A chapter a day: The Broken Kingdom – Chapter 7
I’ve decided to publish a few more chapters on this website of my new Arthurian epic novel The Broken Kingdom. It’s completely free to read, and I am hoping that people will come to this site each day and read the next chapter of the story about the legendary hero Arthur, his mother Igraine and sister Morgan, the wizard Merlin, and all the rest of the familiar cast from the legends, plus a few new additions. If you are enjoying the story, and you want me to continued posting chapters each day, I would really love some feedback and/or encouragement. It’s a fantasy novel, technically, as it has a little light magic and some seriously nasty dragons, but otherwise it is set in a real 5th-century Britain, after the Romans have left, which is riven by war. Only Arthur and his band of warriors, can hope to mend The Broken Kingdom . . .
Chapter Seven
The sea spray felt cool against Redwulf’s weather-burnt cheek. The sun had been shining down on them for days as the open snake-boat made the long crossing from the Frankish coast – for the gods had been kind and held back the wind and rain and storm – and the kiss of water was welcome on his skin.
As the white cliffs of this new and strange land grew from a fine line on the horizon to a high formidable barrier before his eyes, he felt the thrill of expectation; the surge of hot blood that accompanied the beginning of an adventure. He stood in the prow of the ship, his left arm curled around the carved wood of the huge, elk-shaped headpiece, as a stiff off-shore breeze ruffled his long blond hair and packets of spume spattered his leather jerkin and trews, while his comrades pulled on the rowing benches behind him, singing “Heya ho, heya ho!” in time with their straining.
“Keep your eyes peeled for rocks, youngster,” the captain, Erno, called out from the far end of the narrow ship, his thin, boneless form draped over the steering oar.
“Bugger the rocks, keep your eyes out for some pretty girls,” shouted Ragnar, from the foremost bench behind him, to loud guffaws from the body of the craft.
“And fresh ale and roast meat,” shouted another voice.
“Gold!” shouted a third.
“A pair of pretty boys for Sigmund!” The bellow of outrage from the maligned man was drowned by a roar of laughter.
Redwulf did not turn his head or join the merriment. His keen eyes were locked on the advancing shore. He could make out a shingle beach below the forbidding cliffs, and stick-like figures making their way down a path of steps cut into the chalk.
“There’s a welcome-crowd forming, captain,” Redwulf shouted over his right shoulder. “Ten, twenty folk, and more coming down the cliffs . . .”
“Do they look friendly, youngster?”
The Saxon looked at the people now spilling out on to the stony foreshore. Men with long swords at their waist, a spearman or two. But no shields. No grey glint of iron mail that he could see. Some women, too, with shallow wicker baskets. One man bore a pole atop which a flag was fluttering in the wind. It was red, the Saxon could see, with the figure of a prancing white horse clearly depicted on the crimson cloth.
“They are Hengist’s people, by the look of it. So, friendly enough, I’d guess.”
“Like enough it is Wulfram come to greet us.” The wind suddenly dropped and Erno’s words came to Redwulf clearly from the other end of the snake-boat.
“The other two keels must have made a swifter passage and heralded our coming. The Elk is last to arrive again. Row, you lazy arse-fuckers, row. Try to pretend, at least, you are proper saltwater seamen under the eyes of your new lord.”
The beach was less than a hundred paces away by now, and Redwulf could see that blankets and furs were being spread on the stones and baskets of bread and cheese were being unpacked by the busy women. That was a welcome sight indeed.
Redwulf could not suppress a smile. A scant month ago, he had been a Mud-Puddler, a farmer and fisherman from the tiny hamlet of Vestholm at the base of the Jutland peninsula, on the flat muddy west coast, scraping a living from shellfish and netted herring and eating cabbage and gritty barley bread, when the fields were not submerged by the rising sea or the flooding of the rivers. And every year the rivers did flood, and the waters rose again, and more and more folk went hungry and died.
Their lazy thane in Heide did not care whether they lived or died. He had never even visited Vestholm, just a day’s ride away. Now Redwulf was a warrior, a fighting man of Wulfram the Bold – although he had yet to meet his lord, had yet to swear his allegiance in person. Indeed, he had yet to do even the smallest amount of fighting. But Erno had chosen him to serve Wulfram and to be part of the host of King Hengist himself. And that, for the moment, was glory enough for a shy unblooded youngster.
The sea captain had arrived in the hamlet of Vestholm on horseback. He had a huge glossy black bear’s fur around his thin shoulders, a long sword at his side, the hilt inlaid with golden amber and blue enamel and a fine silver torc around his neck.
The villages called him lord and knelt to him, but Captain Erno, laughing, said that he was no thane, just a humble seafarer from a village not fifty miles away who had grown rich across the ocean in the service of the powerful King of Kent on the bountiful Island of Britain. The villagers remained in awe of him, but Redwulf, who had longed since childhood to see faraway places and experience some of the world’s wonders, looked at his permanently angry father and thin, haggard mother, and his dull-minded elder brother Wigdahl, and swore that he would not become like them.
He would not spend his life up to his knees in stinking sea-mud, continually hungry, wet and bone tired. He wanted to be like Erno, the envy of the village, fur-clad and brave, with silver at his throat – and when the sea-captain announced that his lord Wulfram the Bold was seeking brave men to stand in his shield wall and fight under his banner for King Hengist, Redwulf hesitated no more than a heartbeat.
“You are a fool,” his brother had told him. “You are no fighter. You will most likely be drowned at sea or killed in your first battle. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
His mother had wept. “My baby. My darling boy. If you leave Vestholm, I fear I will never see your sweet face again.”
His father, however, was more practical. “There is not enough workable land here to make a living for two sons, that is plain. If you go, Wigdahl will take the farm and the boat when I’m gone and perhaps he can make a better fist of it than I did. And this Wulfram has a good reputation. I have heard from other men that there is fine farmland for the taking in Britain. My advice is that you must serve your lord with courage; do whatever he may ask. If you live, he will reward you. Take my axe, my good blue cloak and my blessing. All I ask is that you think of us, from time to time.”
“I shall not be gone for ever, Father,” Redwulf had protested. “I will serve this bold lord well and win honour and gold on the battlefield and then I will return and we will buy a rich farmstead inland, somewhere far from the sea where you can live out your days in comfort and splendour. I shall return to you and mother, never fear!”
His father had just smiled tiredly, and patted his shoulder. “May the Thunderer watch over you, my son, for all the days you are granted on this green Middle-Earth.”
The keel of the Elk crunched on the stony shingle and Redwulf leapt out on to the beach with the bow rope in his hands. Their arrival was greeted by cheers and good natured cat-calls of welcome in the Saxon tongue and, as Redwulf and his fellow oarsmen hauled the heavy snake-boat high up on to the grey shore beyond the tide line, Erno strode to the knot of strangers standing under the streaming red banner.
As Redwulf watched, the captain was enfolded in a great bear hug by a tall, lean, grey-haired man in a long black cloak with a long sword at his belt, the leather scabbard decorated with coiled silver serpents. After a few words, Erno returned to his crew, who had formed a loose pack on the shore, suddenly nervous and unsure. Many of the men were eyeing the platters of food that had been laid out on cloaks and blankets on the ground, and the women who stood waiting nearby with full skins of drink. The crew of the Elk had not eaten that day. And the day before, on the Frankish coast, and for some days before that, they had had nothing but watery fish soup, mouldy onions and stale rye bread with which to nourish themselves.
“Come and greet your new lord,” said Erno, beaming. “You must all make your oaths and then we shall feast.”
“Here?” said Ragnar, a big bull-necked man with a thatch of fiery hair. “Here on this dirty strand with our clothes all stiff with salt, and the stink of rotting seaweed in the air? I had thought for an oath we would be in a great hall, musicians playing . . .”
“We are men of the sea, and so is our lord,” said Erno briskly. “Come Ragnar and the rest of you, make your vows and then we can all eat to our hearts’ content.”
As the men of the Elk crunched the stony beach towards the flapping banner, Sigmund muttered in Redwulf’s ear. “Our new lord seeks to bind us to him as soon as he can. I have heard a company of fighting men such as ours commands the attention of many lords. Wulfram does not wish us to sell our swords to the highest bidders.”
Redwulf looked at Sigmund then, a man older than most in the crew, nearing thirty and balding, but the cleverest among them and with much knowledge of the world and some basic skills as a healer. As well as his reputation for lusting after boys, some of the crew whispered that Sigmund had a connection with the spirit world, that he talked to demons and could change shape at will. Redwulf did not believe any of that nonsense. Sigmund had always been kind to him and seemed to be a man like any other only, perhaps, a little wiser. It had not occurred to him until then that there might be other lords in Britain who might be eager to obtain their services.
“We don’t have any choice, though,” Sigmund continued, jerking his chin towards the score or more of hard-looking men, standing behind the tall thane. Even without mail or shields, it was clear they were warriors by their square stances and scarred faces and by the big-knuckled hands that rested easily on their sword hilts.
“We must make our oaths or fight all of them,” said Sigmund.
“I came here to serve Wulfram the Bold,” said Redwulf. “I care not if I make my oath to him here or on the highest mountain top.”
Sigmund merely shrugged.
The thirty men of the Elk took their turns to kneel on the loose stones before Wulfram, son of Wulfgar, thane of Haeselholte, and swear that they would be his good and true men, faithful and obedient until death, in the sight of all the gods. When it was Redwulf’s turn and he said the words, he looked up into his new lord’s hard face and saw that the man was badly disfigured. A blade had sliced through the left corner of his mouth and so far into his cheek that his brown back teeth could be glimpsed when he smiled. He looked terrifying. Redwulf stumbled a little over the unfamiliar form of the words, but Wulfram did not seem to notice or care.
The thane touched his shoulder and said: “Rise my good and faithful man. May the gods grant you a long life and contented service.”
Then they all fell upon the food like wolves.
There was oat porridge with honey, and good white wheaten bread and two different kinds of cheeses, salty ham and dried sausages, eggs boiled in their shells, sweet apples and milk puddings. And the women poured out ale into big leather cups which the men gulped down and shared with their fellows. It was a fine meal, and Redwulf soon filled his belly and felt the ale singing in his veins. The warm sun shone down on the beach from high above, warming his skin, driving the damp from his clothes; the Saxon youth felt contented, relaxed; this was a good place, he told himself, this was a good and generous lord to serve. Erno the sea captain seemed especially happy: he called out toasts to his lord and shouted bawdy jests to his crew mates. And well he might be joyous; Redwulf had seen Wulfram’s steward, a hook-nosed elderly man, hand over a heavy purse to the captain when the oaths were done.
Wulfram the Bold ate little, and covered his ruined face with his hand as he chewed; his swordsmen sat around him on the stones, aloof and apart from the crew of the Elk, and they ate and drank sparingly in silence. They eyed the newcomers warily but offered no insults.
When all had eaten and drunk their fill, Wulfram rose to his feet.
“Men of the Elk,” he began, “I welcome you to my service. The Saxon men of the other two ships have gone on to join Hengist’s royal host in the north. They will be lost among the multitudes, but you have the honour of serving me personally as members of my hird and I swear that you shall never go wanting. This island of Britain is rich,” he said, his hand sweeping out to indicate the remnants of the food that lay scattered over the blankets, “there is good land here, and plenty of it for those who are strong enough to take it. Any man with sufficient will can take his pick of the fruits. But we must fight for what we want. We must crush our foes without mercy.”
Wulfram paused there and looked over the assembled crew of the Elk, gauging them. “But fear not: they are weak and divided. For many years they have fought amongst themselves, thane against thane, brother against brother, and now they are exhausted, ripe for the plucking. And we shall do that plucking! They will bend the knee to you. As you bend the knee to me. There will be food and drink, as much as you desire, there will be gold, and slaves, and willing women to warm your beds . . .”
The Elk men gave him a cheer. “Hail Wulfram the Bold, hail our great lord,” shouted out Erno, his face sunset red from the ale.
“You are brave men, you have shown that by making this perilous voyage, but you are not yet proven warriors. I’ll soon give you that chance to prove yourselves.”
Redwulf could see the thane’s men were hauling two big wicker baskets forward towards the spread cloaks. Heavy baskets, for it took two big men to heft each one.
“I have fine gifts for you all, for each of you, as befits my loyal hird-men.”
The four swordsmen were undoing the ties on the lids of the heavy wicker baskets and for a mad moment, for the tiniest instant, Redwulf thought a river of gold or silver would be poured out on to the stony shore. Instead, as the men grunted, lifted and tipped the baskets, a clatter of iron and a cascade of grey poured out on to the spread cloth. Helmets. A score and more of iron helmets. Big and small, helms with side pieces, neck pieces, some with nasals; plain iron caps with leather ties to affix them under the chin, full helmets with face-plates, half-helms, helmets with crest ridges, and holes in which to fit plumes, even one helm with a pair of grubby, tattered goose wings attached to the sides.
“Choose your gifts, men, and choose quickly, for now we must march. Now it is time to fight for what the gods, our strength and our courage shall deliver unto us.”
They marched west, and a little north, through a soft green land of long low hills and little hamlets connected by muddy tracks; through neatly tilled fields of barley and oats, and thick woodland of oak and beech, alive with game: bounding fallow deer and swift-sprinting hares, rootling wild boar and wood pigeons clattering through the branches. Wulfram’s right, thought Redwulf. This is a rich land. Could it be my land?
Erno had told them that they marched through the domain of Hengist, King of Kent, Wulfram’s lord, and that not so much as an egg should be stolen nor the hair on the head of a single man be harmed. But when they did see the local people – short, square-shouldered men, and fine-featured women with long dark hair bound up in scarves – they seemed much afraid of the band of fifty warriors stalking through their fields and orchards, as well they might. They cowered away, made the Christian sign of the cross that Redwulf had seen in Frankish lands, and surrendered the road to the marching men, melting into the trees or pressing back into hedgerows as they passed.
“Thralls,” Erno explained. “Dirty British thralls, no better than wild dogs. They plough Hengist’s land and gather in his harvests, and render up most of its bounty to their lord – and no doubt dream of past days when it all belonged to them. They were cowards who could not defend their own land, so the gods gave it to far better men.”
Not all the folk they encountered shied away from them, some of the men they met rode small scrubby ponies and carried swords and axes and called out friendly greetings in good Saxon, and their ruddy faces seemed almost familiar to Redwulf.
In one village, Redwulf was almost certain he saw his uncle, his father’s older brother Sigurd, lounging on a bench before an ale house. In Vestholm, Sigurd had been deemed drowned at sea many years before. But perhaps it was a trick of the eyes, and before Redwulf could call out, the marching column was hurried on past the alehouse by Erno and the captain of Wulfram’s men, a scarred brute named Svein.
After so many days confined in the Elk, Redwulf’s legs felt stiff and weak, and he was unused, in any case, to walking so far each day. But his sense of excitement buoyed him even when the blisters on his heels burst and his leather shoes filled with blood. He had a problem with his helmet, though. He had chosen a large plain domed helm but, after a few miles of walking, he realised it was too big for his young head. The helm would continually fall forward over his eyes and iron rim cut painfully into the bridge of his nose. On the first night, when they made camp outside a hamlet on the edge of a forest, he was forced to cut a strip off the bottom of his father’s blue cloak to use as padding. On the whole, though, he felt fine and warlike, walking with his comrades through the spring sunshine, his father’s worn axe in his hand and his own short seax swinging from his belt straps in its horizontal sheath below his belly.
On the second night, they reached Wulfram’s hall at Haeselholte, a damp, dismal place seemingly overrun with pigs and almost as muddy as Vestholm. But they were welcomed once again by Wulfram’s household and his fat, jolly wife, a woman called Enga, fed them leek soup and roast pork with turnips, and barley bread and creamy white butter and wild blackberry preserves; they drank ale long into the night before bedding down on giant paliasses stuffed with straw on the hall floor wrapped in their cloaks. Redwulf was a little surprised by the many kindnesses that they received from Wulfram and his family, with so little asked in return. And said as much to Sigmund.
“We are being fattened for the slaughter, like those pigs yonder,” said the older man, before pulling his cloak over his head and beginning to snore like one of them.
The next morning there were more gifts from Wulfram; shields this time. Small rough, heavy disks made from oak slats with two leather straps nailed on the inside for the left arm. After a lavish breakfast, as they gathered in the courtyard outside the hall at dawn, many still thick-headed from last night’s ale, Redwulf felt himself a true warrior, a hero from the old stories, as he hefted his shield and gripped the smooth shaft of his axe, and looked fiercely out from under the rim of his ill-fitting helmet.
He was soon to revise his opinion.
Svein had mustered his men on the other side of the courtyard, their ranks swelled by another dozen from the Haeselholte lands. They all wore shirts of ring-mail that hung to their knees and carried long spears, the blades whetted bright. Their shields were far finer, too, big, round affairs of two layers of ash-slats, laid crosswise and covered with boiled leather, rimmed with iron. Light but strong. The faces of the shields were cunningly painted with the image of a black boar’s head, mouth open, its teeth and tusks white, set upon a yellow field. Every man had a sword and seax, as well as a spear, shield, mail shirt and helm.
They looked like competent, proud, true men of war. They looked invincible.
Redwulf looked down at his father’s axe: a sharpened wedge of iron, affixed to a long well-worn pinewood shaft; a useful tool for cutting wood but how would it serve for cutting down men? His thin, patched leather jerkin would not stop a spear thrust, he knew that for sure, and his new shield now felt like a unwieldy lump of wood.
They left Haeselholte around mid-morning and Wulfram the Bold led his war band westward, for three or four miles across boggy ground north of a slow-moving brown river, that meandered like a lazy snake across the flatlands. Then they turned northwest and, passing through several tiny settlements, the ground began to slowly rise under their feet. An hour or so later they began to climb the grassy lower slopes of a great limestone ridge, thickly wooded at the top, that loomed high above them. There were many sheep in the fields but very few men here, and when they reached the top of the down, as the sun hung low in the sky, Wulfram pointed his spear to the valley that lay to the west and said: “This is the edge of our world, beyond here lie the lands of the Britons. They will soon be our lands. A little fighting and the enemy will submit or flee. But tomorrow you will prove yourselves as men, as warriors.”
Redwulf looked down the wooded slope to a Saxon village huddled beside seven mighty oaks. Nothing moved on the ground there, not a beast nor a man. The few remaining buildings were blackened by fire, the thatched roofs mere scorched clumps adhering to the few remaining timbers. Wagons lay overturned and abandoned. Fences were smashed. Flocks of black birds wheeled above. It was a desolate place, forsaken by its inhabitants and by the gods themselves. “I do not think these Britons are cowards after all,” said Sigmund, “if they can do this to our folk.”
They made a fireless camp in the woods on the northern slope of the limestone ridge that led westwards as far as the eye could see. They chewed strips of dried mutton and twice baked bread and drank watered ale and Erno told the men of the Elk stories of the old heroes, and they sang songs of mighty battles won and the plunder and sack of great towns. Redwulf’s dreams were filled that night with blood.
In the grey twilight before dawn, they made their way down the hill, through an expanse of scrubby moorland and into the ruined village. It was worse than Redwulf had imagined. Bodies lay here and there, some weeks old, by the state of their decay, bodies of folk of all ages: grandfathers, boys, mothers with babes at their breast ripped from this world by cruel blades, now mere bundles of rags and rotting meat. The stench was gagging. Crows picked at the corpses, seemingly unafraid of the approaching war band. A dead cow lay in the centre of the street, its legs stiff, and poking skyward, its belly had swelled, then burst under the force of the gasses inside. A huge rat was feeding inside the purplish cavity. Ragnar gave the dead cow a kick and cursed when his foot burst through the hide and into the foul mush beyond.
“This is the work of the Stone Men,” said Wulfram the Bold. “The very worst of the Britons – merciless brutes, killers, despoilers of all that is good and decent. They raid our settlements and farmsteads in the night and slay all the folk they find. But we shall punish them, lads. We shall take a fitting revenge on these ravening beasts.”
They saw no one that morning as they pushed on westwards a dozen miles along the wooded valley, but hate-filled British eyes had seen them. And when the Saxon war band came out of the thick trees into a wide meadow at the foot of an escarpment, Redwulf laid eyes on his foemen for the very first time.
Chapter Eight
They did not linger. Arthur stopped only to confirm that Erec was dead – an axe had destroyed the left side of the legionary’s skull. He said a short prayer over his body but no more. Galahad and Bedevere had collected up the loose Rhegedian horses, and they had already stripped the bodies of their enemies of food, clothing and weapons.
To be continued tomorrow.
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Angus Donald’s has also written an epic five-book Viking series, published by Canelo, which begins with The Last Berserker (Fire Born 1). He is the author of the Outlaw Chronicles, which kicks off with Outlaw, published by Little, Brown. He is currently writing the 11th Robin Hood novel in that bestselling series.