“They fought like wild beasts,” says Hildrik. “Even with their limbs cut off, they still stood their ground. It cost me six men to finally bring them down. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Like wild beasts…?
I limp back to the camp — the spear wound in my thigh, though cleaned and wrapped to the best of Hildrik’s shieldmaidens’ abilities, erupts with pain at every step — and search through the belongings of the four Saxons. I find a suspicious-looking water skin. I take a sniff.
Henbane.
The secret brew, the dangerous brew that gives Iute warriors their nigh inhuman powers of resisting wounds and battle madness. We learned how to use it from our northern neighbours in the Old Country — the Danes and the Geats. Once, it was commonly used by the Iute Hiréd warriors, whenever there was a need to make a breakthrough in the enemy lines, or stand ground against overwhelming odds — but my father decreed that not only the recipe, but the very existence of the brew be kept a secret, to be made and used only as the last-ditch surprise, just as it had been at Eobbasfleot.
This isn’t a discovery I want to share with the Franks. I bring the finding to my friends, instead.
“I thought the Saxons didn’t know how to brew henbane,” says Ursula.
“They don’t,” I say. “Someone must have revealed the secret. They only had enough for four men, this time — but it was just a foraging pack. If they’re able to brew more, this campaign suddenly turned a lot more dangerous.”
“You should let your father know about this,” says Gille.
“I will — as soon as we find out more about it.” I throw a bloodied bearskin cloak to the ground. “The men who drank the henbane wore this,” I say. “Better stay clear of them if we ever meet them again.”
I turn to Audulf. “Have you managed to learn anything?” I ask.
More than a dozen Saxons survived the battle with enough clarity of mind to be worth interrogating. Of these, I picked two whom I believed to have come from Britannia and, while Hildrik’s men tortured the others to discover the whereabouts of the main Saxon warband, I ordered Audulf to find out what they were really doing here.
“I have. But you won’t like it.”
He leads me back to the captives. One of them is lying on the ground, unconscious, his face a bloody mess; I glance to Audulf’s fists — his knuckles are covered with blood and torn skin. The other one, the Saxon I captured with Praefect Paulus’s help, is sitting up, tied to a hazel tree, staring defiantly at us over a broken nose.
“You were right,” says Audulf. “They are from Britannia. This one says he’s from Anderitum.”
“Does your Drihten know you two are here?” I ask him.
He spits a tooth out. “Drihten Aelle sent us here. What’s it to you, Iute? We’re both a long way from home.”
“The Franks are our friends and allies,” I say.
“We weren’t sent here to fight the Franks. It was you who attacked us.”
I pause. The captive is right; the River Franks had no quarrel with the Saxons, and they didn’t ask for our help. Hildrik marched out against them to assist the River Franks against the raiders. But once we discovered Drohten Hildebert’s indifference to the Saxon expedition, what reason was there for us to continue the pursuit, other than a chance for glory and plunder? Who was more at fault for this conflict — the Saxon warband, crossing the River Franks’ territory by mutual agreement, or the Salians, chasing after the warband without the slightest threat or provocation?
Somewhere deeper in the hazel thicket, I can hear the screams of the other Saxons, tortured by Hildrik’s men. No doubt, after this ordeal, Hildrik will know where the Saxon band was going, and why. I don’t see the point in asking my captive the same questions, so I focus on what’s more important to me and the Iutes.
“How many of you are there?”
The Saxon shrugs. “Why should I tell you anything? You’ll kill me anyway.”
“I’ll let you go free if you swear an ath to return home.”
He looks up. “I’d be dead before I got to the coast. This isn’t a safe land for a lonely, unarmed man.”
“At least you’d have a chance.”
He mulls my proposition over for a while.
“One full ceol,” he says at last. His tone’s changed. I sense he’s telling the truth. There would be some thirty to fifty men on a ceol. “One of our large ones.” Fifty, then. “Most of them are with the main host.”
“Who gave you the henbane?” I ask.
“I don’t know anything about the henbane,” he replies with a shrug.
“The bear-shirts.”
“Whatever the bear-shirts took, they already had it when we arrived.”
“Was there anyone else in the warband who may have given it to them? Some Danes or Geat mercenaries?”
“There was a unit of cavalry with the main host,” he says. “The horses were Thuringian, but the riders were Franks, Friesians — and Iutes.”
“Iutes?” I give him a sharp look. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am that you’re one.”
I know of only one Iute who leads a band of mercenary riders, is friends with the king of the Saxons — and was reported to have left Britannia recently.
Haesta.
The revelation intrigues me but doesn’t surprise. I can’t help but notice the irony; Meroweg asked my father to send Haesta to his aid against the Saxons just as the rebellious cousin was sailing to join the very same Saxons he fought before. I couldn’t blame Haesta for changing alliances. He’s a mercenary. Hemmed in between the Iutes and the Saxons, settled on an inhospitable, marshy land on the south-east coast of Cantia, the Haestingas needed to find a new source of income.
But betraying the secret of the henbane was a different matter. It endangered the entire tribe. If more of Aelle’s warriors learned how to use it, like those bear-shirts in the camp, the fragile balance of peace between the two kingdoms would be shattered.
“Escort him back to the road,” I tell Audulf. “And then give him his knife back.”
“What about him?” the Saxon captive asks, nodding at his unconscious comrade.
“Is he your friend?”
“A brother in arms. We fought at Eobbasfleot together.”
“You were at Eobbasfleot?”
He nods. “I killed two wealas there. One of them with my bare hands,” he boasts, raising bloodied fists high. “And I would have killed more of them here in Gaul if you hadn’t stopped us.”
“Fine, take him with you,” I say, “if you think you can carry him all the way back to Britannia.”
“I will not let him rot in an unnamed grave in Frankia.”
I watch Audulf lead the two Saxons away, and then go off to find Praetor Fulco. He’s making ready to depart back to his home town, with the bodies of the slain watchmen laid out on biers.
“Can I ask you one last favour, Praetor?”
“Anything you ask.”
“I need you to send a message to my father in Britannia.”
“I can certainly try, but I’m not sure how easy it will be to reach him…”
“It shouldn’t be that difficult. Just address it to Aeric — King of the Iutes.”
Shortly after nightfall, just as I start preparing for sleep, Ursula enters my tent, holding something small in a clenched fist.
“I found something that you might find interesting,” she says.
“What is it?”
“Give me your hand.”
I reach out. She puts a small metal object in my outstretched palm: a golden eagle, studded with garnets.
“It’s Basina’s pendant! Where did you find it?”
“In her hand,” says Ursula. “She gave it to me. But if anyone asks, I found it in the grass on the knoll to the north of the camp.”
“I… I don’t understand.”
“She’s still there, searching for it, if you want to give it back to her.”
“What d
oes it mean?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it means Hildrik has grown impatient with her night visits to your chamber,” she says with a grin. “Don’t act so surprised. Did you really think no one would notice?”
The tips of my ears burn. “Does it mean I… shouldn’t go to that knoll?”
“No, you fool. She’s waiting for you. Just do it discreetly. This gives you an excuse if anyone’s asking,” she says, pointing to the pendant. “Hildrik is not stupid. He knows there’s nothing going on between you two, it’s just Basina teasing him, and teasing you — but his honour is at stake, so all of you need to keep up the pretence. Otherwise, he’d be forced to kill you.”
I lick my lips and swallow. “Kill me…”
“They’re all warriors here, Octa. Killing is how they deal with most problems.”
“How do you know so much about this?”
“Audulf explained to me a little how things work in this country… The rest I’ve learned from Basina herself. Now go, before she grows bored with waiting. The night is cold.”
I pass the guard with a nod, and enter the dark, empty, featureless field outside. To the north, a thin line of pale orange dots is spread along the dark horizon: the lights of the city of Coln. We have camped half a day’s march from its walls, on the edge of another old stone road, linking Coln with Trever and southern Gaul. To the east, I can hear the lapping of the mighty Rhenum against its muddy shores. I didn’t have much time to admire the famous river before the quickly coming dusk forced us to make camp, but I can already tell that what I managed to glimpse in that brief moment will stay with me forever.
Tamesa is an imposing, broad current that turns into an inlet of the open sea not long after passing Londin’s walls, but it’s a sea of mud, silt and sewage, an aqueduct of waste and sludge, sometimes resembling nothing more than a trench filled with manure. It is impressive, but it is not beautiful. Rhenum is a wild, gleaming marvel. It spills broad and lazy across the meadows, clear and calm, like an old man who has lived a full life and now spends his twilight years just watching the clouds roll by. A dark, dense forest grows on its distant right shore, a ribbon of shadow, reflected in the pure waters, highlighting the river’s elegant beauty like a line of antimony powder on the eyebrows of a woman of the night.
Somewhere along that shore, between us and Coln, is the camp of the Saxon warband.
After finding all there is to find out from his Saxon captives, Hildrik stood before a difficult choice. The Saxon host we pursued was far stronger than we had expected. It wasn’t even the main Saxon army — that one, a couple thousand men strong, we are told, is marching along the right bank of the Rhenum, to cross at some point further south. There is nothing we can do about an army that large, except maybe warn the Roman garrisons along its path. But even the one here is powerful enough to give Hildrik pause: two hundred footmen, reinforced by Haesta’s cavalry wing, and at least a dozen of those bear-shirts, drunk on henbane. They have engineers among them, veterans of Attila’s army, ready to build siege engines if the situation requires. Meanwhile, our Frankish band now number less than a hundred men, and it is clear we can’t count on Drohten Hildebert and his River Franks joining us against the Saxons.
But it isn’t just the fear of failure that impacts Hildrik’s decision. We know now where the warband is heading — more or less, the men we captured were not high ranking enough to know the exact route of the expedition, only its target — and we know they are no longer a direct threat to Meroweg’s kingdom. Is there still any point in pursuing them, in risking the lives of our men?
“My father would have us return,” said Hildrik. “He doesn’t care what happens to the walhas.”
“And you do?”
The Saxon army is waiting on the outskirts of Coln for the return of the foraging packs, like the one we just destroyed, but soon they will move on to their final target. It isn’t Coln — that one they were leaving to Hildebert’s Franks — but an even greater and richer city in the south, the capital of all Gaul, the seat of the praefect and a residence of Imperators when they visited Gaul: Trever. In the chaos brought on by the feuding Imperators, with hostile Roman armies roaming the province, the city must have been left poorly defended, or at least the Saxons believe it to be.
“Rome makes better neighbours, whatever my father might think,” Hildrik replied. “Once they sign a treaty, they keep to it. The Saxons are unpredictable and can only be beaten into submission. They’re already settled to our West, along the coast, and to our East, across the Rhenum. If they gain a foothold on our southern border, if they ally with the Alemanns and Burgundians, we’ll be surrounded on all sides.”
“Wouldn’t your father prefer a weakened Rome?”
“He may well do — but you already know I don’t agree with him about everything.”
Hildrik may be growing suspicious about my relationship with his betrothed, but he has also grown to realise we share a common affection for Rome, and a wish for the Empire to survive strong and healthy through the many crises it has faced. Like me, he believes the heathens need Rome as an ally and a friend to profit from, not merely as an enemy to be feared.
“Some say this Maiorianus is like the new Aetius,” he said, when I asked him if he truly believed Rome could yet recover its lost might. “My father saw him fight many years ago, when Aetius’s Legions stopped Drohten Clodio’s advance into Gaul. If he can’t do it, no one can.”
“What if he’s also as shrewd as Aetius? What if he’ll have you fight his battles for no reward?”
“Peace and stability on our borders is reward enough. If Rome could stop Alemanns and Saxons from crossing the river, the Franks would flourish where we are.”
“What about conquest? What about glory? What about plunder?”
He smiled. “All in due course. Haven’t you seen how ravaged Gaul was after the Huns? What’s left may be good for the Saxons, but it will take years for it to be rebuilt into something worth conquering.”
I could never tell if he was jesting when he was saying these things.
“How long are you going to stand there? I’m getting cold.”
Basina’s voice brings me back to the present. I can’t see her in the dark, so following her voice, I limp up to the birch tree on top of the grassy knoll. She’s sitting under the tree with her arms around her knees; unusually for her, she’s wearing a long robe of thick wool, and a woollen cloak, as if she was a shepherdess.
“Why did you want to see me?” I ask. “I thought you were angry with me.”
“Of course I was angry.”
“Then, I don’t understand…”
She laughs. “Ursula told me you had little experience with women, but I didn’t think you were this naïve.”
“Ursula —” I remember. “I think I found something of yours.”
She reaches out. I put the pendant on her palm, and before I can take it away, she covers my hand with her other hand and holds. Her fingers are soft and warm.
“Sit down,” she commands, and I obey. She moves closer, until our bodies touch through thick cloth.
“I was impressed,” she says. “No man ever stood up to me like that, except Hildrik.”
“I only did what I thought was right.”
“And you did the same in Ake, convincing Hildrik to save these poor people from fire.”
I remain silent.
“Are you a Christian?” she asks. “It’s the sort of thing I’ve heard Christians preach about.”
“Would you respect me less if I were?”
“I respect a man of conviction.”
“I’m not a Christian,” I tell her. “But I spent a long time among them in Britannia. I was tutored by the Bishop of Londin.”
“A Bishop, no less!” She chuckles. “We always believed Christians were weaklings — not worth a place at Tengri’s table — until Aetius and the Goths defeated the Huns at Maurica.”
“Tengri?”
“It’s what
the Huns call the one you’d call Wuotan.”
“Wodan, in Iutish,” I correct her. “It’s strange to think that these… beasts worshipped the same gods as us.”
She laughs. “They were just men. Except Attila — he… he was more like a god. As if Tengri himself came down to Earth. But he died just like any other man, and after his death, there were no more gods in the East.”
“Were there Christians in Thuringia?”
“A few,” she says. “Even among the Huns. But most went south with the Goths. The Goths are strange ones. They’re Christian, but they are fierce warriors. Just like the Romans. How does it work with all that talk of mercy and forgiveness?”
“I told you. Mercy is a virtue of the strong. The weak must destroy their enemies. The strong can afford to let them live.”
“Hmm.”
She falls silent, and we listen to the distant lapping of the Rhenum, and the northern wind picking up on the empty plain.
“Kiss me,” she says suddenly.
“What?”
“Kiss me.”
“But you’re Hildrik’s woman!”
“I don’t see him here. Don’t you want to kiss me?”
“I… I dream of nothing else.”
She turns towards me and closes her eyes. I lower my head and our lips touch. She opens her mouth and pulls me in; her tongue twirls and dances inside me. The thick wool of her sleeves tickles the back of my neck. I lose myself in her embrace; I don’t know how much time passes before she releases me, gasping for breath.
“Why?” I manage to utter.
“I told you. I was impressed. Consider how you can impress me further next time,” she says.
She stands up and walks away, leaving me breathless in the darkness.
The letters above the gate state proudly: “C.C.A.A.” I do not know what that inscription resolves to, except that the first word must be “Colonia”; the Franks mangled the word into the simple “Coln” — but I imagine like most Roman cities it once had a more majestic, convoluted name, invoking some Imperator or a victorious general in whose name it was founded.
The countryside around the city still bears the familiar scars of the many wars and barbarian invasions that rolled through the land — burned farms and ruined villas reaching almost up to Coln’s tall walls. But nearer the city, the suburbs are in surprisingly good shape. The stone houses lining the highway still stand, with roofs freshly mended and walls recently white-washed. Wheat shoots green in the fields. Orchards are bursting with leaf and budding fruit. Even a few of the marble-lined pagan memorials on the main cemetery still remain, gleaming white in the sun, though most are crooked or overturned in the mud.
The Blood of the Iutes: The Song of Octa Book 1 (The Song of Britain 4) Page 16
