text: Dunston felt no fear as the riders charged towards him. There were too many of them for him to defeat alone, of that he had no doubt and he felt a pang of terrible sadness as he thought what they would do to Aedwen once they had finished with him. Hefting DeaÞangenga before him, he rolled his head, causing his neck to pop and crack. He would make them pay dearly for his life. Perhaps she would find a way to escape if he could hold them long enough. He knew that the idea was foolish, but he clung to it. He could not think of what might befall the girl. All he could do now was to kill as many of these bastards as he was able.
  
  Glowering at the horsemen as they galloped towards him, he was filled with rage. Fury at his failure to protect Aedwen. Ire at the atrocities these men had performed on innocents. And anger at having to break his oath.
  
  They were nearly upon him now, and he had already chosen the man he would kill first. A broad-shouldered man with blue cloak and a long, deadly spear. The spears were the most dangerous weapons in that first pass, so he would slay the largest spearman first.
  
  "I am sorry, my love," he whispered, wondering whether Eawynn's shade could hear him. Well, they would be together soon. "I know that I promised, but I must break my oath to you once more, for it seems I will die fighting."
  
  He thought she would have understood. What else could he do? He had to try and defend the girl. Surely that is what Eawynn had seen in him all those years before; what set him apart from other killers of men.
  
  There was no more time for thinking. The thunder of the horses' hooves enveloped him. He stared into the eyes of the beast that carried his first target. It was a roan stallion, muscled and strong, but this was no warhorse. Its eyes were white-rimmed with terror as its rider urged it forward. The men screamed abuse at Dunston, but he ignored them all. There was nothing now save for the stallion and its rider. The man's spear dipped towards Dunston. In a heartbeat he would be skewered on the sharp steel point of the weapon. But in the last instant, he stepped to the right and raised DeaÞangenga high. The spear whistled harmlessly past his face, and the rider was powerless to adjust his aim. Even if he had been fast enough to do so, the horse's head and neck were in the way.
  
  With a great roar that caused the horse beside the spearman to shy away from the axeman, Dunston swung DeaÞangenga in a great downward arc. Its silver-threaded head bit deeply into the roan's neck, splattering gore in the summer air. The animal let out a pitiful scream and collapsed, turning over itself in a flail of legs, hooves and mud. The rider was thrown.
  
  But Dunston did not pause to see how the spearman tumbled into the long grass. Instead, he used the momentum from his great axe's swing to spin around and, crouching to avoid any strikes from the horsemen, he swung DeaÞangenga low. With a sickening splintering, and a jarring force that almost knocked the axe from his hands, DeaÞangenga's blade hacked into a second horse's forelegs. Bones shattered and the beast added its cries to those of the first animal. It ran on awkwardly for several paces, before toppling forward into the earth. Its rider leapt from the saddle, landing badly and sprawling on the ground.
  
  The remainder of the horses rushed past, with no blow coming near Dunston.
  
  In the time it took the horsemen to wheel their steeds around, Dunston ran past the first dying horse. The spearman was rising, half-dazed, from the long grass. Dunston's axe hammered into his neck. Blood fountained and the man fell back, to lie almost hidden from view in the meadow.
  
  The second rider fared momentarily better. He clambered to his feet, sword in hand and advanced on Dunston. Perhaps he expected to be able to take the older man easily, while Dunston fought his comrade, but the axeman spun to face him a heartbeat later. Bright gore dripped from DeaÞangenga, and the man hesitated.
  
  Dunston did not.
  
  "Now you die, boy," he hissed and he sprang at his assailant.
  
  The young warrior raised his sword, but Dunston batted it away with his axe before burying the blade into his opponent's chest. The young man collapsed to his knees and his eyes filled with tears. His face took on a look Dunston had seen countless times before: a dreadful mixture of despair and disbelief at how quickly death had come when moments before life had pumped hot and vibrant in his veins.
  
  Dunston tugged his axe, but it was held fast between the man's ribs. The man keened. Wrenching harder, DeaÞangenga made an obscene sucking sound as it came free. Dunston kicked the man over and turned to face the rest of his attackers.
  
  The riders had regained control of their mounts and were gathering for another charge now. But Dunston did not wait for them to come. He sprinted towards them, giving them no time to gain any momentum. Several of the riders' horses turned away, refusing to attack. Perhaps they were frightened by the screaming man rushing towards them, or maybe from the smell of fresh blood in the air. Dunston cared not, all he knew was that he had to keep moving, keep killing. To give them a moment to organise themselves would spell his doom.
  
  Three of the men managed to spur their mounts forward. Dunston ran straight towards them. Only one, the man on his right, had a spear, the other two brandished swords. They built up speed, but they only reached a fast trot before Dunston was upon them. He laughed, filled with the glee of blood-letting, all thought of his broken oath now forgotten. The Wolf was no longer the hunted. This is what he had been born to do.
  
  Feinting towards the spearman, Dunston swerved to the left, making it impossible for the man to bring the spear to bear without fear of striking his companions or their horses.
  
  One of the swordsmen swiped at him, but Dunston dodged the blade easily. Reaching for the man with his left hand, he grabbed hold of his kirtle and hauled him from the saddle. The man's left foot caught in the stirrup and he was pulled away from Dunston. The horse, scared and confused by the unusual burden, bucked and shied, dragging the man away from the fight.
  
  The second swordsman was evidently an accomplished rider, for he spun his mount around and aimed a strike at Dunston's neck. Dunston caught the sword's blade on DeaÞangenga's iron bit. The two weapons clanged together and Dunston half-expected the sword's blade to shatter. But despite the terrible blow against the axe's head, the sword was well-forged. Its patterned blade sang from the impact, but it did not break.
  
  The man's steed reared, pawing the air with its hooves. Dunston jumped back and was surprised to see his assailant sliding from the saddle. He smacked his mount on the rump and the horse bounded away, happy to be distanced from the battling men.
  
  "What are you doing?" called a heavy-set man on a splendid grey mare. He was richly dressed in fine linen and wool. A garnet-studded clasp held his cerulean cloak and a golden chain hung at his throat. He was older than the rest of the men and Dunston took him for their leader and clearly a man of worth. Dunston did not recognise him.
  
  The dismounted warrior however was known to him. The man had been with Hunfrith at Briuuetone. It was impossible not to recall those ridiculous red breeches. The man swung his sword before him and grinned, his teeth white in his swarthy face and black beard.
  
  "Just kill him and be done with it, Bealowin," shouted the leader. "We cannot tarry here. We are too close to Exanceaster."
  
  So this was Bealowin. The torturer. The defiler. The murderer.
  
  The swordsman was stepping lightly through the long grass and Dunston circled to follow his movement, unwilling to take his eyes off him for even a moment.
  
  "I will slay him soon enough, lord," Bealowin said. "But this bastard has taken too many of my men. His life is mine. You would not deny me vengeance, would you?" He smirked at Dunston then, as if they were both party to some secret jest. The leader of the men was silent.
  
  From the edge of his vision, Dunston could still make out the lord and the clump of horsemen gathered about him. He would have to hope that the man who had been pulled along by his stirrup had been dragged too far away to pose a threat.
  
  Dunston took in a deep breath and swung DeaÞangenga in a wide arc, flexing the bunched muscles of his shoulders. Droplets of blood, as brilliant and red as the garnets in the lord's brooch, sprayed up in the sunlight. Sweat trickled down Dunston's forehead and stung his left eye.
  
  "Feeling your age, Dunston the Old?" sneered Bealowin.
  
  "At least I have grown old, boy. Just like Aculf. We both yet live. You must ask yourself how that is so."
  
  If the mention of the wolf-head registered, Bealowin did not show it on his face. Without warning, he leapt forward and lashed out with his sword. He was fast and Dunston was barely able to step back from the attack. He felt the wind from the passing blade on his face. He recovered quickly. Taking advantage of Bealowin's lunge, he swiped across the man's chest. Bealowin's speed and agility saved him, and he danced away from Dunston, giggling.
  
  "You are so slow," he chortled. "Just like Aculf. How you managed to kill so many of my men, I will never know. They say you were once one of the fabled Wolves of Wessex, but I cannot believe it. You are so very old now."
  
  Dunston was out of breath, but willed himself to appear calm and poised. He could feel the sweat running in rivulets down his back.
  
  "You will find out soon enough how easily I can kill," he said. "I am Dunston the Bold. Son of Wilnoth. I am yet a Wolf of Wessex, boy. And I will take your life."
  
  "God," said Bealowin, stifling his laughter with difficulty, "how I wish I could have more time with you, old man. Your bleating amuses me. I would have liked to make you sing a merry song beneath the blood-eagle."
  
  Dunston said nothing. The time for words was over.
  
  This was the man who had performed the atrocious acts of butchery on Lytelman, Beornmod and Ithamar. Dunston thought of Nothgyth and the corpses at Cantmael. Who knew how many others Bealowin had tortured or killed? Dunston had met his kind before. Bealowin was one who took pleasure from the pain of others. And Dunston knew something with absolute certainty: Bealowin would die here today. Whatever the cost, Dunston would not allow the man who had inflicted such pain and misery to live.
  
  As the thought hardened like tempered steel in his mind, Bealowin's expression changed, as if he too had come to the chilling notion that he might die here.
  
  Without a sound, Bealowin sprang forward once more, slashing and scything his sword in a frenzied attack. It was all Dunston could do to parry and dodge the blows. All the while he was pushed back. Sweat drenched him now. His eyes smarted and his breath came in gasping wheezes. Step after step, Dunston retreated. DeaÞangenga was heavy in his grip now, and with each parry he seemed to be growing weaker and slower. Damn Bealowin. He had the one thing that Dunston could never regain: his youth.
  
  A savage swing at his head made Dunston stagger, barely catching the sword's blade on his axe haft. Splinters flew from the rune-carved wood. The watching men let out a ragged cheer. But Dunston saw an opening in Bealowin's defences. The young man had over-stretched, leaving himself open to attack. Shifting his weight, Dunston sliced DeaÞangenga towards Bealowin's unprotected midriff.
  
  Too late he saw the gleam of triumph in Bealowin's eyes. Dunston cursed himself for a fool. His mind must be growing as old and slow as his body to have fallen for such a ruse. For, in the instant that the axe swung towards Bealowin, the swordsman, clearly anticipating the attack, parried the blow, and then followed up with a vicious riposte. His sharp patterned blade scored a deep cut along Dunston's arm, following almost exactly the scar that a raiding Norseman had given him all those years before on the beach of Tweoxneam.
  
  Dunston staggered back. His sleeve was in tatters and blood welled in the long cut.
  
  Bealowin laughed.
  
  "Finish him now, man," shouted the mounted lord.
  
  The gathered horsemen jeered at Dunston, taunting him. They could see his death looming; imminent.
  
  Dunston shook the sweat from his eyes. He could feel his strength sapping from him as the blood pumped from the wound. His arm throbbed with each beat of his heart.
  
  "Come and finish it then, boy," he said to Bealowin. He opened his arms wide, holding DeaÞangenga out to the side in his bloody hand. This had to end now, he could not afford to grow any weaker. "You think you could make me sing? See if you can make me scream like those you tortured, you worm," he goaded. "Is that the only way you can make someone moan with your blade? To tie them up and cut them? Not man enough to make a woman moan with the weapon between your legs?"
  
  With a bellow of anger at the old man's insults, Bealowin rushed in, lunging, jabbing, slicing with his blade. Dunston gritted his teeth against the burning pain in his arm and parried and dodged as Bealowin pressed his attack. Dunston's right hand was slick with blood and he could feel his axe slipping in his grasp. This could not go on much longer, and so, grasping the haft in both hands, Dunston smashed Bealowin's sword away and then followed with a powerful downward arc. If it had connected, it would have surely cut Bealowin from the crown of his head to his belly. But the blow did not make contact. Instead, Bealowin stepped back and Dunston's axe bit deeply into the soft earth.
  
  Again the gleam of victory was in Bealowin's eyes. His foe was unarmed, his great axe embedded in the loam of the meadow. Bealowin roared and sprang at Dunston. He lunged with his deadly blade, meaning to spit the axeman on his sword.
  
  But Dunston had not survived all these years and countless battles by strength alone. He knew when to bludgeon and batter an opponent, but sometimes guile was the way to win a fight.
  
  Dunston released DeaÞangenga's haft, leaving the axe buried in the soil, as he had known it would when he'd made the swing, inviting Bealowin to believe him defenceless. Dunston spun, with the speed of a man half his age and Bealowin's sword did not plunge into his guts to deliver a death blow. And yet Dunston did not avoid the sword's bite altogether. The sharp blade ripped open his kirtle. Blood instantly streamed, hot and stinging, from a long slicing cut.
  
  Dunston ignored the pain of the cut. It was not a killing wound. He gripped Bealowin's right wrist in his left hand, tugging him forward. At the same moment he pulled Beornmod's seax from the scabbard at his belt and drove it into Bealowin's stomach. He felt the younger man tremble in his grasp and he twisted the blade, pulling it out of the sucking wound and plunging it back into his flesh. Again he stabbed, and again, all the while watching the comprehension dawn in Bealowin's dimming eyes.
  
  The man's blood gushed over Dunston's hand, mingling with his own that pumped from the wound on his forearm.
  
  "Aculf sends you greetings," whispered Dunston, his face close to Bealowin's. "And now you understand."
  
  "What?" the dying man gasped, lost confusion on his face.
  
  "How I killed your men. Even an old wolf has fangs."
  
  Bealowin let out a rattling, rasping breath and slumped. Dunston released him and let him fall to the ground.
  
  Blinking away the sweat from his eyes, Dunston turned to face the horsemen. His kirtle was sodden with blood now, his stomach and arm a stinging agony.
  
  "Who's next?" he shouted at the gathered men, disappointed that his voice cracked in his throat.
  
  "What in the name of all that is holy is wrong with you all?" screamed the gold-chained lord. "He is but one old man!"
  
  Dunston spat. He wished he had some water, but his flask was in the bag he had given to Aedwen.
  
  "I would find some new men if I were you," he said, grinning despite the pain in his arm and stomach. "These ones are more like lambs than warriors."
  
  "Kill him now!" yelled the men's leader. Spittle flew from his lips and his horse flinched at its rider's strident voice.
  
  For a heartbeat, Dunston thought the man was giving the order to the riders around him. But then the thrumming of hooves reached his ears and penetrated through the rushing sound of his blood. The lord was not looking at Dunston, but behind him.
  
  Dunston spun to face the new danger that came from his rear.
  
  All was a blur. The glittering tip of a spear blade flickered towards Dunston. Instinctively, he leaned backward, allowing the steel to pass a hand's breadth from his face. But he was too slow to avoid the charging horse. The spearman who had passed him earlier spurred his steed onward and it hit Dunston with the force of a storm wave buffeting against a cliff.
  
  Dunston was thrown into the waving grass. He tumbled over until he lay on his back. For a moment, he could not draw breath. He barely knew what had happened. The sky above him was grey. Was it growing darker? Sounds of a horse and a man shouting, muffled, as if from a great distance.
  
  With a huge effort, Dunston finally sucked in a deep breath of the earthy air. His chest screamed out. A sharp stabbing agony made him groan, as he slowly climbed to his feet. He attempted another breath. The same searing pain engulfed him. The spearman had dismounted and was coming towards him. For a moment, Dunston's vision blurred and he thought he might faint. Then the man's features became clearer. It was Raegnold, the man he had fought outside the barn in Briuuetone. Raegnold's face was swollen and bruised.
  
  Clenching his jaw against the pain, Dunston reached down and retrieved DeaÞangenga from the grass. Tears pricked his eyes from the pain. He could barely stand. Had his ribs pierced his lungs?
  
  Raegnold was almost on him now. None of the other men came to aid him to dispatch Dunston. He was not surprised. He must have looked as though he might die soon anyway, soaked in blood and mud, and barely able to rise to his feet. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Judging from the intensity of the pain, he might well succumb with no further injuries, if he was given time. But Raegnold was clearly not going to allow that to happen.
  
  "Come to let me finish what I started back in Briuuetone?" Dunston asked. His voice rasped, his breath scratched in his chest.
  
  "You're dead, old man," hissed Raegnold through gritted teeth, unable to open his mouth any wider due to his broken jaw.
  
  Dunston willed himself to stand upright.
  
  "Speak up, I can barely hear you," he taunted. But he had heard the words well enough. And what was worse, he knew them to be true. He would die here, now. His body was aflame with pain and even if by some miracle he was able to defeat Raegnold, there were still six men here, hale and strong. He could not survive against them all.
  
  Raegnold pulled his sword from its scabbard, but did not reply. Evidently speaking hurt too much. Dunston understood that feeling.
  
  "Well, Eawynn, I will be with you soon," he whispered. "I hope I did not disappoint you too much by breaking my promises."
  
  He hoped that Aedwen had run from her hiding place. Perhaps she would be able to reach the safety of Exanceaster before these brutes could capture her. He prayed it was so. For there was no more that he could do now.
  
  "Come on then," he said, lifting his great axe in both hands. "Let's see if I can't improve that ugly face of yours."
  
  Raegnold growled and rushed forward.
  
  Dunston moved on leaden legs to meet him.
  
  To meet him, and to die.