Torc and Seax

Torc and Seax Chapter 1

Hi everyone! Stephen Wormwood here, thanks for clicking on this! This is my first attempt at writing historical fiction in many years, but please feel free to notify me of any mistakes and if possible I will amend them. Feedback and constructive criticism is always welcomed at stephenwormwood@mail.com. There might be some terms/words you're unfamiliar with in this narrative, so there will be a list of meanings/explanations at the bottom of each chapter. Please also note that I do not write feel good stories. If you read my work and you feel something then my work is done, but that feeling might not be positive. You've been forewarned! As always hope you enjoy reading this and please consider donating to Nifty if you can. CW for sex, violence, SA, homophobia, and transphobia.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

TORC AND SEAX

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

1

Oathbreaker

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Brynna the Bædling – The Preacher, The Wolf, and The Rood – Brūn-hol – Favour of God(s) – A King's Thegn – The Huscarl – Theotford – Styr and Aelgifu – Uhtric Wineskin & The Flames

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

[By a lake in the Land of the English, sometime in 1062]

Wulfhere drew his sword. It was Norman in origin, wrought of glittering steel with a firm leather grip, and a circular pommel containing the broken tooth of a long dead Frankish saint – a lavish procurement even for a thegn of Ceolfraed's standing – and Wulfhere well recalled the day it was gifted to him. He was encouraged to name it (as was also customary in its land of origin) and so he called it Seolforhund – reflecting both its beauty and its wroth.

For a moment he thought of burying Seolforhund hilt-deep in his own chest, but the moment was godless, and it passed.

Instead Wulfhere took a whetstone from his pouch and slowly sharpened the blade. And as he did, he kept a cautious eye about his surrounds. The lakeshore was rounded on all sides by a dense ring of oaks rising high into a star-sparkled night, and this worried him, because it was not beneath a hearth-guardsman's guile to linger in the shadows in pursuit of game – whether man or beast – but Ceolfraed's men were a clunky lot, more hammer than seax, and the forests were largely silent – save for the light rustle of the leaves as the nightly winds ran through them.

And yet Wulfhere kept his eyes to the forest.

("I must mind our backs...") he thought, he was only being cautious, as was his wont. He told himself this. But in truth... he dared not turn his gaze to the sylvan figure bathing in the heart of the lake water. He willed himself not to. But his will was weak and so his eyes went to her, as they always did.

The bædling.

And his whetstone's grind came to halt.

Wulfhere swallowed the lump in his throat as she ran her soft fingertips through a flowing mane of flame-brown hair, finally washing it clean after days of near relentless flight. She cut a smile (more to herself than anyone else) and plunged impishly into the rippling waters before emerging again a few moments later in another spot.

A sudden stiffness took Wulfhere in his breeks.

Brynna was the bædling's name, and she was at the heart of everything now, perhaps even his own. She caught him staring at her – and smiled back coolly. "Join me and wash the stink from your bones."

The whetstone's grind resumed. "...I must keep watch."

Wulfhere did not see Brynna's smile darken as he looked away, back to his sword, back to the trees, back to anything that might steal the blood back from his manhood. He did not see her swim to the shoreline and drag herself out of the waters, padding across pebbly grass towards their makeshift camp. Long legs and wet feet passed Wulfhere by as Brynna strode towards her furs to dry herself. Long legs, wet feet...

...and a small, waddling penis.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"`Fugite fornicationem omne peccatum quodcumque fecerit homo extra corpus est qui autem fornicatur in corpus suum peccat,'" said the tonsured priest, "`An nescitis quoniam membra vestra templum est Spiritus Sancti qui in vobis est quem habetis a Deo et non estis vestry? Empti enim estis pretio magno glorificate et portate Deum in corpore vestro...'"

His barefoot flock came to him from the nearest villages of the shire; women and children mostly, un-oathed boys and un-bled girls. And although his flock knew not the words, they felt earnestly their power. Those villagers blessed enough to spare it threw coins and vegetables into his offering dish. Wulfhere and Brynna watched them gather at his feet in the dozens as he spoke before the slightly tilted, moss-covered stone rood peering up from the high grass. It was not the last sermon they would see along their way south.

Wulfhere and Brynna the Bædling, ahorse, followed the herepath south. Like many of old Aelfred Cyning's war roads, the track was well worn from decades of disrepair, either washed out with wintry rainfall or weeded over by summer heat. But God was good to them that day. The road out of Ceolfraed's thegnage was oft trod by traders, woodsmen, trappers, and their mule-drawn carts – and that made for easier riding.

The journey to Lundenburh would be harsh as its length and securing his well-bred bay, Snotta, in the chaos of their flight was a blessing, one they could not squander. Wulfhere kept his steed to an even canter and allowed him frequent respite – enough for Brynna to feed him apples and water – while at the same time maintaining their pace west. They were to ride along the Icknield toward Roisia's Cross, then head south for Lundenburh. There could be no more delay. Thoughts of pursuit scratched at the corners of Wulfhere's mind, and they would not abate until Oxburh (and Ceolfraed with it) was a distant memory.

To their right the herepath wound about the edge of the woodland like a serpent in the grass, bending forth and back with every ebb and bulge. To their left? To their left turned a sweeping expanse of rolling hills and lush meadowland. And for the briefest moment, the former hearth guard gave himself leave to enjoy the sight. He breathed deep of the country air and luxuriated in his saddle. At thirty-four summers of life he'd wandered the country for at least twenty of them, but he had never allowed himself to admire its great beauty.

(`Too busy running,') he thought to himself. (`Or fighting.')

Whether north, south, east, or west there was some sweet patch of English soil sullied by the rotting flesh of men laid low by his sword's swing or knife's stab, and it was not his intention to join them. As Snotta drew near the worshippers at the stone rood, Brynna's hands (normally wrapped tight around Wulfhere's waist) dislodged and slowly slipped towards his nethers. Wulfhere sighed through his teeth as a soft hand cupped his girth.

And then the humble priest looked their way.

"Don't!" said Wulfhere, jerking his shoulders.

Brynna chuckled in his ear as he avoided the priest's glare. "He cannot see my hands beneath our cloaks, deorling. Let them lie where they may."

"You will not disrespect a man of God in my presence...! And you will not call me that."

The bædling's lips drew so close to his ear he heard her breath. "...Or am I your deorling, is that it? How would you be regarded, hm?"

"By my name," said Wulfhere.

"Which one?" began Brynna. "Wulfhere? Or Haakonsson?"

"How did you-"

A tortured howl cut him off, booming loud but strangled from the dense thicket of woodland bearing west. The priest and villagers, some fifty paces behind them, cowered. These were not untrodden woods, many of the local villages relied upon them for game and timber, but wolves were a constant menace to limb and livestock – not to be taken lightly.

The bædling dismounted.

"Brynna!" yelled Wulfhere. "What are you doing?"

She frowned at him as she gathered up the long folds of her dress by the tablet weaves and walked into the woodland. "Did you not hear its cry? Come!"

A curse came to mind, but Wulfhere bit his tongue – no foulness would pass his lips before a man of God. Instead he dismounted the horse, walked it by the bridle through the tall bushes up to the edge of the forest where he tied its reins to tree trunk and proceeded inward, dry grass and twigs crunching beneath his boots. He waded through the brush from tree to tree until he verged upon a small clearing hidden beneath a shadowy canopy where only a few stray blades of light passed through the foliage above. There he found Brynna and the wolf.

It was enormous, a grey-backed beast with jaws wide enough to crush a grown man's arm. But it was dying. It lay limp and whimpering at the base of a towering oak hollowed out at the roots – its den. And inside that den a clutch of wolf pups lay dead. Rot scent seeded the air.

Brynna knelt to her knees before it.

Wulfhere drew his blade. "What are you doing?!"

"You could not live without them," she muttered, taking the wolf's head into her lap, and stroking its fur as if it were her own. The beast whimpered like a cub. It was heart-sick, and wounded. Three ash-shafted arrows protruded from its lower neck, upper back, and lower right thigh. It was not long for this world, but it was in pain – a pain of two natures. "And so you made it home to protect them... but they were already gone."

"Brynna!"

She thumbed a tear out of her eye. "Give me your seax."

Wulfhere glowered. It sat in its sheath opposite Seolforhund's own. Brynna had asked to carry a weapon of her own after their escape from Oxburh, but he refused, half-unsure of what she would do with it. "Settle for a bow and quiver," he'd said. Even so... there was little harm in it now. The warrior sheathed his sword, unsheathed his seax, and passed it to the bædling.

The bædling then sank the knife into the wolf's throat.

No more whimpering.

_"_Cnawd i bridd, enaid i'r awyr," muttered Brynna, eyes fixed shut. "Nawr rydych chi'n rhydd."

Wulfhere snarled, "What sorcery is this...?"

"It is not sorcery!" She spat back. "It is respect! A curtesy no Saxon ever learned!"

And then a third voice boomed out from deeper within the forest, "ALFGEAT! FOUND YOU YET THE WOLF!?"

As soon as Brynna pulled the seax from its throat, Wulfhere snatched her by the wrist and drug her back towards the edge of the clearing, but voice was too close, the pounding of horse hoofs too close, there was no time to run away, they could only dive behind the bushes and hide. Wulfhere clamped his thick hand around Brynna's mouth and dragged her to him, belly to back, shushing her into silence as a whickering horse lumbered into the wolves' den. The man called Alfgeat, bow and quiver strapped to his back, dismounted his horse just as two other men ahorse galloped in after him. Alfgeat eyed the corpse.

"What is that?" Said he. "A blade wound?"

Alfgeat's eyes turned to the bushes.

Wulfhere and Brynna held still and silent.

"What? You reckon someone's out there, eh Alfgeat?" Said one of his companions.

The bowman paused a moment... and then shook his head. "Nay, who would trouble themselves to fell the creature and leave the hide? Come. Help me get this woolly eoten onto my saddle. When we reach Oxburh and sell the girls we'll make a gift of it to Lord Ceolfraed. Come now, help me!"

It was as Alfgeat and his men lugged the dead wolf onto his steed that Wulfhere and Brynna overheard the voices – the crying, the moaning, the whimpering – all of them female – and a louder, gruffer, fouler voice yelling at the others to HURRY IT UP, MOVE ALONG, KEEP YOUR PACE, HURRY ON, HURRY ON! DO NOT FALL BEHIND! It was then, at the edge of the clearing, just within the realm of Wulfhere's sight, that he saw these men for what they truly were.

Slavers.

Six burly spearmen of varying heights and girth stood guard as they herded a flock of þeowen through the forest. Wulfhere felt Brynna look away. By his count the slavers had 26 women yoked together by leather collars and rope – and their wrists were tightly fastened. All complied. None resisted. The slavers had thoroughly beaten the resistance from them (judging by the black eyes and burst lips some of them wore) but all looked fit to sell. In Oxburh, Ceolfraed Thegn restricted local slave markets to trade every other tīwesdæg, as his priest Redwig Father found it distasteful and un-Christian. But the trade brought with it tremendous amounts of silver, and Ceolfraed needed silver more than he did sentiment. Alfgeat and his men mounted their horses and joined the drove, yelling for the women to keep up the pace.

Little did they know that the bigger prize lay hidden in the bushes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Wulfhere glanced up at the sky from his saddle. Dark clouds above blotted out the sun and grumbled like a half-starved belly. There was a taste of rain in the air, not long in falling, that the bædling felt also. "We should seek shelter," said Brynna. And she was not wrong. She was a Wealh by birth after all and theirs were a mountainous people. They knew the taste of rain better than anyone. And so Wulfhere gathered up a tighter bundle of his Snotta's reins and turned westward off the southbound herepath, back towards the dense thicket of Theotford.

The sky turned black with rainclouds.

"The trees alone will not shelter us," said Brynna.

Wulfhere grunted. "Aye."

It was not his first time in this forest. Ceolfraed, as any good King's Thegn, loved the hunt. Oft did he and Wulfhere and all his other hearthweru ride out at dusk in pursuit of roe and stag, as all reaches of the woodland north of the Little Ouse were his dominion. When Gyrth Godwineson received the eorldom of East Anglia (merely a few winters ago) the wily thegn thought to ingratiate himself to the ascendant Godwinesons by offering a celebratory feast in Gyrth's honour. And Ceolfraed, who knew well of Wulfhere's old familiarity with the vagaries of the forest, did give him pride of place at their side at the head of the hunt.

("So proud I was that day,") thought Wulfhere. There was barely a ride hence without Ceolfraed's hunting party – and yet here he was – riding into the impinging darkness with nothing but his horse, his sword and a stolen þeow. But the þeow was a þeowen in all but God's eyes, and she was warm. She was soft. Before his own honour and before sight of his own God, Wulfhere knew no greater warmth nor softness than Brynna's thin armed embrace. He had killed men for it – and he would kill again.

Wulfhere knew his way.

He slowed Snotta's pace into a trot before dismounting the beast and leading him by his bridle to a secluded footpath carved into the woodland by felled oak and scythed bushes. It was a path unknown even to the best of Ceolfraed's men. The skies above them were black and fit to burst when they finally found the hidden structure at the end of that path – a hideout Wulfhere once knew as Brūn-hol.

It was a dark place, as bitter and cold and black as its namesake. More fortress than hall, the structure was a collision of Saxon woodwork and ancient Roman stone, built up from the ruins of a decaying villa and furnished with the trappings of outlaws; a ring of spikes mounted with the half-bleached skulls of deer and fallen foes, bloodstained plinths and half-made ropework scaffolds propping up rain-bleached walls lined with broken tiles and sullied by bird-scat. The flagstones cracked over from centuries of unkind English weather and bloomed with weeds and nightshade. Thick sheets of moss blanketed its pillars and bricked archways, and black-winged crows roosted atop the timber roof of the Saxon Hall his ancestors built at the centre of the atrium, cawing with menace at Brūn-hol_'s_ newest visitors.

In distant years past (before the previous Eorl of East Anglia, Ælfgar, finally drove them from it) Brūn-hol had been key encampment for a band of ruthless slavers known to trade in unlawfully procured þeows of Saxon heritage – and not even Ceolfraed Thegn knew that Wulfhere was once one amongst their score.

He watched Brynna frown at the rotting hall, then she turned her sour frown on him. "...I can still hear them screaming..." she uttered. "...the women you brought here..."

A crack of thunder rumbled above.

"Get inside," said Wulfhere.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Wisely, sometime before reaching Brūn-hol, the bædling collected kindling while the local wood was still dry. Wulfhere had her carry two bundles of it into the abandoned hall whilst he saw to Snotta, leading him by the reins around the cracked court into the makeshift stable his old associates once built astride the long hall – though `stable' was a generous term for what was merely a wide wooden stall roofed with half-withered thatch. Though the elements had washed away much of the hay, Wulfhere gave Snotta sufficient time to graze on their way down from Oxburh. He fetched some food from its saddle bags; two apples, a hank of cheese, some baked bread, most of what he'd stored away in those last few days before their flight. It was enough to see he and Brynna to nearest burh, Theotford, but no further. He took those things, along with two bulging skins (one filled with water and the other mead) and a string-tied hare that Brynna had shot that morning and returned with them to the great hall where the bædling had set a fire in an iron brazier. A dead hearth-pit lined the floor of the hall from entrance to rear, but there was not enough kindling to keep it alight long.

The Saxon Hall of Brūn was always a foreboding place and its dereliction only made it more so. Dust coated everything in sight, from wall mounted round shields and stag skulls to overturned chairs and long tables. Old cobwebs clung to its beams and posts. Patches of weed crept through gaps in the bloodstained flooring, flooring scattered by thousands of little black kernels of rat scitte. The howling storm winds echoed throughout the rafters, magnifying every thundercrack until its very walls shook. Each flash of lightning lit the sockets of the stag skulls.

There was a time though, in winters past, when the hall was alive with feast and fury. Long dead memories sprung to Wulfhere's mind – of their old band leader, Bolla, seated proudly upon his bearskin throne with goblet of ale in one hand and a half-eaten chicken leg in the other, convulsing with laughter as his dweorg-scop gave him another ribald retelling of `The Princess Who Devoured a Thousand Pintels'. The hearth would be roaring with flames as the men sang, told jokes, wrestled arms, and played dice. The most beautiful þeowens served them ale and by nightfall not one would go un-humped. Some would be pupped, no doubt, but Bolla would have them sold at Northwic within days, long before their bellies ever swelled. "Two þeows for one gild," as he once put it. "Who gains more in the end?"

"Give me your seax," said Brynna.

She had the felled hare in her lap, her meaning was clear. Wulfhere handed her the knife. But before she skinned it, she spoke that God-forsaken chant again – Cnawd i bridd, enaid i'r awyr. Nawr rydych chi'n rhydd.

He frowned at her. "Do all Wealh practice such superstitions?"

"Are all Saxons as fearful as you?" She replied.

His frown deepened. "I fear nothing."

"You fear your god," said Brynna. With well-practiced skill she slipped the seax beneath the hare's pelt and freed its fur from its flesh, even as she scolded him. "It is fear that makes you bow to him – not love. We Cymry who believe in your god feel that same fear... but there are some of us who have not yet forsaken the old gods. I keep to them, as did my mother, and her mother before her. And even now they protect me. They guide me. Your god, however, he leaves you blind. You are right to fear him."

The seax stilled at the offal as a rough hand snatched her jaw.

"Would your `old gods' favour a bædling?!" Spat Wulfhere.

She smiled back, weakly. "Would your god favour a man who favours a bædling?"

Wulfhere's hand moved to Brynna's throat.

"...Will you beat me?" She said quivering. "Like Ceolfraed did?"

His free hand was balled into a fist. And he was tempted. But instead he looked at her – her frightened eyes, her soft cheeks, her plush lips – and he kissed her. Wulfhere's calloused hand caught Brynna by the nape, and he dragged her to him, crushing their lips together, smothering her startled moans. Brynna fell limp in the swordsman's arms as he turned her about and shoved her face-first into the bear furs she'd spread out along the floor by the roaring brazier, un-belting himself and shunting his breeks to his knees. The seax and the half-skinned hare fell from the bædling's grasp. She fell silent. A course, gruff, huffing Wulfhere hiked up the lower folds of her dress, spread her out by her thighs, spat into his hand, and stroked himself slick as he guided his stiffened manhood toward the pink, wrinkled flesh of her earsðerl. The bædling was clean down there, as she always was, as Ceolfraed had no doubt demanded, and that tight ring of flesh gave little resistance as Wulfhere slipped himself inside it. Brynna snatched fistfuls of fur as the pounding rain drowned out her cries. Brūn-hol had sheltered many screaming whores in its day, but the bædling would be its last... and there would be no pups nine months hence.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The sun was blazing bright that day when noble Ceolfraed Thegn of Oxburh first found him, Wulfhere Haakonsson, mulling about the cattle droves of Icknield.

By his count some sixty moons had come and gone since Ælfgar Eorl rode his retinue into the heart of the forest and drove out the slavers of Brūn-hol. Most, like Wulfhere, scattered before they suffered the slaughter of a hopeless battle, but Bolla was a Dane by both blood and temperament, and would not yield lightly. Nevertheless – yield he did – and his severed head (and those of his closest retainers) was soon mounted from the spikes upon Theotford's burh-gate-seat.

Wulfhere, safe from Ælfgar's wroth but now homeless and rootless, went on to wander the reaches of East Anglia for a time. Desperate for food and shelter, he went as far east as the marshes of Bledeburh and as far north as the Cathedral of Elmham, always a stone's throw from selling himself into bondage. He eventually found himself in Northwic and whatever precious little coin he gathered from his labours (or thievery) he spent in beor-halls and brothels – but neither ale nor whores rid him of his grief for long. These were among the most ungodly days of his life.

Some winters later, after earning reasonable coin on the fishing boats in Yernemuth, he secured a young but powerful mare named Snotta, and rode south with the intention of settling in the bustling merchant city of Lundenburh. On the way he sheltered in Mildenhale, and befriended a cattle-herdsman named Osgeat, who sat him to a platter of herring and spoke of his antagonism toward another cattle-herdsman named Wada. The two ceorls had taken each other to the shire-court over a pair of mules they both claimed ownership of. Wada had won the claim and Osgeat was listless over it.

("Without those mules I couldn't carry my milk to market,") he'd said bitterly, half-drunk. ("I reckon he knows what it's cost me. I reckon he revels in it. He's a wulfheort! He's godless, he has no soul! If only he lost something also...")

And that was when (after Wulfhere admitted he was short of both coin and food) Osgeat offered him food enough to last another four days – in exchange for killing Wada's cattle.

It was dirty work – but in those times Wulfhere Haakonsson knew not his father's huscarl honour nor his mother's Christian virtue. It was no dirtier than slaving, or stealing, or fishing, or grave-digging, or haymaking, or stone-breaking, or any of the other pitiless professions he'd taken up to fill his belly. He would do it.

And that was how Wulfhere found himself hidden in the bushes by the chalk tracks of Icknield, lying in wait for the cattle drove of ceorl Wada. His plan was to throw a stone at Wada's head and knock him from his senses, then put his seax through the neck of each cow before collecting his dues from Osgeat and hoofing it south before the tithingsmen came calling. But that was not how that day proceeded.

It was hot. He was hungry. He was so hungry he was weak with it. As he sweated in the bushes awaiting Wada, the merciless clime and his growling belly overtook him. He felt light-headed. And then, in the blazing heat, he fainted in the dirt. Wulfhere did not wake for half a day, not until that unusually brutal sun began to set and the hunting hound that found him slowly licked at his pallid face.

His eyes shot open.

And that was when first he saw, in all his glory, his future lord – Ceolfraed Thegn. A tall man, brown-bearded and steel-eyed, and powerfully muscled beneath the gold-trimmed folds of his dyed green tunic. A crimson half-cloak consumed his right shoulder, fixed to him by a bronze brooch embossed with a boar's head sigil. A sheathed Frankish longsword swung from the saddle of his whickering black-maned stallion as the falling red sun gleamed at his back.

Even at first glance Wulfhere knew this man was no mere thegn, but a King's Thegn. And he was soon to learn that this King's Thegn was by far one of the most powerful men in all East Anglia.

Behind him stood a retinue of twenty hearthguardsmen, all ahorse and all armed either by spear or longsword, each with eyes forged in battle. They'd come up from a pilgrimage to St. Edmund's Bury and by chance one of their hunting dogs had found his half-starved carcass. Two others accompanied the thegn; a cheerless, stone-browed, tonsured priest who Wulfhere was soon to know as Redwig Father, and an auburn-haired beauty draped in a sable cloak shouldered with marten-skin, their face shielded from the sun by a silk shroud. At first Wulfhere thought them the thegn's wife – but only later would he learn the truth – that `thegn's wife' was a slave boy named Braden – and within that slave boy's heart dwelt the woman his own heart was destined to desire.

Brynna the Bædling.

("What have we here?") Said the King's Thegn, smiling broadly. ("Something to be left for dead... or has it a gild worth the were? My name is Ceolfraed, boy. What is yours?")

"My name...?" He blinked. "My name is-"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Wulfhere," said Brynna.

The storms were long passed when the swordsman woke, half-naked from the tunic down, but the bædling had covered him over in his sleep with his own breeks. His thighs and manhood felt sticky beneath them – and he felt an overpowering urge to bathe and wash the sin from himself.

Brynna sat silently by the campfire. A mound of offal, fur and unnecessary bones lay by the bloodied seax whilst the skinned hare slowly roasted over the flames. She'd sweetened its meat by sowing nuts and berries from the forest it its belly; it was a pleasant scent to wake to.

Wulfhere drew a small smile.

He knew Brynna could be tamed. She was wild and godless and sinful, but she could be tamed. That he knew. She was well-versed in all the soft arts of womanhood; sowing, cooking, healing, dancing; all that was needed was to get her to Lundenburh and find some small nook of the city to live out of.

"What was your plan?" Said the bædling.

"You know it," said Wulfhere, sighing tiredly. "We've spoken of it."

"Then tell me again."

A sigh. "We ride west by the Icknield from here to Roisia's Cross and from there we go south for Lundenburh. We take a deer carcass and pose as traders along the way. It can be done."

Wulfhere watched as Brynna tended the kindling with a whittled twig. She sat on her haunches; the cotton folds of her dress still bunched around her hips. He looked to her eyes, crystalline with un-spilt tears, and only then did he notice her focused stare, fixed upon tongues of lambent flame. Her eyes were cursed – one green, one blue – and hell's embrace danced in both.

"It cannot be done," she whispered. "Your way will see us killed."

"And you know this how?"

Brynna smiled softly. "...I see it in the flames."

("More sorcery,") thought Wulfhere. "I've been to the furthest reaches of Northumbia and told the tale, the road to Lundenburh is a mere drove way's passing from here. You underestimate me."

The bædling's glare finally broke from the fire and turned hard toward Wulfhere. "And you underestimate Ceolfraed. Don't you see? You stole me from him – and he will want me back. He will put warriors and dogs on the road to hunt us. We cannot escape him by the road..." Brynna's grin widened as she traded glares with him. "But the flames offer wisdom the God of the Romans does not. I know a better way."

Wulfhere frowned. He misliked that flame-swept glint in her eye.

When he went silent, she spoke without his permission. "South of here stands a sacred cavern that leads to a forgotten river which runs all the way to the stone circle at Lygeanburgh. Deep beneath its soil lies a gate of light that channels the river's flow through the very pit of the underworld. We need only traverse it... and re-emerge where our hearts will us most. This is the one and only route toward Lundenburh we will survive."

"Godless witchery..." spat the swordsman. "Speak no more of this!"

Brynna held her smile. "I speak no lies and you know it – Wulfhere Haakonsson."

(`Again!') Fury found Wulfhere's heart. "How do you know that name-"

A loud crash echoed below their feet like stone colliding with stone. Wulfhere felt the impact in his teeth. He looked to Brynna who looked back with wide-eyed fright. Something is here, said her eyes. Something below them.

(`Has Ceolfraed found us already?') he thought. A now wary Wulfhere reached for his sword belt and fastened it to his waist. Seolforhund clanked restlessly against his leg. "I'll have to see what that was. Stay put and await me."

"Perhaps you shouldn't go alone," said Brynna.

"I said stay put. Do not anger me again."

Brynna glared at him but did not argue – thankfully. Wulfhere sighed gruffly and took up an old torch from the dead iron braziers that old Bolla once kept roaring throughout the winters. He lit it by the cookfire and repeated his warning to the bædling – stay put – before making his way out of the hall towards the source of that ill sound.

The air was damp and seeded with dew, the flagstones of Brūn-hol flooded over at their cracks with muddy rainwater. Snotta's fraught neighing had calmed, but Wulfhere went not to sooth him, instead he slipped slowly past the withered stabling and proceeded down a short flight of old Roman steps into the pits beneath the ancient villa. The darkness below was blinding, the scuff of his boots echoing down into a sandstone cellar where Wulfhere couldn't see more than a foot ahead of him, but he was familiar with this place – and counted his steps to twenty-three before turning left towards the wall where old, blackened kindling sat in even older Roman sconces. The Saxon set light to it, counted fifteen more steps, then set light to another. The cellar grew brighter. Wulfhere turned to his left, set his calloused hand against the painted stone balustrade, and cautiously peered over the edge into the cellar's pit.

And there trod a warrior.

Tall. Lean. Muscled. With every slow step of his mud-stained boots the links of his mail coif and byrnie rattled in the cold air. A bossed round shield painted in circles of white and black swallowed up his back from the straps about his shoulders – and in his firm, two-handed grip glinted a Danish axe inlaid with gold. Nothing of his face could be seen beneath the conical helm protecting it, save for the frayed wisps of tow-coloured hair pluming beneath its plates. The warrior moved slow and silent through the darkness in search of something – something his axe would cleave without a heartbeat's hesitation – of that much Wulfhere was sure. That man, whomever he was, was no mere warrior.

He was a huscarl.

Faint and fading memories of his father played through the Saxon's mind as he slipped a reflexive hand towards Seolforhund's leathered grip.

"He seeks to steal me from you, deorling," whispered Brynna. "Let your steel sing and slay him."

Wulfhere turned sharply, his torch-flame roaring. "Curses be! I warned you to stay behind!"

Heedless, Brynna peered over the edge and smirked at the foe she beheld. "...You know not what he is... and yet you will. You more than anyone."

("More riddle-speak,") thought Wulfhere. "Go back to the hall and douse the fire. Gather our things and ready Snotta. I'll follow."

There was a smile she gave him then, one cold and dark and cynical, that seemed to revel the prospect unspoken – and if you should die? – but as quickly as it rose the smile collapsed into a frown. Brynna gathered up her skirts and fled for the stairs just as Wulfhere set his boot against the balustrade and glanced down into the darkness where the huscarl passed below. A few more paces and he would be out of his line of sight. But the huscarl seemed heedless of him, and if ever there were a time to make use of that...

Wulfhere drew his steel and leapt over the edge – sword in one hand, torch in other – wind whipping in his ears as his war scream sounded up to the roof's beam and he dove helm-first at the axeman from above to split his skull from its shoulders. Seolforhund came as close as a foot's pace from his neck – but in a steel-streaked whirl of motion that neck disappeared and a sudden blow struck him in the ribs, punching him out of the air and hurling him face first into the dusty, tiled floor. Wulfhere landed with a grunt. The torch rolled out of his hand into the handful of yards between himself and the huscarl, their only source of light in the darkness.

The huscarl snarled like a prowling wolf.

"Are you Wulfhere?" He asked, his gloved hands re-gripped to the ash shaft of his Dane axe.

The man in question lumbered up to his knees, sword in hand, ignoring his throbbing ribs. He could not ignore the taste of blood. "Who asks?"

"I am Herewulf," Cold blue eyes burned within sockets of his helm. "Where is the bædling?"

Wulfhere edged back. If there lingered any doubt that Ceolfraed sent this man, it was gone now. As a King's Thegn and a member of the Witan he had the ear of Edward Cyning as well as his brother-in-law, Harold Godwineson, Eorl of Wessex and the Cyning-behind-the-Cyning, who commanded the brunt of the finest fighting men in the land of the English, the huscarls, undefeated in the field since the reign of the Ironside. It was not beyond Ceolfraed's reach to summon such a warrior for his own uses – but how foolhardy to do so! Bædling or no Brynna was Ceolfraed's slave, and by all laws true and English he had every right to take back his own, but if anyone learned the true nature of their relationship...

...a burning woman screamed in Wulfhere's memories.

"I know no such creature," he said. "And I mean you no ill. Withdraw."

"Godless liar..." sneered Herewulf. "I SAW YOU HUMP IT!"

The Danish axe – when properly wielded – was a thing of beauty. The right swing from the right arm could cut a man and his horse in twain. And the huscarls were famed for their skill with it.

A roar unlike any Wulfhere had ever heard emanated from the mouthpiece of Herewulf's helm as he hefted his mighty weapon into the air and sprung forth charging like an enraged bull. Sheer reflex caused Wulfhere to dive away as a flash of Danish steel whirled inches from his shoulder and crashed into the tiles beneath their feet, shattering the sandstone like pot shards.

Wulfhere caught his breath and drew away, carefully stepping backward as his foe pulled his axe from the awl-deep wound it had cleaved into the ancient Roman architecture. It wore its own name in gold-inlaid runes running up the haft – Hildegunnr.

Herewulf howled up to the heavens as he spread his grip wide and barrelled forth.

There was a gap between them as wide as a scip – yet despite the mail and axe and shield weighing him down, Herewulf closed it in the blink of an eye. It was too dark to move blindly. Wulfhere's instincts moved his sword for him, a wide swing that met and caught the axe head mere moments before it split his own head open. A clap of metals echoed and Seolforhund locked with Hildegunnr, their wielders clutched and wrestling for supremacy in the heart of the darkness. Wulfhere grit his teeth and steeled himself, bracing against the weight and force of the axe-wielding huscarl as it bore down upon him full tilt, ragged breath and spittle piping through the mouth slit of his helm.

Holding him back, Wulfhere's arms tensed, muscles aflame. His boots slipped back, almost buckling. He was being pushed back – overpowered! Throughout Wulfhere's life and travels he'd fought off Scyttisc cattle thieves and Wealh raiding bands, trained alongside some of the most talented swordsmen in Ceolfraed's hall. But by God none heretofore met were the equal of Herewulf! Seolforhund's beautifully polished, rattling blade now lulled back, edging dangerously close to his own throat.

So he swung his boot in the bigger man's belly.

Herewulf grunted and doubled back, as did Wulfhere who spied a candle iron out the corner of his eye. He reached out and toppled it between the two of them, clattering loudly against the flagstones as a breathless Wulfhere turned and darted into the shadows.

"COWARD!" Boomed Herewulf. "STAND AND FIGHT!"

Wulfhere ran.

Herewulf was taller than him, stronger than him, better armed and better armoured. In this sightless black pit, and without his own armour, he was no match for the huscarl. So he ran. He ran by memory, bounding beneath a crumbling archway into a narrow corridor and flattened himself against the niche of a porticoed alcove, sheathing his sword, gritting his teeth, and catching his breath.

Off in the blackness Herewulf's clinking mail drew closer and closer with each slow, cautious bootstep. There was not a mote of light now, nothing to see by. The pair of them were blind – but only Wulfhere knew their surrounds.

There was a boarded doorway opposite his alcove.

When the huscarl finally stepped into his line of sight, a raging, desperate Wulfhere charged at him, seizing him by the waist and shoving him shoulder first into the planks. Their combined weight smashed through the boarding, pulverizing it into splinters and fragments raining about their heads as they fell nearly eight feet deep into a Roman wine cellar. They landed together with a heavy thud, causing a ruction that knocked barrels of ale and vessels of wine from their niches and shelves, smashing open against the dusty rat-scitte stone floor. The ale was English and the wine Frankish, some of Bolla's most prized acquisitions, only served by his freshly captured þeowen during his celebratory feasts. Old Ælfgar's men hadn't stumbled upon these treasures.

Now the cellar was soaked with them.

Herewulf was on his back, stunned, whilst Wulfhere caught his breath on his hands and knees.

A gloved hand clasped Hildegunnr.

"Is this how you fight, heathen?" Herewulf lumbered up to his massive feet. "Like some beor-hall outlaw? Renounce the bædling and you may yet be spared."

Wulfhere, weakened, gripped his sheath with one and reached for his sword's grip with the other. He'd hoped to knock the senses from the huscarl long enough to climb up and escape, but Herewulf was barely out of breath much less dazed.

(`No choice,') thought Wulfhere. (`Here then, I make my stand...')

A silence settled between them – the soundlessness that proceeded the death-dance, where kiss of steel summoned the blood plume and stirred the wæl-cyrige from their perches. It was the coin-toss moment that settled fates. And so neither of them noticed the puddle of wine and ale as it oozed around Herewulf's feet and had yet to reach Wulfhere's. It seemed not to matter – not until they heard the wave of a naked flame.

Both men looked up.

And there, by the fragmented boards still clinging to the stone archway up above their heads, stood the bædling, torch in hand.

She threw it at Herewulf.

Wulfhere leapt for the wall as soon as flames caught the ale-scent above the huscarl's head and plumed into a great flame that swept across his lumbering body, setting light to his round shield and leathered breeks. Flamelight flashed and ebbed in an instant. Herewulf fell backwards into the wine puddles, dousing the flames, as Brynna took Wulfhere's arm and heaved him out of the cellar.

And then they ran.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Theotford lay ahead.

Tall palisades of staked timber ran the burh's circumference from the rotting, ancient hillfort in the west to the ford bridge over the Little Ouse to the east. Torrents of mud bloated the gaping ditch beneath its sloped banks and revetments, a gift from yester night's storms. So too did those storms churn the dirt road into a pebble-and-leaf-laden river of mud, one of many now coursing into the river valley beyond.

Snotta's hooves lazily clopped through the muck as a hooded Wulfhere led him along by the bridle. Upon his saddle rode Brynna, her gloomy frown obscured by a gilt veil of white cloth, and behind her waddled the limbs of a felled deer bagged in wool and strung tight to the saddle.

They were not the only ones making their way into Theotford. To their great luck it was a market day, and the march of commerce resumed undeterred by the violent storm. They were surrounded by carts of hemp, thatch, firewood, game, water gourds, ale casks and fish. They blended well into the throng, as was Wulfhere's intention.

Out in the wilds they were easy to ambush but it was equally as easy to escape. Fleeing a burh was a different matter entirely. There was one way in and one way out – the burh-gate-seat – which already told a bloody tale of those caught in breach of the Cyning's laws, for it stood spiked with the severed hands of bread thieves and the severed heads of bandits. Bottle flies buzzed about their rotted flesh – a warning to all within and without – one that wouldn't have gone unheeded in distant times past. Beheading was a crime reserved for the worst of the worst beneath the Cyning's grace – traitors and treasure-robbers and pagans all. Wulfhere would never forget the sight of Bolla's head mounted upon those jagged spikes as night-feathered crows picked the white jelly from his broken eye sockets, a token of Ælfgar Eorl's wroth.

Yet neither that memory, nor those severed heads and hands so cruelly and currently mounted, would sway Wulfhere from his path – beaten and waterlogged as it was. He would endure. He would endure because all he wanted (and all he had left) was the bædling – and he could not stop until they were safe from Ceolfraed's grasp.

They were stopped at the threshold by a pair of spear-bearers who asked them their business in the burh. Like any good guards they were mindful of ceorls they did not know. "Sirs. My sister and I want to trade our deer carcass," lied Wulfhere. "My father would've come he would, but the cold's taken his knee stiff, so we said we'd go in his place, sirs."

"You bring your sister why?" Said the second guard.

Brynna looked away.

"...T-there's a raper about our village, sirs, and we wouldn't want to leave her alone when our father's laid up as he is. She's safer with me until she's handfasted. That's what father thinks anyway."

It was a testament to the bædling's beguiling beauty that they did not espy her secret. But Wulfhere misliked the looks they gave her and hurried things along by gifting them a cloth bundle from Snotta's saddlebags. The taller guard unwrapped it and found a pair of apples inside – as well as two carefully polished silver pennies from Theotford's own mint. The guards grinned at each other and lowered their spears.

"Go on," said the second. He flipped an apple with his free hand then caught and crunched it between his teeth, his pale cheek bouncing as he spoke on, "And see that your tithingsmen do something about that raper when you return."

Wulfhere nodded a polite "thank you" and pulled Snotta along whilst the guardsmen turned to harass the next tradesman seeking entry into the burh.

Theotford was not a small town. If anything it was one of the largest Wulfhere had ever seen across his 34 years of life. The people! Ceorls of all ages, free men and their women huddling around stalls filled with goods from all about the known world, French wine, Danish whalebone, Flemish cloth. Well-kept slaves bore their goods. Clucking chickens flapped about in wooden cages alongside pigs rutting in their muddy pens as their merchants haggled with passers-by over price. The puddled streets were lined with fruiters, bakers, butchers, fletchers, skinners, tanners, and fishmongers. Tink, tink, tink went the hammers of the blacksmiths, whilst black fumes loomed into the grey skies from the piping kilns as they baked what would become some of the finest pottery known through Europe. Monks from distant St. Edmund's Bury recited verse to cloaked lepers and the belly-swollen poor whilst hungry dogs roamed the alleyways in search of stray bones and fruit rinds. It was a town of thousands.

It made Brynna nervous.

"We should not linger here," she whispered.

"And we won't," replied Wulfhere. "We sell the deer carcass and buy what we need to last us to Lundenburh. We'll spend the night and leave at daybreak. Keep your nose to the ground and you'll stir no attention."

Attention, he surmised, was her fear. Despite what dwelt between her legs the bædling was utterly beautiful. There was an air of femininity about her in mannerism as well as appearance. It was not merely the softness of her eyes (cursedly coloured as they were) but the way that they broached you, that arresting glance of an un-wed maiden. Her cheeks were round and her silken hair the colour of chestnut, and she groomed herself in a way no man would. Her softness was an art practiced and honed into perfection – almost.

If one saw beyond the cloak, veil, and chiff, one might see a `maiden' rather tall for a maiden, her feet larger than most, her fingers longer than most. That gilt cloth about her neck did not merely protect it from the cold East Anglian winds it obscured a certain bulge from suspicious eyes. `Brynna the Bædling is beautiful,' thought Wulfhere, `but not without blemish.' And if the wrong person noticed those blemishes... then it was the rope for them.

Wulfhere ferried Brynna to a local stable where travellers could secure their horses, then helped her dismount, her slippered feet slapping in the muck. He paid the stableman and then drew his `sister' aside with a warning, "Stay with Snotta whilst I see to the deer. I'll fetch you when I'm done."

She cut a sneer at him, wrinkling her freckled nose. "Return quickly then, the air stinks with Saxons."

("Not without blemish indeed,") thought Wulfhere. The swordsman slung the deer carcass onto his shoulder and staggered briefly, his ribs aching from the battle with Herewulf at Brūn-hol, but he pressed on up the yarded path beyond the stables, pig pens and cattle-cheap to the bustling marketplace in the heart of the settlement. There was a certain stall owned by a certain man with whom he shared a dark past, and he found him, his timber booth nestled between that of a local poulterer and a Breton mercer of dresses and marten furs.

"Aelbert," said Wulfhere.

He was a boneworker in the ancient way. It had been his father's craft (and his father's before him) and Aelbert had followed in the tradition – for a time. Years ago a fire ripped through his village and destroyed his home and tools, forcing him out on the road, reducing him to theft and vagrancy, much like Wulfhere himself, until Bolla recruited him.

Aelbert had his broad back turned, sharpening his blades and bore against a whetstone, and snapped around sharply when he heard that familiar voice. His grey eyes widened with shock and joy. "Wulfhere! By God, how long has it been?"

"Too long, old friend. So, back to the old ways for you then, eh?"

Aelbert chuckled and glanced down at his ruddy clothes smattered with bone dust and marrow stains. "So it would appear! It's honest work at least, keeps me out of trouble. And how are you? Last time I saw you, you were hoofing it to Bledeburh for work. How did you fare?"

("I took a King's Thegn for a lord,") thought Wulfhere, bitterly. "I survived, I supposed. Found some work with a hunting band up north until our forest was claimed by Gyrth Eorl. I'm back on the road again, bound for Lundenburh. Think I could sell you this for some healthy coin to fund my way?"

Wulfhere dropped the deer carcass onto the table.

Aelbert glanced at the offering, briefly. "You've been staying out of trouble also...?"

"Why do you ask?"

Aelbert untied the rope bindings and evaluated the deer. "Know you Æthelwig, the shire reeve? This dawn past some tithingsmen rode into his mansus spreading word of an outlaw hearthguardsman who pilfered a slave from Ceolfraed Thegn. Said he'd be sword-armed."

("DAMN HIM!") Thought Wulfhere. "T-those days are over for me, old friend. I just need some quick coin. Come, tell me what this beast is worth."

"Well..." Aelbert thumbed his bushy black beard. "You've drained the blood, which makes less work for me, but from the look of it... it's underweight. I won't get much off the meat or the fur either. I could give you... two half-pennies. And some food if you need it."

Wulfhere grit his teeth. He was being robbed, but that was not why he grit his teeth. Ceolfraed's men were already here. They were only tithingsmen, men who knew nothing of battle outside of fyrd duty (and God-only-knows the last time a fyrd had been raised in these parts) and certainly none of them were of a huscarl's pedigree, but all the same it didn't bode well. Brynna was right. It was dangerous to stay here too long.

"I'll take it," said Wulfhere, abruptly.

"Good man," said Aelbert. He fetched two silver half-pennies from his purse and paid him. "Who are you roofing with tonight? Styr and Aelgifu?"

The Dane Styr and his Saxon wife Aelgifu were an old couple who ran a beor-and-brothel over by the potter's yard. Years ago they often hosted Bolla and his men when his ale-stores at Brūn-hol ran dry.

"If they have the room," Wulfhere said it blithely, eyes about his surrounds, darting suspiciously. He suddenly felt watched. "...Are they still around?"

"Aye," the Bonemaker smiled. "It's been too long since my last visit, but I'm well married these past three years. I've sired two pups on the bitch, and she still won't leave me be! Say, why not share a drink with me before you go?"

"Aelbert, I don't think-"

"Come on! Why not? If we have a quick swill before sundown, I'll have enough time to return to the old mare and foals and you can christen your ride to Lundenburh the old way! Come on! Get some ale in you, warm your balls up!"

He was a jolly sort of man was Aelbert. Big-bellied and big-hearted. Slaving never suited him. Marriage, children, honest work – those things were more his manner. There was a time when Wulfhere adored him the way a nephew would a kind uncle. All he wanted to do was get back to Brynna, but to see Aelbert now... he did miss the old bear.

"Fine," said he. "Where to? Sigmund's beor-hall?"

Aelbert waved that off. "His beor-hall burned down last year, him and his son with it, the poor fool. There's a better hall by the ford to St. Peter's Church. See to your business and meet me there after I strip this little doe you've given me. Go on now. Away with you."

("Some old friends never change.") Wulfhere couldn't help but smile. Nevertheless, he had to get back to Brynna. The swordsman nodded goodbye to the bonemaker and doubled back across the markets to the laneway cutting through the heart of the burh, from the river to the wall. He followed it back to where he came, to the traveller's stables where he left Brynna with Snotta.

But the bædling was not alone.

There was a dirty, shambling man by her, half-drunk by ale and half-drunk by lust, leering over her auburn-haired beauty. "Such a pretty young thing," He scratched his beard distractedly. "Oh lady, w-what finds you here among the horses? If you were my woman I should-AGH!"

Wulfhere snatched him by throat. "Keep your hands to yourself, weasel! This is my sister!"

"Sister?" He repeated lazily. "...But you look nothing alike...?"

A single powerful hand hurled him into the mud. The drunkard collapsed, breathless, flapping his arms and legs around until the slurp of unsheathed steel stopped him cold. Wulfhere now had Seolforhund's sharp tip at his throat. Brynna froze.

"F-forgive me, sir!" He cried. "I-I-I-I meant no offence!"

The drunk winced as the sword drew a nip of blood.

"Hands to yourself!" Shrieked Wulfhere. "NO MAN IS TO TOUCH HER!"

Brynna blanched. "Wulfhere...!"

That was when he realized he'd drawn a crowd. Some of the stable boys and patrons had gathered up with amusement at the scene as the drunk man began to cry, first from his eyes and then from his pintel. As he laid there in the mud, terrified and pissing himself, Wulfhere sheathed his blade and snatched Brynna's wrist, dragging her roughly to the back of the stables out of sight and earshot.

"Wulfhere stop, you're hurting me!"

He released her hand with a shove. "What do you think you're doing?!"

"I did nothing!" She protested. "He approached me, what was I to do?"

Wulfhere's anger faded as he saw the fear in her eyes, the very same fear he saw when Ceolfraed would approach her drunk and blood-swollen in his britches. He wanted Bynna to be careful, not to fear him. Once he caught his breath, he pulled the bædling to his mailed chest and kissed her. Brynna gasped, raising her hands to push him away but Wulfhere snatched and held her dainty wrists with a single gloved hand until his ears caught a sigh of relent.

Moments later they broke that kiss, hearts pounding.

Brynna bit her lip.

"Not here," she said.

"I know," said Wulfhere. "Ceolfraed's men are already here, he sent tithingsmen this time."

The bædling's miscoloured eyes narrowed. "Why them? Why not his hearth-guard?"

"I know not."

"Then we should leave now, before-"

"It matters not," said Wulfhere, sharply. "Come tithingsmen or hearth-guards or huscarls, I won't let them take you from me. We will night in Theotford but leave at daybreak, I swear."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Aelgifu was pleased to see him, good old girl as she was. Her jowly cheeks were flushed with joy, and she showered him with kisses. "Always good to see an old face in Theotford," she said. Styr's welcome on the other hand was far less `welcoming'. The tattooed Dane sat with a sour grimace, arms folded, wary. "How long will you be staying?"

The question was curtly put but wise. Much had changed since the destruction of Bolla's slaver band, and it took Wulfhere a single glance about the hall to realize it. Their patrons were mostly ceorls now, merchants and tradesmen, well-dressed and clean-shaven. For all the ale there was little drunkenness and bowls of piping hot food were served by a small group of mannerly þeowen in the couple's service. There were no fights, no dice games, no arm-wrestling, no black eyes or broken teeth or bloodstains. This was not the beor-hall that Wulfhere remembered so well. It was... reformed.

And Styr wanted it kept that way, no doubt.

"Only the night," Said Wulfhere. "This is my sister, Sigeflæd. I'm escorting her south to Sandwic, where our father owns a fishing were. He will take good care of her."

"...Escorting," Repeated the Dane, cynically.

"I never knew you had a sister," Aelfgifu slapped Wulfhere's shoulder. "And here I was thinking she was your wife, you ruddy ox! Do not worry, I'll get you comfortable cots to rest in."

The old girl snapped her fingers. One of her slave girls (the one closest to her) quickly poured a patron another cup of ale then fluttered up to her side. "See them to the good room. Fresh blankets, two beds, and be quick about it, you have your other nightly duties to see to."

("Not entirely reformed then,") thought Wulfhere. He thanked them for their generosity, paid his fee, and followed the girl to their room, a small but well-kept nook at the rear of the adjoined longhouse. Beds were ready made. There was an empty chest for their possessions, racks for their clothes, water gourds from which to drink and wash, and a banded bucket for their waste. The door was secured from within by an iron bolt and there were no windows. The þeowen saw herself out and Wulfhere locked the door behind her.

("Good.") thought Wulfhere. He unbuckled Seolforhund's belt and unbroached his lynx fur cloak to hang them from the racks. His iron helm and byrnie were safely tucked away in Snotta's saddlebags (which they'd brought in with them) for it would not do to walk the burh too heavily armoured.

"That Dane does not trust us," said Brynna. "What makes you think we can trust him?"

"I don't," said the swordsman. "I trust his greed. His purse stomachs the risk."

"And what of our path south? Have you rethought my way?"

Wulfhere sighed angrily. He was so sickened of her sorcery! As if it wasn't enough to beguile him like this, to seize his heart, to steal him from the godly path! He turned and faced her then, shoving a warning finger at her face. "I tire of your witchcraft. I won't warn you again, speak to me no more of it!"

Brynna took his finger between her lips, devilishly, eyes fixed upon his as she licked at it. Wulfhere went stiff and silent, as was her intention, and almost helplessly watched her suckle him with that hell-borne smirk of hers. She had power over him – and they both knew it. Sheer passion took him then. He growled lustily and span the bædling around by her slippered feet, forcing her against grain of the wall and racking her dress and under-dresses up the lithe length of her bare thighs.

That dyed green dress, once destined for Ceolfraed's bride, was the work of seven þeowen and seven weavers but the gilt thread work was all Brynna's own for no one in Oxburh was her measure with a needle. And now, it was all Wulfhere could do not to tear it open and strip it from her.

Brynna's breath raced with his own. Wulfhere shunted down his breeks, spit into his hand to stroke his stiff manhood slick, spread her open from the rear, and thrust himself deep into her rosebud earsðerl. The bædling cried out through a flattened cheek, jerking roughly against the wall planks, her long feet arching out of their slippers to broach herself against his strength. It was all she could do to hold on as Wulfhere held her hard by the hips and rutted her in the dog-like manner of a man half-starved with lust, thigh slapping against thigh, shared moans and grunts over the din, the scent of sweat and candle smoke in the air.

She gripped his wrist powerlessly.

"Slow! Down!" She eked the words out between each thrust. "Please! Slow down! Slow-ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Ugh! Oh! W-Wulfhere! Oh! Slow down, slow down!"

But he didn't.

He couldn't, even if he wanted to. For she summoned demons from within him, evil demons his poor Christ-faring soul had spent decades fighting a losing battle against. They could not be halted. They could not be stopped.

Brynna grit her teeth. Her pintel was soft, flapping desperately between her legs, but without warning it shot ropes of seed against the wooden wall. Wulfhere did not notice for he could not bear to see it – it turned his stomach – and made her kiss him instead until he drove himself thigh deep into her pink tightness and split himself inside her, screaming.

"Christ!" He growled. "Damn you..."

Wulfhere's girth, slimed over with spit and seed, slipped free of her, and he backed away to one of the two beds to catch his breath. Brynna did not join him there. She stood frozen and shivering against the wall, skirts bunched around her hips, as the Saxon's seed oozed down the bædling's inner thigh.

Wulfhere pulled up his breeks up once his breath was back.

"I have a friend to meet with," he said. "Stay here and open the door to no one until I return."

Brynna thumbed the tears out of her eyes. "...Fine."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was the beor-hall by the ford to St. Peter's Church, as Aelbert said, newly built and well attended. Wulfhere knew it not but there was a familiarity to it from the moment he walked in. From the wall hung stag skulls and painted round shields to the stink of old ale and malodorous men, he knew this atmosphere well. It reminded him of Brūn-hol before its fall and of feast days at Ceolfraed's hall. It felt like home in a way precious little had since he was a boy.

Aelbert the Bonemaker grinned from ear to ear when Wulfhere found him. They took a good table by one of the hall's roaring hearths. One of the serving girls brought them cups of ale. A second brought a platter full of chicken slices and warm bread. Aelbert thanked them both and gestured for Wulfhere to help himself.

"I do some work for the master here," said the Bonemaker. "I never have to pay! He's good folk. So tell me, Wulfhere, what've you been about these past few years, eh?"

It was a question he dreaded would come. But Wulfhere was hungry, and he distracted himself a moment, eating five whole slices of chicken and washing it down with a huge swig of ale. He burped. "Oh, I've been about. Bledeburh, Elmham, Northwic, Yernemuth. Did fishing and stone-breaking mostly. It's no easy task finding steady work without a trade."

Aelbert's smile soured. "We had a trade for a time."

"Of sorts. And it was rotten," Wulfhere said that more for Aelbert's sake, however. The older man was ashamed of his days in Bolla's band, but God help him, the younger couldn't say the same. There was a dirtiness to the work that people disliked but it paid him well and it brought him friends, allies, comrades. He wouldn't have known Aelbert without it. Without it, he would never have come to East Anglia, never have served under a King's Thegn, never have met Brynna. Should God commend his soul to the fire, if only for Brynna, it was worth it.

"Well we've put it behind us now," Aelbert swilled some more ale before biting off another hank of bread. "Bolla got his revenge in the end though."

"Eh?"

"You haven't heard? Ælfgar Eorl's dead."

Wulfhere paused. "...What?!"

These were kingly matters. Matters of state and war and witans, matters which Wulfhere took little notice of until he came under Ceolfraed's wing. What little the common folk knew they treated as gossip. Ceorls like Aelbert nattering about far-flung deaths and treaties and marriages, no different from their wives clucking about local love affairs in their weaving houses. But to be a King's Thegn was to not only have an ear to the politics of a nation, but to understand the implications of those events.

And Ælfgar's death certainly had implications.

Wulfhere, suddenly curious, refilled his ale cup with a flagon that the serving girl left behind, and thought on the implications a spell.

To begin with it was known that the Cyning of the English, Edward, was weak. He was pious and beloved, a godly man even, and he certainly had strong allies abroad (Guillaume le Bâtard for example), but he was weak. The true power in England lay not upon the throne but behind it. In distant years it was Godwin Eorl of Wessex, Leofric Eorl of Mercia, and Siward Eorl of Northumbria – powerful men all. But it was Godwine Eorl and his sons (Harold, Tostig, Gyrth and Leofwine) to whom all power would slowly accumulate.

Leofric and Godwine Eorls shared their rivalry with their sons Harold and Ælfgar, between whom the eorldom of East Anglia exchanged three times. It had been Harold's for a period, then during his family's exile it was granted to Ælfgar, then it returned to Harold after his return from exile, and when Godwine Eorl finally died in 1053 and Harold became Eorl of Wessex, the eorldom returned to Ælfgar. The Godwines soon retaliated against their exile by conspiring Ælfgar's own, forcing him into alliance with the King of the Wealh, Gruffudd ap Llywelyn. With this powerful ally Ælfgar negotiated his return to power and went on to became Eorl of Mercia upon the death of his father, Leofric – and the eorldom of East Anglia then passed to its current eorl, young Gyrth Godwineson.

Their eorldom (according to Ceolfraed) was seen as nothing more than a proxy post for the younger members of the four great houses.

("We East Anglians are just marsh-dwellers to them,") said Ceolfraed once. ("They look down on us. There's no respect for our lands, we're just a title for a wealthy son to hold.")

But now Ælfgar was dead.

With Siward Eorl dead and long since replaced by Tostig Godwineson, the Mercian house was isolated and Gruffudd ap Llywelyn had lost a key ally in England. The old Britons had been raiding the western lands for some time now and the Cyning would surely call upon the Godwinesons to act. The true implication of Ælfgar's death... was that war was coming.

And even Aelbert knew it.

"If you want work, they'll be plenty of it now," said the Bonemaker. "Start with the ports and shipyards."

Wulfhere stroked his jaw. ("If the Cyning calls for war then Gyrth Eorl might be called upon to raise fyrds... and that means-")

He was cut off by the stamp of a spear.

The lutenist stopped playing. The patrons fell silent, from table to table, until all heads turned to the threshold where two mailed spearmen accompanied a small host of men dressed in simple woad-dyed tunics and sheepskin-shouldered cloaks – but armed with hammers, hand axes, and seaxes. In war time he would've mistaken them for fyrdsmen. Wulfhere recognized none of them – except one. They were led by a stooping but well-muscled man in a boiled leather helm and a thigh-long byrnie secured by a leather sword belt. His hair was dark and wiry, his skin the colour of curdled milk, and most distinctive of all, much of his face from the left-eye outward was swallowed up by a pickled pink birthmark that earned him the epithet `Wineskin'.

(`Uhtric...') Thought Wulfhere. He lowered his face, snarling.

"My good Englishmen!" Proclaimed Uhtric Wineskin, "I am sorry to trouble you. My name is Uhtric, and I am of loyal number amongst the hearth-guards of Lord Ceolfraed, Thegn of Oxburh, who himself is ally and shield-brother to your lord and shire reeve, Æthelwig. My men and I have come to Theotford in search of an oathbreaker to our lord, a man named Wulfhere."

Aelbert turned sharply to Wulfhere, stunned and wide-eyed, but silent. The swordsman didn't dare meet his gaze. His heart thumped in his chest. Blood pounded in his ears. It was as though the scythe of doom loomed over his nape.

Uhtric palmed his sword's pommel. "This man is more than thirty winters old and tall of height, blonde-haired and black-bearded, and armed with a Frankish longsword, much like my own. He was once leader of the hearth guard at Oxburh's hall, and my thegn's most trusted oathman. But he has broken his hold-oath by fleeing his duties and stealing with him a brown-haired þeow named Braden! This man Wulfhere has violated the laws of our land, the laws of good Edward Cyning of Wessex, long may he reign-"

"LONG MAY HE REIGN!" replied out the patrons, raising their cups.

"Indeed," said Uhtric. "By law of outfangthief, this slave-stealer must be caught and tried before his lord and shire reeve. If you've seen him and the slave, or should come to see them, then bring us your word – you will be rewarded for it. You shall find us at your good shire reeve's hall. We welcome and await you. A merry eve to you all."

Done with his remarks, Uhtric Wineskin nodded to the beor-hall's assembled patrons then lead his men out. The guards (doubtless assigned to his party by Lord Æthelwig) followed them. The men around the hall began to murmur of this slave-stealer, of this man called `Wulfhere', and what they might be rewarded with if they caught him. The hall master gestured for the lutenist to resume with a song most gay and gallant to entertain (and distract) his guests.

"Damn you...!" Whispered Aelbert. His meaty fist trembled with rage. "What have you done? What in God's great name have you done?!"

Wulfhere swallowed the knot in his throat. It felt like a thousand eyes were settling upon him. He wanted to pull up his hood and run for his life but making too sudden a move would arouse suspicion. Instead he sat there under Aelbert's wrathful gaze for as long as he could, finishing his ale and chicken as quietly as possible. Once a few men left of their own accord (whether to piss or go home who knew?) Wulfhere downed his last cup and made ready to leave.

"Aelbert," Though he spoke the Bonemaker's name he daren't look him eye-to-eye, "...If to you our old friendship yet meaneth aught... hold your blessed silence and I'll trouble you no further."

Wulfhere did not wait for a reply. Instead he hurried away, head down, arms beneath his cloak, into the muddy streets of Theotford, where the pale sun above began to set. He followed the main road back south, away from the river, past stray dogs, pissing drunkards and tattered beggars. His boots clopped through the muck until he stumbled upon some peasants huddled around a brazier's flame, roasting rats upon whittled twigs. He had to hurry back to Brynna, there was no time to stop. But for some reason he did stop, as if called to, and he found himself staring into the flames.

And he saw things.

Faces.

First, he saw Brynna's – with her chestnut hair, freckled nose, soft cheeks, and pursed lips. And though there were tears in her miscoloured eyes she was smiling. Then he saw the face of Ceolfraed Thegn, stout and rugged, a great bear of a man with his bushy brown beard and his hard, flat brow. Then other faces appeared, faces far deeper into his past than he ever dared recall, the sweet face of his mother, Eadwyn, contorting with unimaginable pain. Then deeper still the face of the abbot, Beorhtwold, long and thin and pale and sneaky, always with a look of lust in his mice-like eyes. He saw thatch thrown onto a pyre, soldiers banging at a door demanding heriot, and a kind Danish face peering into the feathered cot of his first-born son.

"...F-father...?" Muttered Wulfhere. "...Is... is that you?"

He fell to his knees. He screamed. He wept.

"Lord?" Said one of the beggars. "Are you... are you well?"

"I-I-I must away," said the swordsman. "I must away, I must away!"

And so he scrambled to his feet and ran until he returned to the beor-and-brothel of Styr and merry old Aelgifu. He ran past the slobbering drunks and slave-whores set to slaver over their jutting pintels, and made for his door, slamming it shut and locking it behind him. He breathed a sigh of relief. And then he saw her, Brynna the Bædling, sleeping quietly in her bed, so sweet and soft and delicate, like any other maiden of the shire. His heart swelled to behold her. How long had he waited for her to be his? How many nights had he cursed Ceolfraed's name and willed himself not to break into the bower and take her where she lay?

No one understood.

No one could understand.

Wulfhere felt it in his heart that Brynna was every inch the woman she said she was – at least in some sense. Perhaps God had made her thus. And was it not for man to love and protect God's creations? Were they not to be cherished? Yes. Yes! It was his duty to claim her, to protect her, to beat the Dēofol out of her! She was his to keep!

("Damn the weak Cyning and all his laws!") thought Wulfhere, scathingly. ("Damn the courts, damn the shire reeve, damn Uhtric, and damn that wulfheort Ceolfraed! The bædling was given to me by God Himself and DAMN any man who would dare take her from me...!")

He stroked her hair as she slept.

She was his to protect... at any cost.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

·       Thanks for reading, guys! As before your comments and criticism are always welcome at stephenwormwood@mail.com, love to hear from you.

·       If you enjoyed this, please read some of my other stories on Nifty: Wulf's Blut (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dying Cinders (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dancer of Hafiz (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Cornishman (gay, historical), and A Small Soul Lost (gay, fantasy/sci-fi).

·       As discussed, see below a list of Anglo-Saxon/Old English terms, key figures and place names.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

[WORDS/TERMS]

[Ǣ]

An Old English term for marriage.

[Bædling/Baedling]

An old English term generally considered to mean 'effeminate male'. The specific contextual meaning of the term is subject to debate, but the penitentials make specific reference to the concept of "baedlings" and warn against men "laying" (i.e having sex) with them. Probably not to be regarded as a gender identity as such but rather as a slur for people operating outside of the gender norms of the time. The word is related to another Old English term, 'baeddel/bæddel', which is interpreted to mean "hermaphrodite". Read "Between Medieval Men: Male Friendship and Desire in Early Medieval English Literature" by David Clark, specifically the chapter entitled "Same-sex acts in Anglo-Saxon England" for more discussion on the meaning of this word.

[Beor-hall]

"Beer Hall", a place for drinking beer and revelry.

[Burh]

A fortified town or settlement. During the reign of King Alfred many towns were fortified to scupper attacks by Danish raiders, usually by massive external trenches, protective earthwork mounds, and palisades of spiked wood.

[Burh-gate-seat]

A type of gatehouse fortification that someone of 'thegnly' rank was expected to have at their settlement/burh.

[Byrnie]

A shirt of mail.

[Ceorl]

The lowest class of free men in Anglo-Saxon social hierarchy. They held their land freely and did not pay rent to a lord, and were expected to attend local courts, help decide disputes, and fight in the fyrds if called. Their agriculture was largely community-based and communal in open-field systems, and they earned an income by selling crops or by craft activities like blacksmithing. They had a weregild of 200 shillings (hence known as twihynde).

[-cheap]

Old English word/suffix for "market".

[Cymru]

The Welsh word for "Wales".

[Cymry]

The Welsh word for "Welsh People".

[Cyning]

The Old English word for "king".

[Dēofol]

Old English word for "Devil".

[Deorling]

The Old English word for "darling".

[Doom]

An Old English term with multiple meanings/connotations such as 'justice', 'decree' or 'ordinance', 'law', 'authority', 'power', 'court', 'glory' and 'honour'.

[Dweorg-scop]

An Old English term meaning "Dwarf Scop"

[Dyrnegeligre]

Old English word for "adulterer".

[Earg]

An Old English term for a coward/craven.

[Earsðerl]

Old English word for "Arsehole".

[Eorl]

Old English root word for the title "Earl". The Eorls were the most powerful class in Anglo-Saxon society below the king. They were responsible for tax collection and received a portion of the revenue, raised fyrds for the king when called upon to do so, and maintained personal guards/troops. An eorl's estate typically boasted storehouses, guest houses, workshops, stables, servants' houses, a bakehouse or kitchen, a stone-built chapel, enclosures for animals and a training area for his soldiers. While not a hereditary rank, earldoms were reserved for the most prestigious families of the time.

[Eoten]

The Old English word for "giant", derived from the Norse creatures "Jotans" (ice giants).

[Gedriht]

Professional early Saxon warriors acting as a sworn household guard to their chieftains/warlords.

[Geteld]

An Anglo-Saxon tent consisting of three masts.

[Fæderswica]

An Old English term meaning "A traitor/betrayer to one's father".

[Feorm]

Essentially a "food tax" paid to the king and his followers, usually during visits to his lands. Feorms were also paid to churches.

[Frencisc]

The Old English term for "French".

[Fyrd]

A type of Anglo-Saxon army that could be summoned for service in times of war. One man for every five hides of land was expected to serve if levied, and those between 15 and 60 years of age could be summoned. If a fyrdsman did not heed the summons he could have his lands confiscated, but fyrdsmen typically served for only 40 days after which they could return to their lands to resume their farm work. On the battlefield they were arranged in accordance with their place of origin. There were two types of fyrds - one consisted mainly of thegns and their well-trained/armed/provisioned followers. The second was a more general fyrd of those not normally allowed to leave their lands -- these men were often poorly trained and poorly equipped.

[Handswyle]

A swelling of the hand.

[Hearthweru]

A band of warriors dedicated to their lord's protection and the intimidation of his enemies. Dedicated specifically to war and trained in that regard, they were also considered the king's warriors and could be called to fight on his behalf if need be. The seating position at their lord's hall symbolized their importance to and battle positioning to the lord in times of war. In the earlier Saxon period its field leader was described as ordfruma.

[Herepath]

"Army Path" A series of military roads created during the ninth century to support campaigns against Viking invaders and further interconnect the burhs for internal defence.

[Heriot]

A lord's right to confiscate military equipment (horses, arms, armour, etc) after a subject's death. This originated from the custom of lords providing arms and horses to their men in times of war, with the expectation they would be returned. For example the heriot of a King's thegn comprised four shields, four spears, four horses (two of them being saddled), two swords, a helmet and a coat of mails.

[Heortgryre]

An Old English word meaning "Heart Terror".

[Hide]

A unit of land consisting of roughly between 60-120 acres which was considered sufficient enough to feed a family. Ten hides made up a 'tithing'.

[Hland]

An Old English term for "urine".

[Hundreds]

A land unit roughly consisting of 10 tithings. Hundreds had a 'hundredman' as tithings had a 'tithingman'. They contained (roughly) around 12 villages. Each hundred had a reeve who held a hundred-court each month to deal with lesser crimes.

[Huscarls]

A professional (and infamous) military band acting as bodyguards and household troops. Introduced to England by Cnut, who reorganized his army in 1018 and said only those 'who bore a two-edged sword with gold inlaid hilt' would be admitted into his chosen guard. Originally mostly Danes served, but after Cnut's death they became "household troops" under nobles like Earl Godwin, Emma of Normandy, Harthacnut, and Harold Godwinson as Old English and Old Norse were compatible enough for Saxon and Danish troops to understand each other. They were originally paid in gifts; past a certain point they were paid in money. Armed with conical helms, 3ft round shields, mail shirts, coifs, spears, and Dane/bearded axes. Their bearded axes were used two handed, with a broad blade and a haft 4/5 foot in length and were described as cleaving 'man and horse in two'. They generally fought on foot but rode horses to battle. Though they were not bound to a king, they could only leave his service on one day - New Year's Eve - when their lord traditionally gave them gifts.

[Lǣwend]

Old English term for a "betrayer".

[Lyblāc]

An Old English term for magic, associated with evil/bewitchment.

[Manslaga]

An Old English term for a "murderer" or "man-slayer".

[Meolc-sopp]

"Milk-sop" (i.e. a weak person).

[Morgengifu]

An Old English term meaning "morning gift". It was given to a bride on the morning after her wedding day by her bridegroom.

[Nithing]

A form of punishment that made the subject a `non-person' or outcast to society, denying them any form of companionship or lordly protection. Someone subject to this could be killed without recourse or sanction.

[Oath]

At the age of 12 all boys were called upon to swear an oath of loyalty to the king. This is was what the prose alludes to with "un-oathed boys" in chapter 1 and what Ethelward alludes to in the epilogue.

[Outfangthief]

A right in Anglo-Saxon law that allows a lord to capture a thief outside his jurisdiction and return them for punishment.

[þeow]

Old English word for slave (pronounced 'Th-ay OH') The lowest rank in Anglo-Saxon society. They were legally owned by their masters, had no rights or weregild, and could not fight in the fyrd. If a slave was killed, the slave's valuation (generally a pound, the price of eight oxen), was to be paid to the aggrieved owner. The poorest in society might sell themselves into slavery in exchange for food and shelter. However, it was possible for slaves to 'earn' their freedom. They were badly treated, would sleep in the cowshed or barn, and could be branded or castrated, punished by mutilation or death; stoned to death by other slaves if they were male, burned to death if they were female. Female slaves were called þeowen.

[Þeow-cēapman]

Essentially a "slave merchant".

[ƿiċċe]

An Old English term for (and origin of the word) "witch".

[Pintel]

An Old English word meaning "penis".

[Rōdewyrðe]

An Old English term which means "deserving of hanging".

[Scip]

Old English word for "ship".

[Scitte]

Old English word for dung, faeces, poo. Shit, basically.

[Scop]

A poet or performer, cognate of the Norse "Skald".

[Scyttisc]

An Old English term for Scotch/Irish and their respective languages.

[Seax]

A knife of Germanic origin with a large single-edged blade. A seax over 50cm in length is called a 'Langseax'. The word itself it the Old English word for "knife" and is the origin of the name "Saxon".

[Seolforhund]

'Silver Hound' in Old English.

[Shire]

A collection of hundreds. Each shire had a main burh fortified by walls and acting as a trading hub. They were headed by shire reeves and had their own courts (shire-court) for trying cases and dispatching punishments. Eorls had authority over these courts but had to pay the king one third of any money collected in fines or taxes. These courts were reserved for the most serious cases (aka murder, etc).

[Shire Reeves]

The king's local officials. They collected revenues from the king's land, geld tax, shire court fines, and enforced or bore witness to court proceedings. Those appointed to this position were usually local thegns. By 1066 London usually had two at a time; they were the most important city officials, collected London's annual taxes and had judicial duties in the city's law courts. Root origin of the term "Sheriff".

['Swann Hnesce']

The nickname (meaning 'Gentle Swan') of Harold Godwineson's handfasted paramour, Edith the Fair. Over time this nickname morphed into 'Swanneshals', which is why she is more commonly known as "Edith Swan-Neck".

[Tithing]

A unit of land and land-based social unit consisting of 10 hides/families. The heads of each household formed a collective (tithing) who were responsible for petty criminality on their lands. When a crime was committed it was the duty of all members of a tithing to hunt for the criminal, but officially it was the job of the leader, the tithingman, to produce the offender to a court. Each member was individually responsible for the actions and behaviour of all the members of the tithing, by a system known as frankpledge (frith-borh). If a person accused of a crime was not forthcoming, his tithing was fined; if he was not part of the frankpledge, the whole town was subject to the fine. It tended to include landed men because they were expected to be able to pay the fines. The members of the tithing might be collectively known as 'tithingsmen'.

[Tīwesdæg]

Old English word for "Tuesday"

[Thegn]

A rank of nobleman in pre-Conquest England, below Kings (Cynings) and Earls (Eorls) but above ceorls and slaves in stature. Traditionally they were a nobleman-warrior class who made up the backbone of an army, their role became more civic over time, and they increased in their number. They provided protection to the king's tax collectors and facilitated the repair of roads and burhs and carried a weregild of 12,000 shillings (which is why they are also known as "twelfhynde"). A thegn's children were of thegnly status, and a thegnly woman who married a commoner retained her rank, though she did not transmit it to her own children. Thegns were expected to own at least five hides of land, a personal church and kitchen, an estate with a bell house and "burh-gate-seat". A King's Thegn was a higher rank of thegn who attended witans and answered directly to the king.

[Torc]

A band of metal, usually gold, worn around the neck. The god Cernunnos is often depicted holding one.

[Valholl]

Old English name for "Valhalla".

[Wæl-cyrige]

Old English word for "Valkyries".

[Weregild]

"Man Price". The financial value ascribed to a person's life, usually based on social rank. In cases of murder weregilds were payable to the victim's family. Weregilds were generally enforced to discourage blood feuds.

[Witan]

Essentially a council of noblemen, priests and advisors that could be summoned to counsel the king on political matters, observe charters, authorize laws, and render judgements. The nature of the witan's powers and responsibilities is not fully understood, but in theory the witan had the authority to both elect and depose a king, although deposition would've been more of a symbolic power rather than a readily enforceable one.

[Wealh]

An Old English epithet with three primary connotations: 1) slave, 2) foreigner, and 3) 'Welsh'. The term is the root word for Wales/Welsh.

[Weoh]

An Old English term for a special site or item usually with magical/spiritual significance.

[Wulfheort]

An Old English epithet meaning "Wolf-hearted".

[Wrecend]

An Old English term meaning "avenger".

[PEOPLE]

[Ælfgar]

Son of Leofric of Mercia and an Earl of East Anglia. He was temporarily exiled during his sustained rivalry/quarrel with the Godwinesons, securing his return with the allyship of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, King of Wales.

[Æthelmær, Bishop of Elmham]

Archbishop Stigand's brother and the Bishop of Elmham after him.

[Æthelwig]

A powerful landowner based in Thetford.

[Beorhtwold (II)]

An abbot of Malmsbury. His manner of death in this story is fictional; he died during a "drunken orgy" in 1053.

[Cnut/Knut/Canute]

Also known as "Cnut the Great". He was King of England from 1016-1035, King of Denmark from 1018-1035 and King of Norway from 1028 to 1035. Inarguably the most successful Viking invader of England, although his sons (Harold and Harthacnut) failed to establish a dynasty after him.

[Edward the Confessor]

King of England from 1042 to 1066. His failure to produce an heir, fractious relationship with his eorls (specifically the Godwinesons) and Norman sympathies led to a succession crisis that ended with the Norman Conquest of England.

[Gruffudd ap Llywelyn]

The first and only King of Wales. Ruled from 1055 to 1063. Allied himself with Earl Ælfgar (marrying his daughter, Ealdgyth of Mercia) during his quarrel with the Godwinesons.

[Gyrth Godwineson]

One of the younger Godwinesons and Earl of East Anglia from 1057 to 1066. Died at the Battle of Hastings.

[Malcolm III]

The King of Scotland from 1058 to 1093, nicknamed "Canmore" (meaning 'big head').

[Harold Godwineson/Harold II]

King of England from January 6th to October 14th, 1066. After the death of his father Earl Godwin he became one of the most powerful men in England, second only to King Edward. After successfully repelling the invasion of Harald Hardrada, he was defeated at the Battle of Hastings by William the Conqueror.

[Harold Harefoot/Harold I]

The son of King Cnut by Ælfgifu of Northampton. King of England from around 1035-36 to 1040. Was not the favoured choice to succeed his father as king, as the then Archbishop of Canterbury (Æthelnoth) initially refused to crown him.

[Harthacnut]

The son of King Cnut by Emma of Normandy. King of Denmark from 1035 to 1042 and King of England from 1040 to 1042. His succession pact with Magnus the Good in 1039 was used as a pretext for Harald Hardrada's invasion of England in 1066.

[Stigand]

Archbishop of Canterbury & Winchester. His controversial possession of two sees/archbishoprics encouraged papal support for the invasion of England in 1066.

[Sweyn of Denmark]

King of Denmark from 1047 to 1076. Launched an unsuccessful invasion of England during William I's reign (1069).

[William the Conqueror]

Aka Guillaume le Bâtard/"William the Bastard". First Norman king of England. Defeated Harold II at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

[PLACES]

[Anwnn]

The underworld of Welsh Mythology. Unlike other underworlds it is a beautiful place of great abundance ruled by its king, Arawn.

[Bedanfordscir]

Present day Bedfordshire.

[Bledeburh]

Present day Blythburgh, Suffolk.

[Colneceastre]

Present day Colchester, Essex.

[Difelin]

Old English name for Dublin.

[Icknield Way]

A historic trail stretching from present day Norfolk to Wiltshire.

[Ledecestre]

Present day Leicester.

[Lundenburh]

Anglo-Saxon name for Londonium, roughly equivalent to the present-day City of London.

[Lygeanburgh]

A fortified site on the River Lea.

[Maldmesburh]

Present day Malmsbury.

[Mildenhale]

Present day Mildenhall, Suffolk.

[Meretūn]

Present day Marton.

[Northwic]

Present day Norwich, Norfolk.

[Oxburh]

Present day Oxborough.

[Roisia's Cross]

An ancient monument built at the intersection of Icknield Way and Ermine Street.

[Scrobbesbyrigscīr]

Present day Shropshire.

[Silingeham]

Present day Sheringham, Norfolk.

[St. Edmund's Bury]

Present day Bury/Bury St Edmunds

[Temese]

Old English spelling of the Thames.

[Theotford]

Present day Thetford.

[Wēalas]

Old English name for Wales.

[Wintanceaster]

Present day Winchester.

[Yernemuth]

Present day Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.