We’re no more than a few miles from the walls of Icorig when I spot a handful of riders, approaching fast. Thinking they must be couriers from the fortress to Trever, I slow down and move aside to let them pass, not paying them much attention. When I realise who they are, it’s too late.
Everything happens too fast for me to react. A mercenary’s lance punches through Audulf’s mail coat, raising him like meat on a skewer and throwing him off the pony. Two riders reach Ursula from both sides and grab her from the saddle. Two more pass me by and cut me off from Seawine’s Iutes, who instinctively form into a defensive line along the road. The last one to come into view is Haesta: he raises his helmet’s visor, draws his seax and approaches me, but is not poised for a fight.
“Safe passage!” he cries inexplicably. “Safe passage or we kill them!”
I glance to Audulf — he’s alive but bleeding heavily from the new injury. A mercenary picks him up from the ground and throws him over the saddle. Behind us, Seawine is looking to me for orders, ready to strike — his men should have little trouble dispatching the two Haestingas and breaking through to help me, but I can’t risk Audulf’s and Ursula’s safety.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, desperately trying to figure a way out of this new predicament. “Safe passage — from what?”
“Safe passage!” repeats Haesta. “Through Icorig! Those damn Franks are not letting me and my men go past the fort!”
One of the mercenaries grabs Ursula by the hair and puts a knife to her throat. She hisses and wriggles in his grasp. Audulf struggles in another rider’s grip, until he, too, feels a cold blade on his neck.
“Fine,” I say. “You’re a coward without honour and will find no place at Wodan’s table. Nobody deserves to die for your sake. You will have your safe passage, I swear it — but you’ll have to take me instead.”
“Don’t be a fool, Octa!” cries Ursula, and hisses again as the knife draws a trickle of blood on her throat. “You’re the aetheling, the future and hope of the tribe — we’re just some worthless younglings!”
“You’re not worthless to me,” I say. “It’s for the best. He’s not going to hurt me — he’s had plenty of chances to do so, if he wished. He knows how much I’m worth to my father.”
“Works for me,” says Haesta. “I see you’re a more reasonable man than Aeric.”
I drop my sword to the ground, dismount, and approach him with my hands raised. Haesta grabs me and forces me up onto his saddle in front of him.
Ursula and Audulf are still in their hands.
“Let them go!” I cry.
“You may be reasonable, but you’re naïve,” says Haesta. “Three hostages are better than one!”
The guard at the Icorig gatehouse — one of Hildrik’s men, left in place of Falco’s soldiers who went with us to Trever — eyes us suspiciously.
“I fought you and your riders at Tolbiac,” he tells Haesta. “And I have scars to show. I told you, you’re not getting through this way. Come any closer, and I’ll try my chance with the javelin.”
“It’s alright,” I say, conscious of the knife point at my and Ursula’s back. “They’re my prisoners. I’m taking them to Tornac.”
He gives me a doubtful grimace. There’re only three of us against Haesta’s four riders — Haesta ordered Seawine and the Iutes to stay a safe distance behind — and one of us is barely conscious, and bleeding. But the mercenaries are alone in a hostile territory, and it’s just about possible they prefer being my captives, even if in this strange manner, rather than trying to make it through on their own…
At last, the gate opens. The Frankish guard is not letting us just pass through the fort — he dispatches an escort of three men to accompany us across the fort.
“How are we getting out of this?” says Ursula, quietly, as we reach the northern gate undisturbed.
“I don’t know yet,” I reply. “I’m thinking.”
“Quiet.” Haesta presses the knife deeper into my back. “One more word and the girl dies.”
“Then you die, too.”
“Are you willing to take that chance?”
I fall quiet. The Franks open the northern gate.
“Be careful,” the guard tells me. “Hildebert’s men are all over the road. Last night he overran Tolbiac.”
Tolbiac! I look to Ursula. Are Betula and the Hiréd safe? Did Basina reach Tornac safely?
“We’ll take care,” I assure the guard. Haesta snaps the reins to ride through the gate; once we’re on the other side, we’ll be at his mercy — this is the last moment for me to think of a way for us to escape. But I can’t think of anything. I glance around at the guards, at the wall, at the road, assess the distance between myself, Ursula and Audulf, twitch to test Haesta’s reflexes… And my mind comes up empty.
“I always heard you were a fool and a coward, Iute!” cries a voice behind us, familiar, but coming as if from a dream. Can it really be her? She’s supposed to be on a wagon heading for Tornac. I look over my shoulder. It is her. “You’re a fool to show up here — and a coward to use captives in that manner! What kind of a warrior does that?”
Basina, swathed in bloodied cloths almost from head to toe, rides her white Thuringian mare with some effort — but has enough strength to draw her Hunnic bow and aim it at Haesta.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. I struggle to wriggle out of Haesta’s grasp, but he puts the knife back to my throat, now dropping all pretence. The Frankish guards step back, raising their spears, confused.
“Shut up,” he hisses.
“I was held up when the River Franks took Tolbiac,” she replies. “I thought I’d ride out to see you to safety. Looks like I was right.”
“And what were you planning to do?” Haesta asks mockingly. “One of you against the four of us?”
“I only need one arrow to kill you,” Basina replies. “And I never miss. Not with this bow.”
“She’s right,” I whisper to Haesta. “Let me go or we both die today.”
In response, he draws the knife across my throat. Slowly. I feel the sting and the trickle of blood on my neck.
“If I can’t get out of here, at least I’ll take you with me.”
“Go on, then, kill him,” Basina goads him. “It’d be a warrior’s death, unlike yours. Octa will gladly go to Tengri’s Hall. You’d understand it if you were half the man he is.”
“You — you fools!” Haesta exclaims, losing his patience. “All you talk about is honour and glory! Wodan’s Hall! Death in battle! None of this matters! Look at Rome, it doesn’t care about your honour — it lies and cheats its way through all the wars and disasters — and it survived longer than any of your tiny kingdoms ever will. In the end, only survivors win!”
“Survive this —!”
Basina releases the arrow. It flies faster than I can blink and hits Haesta on the right wrist, inches from my neck. He yelps and drops the knife. “You bitch —!” he cries. I elbow him in the stomach and tumble down from the saddle. As I hit the ground, Haesta spurs his mount to a mad dash. His men follow, taking Ursula and Audulf with them. Basina shoots again and hits one of the riders in the shoulder — he drops Audulf but keeps on riding. I scramble up just in time to see Haesta disappear up the bend.
Once again, he got away.
Basina rides up and helps me back up on the pony. “I’m sorry,” she says. “If it wasn’t for these damn wrappings, I’d have freed them both.”
“Don’t be a fool, Basina,” I reply. “You saved us all. They’re not going to go far — I’ll catch up to them at the gates of Tolbiac. Take Audulf and go back to Seawine, tell them what happened here — you two are in no shape for a fight.”
The cloths on her thigh and side are soaked through with blood. By now I’m familiar enough with battle medicine to know she needs to see the garrison’s surgeon at once.
“I can still draw the bow, damn it,” she replies with a weak grin. “We’ll get your friend back and se
nd that coward to the Depths of Tamag, where he belongs.”
Historical Note
The traditional dates of King Octa’s reign place him in the beginning of the fifth century. The first historical king who follows him, Eormenric, is said to have ruled from the 540s onwards. However, the genealogies and timelines of the early kingdom of Kent are often muddled. Octa is at once a son and a father of a certain Oisc/Oeric. He’s at once a son and a grandson of Hengist. Sometimes, he is Oisc’s brother. Other times, he’s not mentioned at all.
I chose to reconcile these differences, and my early chronology, by making Octa the son of Ash/Aeric, and giving him an heir before Eormenric, who in the chronicles is either omitted, or confused with their father and grandfather.
The years around 460 AD in Gaul are remembered for a mysterious sequence of events, the precise order and dating of which we can’t be sure of. Meroweg, a semi-legendary king of the Salian Franks, dies of unknown causes, and is succeeded by his son, Childeric. Around the same time, the great city of Colonia, and the province around it, having withstood countless raids, sieges and sackings over the centuries, succumbs at last to the Ripuarians, though there’s no mention of any great battle in the chronicles. And in the south of Gaul, Emperor Majorian successfully recaptures Lugdunum from the followers of his rival, Avitus, defeats Visigoths at Arelate, and places Aegidius as magister militum in Gaul — the last man to ever hold this title.
I took some of the names for this story from the medieval legend of Saint Ursula of Coln and her 11,000 Virgins. Pinnosa, Ursula, Odilia are all mentioned in various versions of the confused legend of how the virgins saved the city from the barbarian invaders, as is, most curiously, a certain “Saint Octa”.
TO BE CONTINUED IN THE SONG OF OCTA, BOOK TWO: THE WRATH OF THE IUTES
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The Song of Britain
Thirty years passed since Britannia voted to throw off the Roman yoke. Now, the old world crumbles. Pirates roam the seas, bandits threaten the highways, and barbarian refugees from the East arrive on Britannia's shores, uninvited. The rich profit from the chaos, while the poor suffer. A new Dark Age is approaching - but all is not lost.
Book One: The Saxon Spears
Book Two: The Saxon Knives
Book Three: The Saxon Might
Book Four: The Blood of the Iutes
Book Five: The Wrath of the Iutes
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The Year of the Dragon, Books 1-8
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Book 2: The Warrior's Soul
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Book 6: The Withering Flame
Book 7: The Shattering Waves
Book 8: The Last Dragon King
The deluxe edition contains also a short story "Birkenhead Drill", a full glossary of foreign words, list of characters, and all maps.
The Blood of the Iutes: The Song of Octa Book 1 (The Song of Britain 4) Page 37
