Abomination (6 page)

Wulfric jumped backward to avoid the first blow, but the Norseman was quicker than his size suggested, and his second attack came too fast for Wulfric to anticipate. This time he managed only half a dodge before the maul struck him in the shoulder and knocked him to the ground. He looked up, dazed, to see the great bull of a man bearing down on him, hammer overhead in preparation for the killing blow.

But Wulfric had not lost hold of his sword. He swung low, slashing the Norseman deep across the ankle. The Dane cried out and went down on one knee, dropping the hammer. He drew a knife from his belt, but now it was Wulfric who surprised with his speed. He leapt back to his feet and swung his sword upward like a farmer chopping wheat with a scythe. It caught the Dane on the underside of the neck and buried itself deep in his throat.

As the giant’s blood sprayed out onto the cobblestones, time seemed to slow, and Wulfric noted that it was curious how blood appeared black, not red, in the pale light of the moon. And then time resumed its normal rate again, and Wulfric drew back his sword. The motion pulled the blade free from the Dane’s neck and brought him crashing to the ground. Wulfric stepped back to avoid the dead man’s blood staining his boots as it pooled out toward him, then ran to catch up with King Alfred and his men.

The ox was the first man Wulfric killed in battle, but far from the last. Many more were to come in the months ahead. Alfred and
his company, along with the rest of those who managed to escape the disaster at Chippenham, retreated south to the Isle of Athelney in neighboring Somerset. The small island provided a bottleneck that protected them from the type of frontal assault suffered at Chippenham and afforded Alfred time to regroup.

Not that he had much left to regroup; most of his men had been killed or captured, and the small force that remained could scarcely defend itself, let alone stage a counterattack. But Alfred refused to be cowed, even after a crushing defeat and with so few resources at hand. He sent word to every nearby village and town, commanding men to rally to his banner. And rally they did. After several long months of rebuilding his army, Alfred took it back onto the field and met the full might of the Danish host at Ethandun.

It was to be a bloody morning, not least for young Wulfric, who, since first drawing blood in the battle against the ox, had discovered that he now had not only a talent for killing, but a taste for it. After the fall of Chippenham, the Norse had hounded Alfred’s retreating army halfway across Wiltshire before finally breaking off pursuit. Along the way, there had been several bloody skirmishes, in which Wulfric had claimed many more Danish heads. In each battle, it was as though some inner savage that usually lay dormant within him awoke and asserted control until the fight was over. After the killing was done, Wulfric could feel nothing but remorse for the lives he had taken. But when he was in the thick of it, bloody sword in hand, it was as though he had been born to do this and nothing else. None who fought alongside him, who witnessed this transformation, could disagree. And over time, Wulfric’s nickname, given in jest after that first day in the training yard, began to strike his comrades-in-arms as wholly inadequate.

But on that day at Ethandun they saw something else entirely. Wulfric had already killed at least twenty Norsemen in the battle—the royal crest on his tabard had entirely disappeared behind a thick coating of Danish blood—when he wheeled around to
realize King Alfred was nowhere to be seen. Lost in the reverie of slaughter, he had broken the one rule his master-at-arms had given him:
Stay with the King!
He searched the melee, cutting down any Dane unfortunate enough to stray within striking distance, until he caught sight of the King on his horse. And even from fifty feet away, Wulfric could see that Alfred was in trouble. The Norse were swarming his position, cutting down his personal guard, making their way closer to the man Wulfric had taken an oath to protect.

Wulfric surged forward and reached the King just as a powerful Dane dressed in furs and mail reached up and pulled Alfred down off his mount. With the King defenseless on the ground, the Norseman drew back his axe for the killing blow. That was when Wulfric charged into the fray, piercing the Dane’s mail armor with his sword. The barbarian slid off Wulfric’s blade, dead, even as three more moved in to finish the job he had started. Wulfric, breathing hard, took up a defensive position between the Norsemen and his King.

The first man to attack went down quickly: Wulfric dodged the Norseman’s swinging sword and slashed him across the back with his own. The second and third came at Wulfric together, thinking to better their odds. It did, but not nearly enough. Wulfric ran his sword through the open mouth of one, but when the blade became stuck in the back of the man’s skull and could not be pulled free, he let it go, and took on the other man unarmed.

This one carried a crudely formed cudgel, little more than a heavy hunk of wood with iron spikes hammered through it, but deadly enough, especially at arm’s length. Wulfric, driven by the war spirit that possessed him in battle, knew that his best chance was to get in close. He waited for the Danish brute to take a big, lumbering swing, ducked under it, then charged at the man, tackling him to the ground. The Norseman was still by far the stronger and would doubtless prevail in a hand-to-hand grapple, but Wulfric would not let it come to that. He drew a stiletto from his
boot and drove it into the barbarian’s right eye, deep enough to skewer his head to the ground beneath.

Wulfric fell back onto the ground, exhausted. More English soldiers now rallied to the King’s side, surrounding him. Two men helped Alfred to his feet. None did so for Wulfric. They had not witnessed the encounter; to them he was just another common infantryman, not worthy of their concern. But one man had noticed: Alfred. As he was escorted to safety, his eyes never left Wulfric, the young man who had just saved his life.

Alfred went on to a great victory at Ethandun, and the war turned after that. Alfred routed the Danish host and pursued the surviving rabble all the way back to Chippenham, where the rest of the Norse were by now garrisoned. With the Danish king, Guthrum, sequestered inside, Alfred saw his chance to break them once and for all. Thus, with his entire force arrayed around Chippenham’s walls, Alfred began a slow siege. After two weeks, the Norse within were starving, their will to resist broken. In desperation, Guthrum sued for peace, and Alfred offered the terms that would at last bring the war to an end.

After his triumphant return home, Alfred’s first order of business was to have the young infantryman who had saved his life at Ethandun brought before him. Wulfric had no idea why he had been summoned to the royal court, and so was surprised when he was told to kneel and felt the flat of Alfred’s sword touch first one shoulder, then the other. “Arise, Sir Wulfric,” the King said. And the young man who once swore he would never so much as hold a sword rose, a knight.

Wulfric was a common man with no noble heritage, and so it was explained to him that all knights must have a coat of arms to signify their house. With little heraldic precedent to draw on, Wulfric decided to take as the symbol of his house a cherished
memory from his childhood. His father had taught him as a boy to identify all manner of curious beetles and bugs, and Wulfric’s favorite among all was the scarab beetle. His father had explained that its armored shell made it hardy and resistant to all manner of hostile conditions. Wulfric, who knew the hard life of a peasant, had liked that. He also liked that the scarab’s favorite pastime was to collect dung. And so it was that years later, wrestling with the fact that he was no longer a commoner but a Knight of the Realm, he thought it the perfect way to remind himself of his lowly beginnings. For what could be more lowly than an insect that spends its days half-buried in shit?

Once Wulfric had a coat of arms by which his house could be known, all he needed was a house. Alfred granted him his choice of castles and lands up and down the kingdom, but Wulfric would take none of them. Instead he settled on a house and a plot of land where he could raise turnips and carrots and perhaps find a wife for himself. If God were willing, perhaps he would even see fit to bless him with a son or daughter, but Wulfric would not ask for anything he had not yet earned. To his mind, all he had done of note was kill men in battle, and he did not see why that should ever be rewarded.

When Wulfric stepped through the door, Cwen, his wife, turned in surprise from the stove where soup was cooking. “You’re back early,” she said. “Did you forget something?”

By God, that soup smells good
, Wulfric thought as the aroma hit him. Of all the reasons he had chosen Cwen for his wife, her cooking ranked only second.
Well, perhaps third
, he thought to himself.

“Yes,” said Wulfric wearily. “I forgot, if only briefly, that I will never be out of Alfred’s debt.”

Cwen did not appear to like the sound of that at all. She placed her hands on her hips and frowned at him. “Please, not that look,” Wulfric said as he sat. “How about some of that soup?”

“It’s not ready yet,” said Cwen, softening not even a little. “What do you mean? Those riders I saw on the hill, they were the King’s men?”

“He’s summoned me to Winchester.”

“And of course you said no.”

“I could hardly do that. Not after everything he has done for me. I must at least go and see what he wants.”

Cwen stepped out from behind the kitchen table. She was getting bigger every day. The child was due in only a few months. That was why Wulfric was out on the plow, though the horse was sick. When his son was born—somehow, Wulfric knew it was to be a boy—he would not want for food to eat, nor any of the things that Wulfric had gone without as a child. He would be the son of a knight. Perhaps Wulfric would ask Alfred for that castle after all, so that his son might grow up in it.

“You’ve got it backward,” Cwen said sternly. “You’ve always had it backward. It’s Alfred who owes you, not the other way around. He’d be dead if not for you.”

“I only did what I was sworn to do,” said Wulfric. “What any soldier would have done in my position. But Alfred did not have to knight me, nor set me up for life the way he did. Look at all that I have—more than I ever dreamed. My own house, my own land.” He rose from the table and took his wife by the hand. “My own wife, the most beautiful in the world.”

“Save your flattery,” said Cwen, though the faintest hint of a smile suggested that it had made its mark. “I am quite sure Alfred did not grant me to you.”

“True, but I would not have won you had he not made me a knight.”

“I didn’t know you were a knight when I agreed to marry you.”

“If I were not, I would never have had the courage to ask,” he said, close enough now to kiss her. And kiss her he did.