“Because their screams are like the crying of babies,” Finan said.

“And no one likes that sound.”

“So we dull our ears, lord,” Finan went on, “and when the baby úlfhéðnar are all dead we enslave their women.”

“What do you think of this one?” I asked, gesturing with the oatcake toward Eerika. “Too old for slavery?”

“She can cook,” he said grudgingly.

Eerika turned on him. “May you die like a rat,” she began, then stopped suddenly because I had rammed the rest of the oatcake onto her mouth.

I held it there, crumbling it against her stubbornly closed lips. “There is a slave market two days south of here,” I told her, “and if I hear one more word from you I shall carry you there and sell you to some hungry Mercian. And it will not be your food he hungers for. So be quiet, woman.”

She stayed quiet. In truth I rather admired her. She was a proud woman, her eyes were full of defiance, and she had the courage to confront us, but I had seen that her words were scaring some of my men. “Berg!” I shouted.

“Lord?” Berg was on one of the high sleeping platforms, searching through piles of fleeces.

“You told me once your brother is an úlfheðinn?”

“Both my brothers, lord.” Berg was a Norseman, one of the many who followed me. I had saved him from execution on a Welsh beach, and he had been loyal to me ever since. “I have been an úlfheðinn too, lord,” Berg said proudly. He touched a finger to his cheek where he had inked a wolf’s head. That wolf mask was my symbol, painted on my men’s shields, though the inked heads on Berg’s cheeks looked more like a pair of half-decayed pigs.

“So tell us,” I said, “what an úlfheðinn is.”

“A wolf-warrior, lord!”

“We’re all wolf-warriors,” I said. “We carry the wolf head on our shields!”

“A wolf-warrior, lord, is given the spirit of the wolf before battle.”

“He becomes a wolf?”

“Yes, lord! A wolf-warrior fights with the savagery of a wolf because he becomes a wolf in his spirit. He howls like a wolf, runs like a wolf, and kills like a wolf.”

“But we men kill wolves,” I said. I could see my Saxons, the few in the hall, were listening carefully.

“We don’t kill Fenrir, lord,” Berg said, “and Fenrir is the wolf who will slaughter Odin in the final chaos of Ragnarok.”

I saw Eadric cross himself. “So the wolf-warrior,” I asked, “is given the spirit of a great wolf?”

“The greatest wolf, lord! Which means that an úlfheðinn fights with the anger of the gods in his heart!”

“So how do we, mere men, defeat the úlfhéðnar?” I asked, hoping that Berg would be clever enough to understand why I was asking him these questions.

He was. He laughed and tossed a wolf pelt down from the platform. “We become úlfhéðnar ourselves, lord! And you have already killed the úlfhéðnar in battle after battle! You are a wolf-warrior, lord, maybe the greatest of all the wolf-warriors, and we are your pack.”