Wolf of Wessex

by Matthew Harffy

  Too late he saw the gleam of triumph in Bealowin’s eyes. Dunston cursed himself for a fool. His mind must be growing as old and slow as his body to have fallen for such a ruse. For, in the instant that the axe swung towards Bealowin, the swordsman, clearly anticipating the attack, parried the blow, and then followed up with a vicious riposte. His sharp patterned blade scored a deep cut along Dunston’s arm, following almost exactly the scar that a raiding Norseman had given him all those years before on the beach of Tweoxneam.

  Dunston staggered back. His sleeve was in tatters and blood welled in the long cut.

  Bealowin laughed.

  “Finish him now, man,” shouted the mounted lord.

  The gathered horsemen jeered at Dunston, taunting him. They could see his death looming; imminent.

  Dunston shook the sweat from his eyes. He could feel his strength sapping from him as the blood pumped from the wound. His arm throbbed with each beat of his heart.

  “Come and finish it then, boy,” he said to Bealowin. He opened his arms wide, holding DeaÞangenga out to the side in his bloody hand. This had to end now, he could not afford to grow any weaker. “You think you could make me sing? See if you can make me scream like those you tortured, you worm,” he goaded. “Is that the only way you can make someone moan with your blade? To tie them up and cut them? Not man enough to make a woman moan with the weapon between your legs?”

  With a bellow of anger at the old man’s insults, Bealowin rushed in, lunging, jabbing, slicing with his blade. Dunston gritted his teeth against the burning pain in his arm and parried and dodged as Bealowin pressed his attack. Dunston’s right hand was slick with blood and he could feel his axe slipping in his grasp. This could not go on much longer, and so, grasping the haft in both hands, Dunston smashed Bealowin’s sword away and then followed with a powerful downward arc. If it had connected, it would have surely cut Bealowin from the crown of his head to his belly. But the blow did not make contact. Instead, Bealowin stepped back and Dunston’s axe bit deeply into the soft earth.

  Again the gleam of victory was in Bealowin’s eyes. His foe was unarmed, his great axe embedded in the loam of the meadow. Bealowin roared and sprang at Dunston. He lunged with his deadly blade, meaning to spit the axeman on his sword.

  But Dunston had not survived all these years and countless battles by strength alone. He knew when to bludgeon and batter an opponent, but sometimes guile was the way to win a fight.

  Dunston released DeaÞangenga’s haft, leaving the axe buried in the soil, as he had known it would when he’d made the swing, inviting Bealowin to believe him defenceless. Dunston spun, with the speed of a man half his age and Bealowin’s sword did not plunge into his guts to deliver a death blow. And yet Dunston did not avoid the sword’s bite altogether. The sharp blade ripped open his kirtle. Blood instantly streamed, hot and stinging, from a long slicing cut.

  Dunston ignored the pain of the cut. It was not a killing wound. He gripped Bealowin’s right wrist in his left hand, tugging him forward. At the same moment he pulled Beornmod’s seax from the scabbard at his belt and drove it into Bealowin’s stomach. He felt the younger man tremble in his grasp and he twisted the blade, pulling it out of the sucking wound and plunging it back into his flesh. Again he stabbed, and again, all the while watching the comprehension dawn in Bealowin’s dimming eyes.

  The man’s blood gushed over Dunston’s hand, mingling with his own that pumped from the wound on his forearm.

  “Aculf sends you greetings,” whispered Dunston, his face close to Bealowin’s. “And now you understand.”

  “What?” the dying man gasped, lost confusion on his face.

  “How I killed your men. Even an old wolf has fangs.”

  Bealowin let out a rattling, rasping breath and slumped. Dunston released him and let him fall to the ground.

  Blinking away the sweat from his eyes, Dunston turned to face the horsemen. His kirtle was sodden with blood now, his stomach and arm a stinging agony.

  “Who’s next?” he shouted at the gathered men, disappointed that his voice cracked in his throat.

  “What in the name of all that is holy is wrong with you all?” screamed the gold-chained lord. “He is but one old man!”

  Dunston spat. He wished he had some water, but his flask was in the bag he had given to Aedwen.

  “I would find some new men if I were you,” he said, grinning despite the pain in his arm and stomach. “These ones are more like lambs than warriors.”

  “Kill him now!” yelled the men’s leader. Spittle flew from his lips and his horse flinched at its rider’s strident voice.

  For a heartbeat, Dunston thought the man was giving the order to the riders around him. But then the thrumming of hooves reached his ears and penetrated through the rushing sound of his blood. The lord was not looking at Dunston, but behind him.

  Dunston spun to face the new danger that came from his rear.

  All was a blur. The glittering tip of a spear blade flickered towards Dunston. Instinctively, he leaned backward, allowing the steel to pass a hand’s breadth from his face. But he was too slow to avoid the charging horse. The spearman who had passed him earlier spurred his steed onward and it hit Dunston with the force of a storm wave buffeting against a cliff.

  Dunston was thrown into the waving grass. He tumbled over until he lay on his back. For a moment, he could not draw breath. He barely knew what had happened. The sky above him was grey. Was it growing darker? Sounds of a horse and a man shouting, muffled, as if from a great distance.

  With a huge effort, Dunston finally sucked in a deep breath of the earthy air. His chest screamed out. A sharp stabbing agony made him groan, as he slowly climbed to his feet. He attempted another breath. The same searing pain engulfed him. The spearman had dismounted and was coming towards him. For a moment, Dunston’s vision blurred and he thought he might faint. Then the man’s features became clearer. It was Raegnold, the man he had fought outside the barn in Briuuetone. Raegnold’s face was swollen and bruised.

  Clenching his jaw against the pain, Dunston reached down and retrieved DeaÞangenga from the grass. Tears pricked his eyes from the pain. He could barely stand. Had his ribs pierced his lungs?

  Raegnold was almost on him now. None of the other men came to aid him to dispatch Dunston. He was not surprised. He must have looked as though he might die soon anyway, soaked in blood and mud, and barely able to rise to his feet. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Judging from the intensity of the pain, he might well succumb with no further injuries, if he was given time. But Raegnold was clearly not going to allow that to happen.

  “Come to let me finish what I started back in Briuuetone?” Dunston asked. His voice rasped, his breath scratched in his chest.

  “You’re dead, old man,” hissed Raegnold through gritted teeth, unable to open his mouth any wider due to his broken jaw.

  Dunston willed himself to stand upright.

  “Speak up, I can barely hear you,” he taunted. But he had heard the words well enough. And what was worse, he knew them to be true. He would die here, now. His body was aflame with pain and even if by some miracle he was able to defeat Raegnold, there were still six men here, hale and strong. He could not survive against them all.

  Raegnold pulled his sword from its scabbard, but did not reply. Evidently speaking hurt too much. Dunston understood that feeling.

  “Well, Eawynn, I will be with you soon,” he whispered. “I hope I did not disappoint you too much by breaking my promises.”

  He hoped that Aedwen had run from her hiding place. Perhaps she would be able to reach the safety of Exanceaster before these brutes could capture her. He prayed it was so. For there was no more that he could do now.

  “Come on then,” he said, lifting his great axe in both hands. “Let’s see if I can’t improve that ugly face of yours.”

  Raegnold growled and rushed forward.

  Dunston moved on leaden legs to meet him.

  To meet him,
and to die.

  Thirty-Four

  Aedwen clung to the branch and watched Dunston’s stand against the riders with a mixture of awe and horror. She cuffed away bitter tears, smearing her cheeks with the green of lichen and moss. Despite the terror that she was about to witness the old man’s death, she could not look away.

  More than once she was certain that Dunston would be struck down, but each time he had emerged from the press of horses and weapon-wielding men. She watched in a daze of disbelief as the grey-bearded woodsman killed two of the riders in that first attack and left two mounts screaming and kicking in the grass. The sound of the animals’ distress scratched at her nerves, echoing her own anguish. But she did not scream. She gripped the alder tightly until her muscles cramped while she willed Dunston on.

  Surely he could not hope to face so many foe-men and survive. And yet, as some of the horses wheeled about, she gasped. The old man was rushing at them! His bellowing cry reached her and she shuddered. He pulled one rider from his saddle and the man was sent careening away over the meadow towards Exanceaster, dragged from his stirrup.

  And then one of the horsemen dismounted. His sword flickered in the sunlight as he circled Dunston. The man was young and fast and Aedwen was certain that she was about to see the death of the man who had kept her alive these last days. She felt a hollow emptiness; was unable to think. She knew she should take advantage of the fact that all of the remaining men were watching the duel. She could slip down from the tree and sprint to the path that ran alongside the river. With luck, she could be at the woods the other side of the path before anyone noticed her. Perhaps then she would be able to make her way carefully and invisibly to Exanceaster. She patted the bag that was slung over her shoulder. The message was yet there. And surely that is why Dunston fought, so that she might have time to escape. He could not hope to live. She must flee. She knew it.

  And yet she did not move. She shifted her position slightly so that she might see more clearly through the tree’s leaves and she watched.

  The two warriors, young and old, were speaking, but she could not hear the words from this distance. She held her breath as the dark-bearded warrior leapt at Dunston without warning. The clash of their blades reached her a moment later and she was shocked to see Dunston had avoided the man’s attack.

  Along with all of the riders, she watched raptly, unable to turn away as the two men fought. She let out a whimper when Dunston was cut, and wept with relief when finally he slew his younger and faster assailant.

  But Dunston was wounded now, bleeding and struggling. She could barely imagine the fatigue and exhaustion he must feel, and yet she saw it in his gait, in the droop of his head and the slump of his shoulders.

  Against all the odds, Dunston remained upright and Aedwen cursed herself for not running. He had bought her this time with his blood and his suffering. And, she was sure, with his death, which must come soon enough. And yet still she did not climb down from her vantage point.

  She screamed out a warning when she saw the horse bearing down on him from behind. Perhaps this was how she repaid him, by saving him from a craven attack from the rear.

  Dunston turned, but too slow and she could not stop her tears now as the horse clattered into him, sending him tumbling and sprawling to the soft earth of the meadow.

  She sobbed, willing him to rise. And when he did, pushing himself painfully and slowly to his feet, her heart clenched. He was barely able to stand, his body broken and clearly in agony. The horseman who had hit Dunston dismounted. Despite the distance, she recognised him instantly and cursed at the cruelty of it. That the man who had slain Odin would now kill the dog’s master.

  The circle of horsemen watched on, anticipating the end of the great Dunston the Bold. Expecting to see his lifeblood pumping into the meadow grass here, beneath the crumbling walls of Exanceaster.

  Aedwen watched too. Like the riders, she was entranced, unable to turn away. But from her lofty position in the alder she caught a movement in the corner of her vision. A stealthy rippling in the long grass. A grey shadow, slipping between the waving sedge and golden marigolds of the meadow.

  Raegnold was close to Dunston now. The old man, holding himself awkwardly against the pain, said something to the advancing man, but she could not hear what it was.

  Her blood rushed in her ears and she looked back for the approaching shadow in the grass, thinking she must have imagined it.

  It was still there, creeping ever closer. Could it be a wolf? Her mind could make no sense of it.

  And then, in an instant, all became clear.

  For, at the moment that Raegnold rushed at Dunston, ready to hack him down, the grey shape sprang forward, abandoning stealth for speed.

  Thirty-Five

  Dunston blinked, unsure for a moment what he was witnessing. Had he lost his senses? His body screamed at him, his chest a burning agony with each breath, hot blood running in rivers down his arm and belly. He had seen men lose their minds at the end, delirious from the pain as their spirits fought to cling to life for just a few more heartbeats.

  He shook his head to clear it.

  He was not dead yet. His vision was clear.

  And now there could be no doubt. The grey shape that had leapt from the tall grass was Odin, his great merle hound. The dog’s snarling jaws snapped onto Raegnold’s wrist and the tall man, completely taken by surprise, let out a wail of fear and pain and fell into the grass. Odin was a frenzy of snarling and growling. Raegnold screamed as the two of them rolled, half-hidden by the foliage.

  Regaining his wits, Dunston staggered forward. He would not allow the bastard to kill his dog. Evidently he had not slain Odin in Briuuetone, Dunston was not about to let him now.

  He had only taken a couple of steps, when Raegnold’s screams abated suddenly. Odin rose, panting, chest heaving. Raegnold was still. The dog’s tongue lolled and its maw was stained crimson. Dunston almost laughed to see the dog’s grin, but then he saw the long, blackened wound that ran the length of Odin’s body and his stomach tightened. No hair grew along the cut that appeared to have been stitched and then burnt to staunch the bleeding. Someone had tended to the dog’s injury, but Dunston feared the mystery healer’s work would be undone soon.

  The leader of the riders was the colour of a ripe rosehip now, as he screamed at his remaining men.

  “Kill him! Kill him! Kill him, you incompetent fools!”

  Goaded on thus by their master, the men spurred their horses forward. Dunston saw fear in some of their faces. Much blood had been spilt in a matter of moments, and the old wolf still stood. And yet, there was resolve in his enemies’ expressions too. The warriors urged their mounts closer. Their eyes were hard and their weapons’ steel glimmered dully in the sunlight.

  A light rain began to fall and Dunston welcomed its cooling touch on his brow.

  “To me, Odin,” he called.

  The hound padded to his side. Dunston’s hand dropped to the dog’s head and scratched behind his ears affectionately. It was good to see the old boy one last time, though how he had come to this place Dunston could not guess.

  The riders were hesitating now, unsure how to proceed. They were grim-faced and determined, and yet it seemed they had not contended with the prospect of attacking an armed killer and his huge hound, both covered in the blood of their fallen comrades.

  “What are you waiting for?” yelled their leader. Dunston noticed that despite his anger at his men’s ineffectiveness, he did not ride forward with them.

  A horse snorted and stamped. Its rider sawed at the reins, struggling to keep the beast from galloping away.

  Dunston scanned the men’s faces. Their jaws were set and they still had the benefit of overwhelming numbers. They would attack soon enough, goaded on by their lord.

  “Just you and me again, old friend,” he whispered and patted Odin’s head. The fur was wiry and wet. Odin gazed up at his master with his one eye and licked his hand.

  Above t
he riders, a rainbow appeared in the cloud-embroiled sky. Dunston smiled, wondering at the sign. He drew in a deep breath. By Christ, his ribs hurt.

  Well, whether the rainbow was God’s promise or an omen from the Norse gods, he would find out soon enough.

  Hefting DeaÞangenga before him, Dunston raised himself up to his full height. His teeth ground together and he winced at the pain. But he would not let it show on his face. He would meet these murderers standing tall, not cowed and broken like some old washer woman.

  “Come on then, if you are coming, you cowardly whoresons,” he bellowed without warning. The steeds shied at the volume of his voice. He grinned, his teeth flashing wolfishly. “Or are you too craven to kill an old man and his dog?”

  He would die now, he knew, but he had resigned himself to that reality and had made peace with breaking his oaths to Eawynn. The thought of death held no fear for him.

  “Come on then, you curs,” he yelled, ignoring the agony in his chest and raising DeaÞangenga into the air so that the sun caught its silver-threaded blade. And at last, their leader’s commands and Dunston’s taunts made the men move. As if at some unspoken signal, they all touched their spurs to their horses’ flanks as one, and approached him and Odin with a deep-throated growl rather than a roar of defiance.

  Dunston lifted his axe and prepared to take as many of them with him before death claimed him.

  “Goodbye, Odin, old friend,” he said.

  The riders were almost upon them when a sound cut through their ire-filled shouts and the thrum of their horses’ hooves. It was a piercing wail of a hunting horn and it came from the direction of Exanceaster. The riders reined in their mounts, clearly pleased for an excuse not to attack the blood-soaked greybeard, with his death-dealing axe and his fanged companion.