Chapter One
My Uncle
Looking back from old age, when the faith of Christ has replaced the old religions of my fathers, I can recall many times when my friends and I appeared to be at the whim of powers beyond our understanding. Today, we talk of the will of God. In those far off days it was the machinations of the gods or a man’s ‘wyrd’ or fate that affected his destiny. A man prayed to the gods, put his trust in fate and life would go well: unless of course he was fey − unless he had been chosen or doomed to follow some other path.
You know, I am not entirely sure I agree with all that. It implies that nothing we do has any effect, that in the end we are all merely pieces on the game board of the gods; just pawns pushed around by Loki. I will accept that most folk just live and die with little impact on and little affected by the world about them; but some of us, at least, are more than that. We become part of the world, help to shape it and mould it. You can tell we lived, because the world changed whilst we were alive. And in my lifetime the world changed beyond recognition.
I was not long born the day my uncle stood on the battlefield, surrounded by the corpses of his men.
They had died defending this narrow gully through hills which blocked the approach to the city of Eboracum. The city lay to the east under a pall of smoke that arose from a hundred burning houses. King Aelle had taken the army there to capture it but, hearing reports of an enemy warband coming to lift the siege, had sent Cynric and his company around the city to the west to intercept them.
Eighty men marched through the night to reach this sunken road. They planted their flag in the ditch so it streamed in the wind, revealing the image of the running wolf emblazoned upon it. Then, they gathered about it and waited.
They did not have to wait long.
Soon after dawn, over three hundred spearmen came down the road and needing to reach the city urgently, attacked at once. The narrow confines of the gully funnelled the enemy and brought them onto the spears of Cynric’s men. Then, the killing began.
The enemy paid dearly for each step they took, bled heavily for each wound they inflicted and three died for each of our own men slain. But, in the end, it was not enough. One by one, Cynric’s companions perished and as the company dwindled, it was pushed back down the lane. Time and again, my uncle rallied his men and they charged back into the fray, regained ground and forced the enemy to retreat.
But now, as the sun sank and the sky turned a crimson red matching the bloodstained clay of the road beneath them, Cynric’s company were all dead.
All dead, that is, apart from my uncle, Cynric and the grim-faced Grettir. The pair stood on the road in front of their battle standard. Cynric: tall and fierce, with hair the colour of autumn leaves, which in the dying light must have seemed almost like flames; Grettir: shorter, stocky and muscular with black hair and bushy eyebrows.
Cynric thrust forward his great sword and pointed it at the shield wall. It was a magnificent weapon, forged from rods of twisted iron overlaid with the strongest of steel, crossed by a bronze guard and finished with an elaborately patterned pommel. With it he now gestured at several enemy warriors, picking out − or so it seemed − his next victims. Strapped to his other arm was his bright blue shield, which was dented and scuffed from a hundred sword and axe blows. Grettir had abandoned his and now both hands grasped the shaft of a fearsome axe that had already today slain a score of foes. Together, they glared down the lane and waited for the enemy to attack once more.
There in front of them many more than one hundred enemy warriors still remained and they, having now reformed their shield wall and seeing that only two foes were standing, came on again. Eboracum lay just a mile beyond this lonely pair standing beside their flag, which now hung limp in the still evening air. If the warband could reach the city they could swell the numbers of the beleaguered defenders and the city might hold. If that happened, more of the Eboracii tribesmen from the surrounding lands would come here. They would save Eboracum, then the Angles and Saxons − like Cynric and Grettir − who had risen up from their scattered villages and come here to capture the city, would be slain. Then, there would be no English city; no English kingdom here north of the Humber; perhaps even no English race anywhere.
All that was needed was to kill these two men and march on to Eboracum.
For Cynric and Grettir, this was equally clear. All they had to do was plant their feet on the bloody soil and survive just a little longer. Cynric glanced at Grettir and smiled thinly at him. Grettir just nodded back. Both men knew they would die here … it was just a matter of when.
The Eboracii advanced again and despite the odds in their favour, their faces were pale and their eyes were flicking back and forth. They were nervous, cautious: some even terrified. They had seen their friends die and knew these two men were fearsome warriors. So, they chose to come together in the security of wood and iron that a shield wall offered. Nonetheless, they finally reached Cynric and one of them spat at my uncle, then three spear points were thrust at him.
My uncle stepped to his right, deflected two spears with his shield and then slashed the other one aside with his blade, the heavy steel easily shattering the ash stave. Cynric, following up now, stepped inside the spears and smashed his shield against that of a young lad in front of him. His mouth and eyes wide, the boy stared at my uncle, gave a terrified cry, stepped away but then tripped on his own spear and fell, knocking over the man behind.
"I'll kill you all!" Cynric shouted as he jumped into the breach.
"Come on you bastards!"Grettir bellowed and followed him.
Grettir swung the axe to his left and his right; felt its edge cutting into bone and flesh and with cries of agony two men fell – one man dead, the other whimpering as he clawed at his guts, which now spilt out onto the offal-covered ground. Ahead of him, Grettir could hear his lord roaring as he plunged his sword into two more men and then, suddenly, Cynric was behind the enemy shield wall. He turned and cut down another youth, but more warriors now closed in and Grettir lost sight of him. The last that Grettir saw of my uncle was him screaming in defiance as swords and spears lunged towards him. Then, a shield boss thundered into Grettir’s middle and with a whoosh of air he was winded and tumbled out of the fight.
He was knocked onto his back and lost his grip on the axe, which spun away. He rolled over, clawing at the ground, desperately trying to reach the weapon. Then, above him, there came a shadow and he looked up to see a huge enemy chieftain standing astride him. The man was lifting his own blade up, getting ready to finish Grettir. Oddly though, it was not the sword that Grettir noticed, but the man’s face. One eye had been hacked away and an ugly, bleeding gash ran from brow to cheek − Cynric had left his mark on this enemy and now the man came to have revenge on Grettir.
As he swung back his sword, there was a sudden buzzing noise and an arrow sped over Grettir’s head, striking the brute in the right arm. He gave a roar of pain, dropped the blade and with one eye, he glared over Grettir, towards the city. Grettir bent his head round to look, and almost cried with relief as he saw the glorious sight of hundreds of Angle warriors − English Warriors − charging towards them, up the lane. Cynric had done it: he had held the road and denied it to the Eboracii and now the city of Eboracum had a new name: an English name, Eoforwic.
The enemy fled and after a final venomous glance towards Grettir, the one-eyed chieftain went with them. Grettir took a deep breath and then dragged himself to his feet. He staggered over to where he had last seen Cynric and now he could feel the tears coming. For there, surrounded by the bodies of his foes, he found his lord lying dead in a pool of his own blood and pierced by a hundred blades. His own sword was laid across his chest: although, whether this was the last homage to a noble warrior by his enemies, the whims of the gods, or just chance − Grettir could not tell.
“Gods, what happened here?”
Grettir turned at the voice then bowed his head to his king. Aelle, the King o
f Deira and now conqueror of Eoforwic, stared at the carnage on the road.
“Sire, we did what you commanded. The Lord Cynric died bravely, as did every other man.”
Aelle nodded and stood silently for several minutes, taking in the sacrifice that had won him a kingdom. He then glanced down at Cynric.
“Take his body and sword back to his family and tell them I will see he is remembered: he deserves a song.”
Grettir also nodded, but then frowned.
“I’m afraid I could not write a song to do him justice, my Lord.”
“Ah, but I can,” a new voice replied and Grettir saw, for the first time, a strikingly handsome young man, standing next to the King.
“I am Lilla the Bard, Lilla the Storyteller,” the man said.
Grettir picked up Cynric’s sword, cleaned it and handed it to Lilla.
“I will take care of the body of my Lord and you can carry the sword, storyteller. For all good stories are about a sword.”
The Amber Treasure Page 3
