EPILOGUE > END OF PART TWO
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EPILOGUE
My name is Stigweard Ruadhan of Hereteu and I am a Northumbrian. I am the son of Galenhćst and our family have been raised as Thegns to local Ealdormen for generations. As such our weregild – or our worth to our community; monetarily, militarily and socially – was as such a heavy price, though it paled into mere pittance in comparison with others in the kingdom.
We lived on the savage coast of Northumbria, our bluffs white with the crests of wild waves from the heaving grey seas beyond us. We settled the lands of the ‘hćstapa’ or the ‘noble stags’ and they, along with our ancestors bore us great fortune. The gods still walk among those lands for we would make them a great home there.
We are a proud people, though there were little more than thirty of us within our village, we grew strong with that pride, we grew powerful and we made a many great and fearsome enemies. But my story does not begin there. It begins many long years back – when the skies thundered above us and the ground shook below us.
My story begins with death.
PART ONE
The festival of Yule was fast approaching and it was the early morn of Modraniht - Mother's Night. Our world was bound by ice and darkness; crops failed to yield, our livestock was devastated and our people cowered in their homes, afraid to venture beyond their doors. A great shadow had swallowed our lands and we prayed that the gods would release us from such a fate.
I was sixteen years of age and although my father had impressed upon me the dire nature of our circumstance I was far too excited to care. I had begun my training as a soldier within our Gedriht - the Bodyguard of the Earl. Yet as I was still to fight in open warfare I was assigned to the Geoguth, or the Young Warriors. I was to fight shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield for my kingdom, for my Lord and for my people.
Looking back I was naive, even pathetic. I was soon to learn my lesson.
As I left our home the crisp, bitter sting of winter was immediate and I pulled my cloak across my chest as wisps of air danced from my mouth and out into a sky bruised purple, orange and grey. I could hear the waves crashing against the bluffs thick with lichen and frost and the gulls wheeling and crying out above me. This was my kingdom; savage and wild, beautiful and unforgiving.
The wind whipped the cloak from my grasp as I set out across the market square and past the Christian Abbey that glowered down at me in my insignificance. The only stone building in our village, it dominated without apology. My father, unashamedly pagan in a land of burgeoning Christianity, found it an abhorrence that we should dwell beneath its shadow - but that we did. My mother, eager to please the Earl, had been baptised a year ago during the Yule celebrations. Whilst we drank ale, mead and wine she knelt for hours, paid penitence for things she should otherwise be proud of and was washed by a priest with some water. The Abbey itself was named for some sour wench who had knelt for a great deal longer during her life and, as my father pointed out, there are better things for a woman to be doing on her knees than saying sorry to a god. Her name was St. Hild and she had done rather a service to her 'Christ' god by converting many of those in the villages around us. She had died two hundred years ago and so it was decided that her name be used.
We have been lumbered with the miserable old hag ever since as her body lies entombed within the walls. Strange people, these Christians.
As I glanced past the abbey and out onto the sea beyond I was struck - as I was every morn - by the sheer beauty of that sea. Even as wisps of mist curled and tumbled across the marshy grasslands to the east of the village, she bore such spectacle with an awesome beauty.
"You're late..." the enchantment was broken by the growl of Harlan, the Lord of the Gedriht and the single most frightening hulk of Saxon I have ever laid my eyes upon.
Harlan demanded respect at all times, or at least his appearance did. His stare bore holes into men, black as the wolf's and filled with equal menace, his hair falling about his face and a great beard that barely revealed an expression of sheer joy during the throes of battle. His shoulders were full of raw strength and sheer muscle. He was a man mountain it is sure, but his true worth as a warrior came from his huge heart. It was once spoken, and indeed still is, of his bravery during the war with the northern Picts many years ago when he held five of the horde back with his battle axe 'Black Raven'. Many whispered that he hacked and tore at the enemy with such vehemence that he was sodden with their blood by battle's end, their warmth ebbing away from him as steam rising into the northern air.
"Are you for whipping, son of Galenhćst? Or are you to offer your blood at Modraniht?" Harlan snarled, an accusatory finger pointed toward me. I dared not respond but merely quickened my pace and pulled my cloak about me as a child chastised. The man mountain was as pagan as I, though he made great efforts to stifle any public displays, lest Earl Allaric find fault in his greatest warrior. Our gods had been stricken from our village by this Christ god for as long as I have lived and we are discouraged to speak their names. Our festivals were deemed as 'uncouth' yet a blind eye was turned. Another would be turned this eve when we honoured the great mother - and Harlan would be there as would I.
We had brought our gods many centuries before from the lands east of this isle. I was an Angeln, as was the majority of my village, whilst Harlan was Saxon and though our people now shared a language and had forged a great many kingdoms together, we still thought of one another as elţeodig - foreigners. We would soon think differently.
Harlan was in little mood for my insolence that day and I was cuffed about my head many times, so many that I have forgotten the number but never the pain. A great storm tore through our village that day, just as we had been finishing the drills, and we sought shelter in the 'ealuheall' - ale hall. Modraniht would begin with haste for us and it was then that I learned that Harlan could drink and drink well, though his tongue was never loosened as is the fate that befalls many a man. He remained stoic and brooding throughout countless horns of mead and ale - though I cannot claim such myself for I was found sleeping with the cattle not but a few hours into our sacred night.
It was to be the last peaceful night of my youth...
PART TWO
I awoke to raised voices and cries of anxiety. Through the gloom came an ominous portent - a rider from the north had brought with him the stench of death, and it would follow with him. His face was gaunt, pain etched upon it and fear screaming in his eyes.
"The fury of the Northmen has returned...may the Lord God protect us!" Father Cenric was beating his chest and holding the cross of Christ within his trembling hands, his hysteria compounded by the growing crowd around him. He was a pitiful man - my father had taken a great dislike to him and that was partly due to his fondness of my mother. Ever since her baptism that priest had taken great care to visit her with increasingly mundane anecdotes about a seagull that had turned to his god or a seal who had sprouted wings. He could shovel pig dung with that slimy tongue of his and I suspected this was only his latest contribution.
A voice from behind me, familiar and sincere. "Son, go home to your mother and sisters..." my father had put a hand upon my shoulder and continued on past me towards the crowd, turning briefly to look into my eyes with his, "and prepare your armour. The Danes mean to take our homes." I remember feeling nauseas at that point and I have always maintained that it was the ale turning in my gut. Childish pride would never allow me to be scared or fearful - but I was scared, I was fearful and I had every notion to be.
I had heard many talk about the Danes, the great Northmen who rained fire and death upon our lands a century ago when dragons blackened the sun and tore through our skies in a blaze of anger. The monks of Lindisfarena had then been put to axe and sword and Christ had slept that day, unable to save any of them. The Danes had grown fat from their horde on the island, for priests and monks are notorious in their hunger for gold and silver and those on the holy island had been sating their appetite for years. But now they meant to take far more than that. The rider, it would seem, brought grave news.
The Danes had taken Bebbanburgh, Lindisfarena and Gyruum in less than three days. Their fleet was said to number in excess of two thousand men and they had made light work of our kingdom thus far. Though Bebbanburgh had held for two days they had inexplicably sallied forth into the marshes to confront the Danes and had been cut down within hours. The Earl's family had been hung from the castle walls and the women of the household raped and cut from gut to throat - their insolence punished in the most severe manner. Lindisfarena had been a massacre. Though the monks had worked to restore their holy place, it fell in just minutes, their silver, gold, brooches, art and ironware torn from them and their abbey torched. The Danes liked the priests even less than we did and had disembowled each and every one and left them to the gulls.
As for Gyruum, to the immediate north, the Danes had found the villagers unprepared and had killed many of the men before a blade could be drawn in defence. The survivors were rounded up and herded into the church were it was burned to the ground. The stench of burning flesh, we had been told, was horrific and hung over the village even now. This was the last the man would tell us, for his clothes stunk of smoke and rotting corpses. He had hidden amongst the dead in Gyruum to escape and had walked two days to reach us. Which meant the Danes would not be far behind, for a rider had visited his village but an evening before the wrath of the Northmen was visited upon them - just as he was visiting us.
The order was given that sentries were to be posted every 200 paces around our village. We had hoped that the valley in which we sat would give us good warning of the Dane's arrival upon our lands. I had thought it futile, we were twenty men against an army of countless warriors. We would be butchered and waiting here for the fates to crush us was beyond my comprehension.
But then, we would not have to wait long...
The Danes made landing to our south where the seals bask in the expanse of sand-dune and mudflats during low tide. As the Shelduck, Knot and Redshank wheeled and barrelled through the murky dawn, three ships with ominous beasts at their prows had been spotted by a scout along our marshland some distance from the mouth of the River Tees. They brought with them weapons of great slaughter - our slaughter. War axes, iron swords, barbed spears and vicious daggers were loaded from the ships along with the northmen. Our village had hunting spears, farming scythes blunt from use and a scant supply of tree felling axes. The Earl's money - torn asunder along with the man - meant nothing here. We were farmers and fishermen and we were good for tax and tithe, but little else.
Night had fallen and the men had gathered in the market square, torches illuminating faces etched with apprehension and fear. Our women and children cowered in the abbey of St.Hild. If the shrivelled hag could work miracles, she would now have the perfect opportunity. The building was the most secure in the village with thick oak doors crafted from the forests of our lands and stone walls hewn from the cliffs along our coast. For that night, the abbey was Hereteu and we would die before the North men took her...we would die, or else our women and children would burn in flames as those had done before us.
Harlan stood a few steps ahead of me, his eyes fixed upon the pale moon shrouded in creeping mist. He was praying to the gods - there was little necessity in maintaining the pretence that he was anything other than a pagan now, after all, his Earl was hanging from Bebbanburgh's walls, his entrails providing a meal for the crows.
"Harlan and I will be by your side son" my father gave me a cursory glance, his eyes wide and darting across the fields to our south, "and if you should see us fall to the blade of a Dane, you must promise me that you will run..." his eyes fixed upon me now, his expression adamant and expectant. I merely shrugged my shoulders, my mouth agape in search of the words. I had not considered that my father would die. Until now.
"I...I would avenge you!" my youthful cocksure naivety had tossed such morbid realities from my mind and I was speaking like an idiot again.
"You would be butchered. The Danes would rip out that tongue from your head and shove it from where you speak most often!" his eyes burned with disdain for a short time when he spat that at me. But he was right. I didn't appreciate it at the time and instead railed against the barb, but he was right. "You will run."
It was then we heard their cries. Brutal, feral and horrific in the darkness of the night. They emerged from the gloom as though demons from the pits of that Christian hell, their blades ready for blood, their hearts black with death.
Ethelwulf the blacksmith was the first to fall. That I shall always remember. His neck hacked until his head lurched back and deep red gushed onto the crisp white. He staggered and fell, his fingers clutching and grasping as blood spilled out into the winter air, steam rising from him. His cries were haunting. A garbled call for his wife, a choking and a sickening gargle as though drowning in his own blood. All I could do was to stare, watch as neighbours and friends sank to their knees one by one, cut down by tools of slaughter. For tools they seemed in the hands of those Danes. Every act deliberate, considered and aimed to create the most destruction at all times.
And their faces fixed in morbid joy. Their mouths wide and their dead eyes, wide and catching the moonlight.
All about me, death.
As an axe thumped into my fathers helmet I felt no anguish. As blood bubbled up from the gaping wound and his skull opened I felt no remorse. As he crumpled into a heap at my feet I felt no anger.
I turned and I could see flames leaping from the abbey, but I could not hear the screams. Tears flooded my eyes and my legs ached as they pounded through the thick snow.
I was running. Numb.