The Blood of the Iutes: The Song of Octa Book 1 (The Song of Britain 4)

by James Calbraith

  But I have never seen a ship like this. A hundred feet long, at least, two rows of oars, two tall masts rising from the deck, with crimson sails hanging loose in the quiet air; some kind of siege machine on a raised deck on the bow, and a bronze spur, gleaming patina green in the sun, peeking from the waves aft of the hull. A row of red shields lines the side above the deck.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve… run out of strength… already!” Ursula shouts between breaths. She’s just emerged from around the bend and, judging by how strained she sounds, she’s too focused on rowing fast to look up; I know how she gets in these last few moments of the race. I look over my shoulder; just as I thought, she’s even got her eyes closed. Her puffing cheeks are deep red. “I always tell you…,” she rasps, “fortitude over speed…!”

  “Be quiet,” I say, “and look where you’re going.”

  She opens her eyes and gasps. She lets go of the oars and lets the current drift her boat past me as she stares in awe at the ship. At that moment, a gust of easterly wind fills out the sails. An Imperial Eagle spreads its golden wings across the crimson cloth, as twenty-five pairs of oars strike the water.

  “I need to tell my father about this,” I say. “Go get Gille and Audulf. The race is over.”

  I enter the mead hall and the eyes of my father’s advisors turn towards me. A few of them are members of the old gathering of the elders, the witan, those whom my father trusted enough to be here. Betula, just back from some patrol along the coast, sits on my father’s left side. Ursula’s mother, Adminia, a delegate from Dorowern, sits on his right, next to old, one-eyed Haegel, a man my father brought from his adventure on Wecta; he was the one who put the Rex’s circlet upon my father’s brow. A few more men among them — the master of shipbuilders, the master of brewers and the old scop, whose task it is to memorise the proceedings in case something worth mention in a saga happens at the hall — complete the assembly, sitting at the far end of the horseshoe-shaped table.

  It wasn’t always like this. Until three years ago, before my father declared himself the Rex, the tribe was ruled by the witan of clan elders, who only elected a warchief, Drihten, to command the armies during wartime. But King Aeric disposed of all that, replacing the elders with his court, a small Council of Advisors he appointed himself. He patterned the gathering on the only court he knew, the Londin Council, in which he once served under Dux Wortigern. It wasn’t a completely smooth transition; my father spent most of the first year of his reign quelling small rebellions against his rule, pacifying the villages led by the elders who opposed him, and fending off sea raiders trying to make use of the chaos; but for the most part, the Iutes shrugged the change off and got on with their lives. It did not matter much who ruled them, as long as they could dwell on their land in peace, tend to their farms without having to worry about pirates and bandits and, if needed, trade their produce in the wealh towns without disruption.

  “What is it, son?” my father asks. “I understand you have some urgent news.”

  The servants pour us all mead — except the king and Adminia, who drink imported red wine from glass goblets.

  “I just saw a liburna out on the Tamesa,” I say.

  “A liburna?” one of the elders asks. “What’s that?”

  “A Roman warship.”

  “A warship? Are you sure?”

  “Of course.” Momentarily, I’m angry at him doubting me. It’s not like any of these old men ever had a chance to see a real liburna. None of us have, not even my father, despite all his many experiences. There hasn’t been a ship like this in Britannia’s waters in a generation. “Just like in the old writings. A ballista on the bow, two masts, fifty oars…”

  I describe the ship with as much detail as I can recall, to a few gasps of disbelief.

  “There was only one of them?” asks Betula.

  “As far as I could tell, yes.”

  “Could you tell if the ship was new?” my father asks.

  “It… didn’t look new,” I reply. “Except for the sails and the siege machine on the bow, it looked like it has been through a lot.”

  “Apologies if I speak out of turn, Rex,” another advisor interrupts gruffly. He’s one of Hengist’s old companions, retained at the Council as a sign of reconciliation with those who rebelled against him. One of the boys we fought at Tanet is his son. “But is this news really important enough to interrupt our gathering? Some wealh ship arriving at a wealh city? What does it concern any of us, Iutes?”

  My father’s lips narrow. He scowls at Hengist’s man. There’s no love lost between the two.

  “I remember you were with us at Andreda beach, Elder,” he says, coldly addressing the man by his old title. “When Aetius threatened us with an invasion. Even he would not send a war galley to these shores. This is an unprecedented event, and it affects everyone on this island, Briton, Saxon or Iute.”

  “What do you think it means?” asks Betula. “War? Should we mobilise the fyrd?”

  “They wouldn’t send just one ship to start a war,” my father replies. “I’m guessing it’s a diplomatic mission to the Londin Council. But why now, of all times? And what could they possibly hope to gain from it?” He rubs his forehead. “Do you know anything about this?” he asks Adminia.

  “I haven’t heard anything about any warship,” the Briton replies. “But then, Londin doesn’t inform us of their moves anymore. We are independent of the Council, so they feel they don’t need to tell us anything.”

  “Any news from Gaul?”

  “There’s always news from Gaul.” Adminia shrugs. “I lost count of the usurpers and magisters that came and went over these past few years. But nothing that would explain…” She waves a hand towards the sea. “…this. I’m as surprised as you are. I thought the Legions were busy in Italia.”

  “That’s not what I heard from your daughter,” I say. “The magistrates at Dorowern are more anxious than they’ve been since Maurica.”

  “Is this true, Adminia?”

  “Ursula needs to learn to hold her tongue,” the Briton replies. “But yes,” she admits reluctantly, “there have been some disturbing developments lately. There may even be a new civil war in Gaul. It’s possible one of the sides is looking for allies even here, in Britannia…”

  “If they sent a ship here, they must have sent one to Ambrosius, too,” I say.

  Father looks to me with gratitude. Adminia and I are the only people in his court aware of the politics outside Cantia’s borders, though neither of us can match with his understanding. He spent most of his life in Londin, as a close advisor and sometime friend to the last great Dux of the Britons. Wortigern even offered to adopt him as his son and heir, before the war ruined any chances of a Iute, even one as thoroughly Romanised as my father, ever becoming the ruler of a wealh province.

  “They don’t need to send a liburna to Ambrosius,” he replies. “They don’t have to scare him or impress him into loyalty.”

  “So you think this is about loyalty? Are they trying to get Britannia back?”

  The Iute elders observe our exchange with bored and confused looks. They are clearly out of their depths; their only experiences are in governing the tribal matters, judging conflicts between the villages, settling market disputes, or, when words fail, leading men into war against raiders and bandits. But a Roman warship on the Tamesa is beyond anything they have ever had to concern themselves with, and they are keen to turn the discussion to things they know, and care about.

  “What about the raids on the northern coast?” says one of them. “We were just about to discuss this when the aetheling interrupted us. The pirates are becoming ever bolder. They say there was another bad harvest in the North. Is this not worth our attention more than some wealh boat?”

  “You’re no longer at a witan, Essa,” my father replies. “I decide what’s worth my attention. Besides, my Hiréd has already dealt with the raiders, has it not, Gesith?”

  “We routed a band of Northerne
rs near Duroleo today,” Betula replies. “At least, I think they’re Northerners. We captured a few but didn’t have time to interrogate them properly. It’s hard to understand their mumbling.”

  The king nods. “I remember. Ask the wealh for help. They are more familiar with the speech of the Northerners.” He looks to Adminia and waits for the Briton to offer her service, then turns back to the Iute elder. “As you can see, Essa, the raids are no cause for concern. This warship, however, very much is.”

  “Clearly, you’ve already decided on your course of action,” says Hengist’s companion. “I don’t know what you expect us to do about it.”

  “I was hoping for some advice. But if you can’t offer any…” He shrugs. “We should at least send a man to Londin, to hear what the Romans have to say to the Council. We need to be prepared for anything that may happen — we don’t want to be surprised by another Wortimer.”

  “They would never agree to one of ‘our kind’ attending their Council,” the elder scoffs. “Unless you’re planning to go yourself.”

  “I can’t leave my people. And my standing at the Council is not what it once used to be,” my father replies.

  “Then I will go,” I say.

  Their eyes turn to me again. “The disgraced child? To represent us at the Londin Council?” scoffs the elder. “He’s barely weaned off his mother’s teat. Do you want him to humiliate himself again?”

  A few men laugh, but this time, my father’s glare silences them. This matter is too serious to indulge their jeering.

  “I’m eighteen, elder.” I reply with a deathly stare. “And my mother is long dead. I speak the wealh language like a native, and I am friends with the Bishop. There isn’t anyone else here who can speak to the Councillors as equal.”

  “Ignore him, son,” my father says. “He’s just trying to rile you. I think this is a great idea. You said you wanted to go back to Londin. This is your chance — not as an acolyte or student, but as the Rex’s envoy.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  I try to sound casual, but I can barely contain my excitement. Back to Londin! The great city! No more cramped and dirty mud huts, no more being surrounded by the same Iute pale, fair-haired faces, no more stews and pea-flour bread. My father may be a king, but he’s only a king of the Iutes; our life can’t compare to that of even the poorest of Londin nobles, and I can’t wait to live like one of them, even if for a couple of days.

  “Prepare your pony, then. There’s no time to lose. That ship will already have moored by now,” my father says. “It’s a fortunate thing we were all here today. If that liburna had come just a couple of weeks earlier, we’d still be in Rutubi!”

  I enter the city through the Bridge Gate and halt. I breathe in the unmistakable smell of manure and overflowing gutters, of brick dust from crumbling walls, of sweat coming off the horses and people, of strange food prepared in the inns lining Cardo Street that links the Bridge with the Forum. To anyone unused to it, the stench must be unbearable; to me, it means I’m finally back home.

  Though I lived there only for three years, I think more of Londin as my true home than any other place in Britannia. Orpeddingatun, the village I grew up in with my mother and her husband, was destroyed by Wortimer’s army, and though it’s since been rebuilt and peopled by a handful of Iutes, Saxons and Britons, I have never felt the need to return there since everyone I knew is now gone. And with my father’s court constantly on the move, there is no one place in Cantia that I can call “home” anymore.

  The three years I spent within the mighty black-and-white-striped walls of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and in the walled complex of buildings around it, were the happiest days of my life. Under the tutelage of Bishop Fastidius, I learned to read and write Latin, history, geography and arithmetic — and was introduced to the tenets of the True Faith of Rome. But more importantly, for three years, I got to live in the greatest city in Britannia.

  Everyone I talked to in Londin, then, felt it necessary to point out that the city was a mere shadow of its past glory even before Wortimer usurped the throne of the Dux. Ravaged by war, cut off from its trading partners on the Continent, abandoned by its rulers and elites, it was a hollow shell of a settlement. Wind blew dust and waste through the vast, empty avenues. The trade that went on in the markets had dwindled to a fraction of what my father’s generation remembered. Whole tracts of tenements in the poorer districts, where my father, my mother and Betula once fought running battles with Wortimer’s city guards, had been dismantled for building material for great palaces of Wortimer’s loyalists, which, in turn, lay abandoned and unfinished.

  I did not care about any of that. Without knowing how it was in the past, I was free to enjoy what was left of the city. The uncounted layers of history, visible in the insulae of tenements, built-up, expanded, then shrunk, finally half-razed to make place for smaller huts. The inns, each filled with more people than lived in an entire Iutish village, serving food that tasted like nothing any Iutish kitchen ever cooked, from ingredients the names I could only guess at; broad highways still bustling with traffic on market days; the ruins of grand public buildings, looming like cliff sides above the narrow streets; nestled between them, smaller, single — and two-storey — stone houses, busy with the kind of life that goes on only in the big city, half-sordid, half-industrious: craftsmen, merchants, bakers, butchers, gamblers, whores, beggars — all mingled together, like ingredients in a stew; sprawling gardens surrounding the crumbling palaces, overgrown with weed and ivy, but still witnesses to the glory and riches of their owners.

  Most importantly, instead of being surrounded merely by Iutes and an occasional passing Briton merchant, in Londin I once lived among a multitude of peoples and races, all looking different, all speaking in different accents and, sometimes, even different tongues, if I happened to stumble upon the crew of a Gaulish, Frankish or Iberian ship on shore leave. I’ve been missing all of this ever since my father came and took me with him into the country of muddy villages and farmsteads, green fields and wooded hills — and I know he misses it, too.

  A hurrying merchant brushes grumpily past my pony’s flank. “Get a move on, country boy!” he grunts. “This is Cardo Street, not a bridle path in the Downs!”

  I smile. Everything is just as I remembered.

  The Bishop is surprised to see me at the doorstep of his Cathedral. The people of Londin have themselves only just awoken to the presence of the great liburna in their harbour, a ship so great it took the space of three merchant galleys at the pier. Few had the time to process what its arrival might mean for the city, and for the island as a whole.

  “Have the Iute priests learned how to see the future now?” he laughs.

  “I saw it sail past Robriwis,” I say. “My father sent me here to investigate.”

  “Then you’ve arrived just in time,” he says. “The Council is just about to gather to meet with the Roman delegate. I assume you’ll want to join us.”

  “Then it is true? The ship has come from Rome?”

  “South Gaul, I would guess, judging by the markings on the sails,” he replies. “But I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and looks me in the eyes. “You’ve grown, boy. You’re as tall as me. How’s Ash?”

  I could never quite grasp the relationship between my father and the Bishop. His Grace was the only person I knew who still called my father “Ash” — his old slave name, one he used before he joined the Iutes as the war chief of Hengist’s household guard. The two of them grew up together in the same villa where my mother worked as a bladesmith’s apprentice; when I first saw both of them together, they acted like estranged brothers. Something happened between them that made them grow apart, though they were still on friendly enough terms to meet once in a while, whenever time allowed. Once Ash now Aeric became the king of the Iutes, however, it was no longer seemly for a Bishop to associate himself with a leader of a pagan tribe, and I don’t think they have so much
as spoken since.

  “Hasn’t changed much,” I reply. “No, I lie. He’s grown more… barbaric. He’s wearing furs now, and thick cloaks, and gaudy ornaments of gold. He’s grown a beard and wears his hair long. I don’t think you’d recognise him now. Even his speech has grown rustic.”

  The Bishop chuckles. “Duties of a king. He always had a hard time being accepted by the other Iutes. They saw him as a wealh, a Briton, rather than one of their own. So now he needs to be more Iutish than any of his subjects. Is it working?”

  “He’s quelled all the rebellions, so I guess it is.” I shrug.

  “All the rebellions? Even that cousin of Hengist’s… what was his…?”

  “Haesta settled on Aelle’s land, on the border by the sea.”

  “A screen between the Iutes and the Saxons.” The Bishop nods. “Smart move. Don’t worry. Remember your Greeks: ‘the gods’ millstones grind late, but they grind fine’. Haesta will get what’s his due yet.”

  “Shouldn’t you be telling me to forgive him?” I say.

  He smiles a sad smile. “You are not one of my flock, young Octa,” he says. “And thanks to your father, you never will be.”

  The tall, dark-haired man in a white linen tunic and crimson cape trimmed with golden thread, whom I presume to be the Roman messenger, looks around in confusion.

  “Why is the Council of Britons meeting in… what is this, a chapel?” he asks. He speaks in as pure an Imperial Latin as I’ve ever heard. None of the Londin Councillors sounds as clear and noble as he does. I imagine this is what the words of Rutilius and other Roman writers I’ve been devouring should really sound like when spoken.

  We are crammed inside Saint Peter’s, a small church hall adjacent to the Forum. It was once one of the chambers of Londin’s basilica, the greatest such edifice north of the Alps, as the city folk were always keen to point out, though I doubt any of them have ever been able to confirm that claim in person. Now, the rest of the basilica stands in majestic ruin, as does any other public building in the city that wasn’t converted into a church.