The Saxon Spears

by James Calbraith

  “I’ll change it for Watt’s share of the pool, then.”

  The bandit raises an eyebrow. “Who in hell are you, slave?”

  “I am — I was… a secretary of the merchant called Syagrius.”

  One of the men reaches for the axe, but the one in the mail shirt gestures to him to stay silent.

  “Do you know who we are, boy?”

  “You’re bandits of Andreda. Like the ones who killed my Master.”

  “You’re not afraid of us?”

  “I have faced death once already. I am not afraid of seeing it again.”

  He laughs and nods. “Take a seat, boy. I am Bryni. These are Osric and Eadric.” He points to the other two. “What do they call you?”

  “Aec.” The word means oak, in Saxon. Not the most imaginative of aliases, but it should do the job.

  “Well then, Aec, let’s see if your hand is as good as your tongue.”

  I take the knucklebones from the cup and weigh them in my hand. It’s been a while since I played the game. Paulinus did not allow gambling in the villa, so Fulco taught me the basics of it in secret, as everything else, and showed me a few tricks on how to make sure the dice always rolled the way I needed them to. In Londin, I would often join the patrons at the Bull’s Head. I’m by no means a master, but I feel confident — especially since the three Saxons are likely to underestimate my skill.

  One of the four bones feels heavier than the others. I roll it first. Each bone can fall one of four sides, numbered one, three, four or six. As I suspected, this one falls on the Dog side: one point, lowest score. I look to Bryni and he flashes an innocent smile. I flick my wrist throwing the other three. Four, four and three. One off from a perfect Venera.

  “Not bad.” Bryni notes my score with chalk on the side of the table and picks up the bones. He rolls them all at once, and gets a clear Vulture of fours. The other two have a series of bad rolls and soon part with their coppers.

  “Were any of you there when my Master was slain?” I ask. I get a good Vulture and slide a few coppers towards my pile.

  “We don’t go that far. Osric, you said your cousin was there?”

  “So he says. Don’t you remember, boy?”

  Osric can’t be more than two years older than me. He’s got no right to call me a “boy” — except he’s armed and armoured, while I’m sitting in nothing but a dripping wet tunic.

  “I got hit on the head early on,” I reply. “I crawled into a ditch and fainted. When I came to, it was all over.”

  Bryni looks at my head, searching for the wound. He finds a bump I inflicted upon myself by banging against a marble column in the praetorium and nods, satisfied.

  “So you crawled out of the ditch and took from your Master whatever our men missed.”

  I roll another Venera. A third one this evening. I’m getting a hang of these bones, even the weighted one. The stack of coppers next to my silver coin is growing.

  “I would’ve taken more if there was any more left,” I say, pouring venom into my voice.

  This catches his attention. He lets the bones drop from his hand — two threes and two ones, his worst score yet. “You weren’t fond of your Master?”

  In silence, I slide the tunic of my shoulder, revealing flesh scored by a whip. Another painful element of my disguise. The whip was real — it had to be; the bandits would certainly recognise a fake.

  The men gasp. Whipping slaves is no longer a done thing in Britannia, not just in the households that follow the teachings of Pelagius, but in every Christian home, unless some great transgression was committed.

  “What did you do?” asks Bryni.

  “Nothing. The Master was drunk, and I annoyed him. It wasn’t a one-time thing, either.”

  The three bandits look at each other.

  “I’m beginning to guess why you’ve come to us,” says Osric. “It wasn’t about a game of dice, was it?”

  I smile, looking at the pile of coins before me — only Bryni’s is higher. “It’s a bonus. But you’re right.” I lean closer. “I hate the Britons,” I whisper with a hiss. “And I know how to fight.”

  Bryni finishes his ale and slides his pile of coppers into his pouch. “The game’s over, lads. Come here tomorrow at noon, Aec. We’ll talk.”

  I wait at the round table until noon. Bryni’s bandits are nowhere to be seen. I’m starting to get worried. Have they seen through my ruse? Have they gone to bring in more of their men, or to warn their band of a spy lurking around the inns?

  When the mid-day sun casts a narrow ray through the window slit over my head, Verica comes up to the table and asks if my name is Aec.

  “I thought I told you to stay away from these bandits,” he says in a scornful tone. He looks around before leaning in to whisper.

  “They want you to go to the village of Weland the blacksmith. It’s down the road, about —”

  “I know where it is,” I interrupt him. I don’t need to play the timid slave anymore, not to him.

  “Does old Weland still live there?”

  “Last time I heard.”

  I frown. Unless he’s gone senile in the meantime, Weland is bound to recognise me after the night I spent at his house. Will he remember who my Master was? I’ve made my false life story as similar to my own as was possible, to avoid such problems.

  By the time I reach the village of sunken houses and slag piles, equipped with the half loaf of bread and a water-skin I bought at the inn with last night’s winnings, I already have a plan. That Weland knows me might yet be to my advantage. He doesn’t know what happened to me since he made me the spear. He can, however, confirm something else about me, something I don’t mind the bandits to know.

  The settlement has grown since I last saw it. There is now a guesthouse — not quite an inn yet, just a wooden hut with two sleeping quarters, a one-bench drinking room and a pole for tying up the horses outside. It is the first thing I ask Weland about when I search him out at his smithy.

  “You don’t suffer from the forest bandits as much as you used to, then?”

  “Not while the Saxons protect us, Aec,” he replies. Obviously, he couldn’t remember my real name — it’s taken me a while to remind him he knew me at all, until I mentioned the Anglian spear.

  “I thought the bandits were Saxons?”

  “The bandits are the bandits,” he answers vaguely. “They take in whoever they see fit. Saxon, Iute, Goth, Briton… It makes no difference to them, as long as they are loyal and keen to fight.” He eyes me suspiciously. “Is this why you’re here?”

  “Why, are they likely to appear in the village? I thought you said you were under protection.”

  “They don’t attack, but they do come here for supplies… When the Saxons don’t look.”

  “And to think it was just a few huts around the smithy the last time I was here…”

  I ask him some more about the arrangements in the village. It seems that Andreda Forest is a true state within a state, bound by no law save for that of force and ancient custom. There’s a number of villages such as this, along the Roman roads running through the wood, in a frontier land between the territory ruled by the Regins — and defended in their name by the Saxon mercenaries — and that of the bandits, all protected by the old, sacred rules of sanctuary.

  “They all need our iron, you see,” Weland says. “The forest men more so than the Saxons — without us, they’d have nothing to mend their swords and axes with.”

  “Couldn’t they just take it by force?”

  “Aye, they could.” He nods. “Once. And then what? They have neither skills nor tools to take the iron out of the ground by themselves. It’s a painstaking, thankless job.”

  I feel overwhelmed by all this new information. I’ve heard nothing of these matters in Londin. I see now that I should’ve tried to learn more about the situation in the pagus of Regins before coming here. If only I had more time… The Council gave me only one week to prepare for the mission, and only a c
ouple of months to discover Aelle’s whereabouts. Before the summer harvest starts, I must return with whatever information I will have gathered.

  I go outside the smoke-filled smithy for a breath of fresh air. There’s a bay pony tied to the pole outside the guesthouse which wasn’t there when I arrived. A man comes out of the guesthouse, clad in the same dappled-green cloak as Bryni and his comrades. The owner of the guesthouse comes after him, pointing Weland’s smithy out and nodding.

  Weland retreats into his hut, but I stop him.

  “I’ll need you for this, blacksmith.”

  The man in the green cloak approaches in purposeful strides. I have seen this stride in all of Wortigern’s veterans. He’s used to ordering people around; an officer, or whatever equivalent of one there is in Aelle’s warband.

  “Aec,” he states. He doesn’t look like a typical Saxon. He’s at least as tall as Fulco, who was one of the tallest men I ever knew. His hair, cut short, is so fair it’s almost translucent, except for the red tinge at the ends of his beard. His eyes are narrow and watery-blue and his skin is pale like the autumn moon. A single band of woven silver adorns his right arm.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Weland, you know this boy?”

  His accent is difficult to pinpoint, but it’s clear Saxon isn’t his native tongue.

  “I do, Eirik. I made him his first adult weapon. He and another warrior once saved my life from bandits… I mean, the real bandits,” he corrects himself quickly.

  The man in the green cloak raises his eyebrow. “I thought you were just some cowardly stylus-pusher.”

  “I was one when in Syagrius’s service. He didn’t appreciate my… other talents.”

  He looks me over with a well-trained eye. He must have noticed the muscles under my tunic are more developed than they should be for a simple scribe, for he nods at me to follow him back to the guesthouse.

  “Show me.”

  He hands me the weapon. The blade is similar to my Anglian spear, which I’ve left with Beadda for safe-keeping, though the shaft is longer and lighter, of yew wood. I remark on the similarity to Eirik.

  “My people trade with the Angles just like yours did. We give them our iron, they give us the blades.”

  “And who are your people? You’re neither a Saxon nor a Iute.”

  “I’m of the Geats,” he replies.

  I’ve only ever heard once of such tribe, when Orpedda described the distant neighbours of the Iutes, back in the Old Country. No ancient chronicles mention the name. I wait for more, but Eirik nods at the javelin impatiently.

  I choose a slender beech, twenty paces off, aim and let the shaft loose. The blade slices some bark and a cloud of wood chips off the left side of the trunk, maybe a thumb’s length off from where I was aiming.

  “And you say a Frank taught you that?”

  “I was trained to be a bodyguard under my first Master.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I’m not sure.” I scratch my head. “One day a troop of soldiers came from Londin, took the Master away and then each of us was sold to a different owner.”

  The story I tell him is that of Quintus and his villa. It’s unlikely that I would stumble on any of Quintus’s servant in the forest, but I figure some of the better-informed of Aelle’s men might be familiar with it, if indeed it was Quintus who betrayed us to the bandits on the Medu River.

  “How are you with an axe?” Eirik asks.

  “I prefer a short sword.”

  “Not much use for a sword in the forest.”

  “I can handle myself. A Frankish teacher,” I remind him. By the amused glint in his eyes I can see the legendary prowess of the Franks with their axes has reached even the distant land of the Geats — wherever that is.

  He looks me over again. He takes me by the chin and turns my head to the sides. I feel like I’m at the slave market again.

  “Very well. Get something to eat and rest up,” he says at last. “I’ll take you into the woods, but it’s a day’s march to the nearest camp and I’m not slowing down for you.”

  My back heaves under the burden of a sack on my back. Like the saddle bags on the pony whose bottom bounces in front of me, they’re full of scrap and iron ingots. Eirik hasn’t come to Weland’s village just to pick me up — I’m clearly not that important. From what he tells me, they suffer no lack of potential recruits. There are at least two more waiting to be tested at the camp. We’re moving in a vaguely westerly direction, along a low ridge, having left the Roman road behind us. This worries me — I was expecting us to head east, towards Aelle’s old hillfort settlement. The bandit activity is still the highest in that direction. Does Aelle even come to this part of the forest, or is Eirik just his lieutenant here, left to his own devices?

  “How many camps are there?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “Nobody knows. Most are only built for one season, then moved to another hurst.”

  “Hurst?”

  “A forest glade, on top of a tall hill. A Saxon word. Don’t you know it?”

  “There are no tall hills in Iute land.”

  Eirik grunts in amused agreement. He tuts at the pony and pulls on the lead. The beast climbs a trunk of an overturned oak tree and carefully leaps to the other side. Eirik somehow finds his way again in the jumble of branches and brambles. The sun is getting low before us and we have no torches. In the dim haze, it’s taking longer for Eirik to locate the route with every turn. I’m beginning to worry if we can make it to the camp on time. We’ve been following a maze of criss-crossing animal paths and human tracks for hours, and if he decided to leave me now, I’d be hopelessly lost.

  “You speak good Saxon,” I remark. “When did you arrive in Britannia?”

  He looks to the darkening sky, remembering.

  “Ten years ago, maybe more,” he says.

  He’s reluctant to say more while searching for the path, claiming he mustn’t be distracted during the task; if we linger too long, we’ll need to stay the night in the middle of the woods. I pry out more of the story from him later, when we reach a wider, more comfortable track running along the bank of a spry brook which, judging by how relaxed he becomes, must be the final stretch of our journey.

  “We’ve heard stories from the Anglian merchants,” he recounts. “They would be coming less often and in smaller numbers every year. ‘Our people are sailing west,’ they’d say, ‘to an island called Bretland.’”

  From the tale I learn that the Geats, or at least their chieftains and poets, though living on the northern edges of the known world, were well aware of the goings on in the South, among the wealas. The Anglian traders brought with them goods as well as news from within the Roman borders; news of the wars with Huns, of Rome’s power shrinking, of the Legions departing from Britannia and leaving its green shores open to all who wished to settle.

  “If only that was true,” I murmur.

  “Oh, we knew better than to believe the knife peddlers on their word. Only the young ones grew excited, but the elders forbade them to seek out those distant lands.”

  A distant thunder rumbles to the east. Eirik looks to the sky again. A black, menacing finger of a storm cloud looms over the path. We pick up the pace. The pony whinnies in protest.

  “You were one of the young ones,” I guess.

  “We crossed the land of the Wulfings and the Sea-Danes until we reached the coast of the Angles,” he says, wistfully. “The herring-road was dark and dangerous. Ten of us started from Skara. I was the only one who reached Britannia’s shores alive.”

  “How did you end up here in Andreda, of all places?”

  The brook turns south, down and away from the track, which climbs steeply up a slope. Soon the track itself ends, overgrown with thorns and clumps of ivy which seem impenetrable until Eirik reaches out and parts the vines to both sides. Beyond it spreads a forest glade, the hurst, in the midst of an ash forest, with several dozens of tents and huts, all lit up by campfires and torches
. A guard spots us and waves at Eirik.

  “When you become one of us, I might tell you this story one day.”

  The first slow drops of rain fall on my cloak and the bag on my back, making them feel even heavier.

  The storm shows no sign of abating. The forest glade has turned into a sea of sloppy, sticky mud. It feels as if the tents in which we huddle might simply float away any minute. With the sky permanently blackened by the storm clouds, it’s impossible to tell whether it’s noon or evening. The only way I can tell the time is by how hungry and tired I’ve grown since the last meal. Without fire, all we have to eat is sodden bread and mouldy cheese. It’s barely enough to keep me awake — but not to keep me warm.

  But although the rain is lashing against my face with the strength that makes it hard to breathe, although my legs get sucked into the mud up to my ankles, although my tunic is so soaked through it’s turned into a wet rag, Eirik has no mercy on us. The trials, he says, must proceed. This is what life in the forest is like, he tells me. Better get used to it.

  He orders me and the other two recruits into the centre of the camp and has us stand in the corners of a triangle. I can barely see them, or anyone else, through the opaque curtain of rain. The one on my left is a Saxon girl, the one on my right a Briton boy. I can’t see his face clearly, but there’s something familiar about him.

  “Andreda Forest is not an orphanage,” Eirik booms through the roar of the storm. “We have enough mouths to feed as it is. Of the three of you, only one can stay. I have tested you all individually — now it’s time for you to fight for your right to be one of us.”

  Fight. As simple as that. The Briton is smaller and of frailer build than either me or the Saxon. The Saxon, as far as I can tell, is roughly my size, with a plain, narrow face that’s seen its share of fighting: a broken nose, a cauliflower ear peeking from under short hair… I know nothing about either of them, who they are, how well they can fight, so I must assume the worst. I wipe the rain from my eyes and look closer at the Briton.

  It’s Waerla, the pig shepherd.

  I don’t think he has recognised me yet. If he has, he’s not saying anything. He looks frightened. He, too, knows he stands the least chance of us three. Like me, he must wonder whether either of us will strike him out first as the easy target; or will we jump at each other instead, leaving him for last?