.”

  I led one hundred and eighty-four men to Heagostealdes, and with them went thirty of my tenants who were skilled hunters with their bows, and over ninety boys and servants. Our packhorses were heavy with shields, spears, food, and ale. Sihtric of Dunholm, who held that great fortress in my name, brought sixty-two men. Sigtryggr arrived with a hundred and forty-three household warriors, while his jarls, those men who held estates and owed Sigtryggr allegiance, brought another one hundred and four. That was far fewer than Sigtryggr had hoped. “So we have close to five hundred men,” he said gloomily on the night we gathered in the village. “I expected more. But those bastards in the south,” he left the sentence unfinished, but I knew he was talking of those Danes on Northumbria’s southern border who had made their peace with Christian Mercia. “We’re not fighting Mercia, but they still wouldn’t send men. Bastards.”

  “And we can’t punish them,” I said, “because they’re under Edward’s protection.”

  “Then I had to give Boldar Gunnarson ninety men,” Sigtryggr added gloomily, “and he needs double that number.”

  Boldar was one of his commanders, an older man of sense and caution, who was leading the troops who were guarding the roads leading to Eoferwic in southern Cumbraland. “Boldar will let us know if he’s in trouble,” I said, “and five hundred men should be enough to take Heahburh.”

  “You know that?”

  “No.” I shrugged. “But Sköll will be lucky to have five hundred, so it should be enough.”

  “Rumor says he has more than five hundred.”

  “Rumor always exaggerates the enemy,” I said, and hoped I was right.