I must have fallen into a doze soon afterwards, for the next thing I knew I was jerked awake by a deep wheezing grunt. The sound was so hoarse and powerful that it seemed to reverberate right inside my own chest. I had never heard a sound like it, but the message was unmistakable. It was a challenge.
I could not stop myself. I twisted round and looked behind me. The sight was something from a nightmare.
An enormous animal stood among the tree trunks, some thirty paces behind us. How such a bulky and massive creature had managed to come so close and in such silence was shocking. Even Vulfard, the most alert of huntsmen, had been taken off-guard.
The beast had ambushed us. At the shoulder it stood taller than the very largest stallion. The body bulged with muscle and was covered with a coarse blackish-brown pelt. The creature was a grotesque version of farm oxen that I had known as a child. They had been domestic animals, plodding, slow and placid. The creature that now stood close behind us was larger, stronger, hostile, and infinitely more dangerous. I stared with horrified fascination at its horns. They projected from its brow in a long forward curve, half the length of my arm, then swept upwards to end in a deadly sharp-pointed hook. They were designed to pierce, gore, and then fling aside a victim. They were weapons for killing.
Unbidden, the name of the beast surfaced in my mind. Vulfard’s informant had called it ‘aurochs’. In Frankish this meant ‘ancient ox’, an apt name for a throwback that belonged to a distant age when all manner of gross creatures walked the forest. I had failed to foresee that beasts that deserved this name might still claim mastery over their ancestral domain.
The huge beast gave a second resounding grunt. Louder, more aggressive than before, the challenge was even more obvious. The animal resented our presence. We were trespassers, and the carefully sited trap had gone disastrously wrong. We had planned for the aurochs to approach from the far side of the glade and we had placed ourselves downwind. But the beast had come from behind us, sensed our presence, and come to investigate. Now we were the ones who were trapped.
The beast tossed its head angrily. A great gob of drooling spittle flew through the air.
My guts turned to water. I was so frightened that I doubted I could even get to my feet. For a stupid moment I thought that if I stayed absolutely motionless the creature would ignore me.
Then the aurochs swung its head from side to side, displaying the terrible horns in a further warning, and I saw the creature’s eyes. They had a mad, glaring look, a white rim around the darker, gleaming centre. There was no chance that the creature would leave us alone.
It was so close that I could see the slick wetness inside the flaring nostrils of its broad black muzzle. The aurochs snorted angrily yet again, then gave another threatening side-to-side shake of the horns. The creature stamped down, pawing at the ground. The hoof dragged a deep furrow in the soft earth, and the monster lowered its head. It was about to charge.
At that instant, Vulfard saved my life. He was either very brave or very foolish. ‘Lie still, Sigwulf!’ he rasped, then he sprang to his feet, snatching up his cap. Spinning round to face the aurochs, he waved his cap in the animal’s face and taunted it with a shout. Then he turned on his heel and ran directly towards the pitfall.
It was impossible that such a huge animal could move so fast. One moment the aurochs was standing still. The next, it had gathered its huge haunches and sprung forward, head down, the great legs moving in a blur. The ground shook under me with the sudden thud of its hooves, followed by a waft of musty air as the animal raced past where I lay paralysed with fear. In a heartbeat it was closing the gap as Vulfard sprinted to escape the deadly horns.
He ran out into the glade. Now he was on open ground and totally exposed. Yet he kept his nerve. With perhaps three paces to the lip of the pitfall he glanced over his shoulder and, at the very last second, swerved to one side. The aurochs charged on past him, unable to halt its headlong rush.
As the huge beast stepped on the false ground the covering of hurdles collapsed immediately. With a great flurry of broken sticks and earth sods the huge creature tumbled into the pit, bellowing with rage.
Perhaps Vulfard had mistaken the precise location of the hidden pit. Or misjudged the length and reach of the long horns. The verderer was unbalanced and teetering on the very edge of the pit when the aurochs dropped forward. With amazing agility for such a bulky creature, the aurochs twisted sideways in mid-air. The tip of the right horn snagged the verderer’s jerkin, just below the armpit. One moment Vulfard was on the edge of the pit; the next he was dragged down with the enraged beast.
Aghast, I lurched awkwardly to my feet and ran forward, my legs already wobbly with fear. Reaching the edge of the pit I looked down. Nothing could save Vulfard. He had landed alongside the animal and managed to push himself upright in the gap between the side of the pit and the aurochs’ hindquarters. For a brief moment he was clear of its horns. But the enraged monster squirmed round and I watched as it drove a horn straight into Vulfard’s chest. The horn spiked Vulfard like a pig on a roasting spit, passing right through him. With a savage twist of its head the aurochs tossed Vulfard high into the air. The verderer spun, then fell back. The aurochs caught him on both horns, then tossed him again. I prayed that death would come to Vulfard quickly, so badly broken was his body. It flopped limply as the aurochs flung its victim upwards again and again. After several lunging, maddened attacks the brute allowed the wreckage of what had once been a man to drop into the churned mud of the pitfall’s floor. To my horror the aurochs then backed away into the small space available, lowered its head and deliberately spiked the corpse again. Lifting Vulfard on its head like some grisly trophy, the aurochs shook its head from side to side as a terrier might shake a rat in its jaws. A terrier would have growled its anger; the aurochs bellowed and bellowed hate and frustration.
Only when Vulfard’s mangled corpse was a bloody pulp did the aurochs finally drop its victim into the slime and mud. Little by little, the frenzied bellowing died away, and from where I stood above, I could see its flanks heaving in and out. Then the beast raised its huge head to me, its mad, white-rimmed eyes glaring malevolently.
In the terrible, empty interval that followed I became aware of Walo standing on the opposite side of the pit. He too had been looking down at the gruesome death of his father. Tears were streaming down his face, and he was shaking violently. For a desperate moment I thought that Walo would hurl himself down into the pit to try to retrieve his father’s body or avenge his killer. Instead, as the aurochs ceased its bellowing, Walo threw back his head and, between great sobs of anguish, let out an awful, long-drawn-out howl.
Chapter Two
My summons to the royal chancery had arrived three weeks earlier. The compline bell in the dome of Aachen’s basilica was tolling when a nervous-looking young clerk with rabbit teeth knocked on my door. He stared at the ground and mumbled his words because I had not had time to slip on the eye patch I usually wore in public. The Franks and my own Saxon people believe that someone who has eyes of different colours bears the mark of a person touched by the evil one. One of my eyes is blue, the other a greenish hazel. This oddity saved my life as a teenager when my bitter nemesis, King Offa of Wessex, invaded and seized my family’s insignificant little kingdom. Offa slaughtered my father and brothers but, fearful that ill luck would follow my murder, he spared my life, choosing instead to exile me to the court of the king of the Franks and the most powerful sovereign in Europe whose rule now extends from the Atlantic coast to the dark forests beyond the Rhine. That exile had a cruel streak. Offa anticipated that I would suffer all the disadvantages and sorrows of a winelas guma, a ‘friendless man’, a prey to all who would harm or exploit him. Against all odds I had prospered. My service in Hispania had been rewarded with an annual stipend and the gift of a small house on the edge of the royal precinct.