Jack and the Great Heathen Army
A Willerby Story
Willeerbei, March AD866
Jack liked soldiers.
He liked the chaos they brought with them. He liked their funny-serious faces and silly metal clothes.
He especially liked the sharp points they used to poke spurting holes in each other.
When they were fighting, he liked to join in with his white teeth and black claws, surprising them by jumping up from puddles and down from clouds, leaping around between them, singing cheerily at the top of his reedy voice, flaying skin, ripping off limbs and decapitating torsos.
Yes – Jack really liked soldiers.
Deep in his bower in his pond, he could hear them when they were close.
Dreams of rage, revenge and hidden fear were loud and easy to follow.
But frustratingly, sometimes they did not come close enough.
Sometimes they turned away and went elsewhere.
When they didn’t come, he was always bitterly disappointed, but an ancient bargain meant he was not allowed to give chase.
Instead, he had to make do with something else to play with until either it was dead or he grew bored and let it go, sometimes with a gift if it survived his games and something he’d grown especially fond of.
Strictly speaking he wasn’t supposed to do this either, but small and then progressively larger experiments had taught him these people – not the same people he’d arrived with long ago – were not so vigilant and if he wasn’t greedy or obvious didn’t miss the odd goose, pig or child.
But soldiers were much better.
This time the men he could hear were particularly interesting.
They came from far away, from dark lands of ice and snow, bringing old gods long banished by the Christians with them.
The humans in the village were afraid – he could read that too – and this made it all the more delightfully exciting.
But – and he told himself this sternly – the soldiers may not come at all so Jack began his search of the village for something else to console him should his hopes be confounded.
…
Edward the blacksmith was the busiest man in the busy village, working at his forge until he grew so tired he couldn’t see through the sparks on the anvil and had to be carry-dragged back to his house to take rest.
He hammered enchantment into the iron where he could, but out of habit more than anything else.
The enemy on the way was of human flesh and human bone, immune to spell and charm.
It angered him that all his power could not protect his wife and children from the savagery of the raiding strangers.
He was a big, strong man and one-on-one he’d bet on himself to give as good as he got but he was also no fool and knew the war to come would not be a fair or even fight.
…
In all the fuss and alarm, Eliza, Edward’s five-year-old daughter found herself with more time than she was used to.
Nobody was setting her chores, and the eyes and hands of the adults were too busy to stop her wandering after the scurry of wild paws and the call of the early spring birds wherever they led.
Since she’d been big enough to walk, Eliza had known how to follow and find wild things.
Eagle, raven, owl, falcon, hare, badger, fox.
Still wilder animals too - just a year before she’d been found by the other children in a glade in the wood feeding a great she-wolf slices of pilfered cured ham. They’d driven it off with shouting and stones and brought her back to Edith, her mother.
She’d cried disappointed, angry tears all the way home.
Later, even after she’d calmed and the way of the world had been explained to her, she hadn’t understood.
After that her family kept a close eye on her and the other children told never to leave her alone.
“Don’t go further than you can hear me call,” Edith called, busily packing sacks and bags, too preoccupied by the pressing threat to watch her daughter as closely as she should.
“No, mother,” Elzia called back.
She was a good girl and meant it, but she was also too small to remember promises like this for long, which was why she followed a pompous vole further than she should have and found herself by the out-of-bounds pond.
There she met Jack, sitting on the bank, minding his own business, happily paddling his webbed feet and enjoying the prickle of the midday sun.
…
Ulf arrived in Albion on a warship from the northern dark lands with murderous plans.
Predator and prey – he had learned since birth – was the way the world was. Sheep ate grass and needed to be protected from wolves because they were weak.
The white bears ate men if they could.
Men preyed on weaker men.
Strong took from weak.
This was the law everywhere.
Ulf himself knew this as well as anyone.
His parents had been killed by stronger men and he had only survived the great massacre because he’d been stronger than they were – wise enough to know he could not defend them, wise enough to know to run and hide until he was big and tough enough to take revenge when the time was right.
That revenge – a glorious and triumphant raid with his band of other orphaned men – had got the attention of Ivar, later called the Boneless, and why he’d been selected as a commander in the army assembled to take the soft land to the South.
It had been an easy season and now, after a winter of preparation, it was time to move again.
Fireside stories told of a time when these lands had been defended by a mighty army who wore red and marched below eagles, but those stories were old and that army was gone, leaving behind just tales and the mouldering ruins of their great cities.
Those that came almost in their wake had been strong once too, men with the same ancestors as Ulf’s people, protected by the same mighty gods, but they’d abandoned these to worship a man who washed the feet of his followers and died on a cross.
The Christians were unnaturally and uncannily devoted, so much so that some of them died without recognising their own foolishness.
Ulf had been there when a band of the men shot arrows at one of the petty kings, aiming to maim not kill until in agony at last he succumbed.
Until the end he called on a god who did not come.
What sort of faith was this? A silly and disgusting religion that rotted the minds of everyone it touched.
Those living in Albion now were weak and without will, so foolish they left their greatest treasures in the care of feeble old men who could not defend them.
Wheat for the scythe.
After the plunder Ulf would make a home here – he would take what he needed for that from any who could not defend it.
Sheep to his wolf.
The living would be easy here, he thought, wrapping his cloak around himself as he took his turn on the top of the hill they’d camped on, casting his predator eyes on the campfire of the village below them, perhaps too small and poor to be worth the bother but on balance, probably not given how little risk the raid would be.
While there might not be riches there would be food, women and slaves.
…
Jack was delighted by Eliza’s blonde hair and her fragile, delicate arms and legs, so different to his own dark fur and strong, stubby limbs.
Then he was delighted by her singing, sang in a key he loved but could never quite reach himself.
She sang so sweetly that he sang for her too, then allowed her to pet him and place a wreath of white snowdrops around his sleek neck.
After that they played for a long time, hide-and-seek and chasing games around the pond and in the old-growth trees.
Eliza turned cartwheels and Jack applauded.
Jack walked on his hands and tried to teach Eliza. She didn’t have the strength or balance, tumbled, hurt herself and began to cry.
He stroked her hair and then, once she was consoled and he was content, made himself small and dozed in her little lap.
He was so happy with her he forgot all about the soldiers.
Jack would keep her – he thought between snatches of sleep – he would take her to his bower under the pool given to him until, as all living things do no matter what you did to try and keep them alive, she faded and rotted away until all that was left of her were little bones.
He might make a necklace from her teeth to remember her by.
She’d like that, he was sure.
…
“Eliza!” Edith called, the rising panic in her voice making her sound angry. “Eliza! Where are you we must go now!”
“Eliza!” Edward shouted too, rougher, heavier, just as afraid, hefting sword he’d just forged. “You come to us right now, girl, wherever you are.”
“Edward,” Edith said, “I won’t leave without her.”
The big man turned on her. “You will because we have a son and another child on the way,” he snarled.
“Edward..”
“I can see their torches up on the hill. They’ll wait for dusk and then they’ll come. They’ll kill any man they find, maybe worse for you. Go. You can’t help now. I won’t leave without her.”
“I’m staying too,” said Wiro, their oldest, dropping the bundle of clothes he’d been carrying. “I won’t leave you.”
“Christ’s tears, all the work I did and I raised a fool?” Edward said. “The men coming kill and torture for sport. Go with your mother.”
“I’m no coward.”
“Then prove it. Go with your mother to protect her and your new brother or sister. Cowardice would be to freeze here like a beast in thrall. Whatever happens they’ll need you. Go to the top of the old fort. They don’t know that ground. In the dark you and the others might be able to pick some off one at a time –with a couple of men dead, they might decide it’s not worth the risk and move on.”
Wiro hesitated.
Edward handed him the sword he was holding.
“I made this for you. Don’t waste my work. Now go – Edith you ahead, Wiro, behind to guard her.”
Edith looked at her son and then her husband. She paused as if she was going to say something, but instead went to Edward, held him tight and then kissed him on the mouth.
“Find our girl,” she said and then was gone.
Edward watched them until they turned off the main mud track onto one of the spider’s web shortcuts that led up to the old fort and more faraway places.
Wiro’s adolescent frame was barely more than a skinny scarecrow silhouette in the red light of sunset.
There was little hope for any of them, he knew, but what good to anyone would it do to dwell on that?
…
Edward searched close first – the woodstore; his smithy, from which he took the last good axe; the thickets of growth in eyesight of the house but found no trace of her.
Then he tried his neighbour’s houses, running to each and calling her name.
He tried the church, nested among the older round barrows surrounding it, its uncharacteristic desertion eerie in the gathering dark.
But not – he saw – completely deserted.
The Old Lady was in the porch.
Normally haughty and disdainful of the people in the village who were not of her time, today she beckoned to him instead, and then when he drew near waved and pointed up at the old fort, silently mouthing “go” at him again and again.
Edward did not have time to make her understand.
He turned and ran back down the path leaving her behind.
He searched in wider and wider circles, telling himself at the beginning of each that if he did not find her, he would go to everyone else, knowing he would not.
…
The sun was almost gone.
It was time.
Ulf got up, turned to his men and gave the order.
His band followed him down the hill.
They set fire to the first house they reached.
Then the next.
Then the one after that.
…
Edward did not even think to check the pond until he’d checked almost everywhere else and found himself right by it.
It was strange and wrapped in very old stories.
The wise woman who lived in the clearing where the cats gathered at night said a demon lived there, an old, powerful demon that could not be laid.
The old priest who visited from time-to-time said it was a devil from the old times, and that was enough for those who lived in Willerbei to stay away and to teach their children to stay away too.
There was only one child in the village Edward knew who might go there.
His own.
He’d looked everywhere else.
He was in such a blind panic that he pushed through the growth without thinking.
…
The village was abandoned – as Ulf had suspected it would be, but the residents would not have gone far.
While they would have taken what they could carry their lives were here.
He and his men would make camp here, feast on the animals, bread and beer left behind, and then in the morning they’d go in search of people to kill and enslave.
Perhaps they’d set fire to the whole village to try and draw them back in.
This worked more often than it really should.
But was it really abandoned? Ulf heard something and raised his hand to quieten the men.
Yes.
A child singing – a girl by the sound of it.
He turned, put his finger to his lips and with great care and surprisingly delicacy and elegance, picked his way through a thick tangle of blackthorn, his followers almost as quiet behind him.
…
Jack and Eliza had woken only minutes before. Eliza had decided it was high time Jack learned to sing proper songs but was frustrated with him for not being able to better follow her tune.
He wasn’t getting it at all. While his warbling wasn’t unpleasant it was nothing like the song she was trying to teach him.
He just wasn’t trying hard enough, she decided, and scolded him.
She was so engrossed in teaching her lesson she noticed neither her father nor the strangers from far away.
…
Ulf saw Eliza but not Jack, for he was hidden inside his own shadow to everyone except his new playmate.
A small girl alone on a curiously mown and level meadow by a dark, round pond.
A small prize, for sure, but a prize, nonetheless, a herald of greater riches to come.
Ulf made straight for her.
…
Edward did not see Jack either, but he did see both his daughter and the dark men.
Knowing he would die and his daughter would be taken anyway he gave a great shout and ran to the man closest to Eliza, raising his axe over his shoulder ready to make the only clear swing he’d ever get.
…
Jack was concentrating so hard on the melody he noticed nothing until Ulf’s hands were on Eliza’s shoulders and he was swinging her off her feet.
And then he did – and all at once Ulf got all his attention.
Outraged at the insult, in one effortless arc, Jack first removed both Ulf’s hands with a suddenly foot-long slashing black claw.
Eliza tumbled to the ground.
For an instant – unable to work out what had just happened – Ulf stood motionless, frozen in the stance he’d used to grab the little girl who was suddenly not there.
He lifted his spurting stumps up to look at them properly and then, as Jack took off his feet, fell to the ground.
Still unable to understand what had happened so fast, he tried to get up on feet he no longer had, a sight which made Jack roar with laughter and dance on the spot.
With great joy Jack realised that there were more.
Lots more!
The soldiers had arrived after all – he’d forgotten all about them!
He let the limbless one twitching on the ground for later and, hooting and hollering, rushed to play with the rest.
…
For the rest of his life Edward was haunted by image of what would have happened had he got to his daughter before the Viking had.
As it was whatever happened – and he was never certain of this – was so intense, so awful, that nobody noticed him take Eliza on his shoulder and back to the blackthorn growth on the edge of the meadow.
They hid there.
“Close your eyes,” he told her, putting his great, rough hands over her ears until the screaming stopped, pressing them so closely not a sound got through.
He would never speak to anyone about what he saw under the cold light of stars and moon.
Not to the wise woman. Not to the priest. Not even to Edith.
They asked but he said there was nothing to be gained by going over it now it was over and nobody pressed the point.
The screaming went on for a long time.
After it was all over, in the near silence, one man still moaned, softly and quietly.
“Stay here, don’t move, keep your eyes closed tight,” said Edward.
It was the first man. The man without hands or feet.
As Edward drew near the man called out. He was begging. Edward did not need to know his language to know what for.
He stood over him, considered leaving him there to bleed to death or worse.
But while this man might have been a beast he was not.
“You deserved it all,” Edward said, then swung his axe and killed him clean.
…
Eliza slept the rest of the night in her usual spot with Edward watching over her.
Sleep to him was unthinkable and he did not try.
He didn’t sleep at all for days and never slept well again.
He accepted this without complaint as a fair price for deliverance.
As soon as it was light enough to see he woke Eliza, lifted her onto his thick shoulders and took her up the path that led to the old Roman fort where he found his family cold, hungry but safe and well.
They all wept.
“There’s no danger, not now,” Edward said. “Let’s find the others and go home.”
…
Months later, after they felt it was safe to go to the pond, on the orders of the wise woman and the priest the village collected what was left of the bodies, burned them and then buried the bones in a deep pit in the worst field.
Jack woke briefly, but he’d taken the tokens and trinkets he wanted to keep and was too sleepy to move.
He drifted away again and didn’t wake at all for another hundred years.
He never thought of Eliza again.
…
For a while Eliza remembered Jack and, to begin with, asked when she’d see him again.
But she was only five and by the time she reached her teenage years she’d forgotten about him too.
…
Epilogue.
Willerby, March 2026
“None of it makes sense,” said John, three pints in, to David and Mauve in the snug of the Green Man. “We’ve got the archaeology suggesting the men they found in the bone pit were ripped apart –- but we’ve got the historians saying they were defeated by a Mercian army. But that can’t be right.”
“Historians!” David scoffed. “What do they know? They come up with their stories before they look at everything and then when they find something that don’t fit, they just ignore it.”
“They explain the state of the bodies by saying they must have been killed by the Anglo-Saxons, then left for wild animals to rip to bits, then gathered back up and thrown in a hole. I get that’s possible but nothing like that has ever happened anywhere else.”
“You can always get one-offs,” said David. “Sounds as likely as anything else.”
“Whatever happened, I think it’s important, look at this map, look!”
David rolled out a map of the midlands on the polished wooden table and used their drinks to weight down the corners.
He’d used a Sharpie to draw a dark line through the middle of it.
“That’s the Danelaw – that line. And we’re right on it. For some reason, the Great Heathen Army stopped right here. And we’ve got a great grave of dismembered Viking bones right here too. That can’t be coincidence. There’s got to be a connection.”
“Oh, stop fussing about it now, John Macdebs,” said Mauve. “Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. You’re never going to know. Leave it alone. You can’t resolve everything, especially not here. Go buy us another drink. It’s your round again.”
“I bought the last one!”
“Don’t fuss,” Mauve said. “It’s always your round.”
…
The end.
…