War of the Wolf

by Bernard Cornwell

  Sigtryggr touched the hammer again, then clutched it as Snorri slowly raised his wolf skull and pointed the muzzle toward us. I could see his mouth moving, and I supposed he was cursing us, though he was too far away for us to hear the curse. A man shouted from the ramparts and was silenced by his companions. Sköll’s men wanted to hear the curses that the dreaded Snorri cast on us. “They say he can kill with a curse?” Sigtryggr asked.

  “If he can kill with a curse,” I said, “why does Sköll need warriors?” Sigtryggr did not answer, but just kept holding his hammer as the small dog led Snorri closer to us. The sorcerer stopped a long spear’s throw away. “Sköll’s trying to frighten us,” I said. He was succeeding too, and I could see him watching and smiling from the long rampart. Snorri began howling, and in between the shrieks and howls he hurled more curses. He was in earshot now, and he cursed us by land, by the sky, by the earth, he cursed us by fire, by water, by air, he gave our bodies to the Corpse-Ripper of Niflheim, he promised us an eternity of pain from Hel the goddess of the rotting dead, and he raised the skull and his sightless eyes to the heavens and called on Thor to strike us and on Odin to blight us.

  Sköll laughed with every phrase of the curse. He was in his great white cloak, pointing at us, talking to the men around him. He cupped his hands and shouted, “You’re all doomed! Snorri will kill you with his next curse!”

  “They’re just words,” I shouted, but I could see that my men, even the Christians among them, were troubled by Snorri. They knew the gods controlled our fate and knew that a sorcerer was closer to the gods than other men or women, and they had all heard the dread rumor that Sköll’s sorcerer could kill men at a distance, just by curses. “They’re just words!” I called again, even louder. “Just nonsense!” But I saw men making the sign of the cross or touching their hammers. Some began to edge away, and I knew our men trembled on the verge of a panicked flight. They could fight against men, but not against the gods. The Norse on the ramparts were jeering us again as Snorri seemed to take a deep breath ready to launch his most powerful sorcery.

  Then Ieremias leaped out in front of us. My immediate impulse was to pull him back, but Finan put a hand on my arm. “Let him be, lord, let him be.”

  Ieremias turned and hissed at me. “Have the stone ready, lord!” He looked back at Snorri, raised his arms, and screamed like a soul in torment.

  There was another silence after that scream. Sköll’s men were plainly surprised to see that we had a sorcerer too, and they went quiet, not in fear, but rather anticipating a battle of sorcerers, both of them old, both white-haired and skinny, and both calling on the mysterious power of their god or gods. But Snorri, who had evidently expected no rival sorcerer and who was astonished by Ieremias’s scream, was momentarily speechless. Ieremias, meanwhile, appeared to be dancing. He was turning and leaping, singing in a high, crooning voice. There were no words, just the strange keening sound as the fool in his bishop’s clothing danced and twisted and capered toward Snorri.

  “He’s drunk!” Sigtryggr said.

  “No,” I answered, “he’s used the ointment.”

  “Ointment?”

  “The henbane. He thinks he’s flying.”

  Ieremias suddenly crouched, then sprang up, arms wide. “Thou turd of Satan!” he shouted, pointing at Snorri, then he loped toward the Norse sorcerer with his dirty bishop’s robes trailing in the grass. He stopped some twenty paces short of Snorri and lifted his crozier on which the ram’s skull was still perched. “I curse you!” he called in his native Danish, a language very close to the Norse tongue. “By the power of Abraham’s ram I curse your head, I curse your hairs, I curse your eyes.”

  “He doesn’t have any eyes, you fool,” I muttered.

  “I curse your face, I curse your nose, I curse your serpent’s tongue, I curse your teeth, I curse your neck, I curse your hands, I curse your belly, I curse your prick, I curse your arse!” He paused for breath. His words were slurred, but clear enough to every man in both armies. “I curse every part of your foul being from the hairs of your head to the soles of your feet. I curse your loathsome soul and consign it to the deepest pits of hell. I doom you to be torn apart by Lucifer’s hounds, I condemn you to the torture of Satan’s endless flames, to the perpetual agonies of eternity.”

  Snorri screamed back, calling on the frost-giants of Niflheim to tear his rival from limb to limb with their dread axes of ice. “Let the gods hear his screams!” Snorri shouted as he raised his empty eyes to the sky. “He is pus from the arse of the Corpse-Ripper, so let him be destroyed. I call on you, Odin! I call on you, All-Father! Kill him now! Kill him!” He held his wolf skull toward Ieremias, and for a heartbeat I held my breath, thinking to see the mad bishop fall.

  He did not fall. “I live! I live! I live!” Ieremias called triumphantly. He was capering again, the ram’s skull teetering on the crook of his crozier. He went closer, much closer to Snorri, still screaming. “May worms gnaw your bowels and swine feed on your flesh! May cockroaches shit on your tongue! I curse you in the name of the Father, I doom you in the name of the Son, and I banish you from the living by the power of the Holy Ghost!” And on the last word he jerked his crozier fast forward, swinging it down from high above his head until it pointed toward Snorri. I think the gesture was simply meant to point the ram’s skull at Snorri, but such was the force of the swing that the horned skull flew from the crozier’s tip and struck the pagan sorcerer on his breast. The blind Snorri staggered back, more surprised than hurt, and as he staggered he let go of the rope leash, and the little dog, yapping happily, ran to Ieremias, who seemed just as amazed as his rival. “I win!” he called, unable to hide his astonishment, “God wins! The heathen is smitten!”

  And Ieremias had indeed won. Snorri had been driven backward, and instead of responding with a curse of his own he was stooping and groping for his dog, but the dog had deserted Snorri and run to the mad bishop, who was cackling in triumph, and it was the dog’s treachery that seemed to anger the watching Norsemen. They knew they were victorious that day, but Ieremias’s triumph over Snorri was an insult to their pride, and suddenly the gate opened again and a stream of warriors came across the causeway while others leaped down from the wall, and almost every one of those warriors wore the gray wolf skin cape of the úlfhéðnar.

  “Shield wall!” I shouted, and pain seared through my head. “Shield wall, now!”

  Ieremias might have been half-crazed by the henbane ointment, but he retained enough sense to flee when he saw the enemy warriors coming for him. He ran toward us with the small dog scampering beside him. “The stone of David, lord,” he panted as he got nearer, “throw the stone now! For the living Christ’s sake, throw the stone!”

  I kicked the soil and a scrap of stone, probably a chip from a block of Roman masonry, skidded away from my toe. I bent, picked it up, tried to ignore the stabbing pain in my head, and hurled the stone toward the enemy.

  Ieremias shouted as I threw the stone. “We will win! We will win!” He pushed his way between the shields of my front rank to find a safety that I feared was merely temporary. He stooped, picked up the small dog, and beamed at me. “You believed me, lord! The stone of David is cast! We will win!”

  But the úlfhéðnar were coming to kill us.

  Then carry your willow-shields

  Before you, and ring-mail coats too,

  And shining helmets into the crowd of foes.

  Slaughter their leaders with bright swords,

  Their fated leaders. For your foes

  Are doomed to die, and you shall have fame.

  Glory in battle!

  “I didn’t say anything like that!” I told the poet.

  “Well, lord—”

  “It’s a poem, I know.”

  “So what did you say to your men, lord?”

  “Probably something like kill the bastards. Or keep the shields tight. You make speeches like that one,” I tapped the parchment, “before a battle, not during it, but
Sköll didn’t give us time for speeches.”

  Father Selwyn frowned. “Ieremias,” he said uncertainly. He knew the mad bishop was a heretic and he was uncomfortable talking about him. “Had he used the henbane, lord?”

  “He stole it from my servant, and yes, he smeared it on his chest. He was shaking when he reached us, shivering and babbling. He collapsed behind us.” I smiled, remembering the small dog licking the mad bishop’s pale face. “I’m not sure the poor man even knew what he’d just done.”

  The priest frowned. “He’d provoked an attack by the úlfhéðnar!” he said disapprovingly.

  “He had, yes.”

  “Did Sköll come with his úlfhéðnar?”

  “No, he stayed on the wall and watched.”

  “How many wolf-warriors were there, lord?”

  “Not many, sixty or seventy. There wasn’t time to count them, we just had to fight them.”

  Later, much later, I learned that Sköll had been keeping his úlfhéðnar for the battle’s end, saving their savagery for the slaughterous pursuit as we retreated, but Snorri’s defeat had enraged them, and men who are under the influence of a sorcerer’s potion are incapable of obeying orders. They are like hounds smelling blood, they just want to fight, and so the úlfhéðnar had simply charged through the open gate. No one ordered that charge, Sköll probably did not want it, but he was evidently content to let his crazed warriors make their headlong assault, knowing that even if his úlfhéðnar went down to a bloody defeat that would not change the battle’s outcome.

  “But surely he didn’t want to lose them?” Father Selwyn asked me, puzzled.

  “You can’t control the úlfhéðnar,” I tried to explain. “It’s as if they’re drunk. They believe they can fly. They believe they’re invulnerable, and, believe me, such men can do an astonishing amount of killing before you put them down. They’re usually the youngest hotheads, men who want reputation, men who want to boast in the mead hall of their exploits. Sköll probably didn’t want to lose them, but it would only add to his reputation if they panicked us. I remember looking at him as they charged, and he was laughing.”

  Sköll was laughing, and his men, up on the walls, were cheering. This was a spectacle, a crazed charge by drugged warriors, a revenge for Snorri’s defeat. Not every man who came toward us was an úlfheðinn, some other young men had joined the madness. There were probably about a hundred warriors altogether, most of them in the gray cloaks, though some were bare-chested, and many of them came without either shields or helmets. They believed they could not be harmed because the henbane had given them the courage of the insane.

  And we made the shield wall.

  Which meant it was discipline against madness.

  Rorik had brought me a dead man’s shield and I tried to stand in the front rank, but Finan unceremoniously pushed me to the third rank. “You’re not recovered, lord.” He did the same to Sigtryggr, who was unable to hold a shield, then turned to look at the approaching men. “Shields up!” he shouted. “And use spears!”

  The charging men screamed. I had an impression of wild faces, unbound hair, mouths open, fierce eyes, long swords, and then the leading men leaped at us. Was it because they believed they could fly? They leaped as if to jump over the front rank and were met by spears. I saw a savage-faced man screaming at us, jumping at the men in front of me, and Beornoth just lifted his spear and impaled the Norseman. The man, still screaming as blood appeared in his mouth, slid down the long shaft to be met by a sword cut that ended the scream abruptly. Another úlfheðinn, wielding an ax, beat down two of our front rank, screamed his triumph, and waded into the second rank where three men hacked him to death with swords and axes. He was not the only man to break the wall, but those crazed warriors who threw themselves at our shields had no one to support them. Sheer impetuosity split our shield wall in places, but the wall closed up relentlessly. Then it went forward. Finan was bellowing the order, “Forward! Forward!” And still the úlfhéðnar came, slamming into us, screeching and flailing, and still we went forward, step by step, slipping on blood-slicked grass. A bare-chested man hurled an ax at our wall and the big blade split a shield in two and the man followed with no weapon but his hands, clawing at Beornoth whose shield was splintered, and my son killed him with a vicious upward thrust of his seax. “Close up!” Finan shouted. “Close up! Keep going!” Men stepped over the blood-laced bodies of the dead, and still the wolf-warriors fought. It usually took two men to defeat each, one man to take the attack of ax, sword, or spear on his shield, and the other to kill. Some of our men seemed infected by the madness of the úlfhéðnar. I saw Redbad break out of the front rank and slam an ax down on a charging man, splitting his skull in a mist of blood and brains. My son hauled Redbad back, the shields touched, and the wall went forward again. Immar Hergildson, who I had taken care to keep in the rearward rank because he was not as well trained as most of my men, had somehow worked his way to the front and was screaming defiance. I saw him slice down with his sword, saw him kill a second man, and saw the battle-joy on his young face. Sigtryggr’s men who had been facing the ramparts where Svart had died were running to join us now. We were advancing down the long wall between the western and northern towers, driving back the survivors of the mad brave charge.

  Not all the enemy were mad and some lost their bravery. They saw their companions die, they smelled the blood and shit of dying men, they saw the grim wall of shields coming, a wall glinting with spears and swords. The right-hand end of that wall was being assailed by spears thrown from the ramparts, and I shouted for Cuthwulf. “Use your arrows on them!” I called, pointing at the men throwing the spears.

  “All of the arrows, lord?”

  “All of them!” I had realized that we had no chance of overcoming the fort’s walls. There were too many defenders. Even if the northern corner was easier to approach, we would still face a rampart packed with warriors. We would have to be content with this small victory over Sköll’s vaunted úlfhéðnar, though once they were killed it would be our turn to face the slaughterers.

  Our shield wall advanced inexorably, step by slow step, to drive Sköll’s men back, and Sköll, it seemed, decided enough was enough because a horn sounded urgently from the ramparts, a signal to recall the surviving úlfhéðnar. Most of the wolf-warriors ignored it, too crazed to abandon the fight and too crazed to obey an order, and so they kept trying to break our wall, kept stabbing and screaming, and the screams turned to cries of agony as they were cut down. But some few turned to retreat, and most of the young men who had joined the charge of the úlfhéðnar also obeyed the summons. They ran back to the gate.

  And it was closed.

  Men beat on the gate. It did not open. Maybe half the men who had charged us were now bunched at the entrance, screaming at its defenders to let them in. My son saw the opportunity before anyone else and shouted, “Kill them! Kill them!” He broke out of the shield wall, and, followed by his closest companions, charged at the gate.

  The mad bravery of the úlfhéðnar can turn to terrified panic in a heartbeat. Men who a moment before had thought themselves unbeatable were suddenly turned into sobbing, desperate fugitives. They beat at the gate, they screamed for it to be opened, they screamed even more when my battle-maddened men began their slaughter on the causeway that crossed the ditches. I was hurrying after them, all of us were going toward that gate, and I looked above the arch to the fighting platform where I expected to see Sköll’s men hurling spears into our ranks.

  And instead I saw the eagle.

  And men fighting.

  Almighty God

  Lord and ruler, gave them wondrous aid.

  The valiant heroes with their precious swords

  Then hacked a bloody passage through

  The host of foemen; they split the shields,

  Cut through their shield wall.

  “Almighty God?” I asked.

  “The archbishop asked for the poem, lord,” Father Selwyn said very pri
mly, “and I don’t think he’d be pleased if I gave the credit to Odin.”

  I grunted. “I suppose not. But you don’t even mention the eagle!”

  “I do, lord!” he protested, then leafed back through the pages. “There, the white-tailed eagle—”

  “Not the bird,” I said, “the flag! The spread eagle! Berg’s banner!”

  “Was that important, lord?”

  “Of course it’s important! Didn’t you even talk to Berg? Or to his brothers?”

  “No, lord.”

  “The flag was flying over the shut gate,” I said, “and all three brothers were there. You should talk to the oldest, he’s a poet.”

  “Is he, lord?” The young priest sounded distant, as if he did not like hearing about a rival poet.

  “He’s called Egil,” I said. “He’s a skald and a fighter and something of a sorcerer too. He’s a remarkable man.”

  “He certainly sounds so, lord,” the priest said, still distant. “You say the flag was over the gate?”

  “Berg was waving it.”

  The gods do play with us, and, like children, they love surprising us. I could almost hear their delighted laughter when I saw Berg desperately waving his precious flag. I had no idea what it meant at that moment, for a heartbeat I even thought he had joined Sköll’s forces, but then saw that the men around Berg, those men high on the platform above the gate, were throwing spears at the lower ramparts. They were throwing spears at Sköll’s men, not at us, and at that moment I knew the curse was lifted. The pain in my head and the ache in my thigh did not matter because Berg’s banner, the spread-eagle banner of the Skallagrimmr family, was flying over Heahburh.

  When Berg had vanished at the battle’s opening the banner had disappeared with him, and I had feared he was dead or a captive, but the truth was much stranger. The gods loved Berg, which made it odd to remember that when I had saved him from death on a Welsh beach I had promised King Hywel I would let the Christians try to convert him. I had kept that promise, but Berg had never succumbed to their persuasion, and ever since the gods had rewarded him. Berg was lucky.