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With their longships storm-blown to the southern coast of Engla-land, Thorgrim Night Wolf and his men find themselves rich with plunder and safely ensconced in a priory called Christchurch. But that cannot last. Thorgrim, in a wolf dream, has seen the enemy armies closing in, and he knows that their peace will soon be at an end. The gods do not go so easy on him and his men. He has learned that through experience and hard use.
Nor are the gods the only threat they face. As Nothwulf, brother of the murdered ealdorman of Dorset, and Cynewise, his sister-in-law, fight for rule of the shire, each seeks to make the raiders unwitting pawns in their game, maneuvering toward a final battle that each hopes will spell the end of the other and crush the Norse strangers who have invaded their shores. |
Kings and Pawns sample chapter
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Now of thy wolves take
one from out the stall; let him now with my hog run. – The Poetic Edda |
It was dark and Thorgrim Night Wolf was running. The ground was moving swiftly under his feet, a fine sensation, odd and familiar at the same time, the tall grass brushing against him as he raced through it. He felt his body moving in a smooth, easy, nearly effortless way. The stiff elbows and knees were no more, the tight pull of the old wound in his back, the sharp stab of pain he often felt from the spear he had recently taken in side, all gone. It was the motion of power, and youth.
He was aware of the scents in the air. They, too, were both familiar and strange. He could smell wood smoke and the scent of animals, the odor of wet grass and the salty tang of the sea, not so far off. He could smell men. A lot of men. And they, too, were not so far off.
The ground rose up before him and he slowed, not because he was growing tired—he wasn’t—but because he knew the men were very near now. It was no longer time for speed, it was time for stealth.
He paused in the dark and let the scents and the sounds settle over him. It was mostly men now, their smell overpowering the smell of horses and smoldering fires and leather and iron and cooked food. He could hear them moving about, but just barely. A shuffle and then silence, a muted cough. A few words spoken in a harsh, low voice. Many men, being as quiet as they could be, which was not very quiet at all. At least not for Thorgrim’s sharp ears.
He moved again, slowly, and even he could not hear the sounds of his own footfalls on the soft ground. He came to the top of the rise and bent low as he passed the crest and peered over. There was nothing below that surprised him. He had seen this sight before, many times.
There were tents. Rows of them, dull white, like old, exposed bones in the light of the sliver of moon overhead. Here and there a torch guttered or a small fire still burned, but Thorgrim did not look at them. He knew the light would impair his vision in the dark. And he knew it impaired the vision of the few men still awake in the camp, and that would make it harder yet for them to see him. Impossible, really.
He moved down the hill. He could see the shapes of men silhouetted against the flames in the camp, sentries posted beyond the throw of the light, armed men staring out into the blackness, looking for any threat approaching from the dark country beyond. But Thorgrim knew they would see nothing. There were no threats out there, save for him, and they would not see him.
The camp was laid out in a rough circle and Thorgrim moved around the perimeter. No clear thoughts came to his mind, no conclusions or observations. Nothing that could be articulated. Just impressions, senses, amorphous notions, but he took them all in, let them swirl like mist in his head.
The big tents were near the far end of the camp, large, round, pavilion-style tents that seemed to glow from inside. There were candles burning in there, men still at work or men who feared the dark. But there were only two of them, set up twenty feet apart. Guards stood outside the flaps of each. They looked bored and drowsy. Thorgrim could not tell if they were paying any attention to anything around them. If something happened they looked like they would be dead before they raised the butts of their spears off the trampled ground.
He moved on, coming to the far side of the camp. He had smelled the horses from a long distance away, long before he had seen the tents. Now the smell was growing more powerful, and with it he heard the animals shuffle nervously. The guards used their eyes to look out for danger, though sight was all but useless on that dark night. The horses used their hearing and their sense of smell, and even Thorgrim could not hide from that.
He paused and he heard the shuffling continue and he knew if he approached any closer the shuffling would turn to whinnying and that would attract the attention of the guards. For a moment he remained motionless and he heard the sound of the horses settling back down. Then he turned and moved back the way he had come. None of the sentries cried out or gave any indication that they were aware at all of his presence.
Then he was running again, the ground flying by, his muscles strong and tireless.
And then he was awake. His joints ached and the wound in his side throbbed and he felt as if he had been beaten with a heavy stick.
He opened his eyes, slowly. It was dark still, with just a hint of the dawn at the edge of the sky. He was lying on the ground. There was no fur or blanket over him, Failend was not by his side. Against the growing light in the east he could see the outline of a man, and even though he could not see anything beyond that, he knew it was Starri Deathless. Thorgrim moaned softly, involuntarily.
“Night Wolf,” Starri said. It was a statement.
Thorgrim pushed himself up on one elbow and looked around. He thought he was somewhere near the south wall of the monastery. The one they had captured and plundered the week before. Where they had fought with English men-at-arms who had been there for some reason. Thorgrim could not recall the name of the place. He did not know if he ever knew the name. Or cared.
“Wolf dream?” Starri asked.
Thorgrim groaned again as he pushed himself up to a sitting position. He nodded his head, then realized that in the dark Starri probably could not see the gesture.
“Yes,” he said. Wolf dream. He had had them since he was a young man. In the evening his temper would grow short and a black mood would consume him and he would have to stagger off and be by himself. He could not stand the presence of others, and in truth they could not stand him because they were afraid of him when he was like that. And after some time he would fall asleep and in his dreams he would travel over the countryside. He would see things. Things that would often turn out to be real.
It was how he earned his name. Kveldulf. Night Wolf. The older he grew, the more infrequently the wolf dreams came, but he was not free of them yet. Some said that they were not dreams, that his soul took on the form of a wolf and ran over the land as truly as a real wolf would. Thorgrim had no idea if this was true, but he doubted it. Mostly.
He looked over at Starri and he could see him more clearly now. Starri was fingering the charm he wore around his neck, a familiar gesture. It was the head of an arrow that had, in one of those odd occurrences that sometimes happen, struck the edge of Thorgrim’s sword in the moments before battle and stuck there, split perfectly down the center. It was when Starri and Thorgrim had first met.
Thorgrim had pulled the arrow free and tossed it aside, but Starri took it as a sign that Thorgrim was blessed by the gods. He retrieved the arrowhead and had worn it on a cord around his neck ever since. And ever since he had rarely left Thorgrim’s side.
That was particularly true when the dark mood came on, the precursor to a wolf dream. Since their first meeting Starri had always sat at Thorgrim’s side during those times. And, for reasons Thorgrim never understood, Starri was the one person he could stand to have near him then. Even his son Harald, whom he loved more than anyone alive, was intolerable to him. But not Starri.
They had never spoken of it. Thorgrim did not know why Starri insisted on keeping him company, but he guessed the reasons were twofold. Starri wanted to make certain that Thorgrim’s physical form was safe in those times when his soul was wandering far afield. And Starri felt that when Thorgrim was having a wolf dream the gods were close at hand, and Starri wanted to be there, too.
“What did you see?” Starri asked. He sounded like a calm and reasonable man. Starri always sounded that way when Thorgrim woke from a wolf dream. It was one of the only times he did.
Thorgrim made a grunting sound, but he did not answer at first. He thought back over the dream, the things that had appeared to him.
“I saw men,” he said at last. “A camp of warriors. Not too far from here.”
“The ones that Jorund’s man Ofeig reported?”
“I guess so,” Thorgrim said. “The army that this Oswin, shire reeve or whatever he’s called, did not know about.”
When they had captured that monastery, Thorgrim sent out scouts in all directions to see what threats might be approaching. Ofeig had come across an army, which he guessed was about two hundred men strong, moving their way.
Soon after, a fellow named Oswin had arrived at the gate, wishing to talk. He claimed to speak for the man who employed the men-at-arms Thorgrim’s men had taken when they took the monastery. He claimed he could arrange ransom for those men. He claimed he did not know about this other army, but he said it was a threat to him and to Thorgrim as well.
I guess we’ll find out the truth of this, soon enough, Thorgrim had thought as the fellow Oswin rode away, claiming that he was off to arrange for the ransom.
“Not a big army, no great force,” Thorgrim continued. “Maybe two hundred men, like Ofeig said, maybe a few less. Horses. But not many.”
“So, nothing for us to worry ourselves about?” Starri asked.
“As soon as we stop worrying, we’re dead,” Thorgrim said. “But this doesn’t look like an army we can’t beat.”
“Good,” Starri said. “Then we wait for them here, and when they attack us we’ll crush them like the serpents they are.”
In the dark Thorgrim smiled. Starri was a berserker, imbued with fighting madness that made him crave battle as if it were all that sustained him. It led him to take actions that more prudent men might shun. It also made him forget that such decisions as when and where to fight were not his to make.
“If it were mine to say, I would stay here and let you kill them all single-handed when they came,” Thorgrim said. He put his hands on the cool, hard-packed dirt and pushed himself to his feet, awake enough now to stifle the groan growing in his throat. Starri stood as well, in that way of his that seemed more as if he was unfolding his lanky body.
“But it’s not mine to say. I’ll call a meeting of the lead men,” Thorgrim said, though he knew the words were not true. It was his to say. He was the leader of these men, Lord Thorgrim, and what he said, they did. He would have it no other way.
At the same time, he wanted to show respect for the men who followed him. Jorund had joined with Thorgrim at Loch Garman, putting himself, his four ships and near two hundred men under Thorgrim’s command. He deserved a say in what they would do next. So did Godi and Harald, who had been with Thorgrim through so much, as well as the captains of the other ships.
“Very well, Night Wolf, do as you wish,” Starri said, acquiescence which Thorgrim found surprising.
“That’s very…reasonable of you, Starri.”
In the dawn light he saw Starri shrug. “It’s no matter,” he said. “The others will just do as you say whether you ask for their opinions or not. And whatever you say always seems to lead to fighting. Enough fighting even for me.”
It was still dark when Failend woke, the heavy furs under which she slept pressing her down into the straw pallet that made little crackling noises when she moved. She did not sense Thorgrim’s presence in the bed with her. She reached out her hand, sliding it between the fur and the rough linen that covered the straw, but she could not feel him there. She rolled over and felt in the other direction. He was not there either.
Wolf dream…she thought. She had seen the dark mood coming on Thorgrim the night before, the furrowed brow and the downturned mouth, the expression that looked like barely contained and inexplicable rage. She had seen that before, on a few occasions since she had known him. She knew what the heathens thought it was, that his soul took on the form of a wolf and roamed the dark.
Under the fur she made the sign of the cross.
Failend did not believe such things. She did not believe what the pagans believed. But she also knew that there were many strange things out there, that God was not alone in His works in man’s world, that Satan also had a hand in what happened in the night. She did not like to think that Thorgrim was a tool of Satan. But again, she had been raised to believe that all the heathens were.
Then another thought came to her. Maybe he’s sharing a bed with another woman. That notion gave her more pause than the idea of the wolf dream. In part because it was more plausible. And like the idea of Thorgrim’s soul turning into a wolf, it was not the first time the thought had crossed her mind.
“Who would he be sharing his bed with?” she asked herself in a whisper. There were women among the captives they had taken when they took the monastery, but they were the wives of the men who worked there, tradesmen or laborers or fishermen. The women were ugly, near toothless, hands and faces leathered, bodies misshapen and stooped from years of labor and childbirth.
“He would have none of them,” Failend said, once more speaking softly but out loud, and in her mind added, Not when he could have me.
The wives of the working men were the only women at the monastery; there were no others. There had been nuns, apparently, judging from the garments they had found in one of the dormitories, but those women were gone by the time the heathens had arrived.
Every time that Failend wondered if Thorgrim was sharing another woman’s bed, it led to the same string of thoughts. She figured he would not lie with another woman because there were no other women with whom he might want to couple. He would not be faithful because he loved her, or because he felt any loyalty toward her, but simply because she was the only desirable woman to be had.
“You don’t know that,” she said. And that was true. She didn’t know, had no real notion of what Thorgrim Night Wolf thought or felt. She never spoke to him about those things. The very idea of talking to him about love and faithfulness seemed absurd.
Thorgrim loved Harald. He had apparently loved his late wife. He had three other children: a son named Odd and two daughters, Hild and Hallbera. He had told Failend a little about them, and she had the impression he loved them too, though he had not been in their company for several years now.
She did not know if Thorgrim loved anyone else.
“Well, it’s not as if you’re in love with him, either,” she said, and then she closed her eyes and began to cry.
He was aware of the scents in the air. They, too, were both familiar and strange. He could smell wood smoke and the scent of animals, the odor of wet grass and the salty tang of the sea, not so far off. He could smell men. A lot of men. And they, too, were not so far off.
The ground rose up before him and he slowed, not because he was growing tired—he wasn’t—but because he knew the men were very near now. It was no longer time for speed, it was time for stealth.
He paused in the dark and let the scents and the sounds settle over him. It was mostly men now, their smell overpowering the smell of horses and smoldering fires and leather and iron and cooked food. He could hear them moving about, but just barely. A shuffle and then silence, a muted cough. A few words spoken in a harsh, low voice. Many men, being as quiet as they could be, which was not very quiet at all. At least not for Thorgrim’s sharp ears.
He moved again, slowly, and even he could not hear the sounds of his own footfalls on the soft ground. He came to the top of the rise and bent low as he passed the crest and peered over. There was nothing below that surprised him. He had seen this sight before, many times.
There were tents. Rows of them, dull white, like old, exposed bones in the light of the sliver of moon overhead. Here and there a torch guttered or a small fire still burned, but Thorgrim did not look at them. He knew the light would impair his vision in the dark. And he knew it impaired the vision of the few men still awake in the camp, and that would make it harder yet for them to see him. Impossible, really.
He moved down the hill. He could see the shapes of men silhouetted against the flames in the camp, sentries posted beyond the throw of the light, armed men staring out into the blackness, looking for any threat approaching from the dark country beyond. But Thorgrim knew they would see nothing. There were no threats out there, save for him, and they would not see him.
The camp was laid out in a rough circle and Thorgrim moved around the perimeter. No clear thoughts came to his mind, no conclusions or observations. Nothing that could be articulated. Just impressions, senses, amorphous notions, but he took them all in, let them swirl like mist in his head.
The big tents were near the far end of the camp, large, round, pavilion-style tents that seemed to glow from inside. There were candles burning in there, men still at work or men who feared the dark. But there were only two of them, set up twenty feet apart. Guards stood outside the flaps of each. They looked bored and drowsy. Thorgrim could not tell if they were paying any attention to anything around them. If something happened they looked like they would be dead before they raised the butts of their spears off the trampled ground.
He moved on, coming to the far side of the camp. He had smelled the horses from a long distance away, long before he had seen the tents. Now the smell was growing more powerful, and with it he heard the animals shuffle nervously. The guards used their eyes to look out for danger, though sight was all but useless on that dark night. The horses used their hearing and their sense of smell, and even Thorgrim could not hide from that.
He paused and he heard the shuffling continue and he knew if he approached any closer the shuffling would turn to whinnying and that would attract the attention of the guards. For a moment he remained motionless and he heard the sound of the horses settling back down. Then he turned and moved back the way he had come. None of the sentries cried out or gave any indication that they were aware at all of his presence.
Then he was running again, the ground flying by, his muscles strong and tireless.
And then he was awake. His joints ached and the wound in his side throbbed and he felt as if he had been beaten with a heavy stick.
He opened his eyes, slowly. It was dark still, with just a hint of the dawn at the edge of the sky. He was lying on the ground. There was no fur or blanket over him, Failend was not by his side. Against the growing light in the east he could see the outline of a man, and even though he could not see anything beyond that, he knew it was Starri Deathless. Thorgrim moaned softly, involuntarily.
“Night Wolf,” Starri said. It was a statement.
Thorgrim pushed himself up on one elbow and looked around. He thought he was somewhere near the south wall of the monastery. The one they had captured and plundered the week before. Where they had fought with English men-at-arms who had been there for some reason. Thorgrim could not recall the name of the place. He did not know if he ever knew the name. Or cared.
“Wolf dream?” Starri asked.
Thorgrim groaned again as he pushed himself up to a sitting position. He nodded his head, then realized that in the dark Starri probably could not see the gesture.
“Yes,” he said. Wolf dream. He had had them since he was a young man. In the evening his temper would grow short and a black mood would consume him and he would have to stagger off and be by himself. He could not stand the presence of others, and in truth they could not stand him because they were afraid of him when he was like that. And after some time he would fall asleep and in his dreams he would travel over the countryside. He would see things. Things that would often turn out to be real.
It was how he earned his name. Kveldulf. Night Wolf. The older he grew, the more infrequently the wolf dreams came, but he was not free of them yet. Some said that they were not dreams, that his soul took on the form of a wolf and ran over the land as truly as a real wolf would. Thorgrim had no idea if this was true, but he doubted it. Mostly.
He looked over at Starri and he could see him more clearly now. Starri was fingering the charm he wore around his neck, a familiar gesture. It was the head of an arrow that had, in one of those odd occurrences that sometimes happen, struck the edge of Thorgrim’s sword in the moments before battle and stuck there, split perfectly down the center. It was when Starri and Thorgrim had first met.
Thorgrim had pulled the arrow free and tossed it aside, but Starri took it as a sign that Thorgrim was blessed by the gods. He retrieved the arrowhead and had worn it on a cord around his neck ever since. And ever since he had rarely left Thorgrim’s side.
That was particularly true when the dark mood came on, the precursor to a wolf dream. Since their first meeting Starri had always sat at Thorgrim’s side during those times. And, for reasons Thorgrim never understood, Starri was the one person he could stand to have near him then. Even his son Harald, whom he loved more than anyone alive, was intolerable to him. But not Starri.
They had never spoken of it. Thorgrim did not know why Starri insisted on keeping him company, but he guessed the reasons were twofold. Starri wanted to make certain that Thorgrim’s physical form was safe in those times when his soul was wandering far afield. And Starri felt that when Thorgrim was having a wolf dream the gods were close at hand, and Starri wanted to be there, too.
“What did you see?” Starri asked. He sounded like a calm and reasonable man. Starri always sounded that way when Thorgrim woke from a wolf dream. It was one of the only times he did.
Thorgrim made a grunting sound, but he did not answer at first. He thought back over the dream, the things that had appeared to him.
“I saw men,” he said at last. “A camp of warriors. Not too far from here.”
“The ones that Jorund’s man Ofeig reported?”
“I guess so,” Thorgrim said. “The army that this Oswin, shire reeve or whatever he’s called, did not know about.”
When they had captured that monastery, Thorgrim sent out scouts in all directions to see what threats might be approaching. Ofeig had come across an army, which he guessed was about two hundred men strong, moving their way.
Soon after, a fellow named Oswin had arrived at the gate, wishing to talk. He claimed to speak for the man who employed the men-at-arms Thorgrim’s men had taken when they took the monastery. He claimed he could arrange ransom for those men. He claimed he did not know about this other army, but he said it was a threat to him and to Thorgrim as well.
I guess we’ll find out the truth of this, soon enough, Thorgrim had thought as the fellow Oswin rode away, claiming that he was off to arrange for the ransom.
“Not a big army, no great force,” Thorgrim continued. “Maybe two hundred men, like Ofeig said, maybe a few less. Horses. But not many.”
“So, nothing for us to worry ourselves about?” Starri asked.
“As soon as we stop worrying, we’re dead,” Thorgrim said. “But this doesn’t look like an army we can’t beat.”
“Good,” Starri said. “Then we wait for them here, and when they attack us we’ll crush them like the serpents they are.”
In the dark Thorgrim smiled. Starri was a berserker, imbued with fighting madness that made him crave battle as if it were all that sustained him. It led him to take actions that more prudent men might shun. It also made him forget that such decisions as when and where to fight were not his to make.
“If it were mine to say, I would stay here and let you kill them all single-handed when they came,” Thorgrim said. He put his hands on the cool, hard-packed dirt and pushed himself to his feet, awake enough now to stifle the groan growing in his throat. Starri stood as well, in that way of his that seemed more as if he was unfolding his lanky body.
“But it’s not mine to say. I’ll call a meeting of the lead men,” Thorgrim said, though he knew the words were not true. It was his to say. He was the leader of these men, Lord Thorgrim, and what he said, they did. He would have it no other way.
At the same time, he wanted to show respect for the men who followed him. Jorund had joined with Thorgrim at Loch Garman, putting himself, his four ships and near two hundred men under Thorgrim’s command. He deserved a say in what they would do next. So did Godi and Harald, who had been with Thorgrim through so much, as well as the captains of the other ships.
“Very well, Night Wolf, do as you wish,” Starri said, acquiescence which Thorgrim found surprising.
“That’s very…reasonable of you, Starri.”
In the dawn light he saw Starri shrug. “It’s no matter,” he said. “The others will just do as you say whether you ask for their opinions or not. And whatever you say always seems to lead to fighting. Enough fighting even for me.”
It was still dark when Failend woke, the heavy furs under which she slept pressing her down into the straw pallet that made little crackling noises when she moved. She did not sense Thorgrim’s presence in the bed with her. She reached out her hand, sliding it between the fur and the rough linen that covered the straw, but she could not feel him there. She rolled over and felt in the other direction. He was not there either.
Wolf dream…she thought. She had seen the dark mood coming on Thorgrim the night before, the furrowed brow and the downturned mouth, the expression that looked like barely contained and inexplicable rage. She had seen that before, on a few occasions since she had known him. She knew what the heathens thought it was, that his soul took on the form of a wolf and roamed the dark.
Under the fur she made the sign of the cross.
Failend did not believe such things. She did not believe what the pagans believed. But she also knew that there were many strange things out there, that God was not alone in His works in man’s world, that Satan also had a hand in what happened in the night. She did not like to think that Thorgrim was a tool of Satan. But again, she had been raised to believe that all the heathens were.
Then another thought came to her. Maybe he’s sharing a bed with another woman. That notion gave her more pause than the idea of the wolf dream. In part because it was more plausible. And like the idea of Thorgrim’s soul turning into a wolf, it was not the first time the thought had crossed her mind.
“Who would he be sharing his bed with?” she asked herself in a whisper. There were women among the captives they had taken when they took the monastery, but they were the wives of the men who worked there, tradesmen or laborers or fishermen. The women were ugly, near toothless, hands and faces leathered, bodies misshapen and stooped from years of labor and childbirth.
“He would have none of them,” Failend said, once more speaking softly but out loud, and in her mind added, Not when he could have me.
The wives of the working men were the only women at the monastery; there were no others. There had been nuns, apparently, judging from the garments they had found in one of the dormitories, but those women were gone by the time the heathens had arrived.
Every time that Failend wondered if Thorgrim was sharing another woman’s bed, it led to the same string of thoughts. She figured he would not lie with another woman because there were no other women with whom he might want to couple. He would not be faithful because he loved her, or because he felt any loyalty toward her, but simply because she was the only desirable woman to be had.
“You don’t know that,” she said. And that was true. She didn’t know, had no real notion of what Thorgrim Night Wolf thought or felt. She never spoke to him about those things. The very idea of talking to him about love and faithfulness seemed absurd.
Thorgrim loved Harald. He had apparently loved his late wife. He had three other children: a son named Odd and two daughters, Hild and Hallbera. He had told Failend a little about them, and she had the impression he loved them too, though he had not been in their company for several years now.
She did not know if Thorgrim loved anyone else.
“Well, it’s not as if you’re in love with him, either,” she said, and then she closed her eyes and began to cry.
