Chapter 65: The Wolves at Dún Ailline
The sky above Dún Ailline was iron-gray, pregnant with rain that never quite fell. Smoke rose in lazy, greasy pillars from the town below the ancient hillfort.
The scent of charred thatch and scorched flesh mingling with damp earth. A thick miasma that would consu lesser n.
And yet, Vetrúlfr and Ármóðr stood upon a slight ridge, overlooking what had monts ago been the last desperate stand of the local guards.
Their bodies still dotted the muddy road, limbs twisted under rough Norse boots as warriors stalked among them, checking pouches, prying rings from swollen fingers, driving axes into the skulls of the half-alive to quiet their moans.
Dún Ailline itself lood above; a relic of older ages, its earthen ramparts and stone reinforcents formidable but not unassailable.
Even now, battered gates clung to their hinges, scorched where n had tried in vain to fire the Norse back with burning oil.
The town outside the walls had paid the first price.
Ármóðr watched as one of his n shoved a spear through the chest of a would-be hero, crawling away on shattered legs, pinning him to the muddy street like a frog on a spit.
The Jomsvikings worked with a cold, casual efficiency, their blackened shields stacked at intervals as they pushed carts through the alleys, collecting timbers, barrels, anything that could burn or build.
Closer to the hill, Gunnar approached, his beard wet with blood that was not his own. He inclined his head to Vetrúlfr, his voice low but calm.
“We’ve taken the forge, three granaries, and the rchant’s hall. Enough iron and grain to feed your wolves for a fortnight. The n are stripping timber from the houses, driving in stakes. We’ll have your walls up by tomorrow’s dusk.”
Ármóðr blinked at that. “Walls?”
Gunnar only smiled
“Aye. Palisades. Ditches. Pit traps. Like they build in the lands beyond Miklagarðr. Your n will learn.”
Vetrúlfr said nothing at first. His eyes, pale and pitiless, watched the distant gate. Then he glanced down at Ármóðr, his lips curling into a thin amusent.
“You thought we would camp like goats in the field, did you? Leave ourselves open to every sortie or arrow volley from behind those walls?”
Ármóðr felt a flare of embarrassed heat at his collar. “I have never seen such… preparation from free companies. Nor from jarls co raiding.”
“This is not a raid,” Vetrúlfr murmured, voice soft as sleet. “This is the grinding down of a kingdom. It must be done with care, like gutting a stag. Open too fast, and the blood spoils the at.”
Below them, the work was already advancing. Entire streets had been leveled, their timber dragged up the slope. Long rows of sharpened stakes bristled like wolves’ teeth.
Pits were dug and lined with fresh-cut stakes. Wagons of stone were positioned to build low ramparts where the hill allowed. Fires burned under iron pots, heating pitch to seal wooden hoardings.
Where once the town had stood in living mory, now rose a war camp; stark, disciplined, terrifying in its order.
Ármóðr caught the dark glimr in Gunnar’s eye as he gestured at the n laboring.
“Not a nail from our ships was touched. All of this was built from their own land. Their hos, their tools, their lives, remade into the cradle of your death.”
A horn sounded from sowhere near the half-ruined marketplace. A cluster of remaining townsn had tried to rally, rushing with hay-forks and wood-axes toward a lone knot of Norsen who appeared isolated.
The trap closed with vicious speed. Arrows hissed from behind carts, two-handed axes flashed, and within heartbeats the peasants lay gutted on their own thoroughfare.
Vetrúlfr did not even turn to look. His attention remained fixed on the fort above.
“By tomorrow,” he said coldly, “we will have the ground around Dún Ailline tad. And then we will show them that even stone does not save.”
Ármóðr exhaled, slow and careful. Around him, he realized, every man watched Vetrúlfr not as a lord to be served out of obligation, but as sothing far older. A dark star in whose gravity they all spun, drawn helplessly, terribly.
He touched the hilt of his sword, more from habit than comfort, and forced a thin smile.
“And what of Surtr’s flas? When shall we use them?”
Vetrúlfr, and then patted Ármóðr’s shoulder, as if ntoring a young lad on life.
“That is too precious to be used on every ring fort we co across. No… Surtr’s flas are used to send a ssage, but here it is unecessary. By will and northern steel alone these walls will crumble, and that in and of itself is a different ssage entirely.
“Then let them cower behind their walls,” Ármóðr muttered. “For by the Allfather they will not keep them long.”
Vetrúlfr’s answering look was not quite human. It held a cold promise; of fires yet to co, and of cries that would haunt these hills long after even the crows had had their fill.
—
The witching hour had co to Dún Ailline.
It was the blackest hour of the night; when the stars hid behind thick clouds, when the oil lamps burned low for fear of emptying precious stores.
The hour when, in every chapel and household shrine, folk whispered desperate prayers against the crawling dark.
Captain Rónán mac Taidg pressed a hand to the cold stone of the parapet. Beneath his callused palm, the wall felt clammy, almost alive, slick with dew.
He could hear the labored breaths of his n along the ramparts; boys, mostly, and farrs pressed into levy by their lords. All of them half-starved and gaunt from weeks of mustering, eyes hollow with dread.
Below, beyond the hastily reinforced gates, he could just make out the shape of the Norse camp.
A black wound upon the land, bristling with palisades, torchlight flickering through ragged smoke.
It pulsed with life, even at this hour. n moved like shadows, carrying timber, hamring stakes.
And then there were the drums.
Soft at first, as if echoing inside his skull. Then growing, a deep marrow-throb that seed to shake the stones beneath his boots.
One of his sergeants flinched. “Christ’s blood, they strike the war-skin at this hour?”
Another made the sign of the cross, lips moving silently.
Then ca the horns. Low and savage. Not the clear brassy cry of Connacht war horns, but sothing rough-hewn and mournful that rolled up the hill like the bellow of so titanic beast stirring from its lair.
n ran for their stations, clutching spears that rattled in their hands. Archers scrambled to string bows stiff from the damp, fumbling at quivers.
Soone spilled a pot of oil too early; it hissed across the stones in a steaming slick.
Rónán’s heart slamd against his ribs. He raised his voice to rally them. “Hold fast! They’ll not break us by noise alone. Watch for the signal—”
The words died in his mouth. Down the slope, beyond the crude ditches dug by terrified townsfolk, the Norse host was moving.
Not charging. Marching.
Ranks of shields, iron rims catching stray torchlight. Long ladders borne on wide shoulders. Axes gleaming like the smiles of devils.
And above them all, cresting the rise, a figure in a wolf-skin cloak. Rónán felt his breath catch.
The stories ca unbidden; of the white wolf from the north who devoured kings and drank blood in the moonlight. Of entire villages vanished, left as smoldering graves.
“Archers! Nock!” he barked, voice cracking. “Nock and draw!”
Arrows rained from the wall, a hissing storm that vanished into the night. So found shields, others flesh.
But only those who were struck in the gaps between their armor were truly felled by the iron rain.
A brief chorus of screams floated up; then were swallowed by the steady drumbeat, louder now, joined by hoarse voices chanting in a tongue older than these hills.
The Norse closed ranks. They advanced. No faltering. Even as arrows struck, they shuffled over the bodies of their own unfortunate enough to be maid by them, shields overlapping like a tide of black scales.
A pot of oil finally ignited, crashing into their front line. Fla burst high, sending two n writhing in shrieks; but the line closed over them, trampling the burning corpses without a pause.
Rónán felt his bowels loosen. “Stone-throwers, there! Drop the ladders!”
But the first ladders were already braced against the walls, grappling hooks thrown by lean n who scrambled up as if the stone itself were a stair.
Rónán drew his sword, just as the first Norseman vaulted over the parapet. A giant with matted blonde hair jutting out like a river of honey beneath his iron helm; a grin full of broken teeth haunted the Gael.
He swung an axe into a levy’s collarbone, splitting him like a butcher’s block, before turning toward Rónán with eyes bright with savage joy.
Steel t steel. Rónán parried, stumbled back over a corpse, then lunged desperately. His blade caught in the man’s gut, tearing a wet grunt from him. But the Norseman did not fall; the blade barely pierced through his leather lallar, let alone the mail behind it.
He grabbed Rónán’s arm, hauling him close, breath hot with ad and rot.
“Die for Odin!” the brute rasped, before driving a dagger up under Rónán’s mail.
Pain exploded through him. The wall tilted. His last sight was of another ladder cresting the parapet, more wolves spilling over; followed by a banner bearing the white wolf’s mark.
As he slid to his knees, blood pouring down his thighs, he thought he heard the Norse warlord’s voice, calm as winter’s breath, calling orders that carried over the clash and screams.
Then the darkness took him, and with it Dún Ailline’s last hope.
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