The Saxon Knives, page 1
part #2 of The Song of Ash Series
THE SAXON KNIVES
The Song of Ash
Book Two
JAMES CALBRAITH
Published January 2020 by Flying Squid
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Copyright © James Calbraith, 2020
Cover photo: Oleksandr Zamuruiev, Peter Lorrimer via Shutterstock
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Fan fiction and fan art is encouraged.
BRITANNIA SUPERIOR, C. 450 AD
BRITANNIA MAXIMA, c. 430 AD
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Londin
Brutus: Centurion of Londin praetorium guards
Deneus: Oyster merchant from Caesar's Market
Fastidius: Vicar General of Londin, Ash’s Brother
Fatalis: Bishop of Londin
Postumus: Senior Councillor
Wortigern: Dux of Britannia Maxima
Wortimer: Younger son of Wortigern
Ikens, Angles, Picts
Angenwit: Drihten of the Angles
Cunedag: a Pict prisoner
Drust: King of the Picts
Una: Comes of the Ikens
Britannia Maxima
Elasio: Comes of the Cadwallons
Catuar: Comes of the Regins
Masuna: Comes of the Atrebs
Odo: Decurion of the Gaulish cavalry in Cantiaca
Peredur: Comes of Trinowaunts
Worangon: Comes of Cantiaca
Britannia Prima and Rome
Ambrosius: Dux of Britannia Prima
Donatus: Bishop of Ebrauc
Germanus: Bishop of Autissiodorum
Riotham: Praetor of Ambrosius
Severus: Bishop of Treverorum
Iutes
Three brothers:
Eobba: lost at sea
Hengist: chief of the Iutes of Tanet
Horsa: chief of the Iutes of Londin
Beadda: commander of Hengist’s household guard
Beormund: commander of a coast defence warband
Haesta: Hengist’s cousin
Rhedwyn: daughter of Eobba
Saxons
Pefen: chief of the Saxons, unifier of tribes
Aelle: chief of the Saxon warbands in Andreda
Weorth: chief of a Saxon tribe
Bucge: chief of a Saxon tribe
GLOSSARY
Aesc: Saxon spear
Ceol: Narrow, ocean-going Saxon ship
Centuria: Troop of (about) hundred infantry
Centurion: Officer in Roman infantry
Comes, pl. Comites: Administrator of a pagus, subordinate to the Dux
Decurion: Officer in Roman cavalry
Domus: The main structure of a villa
Drihten: War chief of a Saxon tribe
Dux: Overall commander in war times, in peace time – administrator of a province
Fulcum: Roman shield wall formation
Hiréd: Band of elite warriors of Drihten’s household
Gesith: Companion of the Drihten, chief of the Hiréd
Mansio: Staging post
Pagus: Administrative unit, smaller than a province
Praetor: high administrative or military official
Pugio: small Roman dagger
Seax: Saxon short sword
Spatha: Roman long sword
Villa: Roman agricultural property
Wealh, pl. wealas: “the others”, Britons in Saxon tongue
PLACE NAMES
Andreda: Weald Forest
Anderitum: Pevensey, East Sussex
Ariminum: Wallington, Surrey
Callew: Silchester, Hampshire
Cantiaca: Kent
Caesar’s Market: Caesaromagus, Chelmsford, Essex
Coln: Colchester, Essex
Corin: Corinium, Cirencester
Dorowern: Dorovernum, Canterbury, Kent
Beaddingatun: Beddington, Surrey
Britannia Maxima: a province of Britannia, capital in Londin
Britannia Prima: a province of Britannia, capital in Corin
Ebrauc: York
Eobbasfleot: Ebbsfleet, Kent
Lindocoln: Lincoln
Londin: Londinium, London
Medu: River Medway
New Port: Novus Portus, Portslade, Sussex
Regentium: Chichester, Sussex
Robriwis: Dorobrivis, Rochester, Kent
Rutubi: Rutupiae, Richborough, Kent
Saffron Valley: Croydon, London
Sorbiodun: Salisbury, Wiltshire
Tamesa: River Thames
Tanet: Isle of Thanet, Kent
Wenta of the Ikens: Caistor St Edmunds
Werlam: St Albans, Hertfordshire
PART 1: 445 AD
CHAPTER I
THE LAY OF RIOTHAM
Two pairs of bare feet stomp on the beach. The one at the back is heavier, burdened with the weight of a sack full of plunder. The one in front is fleeter, but limping, every step leaving a bloody spurt on the sand.
The two men are desperate to reach the boat, bobbing in the rising tide. I give them no chance. My boat pony fares well in the wet sand, and soon I reach the blood-splattered trail and overtake my prey.
I draw the seax and point it at the runaways. They pause. Their eyes dart around, seeking another escape route, but all they see are more riders – two ponies approaching to their left, and a black horse to their right, its rider brandishing an angon, a Frankish javelin.
The two men split: while the younger one tries to pass me to my rear, the stockier, older warrior drops his haul, draws a short, curved knife from a sheath at his thigh and lunges at me. I leap down to face him; I fight better on foot. The old man is swift for his size, and no doubt has seen his share of fighting, but I have the range over him. I parry and twist, and the knife flies from his hand. He clutches a bleeding wrist.
I turn to face the younger raider. He limps away towards the boat, but he’s too slow. The boat’s lone helmsman decides not to wait any longer. He heaves away, pushing out with a long pole. The horseman throws a well-aimed javelin straight into his chest. Before long, the empty boat drifts off in a tide of purple froth, towards a small ship which stands watchful on the horizon, beyond the range of our missiles.
The older raider grunts a command at his younger comrade. They both kneel in the sand, their heads low, ready for an executioner’s sword. At last, I can now take a closer look at the captives.
The Romans called them Picts – the Painted People; but I can’t see any more or less body paint and scars on them than on any battle-seasoned Saxon warrior. They’re both short and stout, and both are wearing drab tunics and brightly coloured plaid capes, torn in the fight. Other than that, I doubt I’d be able to pick them out from a crowd on a Londin street. Their speech is a coarse-sounding, rural form of the standard Briton tongue.
The other horsemen trot up to us and dismount. Two of them are Iutes from Tanet, Drihten Hengist’s men. The third rider, who threw the deadly missile, approaches from the south, his long black hair flowing in salt-dried clumps over his shoulders: Odo, the Gaul cavalry decurion. He takes one last scowling glance at the ship on the horizon.
“This must be the last of the raiding party,” he says. We encountered three other boats on the nearby beaches – all of them managed to get away before we reached them, though we’ve recovered most of the plunder.
He steps forward, drawing the long spatha sword. The younger of the Picts – he looks a few years older than myself – flinches inadvertently, but the older one grunts at him to act like a man.
“How many of you are still out there?” he asks. The older Pict stares up at him, defiant. Odo’s mail-clad fist meets his face. The Gaul picks up the bloodied captive. The Pict spits red sand.
“He’ll talk,” Odo says, after studying the old man for a while. “But I need to take him with me back to Dorowern. You can do what you want with the other one.”
The two Iutes look to me for decision – not as their leader, but as a guest on this raid. The Iutes are not taking prisoners if they can help it – but I don’t feel too keen about slaying the young man in cold blood. The Pict raiders this season have been more interested in plunder and pillage than killing, and I can see in the youth’s eyes that he has never bloodied his blade before.
“Get up,” I say, kicking the younger Pict’s backside. “You’re coming with us.”
By nightfall we reach the Iute war camp. Nine tents cluster atop a low, grassy cliff overlooking the Tamesa Estuary to the north, not far from where the old Reculbium road turns a sharp corner. There were eleven tents here at the start of the summer, but two warriors have since perished fighting the raiders.
The losses did little to endear the Iutes to our young captive. Knocked about and spat at, the hapless youth slumps from my pony and plops down, staring dejectedly into the sea. I stand between him and the curious Iute warriors, to shield him from further abuse.
“What do you need him for?” asks Beormund, the chief of this s mall warband. “He’s not going to tell you anything. He doesn’t look like he even knows why he’s here.”
“I’m taking him to Londin,” I reply. “To take him before the Council.”
“You’re going home?” asks Beormund. “How fortunate you are. We’re supposed to stay in this dump until the full moon.”
He barks at his men to stand down and sits beside me and the Pict thrall. “When you arrived at Eobbasfleot with Worangon’s men, back in the spring…” he starts, “I thought you only came to mock us.”
It has been a difficult summer in Cantiaca. The Picts have been coming in great numbers – greater than anyone alive remembered; after the war with Aelle last year, the treasury and the manpower of the small pagus were all but depleted. Odo’s Gaulish cavalry could not be everywhere at once, swift though they were, and the Dux’s Council in Londin stubbornly refused to acknowledge the seriousness of the raids – not that they would have much to send in the way of reinforcements, even had they wanted to.
Even a Comes as loath to ask pagans for help as Worangon was eventually forced to confront the reality of his situation. There was only one place left he could reach out for help, one that was right at his doorstep: the Iute warriors on Tanet, bored, impoverished and seeking the kind of glory that their more fortunate brethren found the year before in Andreda.
As the Council’s representative to the Iutes, I took part in Worangon’s hastily assembled emergency mission to Hengist’s mead hall at Eobbasfleot. But the proposed deal was not what the Iutish chief had hoped for. The Cants would still not let the warriors settle in their land – only to set up a war camp for the duration of the summer campaign, for a dozen men, paid for their effort in a share of the spoils, and a handful of unclipped bronze coins each, to spend however they wished in Dorowern’s shops and taverns once the fighting was over.
“Did you know the Drihten’s cousin, Haesta, almost rebelled against Hengist?” says Beormund.
“I did not know that,” I reply. “What did he plan to do?”
“Cross the Stur channel and invade Cantiaca – or die trying. He wanted me as part of his conspiracy, but too many remained loyal to Hengist.” He sighs.
“It was the most we could convince Worangon to grant you,” I say. “You have no idea how difficult – ”
“It doesn’t matter. I see now that Hengist was right. If anything, we’ve been here too long.”
“Is it that much worse than Tanet?” I ask with a wry smile, remembering the filthy, crowded squalor of the island.
“At least there are women on Tanet,” replies Beormund with a bawdy laugh. “The only ones here are Helge and Inge – and they’re only interested in each other!” He laughs again, but more bitterly this time.
“It is hard to live in a place where you’re not wanted,” he says. “We’ve all heard how happily Beadda’s men have settled among the wealas – but it’s different here. I may not understand what the Cants say, but I can hear the repulsion in their voices, I can see the loathing in their eyes, even as they smile.”
I nod. I know all too well what he means – I have seen it, not only here in Cantiaca, but in Londin, too, some of it aimed at myself.
“You should… join us…” croaks the prisoner. This surprises me even more than Beormund’s revelation of the rebellion threatening Hengist’s rule. Beormund is equally shocked.
“Join you?” he asks. “You’re just another wealh.”
“Riu… Drust… respects all warriors…” says the Pict, struggling for Saxon words through swollen lips. “We have some… Anglians – a handful, by Ebrauc. All… united – under the Boar’s Banner…”
Beormund and I look at each other, then the Iute smacks the Pict in the face to shut him up.
“What do you need this boy for, anyway?” he asks me.
“To show what we’re dealing with here, and how you Iutes are helping. The Councillors fail to appreciate the threat these raiders pose to our shores, and refuse to send help. Some of them have never even seen a Pict in the flesh before.”
Beormund scratches his chin and nods. “It may seem a long way from here to Londin for someone used to travelling around on a litter – but it’s only a day’s sail for a Pict ship.”
“Precisely,” I say, content that I don’t need to belabour my point any further.
In truth, there is another reason for me wanting to bring a captive to Londin. I need to show something for all my efforts. I am neither part of the Iute party, nor one of Odo’s cavalrymen, and so I have been allocated neither a share of the plunder, nor a salary. I have been sent here to observe and report, not to fight – that I found myself unable to stand idly by as the Iutes fought back the raiders was nobody’s problem but mine…
I have spent the better part of the year on these observation missions – first in Beadda’s village, throughout the winter, then the spring in the two newer settlements south of Londin, and now here, in Cantiaca, in the summer. As the Council’s representative to the Iutes, it has been my duty to see how our new allies have been faring – but I knew the real reason for my continuous absence from Dux Wortigern’s court had nothing to do with tribal diplomacy.
All through the winter I have watched, helpless, how Wortimer, the Dux’s only surviving son, through intricate political manoeuvring, throwing a praise here, a threat there, or a promise of wealth and power where neither sufficed, gained a sufficient majority in the Council to push through any decision he wanted, as long as it wasn’t directly opposed by his father. And whatever other plans he may have had for himself and for Londin under his quasi-dominion, one thing, I knew, was always on his mind: to get me out of the city for as long as possible.
He could never outright banish me – I was far too cautious for that, and I had the backing of too-powerful figures at the court, my foster brother Fastidius among them. But he could send me on distant missions I could not refuse, one after the other, and so he did; all so that he could be alone at the Praetorium, the Roman Governor’s Palace, now turned into Wortigern’s court house – alone with Rhedwyn…
The thought of him lurking about her, leering at her pure bright face, slobbering at her slender frame makes me shudder with nausea – as, I know, it must her. We barely had time to talk after her arrival from Tanet, but I soon gathered she was as repulsed by Wortimer as I was; not by his visage, which, as I understood, was a fairly handsome one for a Briton, but by what he stood for – and by the hypocrisy with which he pursued her, while striving to make the lives of her fellow Iutes in his father’s land as miserable as he could.
“I have been away for too long,” I say, more to myself than to Beormund. “It’s time to return home.”
I didn’t exactly expect a triumphal parade into the city, bringing with me nothing but the single bound prisoner and a pack of letters to the Council from Comes Worangon and Hengist – but I am still annoyed and surprised by how little attention I’m granted upon my return.
There is so much commotion at the Praetorium, so much noise, so many people pacing to and fro down the half-ruined corridors arguing with each other about some ceremonial minutiae, that my entrance is barely noticed. At first I worry that the news of some new attack has reached the city in my absence – but I detect no fear in the voices of the courtiers, more agitation and irritation. Something other than war has stirred this nest of hornets, and they do not like it.
I stand at the door of the audience hall for a good minute, my Pict unceremoniously squatting on the mosaic floor behind me, before the Dux wearily summons us in.
“You have dealt with the raiders in Cantiaca, Councillor Fraxinus?” he asks, referring to me with my baptismal name and, before I can answer, swats me away with impatience. “Good, good.”
“My Lord, I bring with me – ”
“I will read your report in due time, Councillor.”
“But the situation in Cantiaca – ”
“I’m sure you believe it’s all very serious, but it will have to wait.”
