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

by James Calbraith

  The merchants don’t hawk their wares to the passers-by like us; instead, they speak only with other merchants, shadowy dealers with bulging purses and muscular bodyguards. Once in a while, a buyer exchanges his purse for a stack of weapons that are then loaded onto a foot cart and taken speedily out of the market.

  “What’s going on here, Octa?” asks Ursula, staring at the spectacle with wide eyes. “Who are all these people?”

  “I’m not sure,” I reply. I can’t tell any pattern to the purchases. The men who buy the weapons look like Franks, Saxons, Gauls, Britons, Iberians; there’s even a thin-eyed, fat-cheeked Easterner, browsing through the bowyer’s stand with interest. They all speak the same Vulgar variety of Latin, mixed in with their own tongues and accents. Most of the equipment on sale is used; a lot of it is quite old. The swords are notched and pocked with rust. The spear blades have been torn from their shafts with little regard to how they’d been fitted. The helmets are dented; the mail coats are in tatters. But none of this seems to deter the buyers.

  “These must be weapons from Maurica and other great battlefields,” I say at last. The greatest battle in living memory took place only seven years ago. If the numbers I’ve heard rumoured were right, there would have been tens of thousands of weapons lost on that field; enough to sustain a market like this, and many others scattered throughout Gaul, for years. And there has been more fighting since then, wars I’d only hear in gossip about: Franks against Alemanns, Goths against Suebians, Saxons against Burgundians, Roman Legions against all of them… Men were numerous and easy to replace. Weapons were valuable. The buyers in this market would be the representatives of the very tribes and armies who fought in those battles, aiming to reclaim some of the lost property, scavenged from the dead by slavers and corpse thieves.

  One of the merchants, passing us by, stops and looks greedily at the sword at my side. It’s a Legionnaire’s spatha, given to me by Aegidius for protection. This weapon, at least, is brand new.

  “How much would you like for that sweard, boy?” the man asks.

  “It’s not for sale.”

  “I’d trade you for four of my own,” he probes further. “One for each of your…” He looks at my friends, uncertain whether to call them my guards or my slaves. “…companions.”

  “That’s very generous of you, but I’m not interested.”

  “Wait, you’re from that ship that moored today, aren’t you? Tell the captain I will buy every weapon he can spare. The River Franks will pay in gold! Just tell him to ask for Probus!”

  “Octa, look!” Ursula points to the podium in the centre of the market, while I’m trying to tear my sleeve out of Probus’s grasp.

  A column of fair-haired slaves, chained to one another, is pushed onto the podium by a burly guard. The slave trader waits for the small crowd at the foot of the podium to calm down, before announcing his new wares.

  “What we have here,” he says, “are fifteen fine men and women, fresh from the island of Britannia.” He touches the muscles of the slave in front. “Sailors. Warriors. Child minders. Supple girls for your pleasure. And this one’s a good cook!” he says, pointing to an elderly woman at the back.

  “These must be the Iutes captured by Haesta’s men!” I say. “The ones they sold to the Frankish pirates.”

  “We have to save them!” says Ursula. “I know that girl on the right; she’s from Robriwis!”

  “And that old woman is from a village near Leman,” adds Gille. “He’s right; she is a good cook.”

  There are far more onlookers than interested buyers in the crowd. I push through to the front. “How much for the lot of them?” I shout.

  The slave trader laughs. “They don’t come as a set, boy. Did everyone in your villa just run away and you’re looking to replace all your servants?”

  “How much?” I repeat.

  “Five solids, if you must know. Five solids, everyone!” he addresses the crowd. “That’s a discount if you buy them all together — if you can afford it!”

  I peruse my purse. There isn’t even one whole solid in it. Aegidius really didn’t appreciate my father’s worth…

  “I’ll take them all,” a gruff voice calls. I search for the buyer in the crowd. He’s wearing a cloak of black fur over a narrow tunic of fine, bright green cloth. A diadem of silver wire adorns his long fair hair.

  “My lord Ingomer,” the slave trader bows with an uneasy smile. “What need does your king have for a Briton cook? Or a cloth weaver?”

  “You’re not getting out of it so easily, Hypatius,” says the man in the fur cloak. “I know you’ll get more if you sell these slaves individually, but you said five solids for all, and that’s what I’m paying.”

  The slave trader gives me a vicious stare, then goes back to arguing with the man in the fur cloak; but “lord Ingomer” is a shrewd merchant, and he ends up negotiating himself an even greater discount.

  “I will prepare them for you for tomorrow, my lord,” the slave trader ends with a miserable look on his face. “And you, boy,” he turns to me, “I better not see you on this market ever again!”

  “Five solids is a decent price for fifteen Iutish slaves,” says Aegidius, nodding, when I tell him what happened at the market. “Especially if some of them are strong young men — or fine-looking girls…”

  “That’s not the issue here,” I interrupt him.

  He sighs. “Son, I’m not going to buy out your kindred for you. I know what you’re going to say —” He raises his hand. “It would be a favour to your father. It would help to get him on our side… But that’s not how things work in Gaul. That man bought the slaves in a fair transaction, and it’s not my, or anyone else’s, problem what he’s going to do with them.”

  “Then just lend me the money. My father will give it all back to you, with interest.”

  He lays a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but… If your father cared so much about his people being sold to slavery, he would send his own merchants to Epatiac. I’m sure he knows what’s going on here. It’s only a day’s sail away from Britannia, after all.”

  I want to protest, but I realise he’s right. Maybe back in the day, when pirates and raiders ruled the Narrow Sea, and the Iutes struggled for survival on Tanet, such a thing was unthinkable; but it’s been relatively easy to reach Gaul for a few years now, and my father is not a poor man. He told me often of the pot of gold coins buried on the grounds of the villa where he grew up. Why hasn’t he been buying back his own people from the pirates?

  “See, even your father understands the economy of the Empire. And really, a slave’s life is not as bad as you think, especially if he’s sold to a good Christian home. Now, if it’s one of the barbarian lords that took them…”

  “His name was Ingomer.”

  “Ingomer of Tornac?”

  “Maybe. Big man, black fur coat, silver diadem…”

  “Ah, that’s different.” Aegidius taps a finger on his lips. “You don’t want to involve yourself with him. And I definitely wouldn’t want to get on his wrong side. You’d best forget about those Iutes, Octa. Anyway, we’re leaving tomorrow for Iberia. You’d do well to get used to seeing your people on the slave markets. There’ll be plenty more of them in the South.”

  I return to Ursula and the others, waiting for me at the pier. “We’re on our own,” I tell them.

  “What do we do?” asks Gille. “We can’t just leave these poor people there.”

  “We can’t buy them, and we can’t steal them. The town is crawling with guards,” says Audulf. “Not to mention the bodyguards of that fur-cloaked merchant.”

  “Maybe not while they’re in town…” I rub my chin. “But I may have a plan. We just need to find out where he’s taking those slaves…”

  “What are you thinking? We can’t fight through an armed guard,” says Ursula. “We’re just four younglings — and we don’t even have weapons, other than your spatha.”

 
“This, we can remedy right away,” I say. “Let’s go back to the market and find that Probus.”

  CHAPTER VI

  THE LAY OF HILDRIK

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” says Ursula excitedly. “A week ago, I was helping my father finish his accounting in Dorowern. Now I’m a forest bandit!”

  “You realise we can die here, right?” asks Gille.

  “Try not to,” I answer with a grin. I hush them and we sneak through the scrub. I, too, can’t quite believe I managed to convince them — and myself — to this mad plan. We’ve been following Ingomer’s caravan for half a day along a Roman highway out of Epatiac. They are now decamping for the night in the grounds of an old, ruined, halfway mansio. A part of me is strangely content to see the ruin. Not everything in Gaul is in better shape than Britannia.

  The slaves are ordered to shuffle to the road side and sit there under protection of two armed guards. I notice they’re being treated with surprising leniency. Three more men guard the two tents set up within the mansio’s walls for the merchant and his servants.

  “There doesn’t seem to be that many guards for a caravan that size,” notices Audulf.

  “The roads here must be safer than in Britannia,” I say. “No bandits around here.”

  “Except us,” grins Ursula.

  “There’s still five warriors to deal with,” says Gille. “And the only combat experience we’ve got is beating up some Iute boys in training.”

  “We can do it. We are Iutes.”

  “No, we’re not,” says Audulf.

  “We are my father’s subjects. That’s what makes us Iutes,” I say. “Not blood. And that’s why we are freeing these slaves. Because they’re our tribesmen.”

  I explain my plan to them in detail. Audulf is to stay in reserve, to draw the attention of Ingomer’s guards, while the rest of us will rush to free the slaves. “I don’t plan that we will fight all five of them,” I say. “I just want to get the Iutes and us out of here as quickly as possible.”

  Unlike my friends, I feel oddly optimistic. We may have no experience, but we’re well trained and have surprise on our side. The Iutes were captured only a few days ago, and apart from the slaver’s whip marks and being tired from the day’s march, they seem to be in good condition. Some of them look like they might even help us in the fight. If we can all get into the dense forest on the other side of the road, there’s a good chance we’ll lose any pursuit.

  I draw the sword. It’s one of the beaten-up, rusted blades from the market. Probus made good on his promise, and even threw in knives for the other three, to match the one my mother made me.

  “I’ve never killed a man before,” says Ursula, growing suddenly sombre.

  “None of us have,” I remind her. Her remark makes me pause. Why am I doing this? She is right — I am not a Iute. My mother was a Briton bladesmith. My father may have been born in a Iutish village, but he was raised as an heir to a Roman villa.

  Ever since I saw that liburna, I’ve been acting like a shield-biter on henbane. I’m not surprised the others have followed me on this adventure — their lives were tedious enough back in Cantia; son of a fort guard, son of a horse trainer, daughter of a minor nobleman from a backwater town… But I’m the aetheling, the heir of a king. I should not be playing forest bandits on a country road, somewhere in northern Gaul.

  “Octa?” whispers Audulf. “Are we doing this or not?”

  “Let’s go.”

  I launch into a charge. Ursula and Gille follow after me. I cross the stone road before the surprised two guards manage to react. One of them, too slow to strike, raises his spear to a parry. I grab my sword in both hands and slash through the shaft with full force.

  The blade snaps in two.

  “There haven’t been bandits on this road since Aetius,” says Ingomer. “Who are you, younglings, and what are you doing here? Did Hypatius send you to pester me?”

  I make a feeble attempt to wrestle out of the guard’s hands, but it only results in him tightening his grip. I say nothing. I haven’t said anything since telling my friends to stand down and keep silent, as soon as it was clear we were not going to defeat Ingomer’s bodyguards. I managed to cut one of them with the shard of my broken sword, and Audulf gave the other a bruise on the head, but with our weapons broken, we were soon overpowered.

  Ingomer picks up the blade from the ground and studies it intently. “Curious,” he says. “You’re rich enough to buy swords from Probus, but not smart enough to know when he’s cheated you.” He then looks at the rest of us. “What even are you all? You’re a Briton girl, aren’t you? What are you doing with these two?”

  I lick blood from my lower lip. The guard searches my clothes and finds the purse from Aegidius. He throws it to the merchant.

  “Wait, I remember you now,” says Ingomer, after browsing through the contents of the purse. “You’re the boy who asked about the price of the slaves. What is your interest in them?”

  “He’s —” Ursula starts, but I grimace at her to stop.

  “I don’t have time for this,” says Ingomer and turns to his guards. “Kill everyone except the girl. She’ll fetch a good price in Tornac.”

  The guard draws a long knife.

  “Stop!” I blurt. “I am Octa, son of Aeric, king of the Iutes.”

  The merchant laughs. “The son of a king! Ha! I haven’t heard that one before. And what is a king’s son doing in a forest in Gaul?”

  That’s a great question…

  “I’m saving my people from slavery.”

  Ingomer laughs again, then his eye falls on the chained slaves. He orders the guard to bring me before them. “If you’re their aetheling, shouldn’t they recognise you?”

  “Most of them are serfs,” I say. “I doubt they’ve ever seen me.”

  “Then it looks like I have only your word.”

  “I don’t know if the boy is who he says he is,” says an old woman, sitting at the far end of the group. “But I know the girl. She’s Ursula, Adminia’s daughter. Her mother owns a wharf in Leman where our ship sometimes moors.”

  “And that’s Gille, Brinno’s boy,” says another slave. “The best pony tamers between Rutubi and Dubris.”

  I notice one of the girls sitting at the back — the one Ursula said was from Robriwis — is staring at me curiously, in silence.

  “What are the chances of them recognising you?” asks Ingomer dubiously.

  “We are a small tribe,” I reply. “My companions and I travel with my father’s court.”

  “Hmm.” He throws the broken blade to the ground. “Fine. I’ll take you with the others to Tornac. If you really are King Aeric’s son, somebody there will recognise you.”

  “What? No!” I protest and struggle again. “We need to get back to the harbour. Our ship is leaving in the morning!”

  “And you thought you’d just steal my slaves and take them back to your ship before then?” The merchant laughs again. He puts a hand on my shoulder, in what I take for a fatherly manner — then pushes me down to the ground. “Sit down, ‘aetheling’. You’re leaving in the morning, alright — with me, to Tornac.”

  Here is another thing I’ve never seen in Britannia: a Roman town that has outgrown its walls. Where Briton towns shrank over generations so much that many of them needed to build second, smaller walls to better contain the receding grid of streets, Tornac spilled out of what was once essentially just a Legionnaire fort guarding a river passage, into a sea of wooden houses and mud huts, sprawling across the bridge to the other side.

  Is this what a capital of a barbarian king looks like? Is this what Rutubi or Robriwis will eventually turn into? I have already seen the beginnings of this transformation in these towns, with Aeric’s mead halls raised on the grounds of the old fortresses, surrounded by huts of the court followers. But Tornac is different. It is not just a Frankish town — Gauls live here, too, maybe even in greater number than the Franks. It is as if my father built h
is court in the middle of Dorowern. And the seat of the king is not a mere mead hall. It is a palace.

  I don’t know much about the Franks of this region, other than they have had their Rex for a whole generation longer than the Iutes, and Tornac is the chief seat of their court. Some decades ago, the Franks crossed the Rhenum in force, like so many other barbarian tribes, and were “allowed” to settle in the northern marches of Gaul — a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that Rome was too weak to unseat them from the land they occupied, even after Aetius defeated their warbands in a series of battles further to the South. With only the Narrow Sea separating them from Cantia, the Franks have been a traditional ally in our struggles with the wealas — as long as it suited their interests.

  The fort’s walls are far from crumbling; the Franks — the work is recent — filled out the gaps with rubble from the dismantled barracks. Beyond the twin-towered gatehouse spreads a compound of long, low timber buildings, culminating in a grand hall, at least twice as large as the hall in Robriwis, with a roof of slate tiles, its gables and edges decorated in patterns of gold and silver foil.

  For five days, my friends and I march tied to the Iute slaves. I wonder how we are going to get ourselves out of our predicament, but I don’t worry too much — I am certain once we got to Meroweg’s court, my identity will be confirmed by one of the envoys who visited my father over the years. I’ve grown to know a few of the Iutes as we march down an old Roman road, passing settlements scattered along it between Gaul and Frankia — Seawine, a sailor, who once fought at Crei; Ulfa, the old cook; they are a curious, varied group, thrown together by Fate and the slavers: some, like Ulfa or Odilia, the girl from Robriwis, were captured on a ship heading for Leman, others were taken by the “Haestingas” from our villages on the south coast.