He stood above her watching the two children sharing her sleep at her breast. He had his hand on his knife. Soon he would use it to kill her, he thought, perhaps when they met the witches, perhaps just before he returned to his wife. Whenever, it would be by the knife. The Moonsword had only ever killed warriors and he wouldn’t stain it with the blood of a woman. And yet he felt it wrong to finish her with the same implement he would use to gut a fish. She was a mother and, to him, that deserved some respect. He had seen his wife go through labour five times and had wondered how many of his men would stand such pain.
There seemed something precious and worth preserving in the bond between the mother and her children, a warmth that seemed to spread from her. Authun the Pitiless felt something stir in his breast that, had he known it, was the first faint flickering intimation of his doom.
The woman had a charm given to her by the boys’ father, a curious, wandering man in an age when lonely wanderers were rare. Few would dare to walk the land alone, at the prey of hostile villagers, offended lords, bandits, wild men, trolls, elves and wolf men. But the boys’ father had dared. The amulet — just a wolf’s head scratched on a pebble — would offer her protection, he had said, and left. So far it had offered her none at all but she clutched it to her in her sleep. When Authun the Wolf, slayer of the giant Geat, pillager of the east, feared lord of the white wastes, touched his knife and looked down at her he felt pity. It was a new emotion for him but who is to say it was the stranger’s charm? A man has to become tired of slaughter eventually. Only the gods have an endless appetite for that.
The ship, under no direction, had turned across the waves and made a sudden violent jar. Authun kept his balance but the woman and the babies were shaken and slid against a chest. They awoke in a confusion of screaming, and for an instant the woman stared at Authun with that penetrating bloody eye. The king, who could face down any enemy, turned quickly to steady the boat. Action, as always, kept reflection at bay.
The woman watched him tie the rudder and work the sail and thought him the second most terrible thing she had ever seen. She recognised him for what he was, a belligerent self-seeker who had taken all the fears he had in him and thrown them at his enemies, a snatcher, a killer and a hero.
The children’s father had said he was bored by heroes but Authun seemed anything but boring — terrible, murderous, almost divine. As he’d taken her from the church, the arrows flying, the fires blazing and the villagers screaming, he had seemed a point of unnatural calm, a rock in the eddying currents of violence. It was as if, for him, that situation was normal. If she ever met the god of war, she thought, Authun is how he would look.
The gods, however, had been much closer in her life.
3
The mother’s name was Saitada and she had been very beautiful, sold as a young child when she was captured from her own people. Then her name had been Badb. As she had grown she had attracted the sexual attention of her owner — a smith. He was a generous man and liked to share her with his friends. At the age of thirteen she had cursed her good looks, taken a hot iron from the forge and applied it to her face.
The smith had been furious. He had tried to beat her but for some reason couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her, tell her he would make things all right, but he knew the girl would never come near him any more except by force. For as long as he’d owned her he had been convinced there was some bond between them — that despite her tears and her protestations, her eventual sullen withdrawal, that she felt something for him, even that he was special to her. There on her face he confronted the damage he had done and, as a coward, could not bear to look at it in his home. So he’d just taken her to market. Though she had been delirious with pain from her wound, she remembered that place, where she had stood alongside goats and pigs in the shit and the stink to be prodded and inspected and sold on.
‘This one,’ said the farmer’s wife, who could have been mistaken for an upright pig in the wrong light. ‘This one I think is very suitable.’
The farmer, whose advancing years had neither increased his discernment nor reduced his lust, had been delighted. If he positioned her right then he would have a rare beauty to enjoy. Then he had looked into that eye and the idea had seemed impossible. He felt bad for having had such lewd thoughts and took pity on the girl.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she will make a fine maid.’
They had asked her what she was called and she, wishing to leave the sullied little girl with the pretty face behind, had chosen another of her people’s names. Saitada.
The farmer’s wife had picked her for her horrible looks, fearing to lose her husband’s affections to a prettier girl. The wound, she knew, would not put a man off because a man in passion is a beast that no small deformity can deter. It was the bloody eye that seemed to look through you and expose your sins to shame that would keep her husband true. No man, she thought, could have that look upon him and feel his misdeeds would go unpunished.
The farmer’s wife was a healer and had dressed and cared for the girl’s wounds with presses of comfrey and chamomile. Lacking children of her own, she lavished attention on her, combed and plaited her hair, made her a pretty dress and even gave her a bed. Saitada was as happy there as she had ever been, though she swore she would never take another man. And she never did, until she was seventeen.
On the day that she was to go back on that vow a neighbouring farmer had visited to warn that, very unusually, there was a wolf in the area. Three of his sheep had been killed the night before. In such a tight community of small farms wolves were rare, put off by the number of men. Hence the local farmers had little experience of dealing with them.
So Saitada, the farmer and his wife drove their livestock into the pen by the pigsty and waited the night with the dogs and a spear. You have two ways to go with a wolf, unless you are an experienced trapper. One is to light your torches and sing your songs, hoping that the noise will drive him away. The second is to lie in wait to spear him and kill him. Neither will work but both courses of action will provide the comfort of doing something. If you come in force he will slip away and try again tomorrow. If you wait, he can wait longer, until you are tired and sleep takes you. To catch a wolf, you need a trick and a trap, things the farmer did not have.
The farmer was eager for sleep and wanted to get things over with, so he commanded silence from the women. Still, he could not quite keep quiet himself, so impressed was he with the weight of his spear. Men who have never had to fight love a weapon. They love to hold it in their hands, feel its balance and speculate on the damage they might do, were they called to do it. There is a killer in every cowardly man, waiting for the right set of circumstances when the time has been drained of the possibility of reprisals and he feels free to act. The farmer was no different and began, as he sat in the warm night, to feel the importance the spear bestowed upon him and, despite himself, to talk.
‘When I was a boy it was said no one threw a spear better than I.’
The farmer’s wife rolled her eyes because she had heard this story before many times when he was in drink.
‘I thought we were being quiet for this wolf,’ she said.
‘I’m just saying,’ said the farmer, ‘had I been born higher I would have made a mighty warrior. As a boy I had quite the feel for weapons. The earl himself saw me one day and said he wished half his warriors could shoot a bow as well as I. I was quite the-’
Suddenly he was quiet. In the trees by the farm two gigantic eyes seemed to burn, less a wolf than some fiend from hell.
He moved smoothly behind the slave girl. She did not flinch, having endured worse than a wolf had to offer her.
‘That is no ordinary wolf,’ said the farmer’s wife.
‘Sound the alarm,’ said the farmer. ‘Fetch aid, fetch aid!’
‘You fetch aid,’ said his wife; ‘you’re the man.’
‘If I move it might see me,’ hissed the farmer.
‘If I move it might see me,’ hissed his wife.
‘I am needed to till the land. Who will provide for poor Saitada?’ said the farmer.
