The Blood of the Iutes: The Song of Octa Book 1 (The Song of Britain 4)

by James Calbraith

  There are six of them, standing on the foreshore, waiting; one of them holds Bana’s arm in a tight grip. I can guess who they are before we get close enough to see their faces: sons of the Iute warriors. Fathers of two of them are members of the Hiréd, the king’s household guard: the most elite fighters of the tribe. They have names, but I could never be bothered to remember them; they all have the same pudgy faces, turning deep pink in the sun; the same thatch of pale, almost translucent hair — they might as well all be siblings.

  I raise the oars, slow down and nod at the others to catch up to me so we can prepare for the inevitable brawl.

  “Will they really dare to fight you?” asks Ursula.

  “I can’t hide behind my father forever,” I reply. “If it’s a fair fight, there’s no reason for me to avoid it.”

  “They’ll crush us,” says Gille. “Look at their arms. They’re as big as my legs.”

  “They may have brawn, but they don’t have our brains,” I say. “Give me a minute to come up with a plan.”

  I’m boasting to raise their spirits, but for the moment, I don’t have any idea how we can get out of this without a sound beating. Gille is right to fear the six boys. They’re taller and stronger than any one of us, except Audulf, and have been spending all their free time in combat training, hoping one day to succeed their fathers. We brawled with some of them before, in smaller groups, but have never yet had to face all six at once.

  Bana cries out, his arm twisted behind his back.

  “Hey, you mongrels!” yells one of the six, “if you don’t hurry up, we’ll just have to beat up your friend, instead!”

  “What in Hel do you want from us?” I call back, though I can guess why they’re here. I’m playing for time; I need a plan, and fast.

  “You’ve desecrated the sacred place of our people,” the pale-haired boy replies. “Disturbed the spirits of our fallen with your foolish playing.”

  “We haven’t done any such thing,” replies Gille. “We just rowed there and back.”

  “Hengist’s grave is not some arena for you to race around! But of course, you wouldn’t understand it — none of you is a real Iute!” He spits.

  This is the main reason why the warriors’ sons loathe the five of us; this is why they really came here today. At last, we’ve given them enough of an excuse; but they’ve been itching to make us suffer for months for the perceived crime of trying to live among the Iutes as if we belonged here.

  Ursula, dark-haired and dark-eyed, is the worst offender; she isn’t even a barbarian — she’s a wealh, a Briton, a native of this land, daughter of Dorowern nobles, representing the Cants at Rex Aeric’s court. Little Gille, his face as pale as his short, spiky hair, is a Frisian; his parents, a family of horse traders, settled near Dubris a few years ago, and now provide mounts for the king’s guard. Audulf’s father arrived on Tanet from Frankia to help in the war with the Britons. And Bana, squirming in the grasp of his tormentor, was born into a family of Saxon smiths in the Trinowaunt land to the north; they moved across the Tamesa to sell their metal ware to the Iute warriors.

  Myself, I’m a half-breed. My mother was a Briton, a native of this land. I have her bright red hair and green eyes. People tell me I have my father’s slightly bulbous nose, and the ruddy complexion of his kin; but it’s not enough to make me pass for a Iute in the eyes of those whose parents came here on the sleek ceols from the Old Country.

  This is a new world for most of the Iutes, this stew of tribes and races; they lived for too long in the crowded squalor of Tanet, and some of them had grown used to only ever seeing and talking to others like them. Back in the Old Country, before the wars and the great upheavals of peoples that forced them out, they would rarely see anyone other than their neighbours, or a passing Anglian or Saxon merchant. Even long after leaving Tanet and settling down on the mainland, their villages and farms were only peopled by the Iutes; the war with the Britons — a terrible, bloody conflict which pitted the Iutes and their Saxon and Frankish allies against the armies of the wealh — further cemented the bonds between the tribesmen and made them feel that they could only count on each other for support.

  But that war ended years ago, and in the time of calm and relative wealth that followed, people from across the Narrow Sea began to see Britannia as a safe haven from the many conflicts that continued to shake the Continent. Much like the Iutes a generation earlier, others would now land on the friendly shores of the easternmost province of Cantiaca — or Cantia, for short, as the newcomers have begun to call it— seeking peace or fortune; and much like the arrival of Iutes, this new migration has spawned a new conflict with those already here, if only for a generation.

  “If you want to one day be in the Hiréd, you should watch how you talk of my father,” I say.

  The Iute scoffs. “By the time we’re in the Hiréd, your father will be long gone,” he says ominously. “We’d rather serve under Haesta.”

  “Then maybe you should go join him now,” I reply. “I’m sure there’s space in his filthy mud huts!”

  The boat grinds on the shoal; the tide is ebbing, and there’s a good hundred feet of dark, wet, heavy sand and gravel between us and the enemy, enough to slow down any charge. A head-on attack is out of the question, and though the six Iutes are far from the smartest boys in Rutubi, I doubt I can goad them to run towards us.

  “I could just whack them over the heads with the oar,” offers Audulf. The Iutes are unarmed, as far as I can tell — and anyway, even they wouldn’t dare attack me with blades — and an oar in Audulf’s hands would be a deadly weapon.

  I shake my head. “Not while they have Bana. They came here for a fist fight, and we have to honour that.”

  “Not much honour in fighting six against four,” says Ursula.

  “True,” I admit. “It does seem like we have a bit of an unfair advantage,” I add with a smile as we start wading through the surf. “Now, listen carefully…”

  “Your father wants to see you,” the guard at the gate says. She eyes my bruises but says nothing.

  “Good. Where is he?” I ask. She points towards the stofa, the wooden bathing hut. Steam rises through its thatched roof.

  “Again?” I roll my eyes. “How many times a month does this man need to wash?”

  I cross the wide-open yard of Rutubi. It’s a memory of a Roman fortress, still surrounded by an ancient, crumbling wall of striped stone. The Iutes live on a borrowed land, a land of the dead, and we are surrounded by the reminders of that fact everywhere we look: lines of raised dirt and patches of stone pavement mark the foundations of the barrack houses, officers’ halls, warehouses, water cisterns. In view of the fortress walls stands the great stone circle of the amphitheatre, and between the two, more grassy mounds and outcrops of stone mark a garrison village that had once sprouted here. The only Roman building that still stands is the small chapel by the cemetery, rebuilt in Hengist’s time as a symbol of peace between the pagan Iutes and the Christian wealas, to serve the natives who still tilled their old scraps of land scattered among the new Iutish farms.

  The Romans, too, built their stone dwellings on someone else’s land — that of the native Britons, whom they subdued, conquered, ruled for centuries, and then abandoned when the Empire’s fates turned. There are no more Romans in Rutubi. Iutish buildings now stand where once the Legions dwelled, made of wood, dirt and thatch set up atop cracked stone pavements — the mead hall, the guest house, the granary, the brewer’s hut, the blacksmith’s forge… In the middle of it all, a few of the Hiréd train spear-fighting under the watchful eye of their Gesith, war chief, Betula. I nod at her respectfully, and she nods back, brushing silver hair from her eyes with her one remaining hand; she lost her right arm fighting the Britons. Her daughter, Croha, a pretty twelve-year-old with golden mouse-tails, stands at her side; she’s holding a long stick, and imitates the movements of the spearmen as best as she can.

  The stofa, built at my father’s command, stands
in the corner where the Legion’s bath house once stood, back when the Legions were still garrisoned within the walls of the fort, to guard Britannia’s shores from raiders and pirates. But it’s been almost fifty years since a Legionnaire was last seen anywhere near Rutubi, and longer still since the Legions resided here permanently, and their bath house was long ago dismantled for building stone to repair the palaces of the wealh nobles. Now, even these are falling apart…

  I enter and wait for my eyes to adjust to the dim light of the oil lamp inside, diffused on the thick steam. This is nothing like the Roman baths of old: great buildings with heated floors and separate chambers for cold and hot water, the remains of which I’d seen in Londin — and that my father would still have used in his youth; like everything else around us, this one’s just a memory, a dream, a twisted mockery of the past: a simple lead tub, dug into a hole in the ground, that a servant fills with water heated up in a big cauldron.

  I find my father sitting on the rim of the tub, with his back to the entrance and his legs in the water, drying himself with a towel. In the light of the lamp, I can see all his old scars. The mess of badly healed skin along his right side and arm is where he stopped a great stag from trampling Wortigern, the Dux of the Britons, on a hunt in the West. The deep cut on his right shoulder is from a duel with Wortigern’s son, Wortimer, at the Battle of Crei, where the Iute fyrd beat a Briton force sent from Londin. A spear wound in his left side — a duel with Brutus, Wortimer’s commander, at the Battle of Eobbasfleot, where the combined armies of Iutes and Saxons defeated the alliance of Britons marching to destroy the barbarians at the end of the great war. There are other scars and bruises from minor skirmishes and fights that were not important enough to talk about or sing of in the songs of the scops. Each marks a different time in history when he fought for the future of the tribe. His tribe.

  Few people see him like this, other than the bath servants. He took no wife after both women he loved died in short succession; I am his only remaining family. When he’s not at home or in the bath, he wears a white woollen tunic, plaid breeches and a rich cape lined with bear fur: a gift from Frankia; a thick golden armband, carved with dragons and wolves, adorns his right arm, and a long seax sword hangs at his waist, to complete the look of a powerful barbarian warlord.

  This isn’t how he looked the first time I saw him. I was twelve years old then, and terrified, and he was just another young warrior, one among a massive host of Iutes and Saxons gathered on the shores of the Narrow Sea not far from Rutubi’s ancient walls. I watched him fight a Briton general on the beach, and win, but I didn’t understand anything of what was happening.

  Two years earlier, soldiers in odd uniforms and speaking in strange accents, invaded our village, slew the man I thought was my father, burned down our house, and took me away, far to the West. During those two years, I lived in a community of Christian hermits on some distant seashore, a place of faith and learning. The hermits taught me to speak the Imperial Latin and were just about to start preparing me for a baptism, when another man arrived to take me away yet again. This one was old and grey, but with a majestic demeanour and the taut muscles of an old soldier. He told me that his name was Wortigern and that he was going to take me back home.

  But my home was gone, and I never returned to what was left of my village. For reasons I did not yet understand that young Iute warrior, whom I watched kill the Briton general on Rutubi beach, took me into his care, even though my mother, Eadgith, still lived. He took me to stay at the Londin Cathedral with Bishop Fastidius, while my mother, until now a village blacksmith, moved to a distant island of Wecta. There she ruled a colony of Iutes — and there she fell, fighting for her people.

  Two years ago that Iute warrior — not so young anymore — brought me the grim news of her death. That same day he announced that he was my real father… and that the gathering of tribal elders, the witan, had just elected him as Rex Aeric, King of the Iutes.

  He turns around.

  “What happened to your face?” he asks.

  “A mock fight, turned real,” I reply with a shrug.

  We talk in Latin, the High Imperial tongue, rather than Iutish; my father insists that we use it whenever we’re alone, so that I sharpen my skills and that he — surrounded by barbarians — keeps alive the memory of a better time, a time when he lived among the wealh as one of their own.

  “Did you win?”

  “…no.”

  It started well enough, but it was always going to be a slim chance. I took to the fight as I would to a battle, using all the knowledge of strategy and tactics I gained from the books my father and uncle had me read. We rushed the leader of the six boys, all four of us, in a diamond formation — there weren’t enough of us to form a wedge — Ursula and Gille at my sides, Audulf at the back; we kicked him down and sent Audulf through the gap before the others piled on us. Bana, encouraged by our help, wrestled with the boy fighting him, reducing the enemy’s numbers to equal ours. I punched one of the Iutes squarely in the face, scraping my knuckles on his nose; Ursula bit and scratched at another ferociously, forcing him back, and Audulf grappled the third by the neck and brought him to the ground.

  But none of that was enough. There were too many of them, and they were too strong. Gille was the first to lose his fight, thrown back into the surf and kicked in the stomach until he pled surrender. Bana soon followed, choked, his arm twisted almost to breaking. In the end, with Ursula pinned to the sand by the strongest of the Iute youths, only Audulf and I remained standing against a flurry of kicks and blows, until at last we, too, succumbed and fell; I curled up and covered my head with my hands until our tormentors at last grew bored; they trampled our satchels, broke the flasks and left, laughing and calling us cowards and weaklings.

  I sniffle and wipe blood trickling from my nose. The bruises still sting.

  “I’ll have Betula punish whoever did this,” my father says.

  “Please, don’t. It’s fine. It was a fair fight.”

  “You’re an aetheling. A king’s son,” he says. “You can’t go around getting beaten up like this. What if next time you get really hurt?”

  “I can’t just sit at the court all day, afraid to come out.”

  “And I’m not asking you to — I’m just saying, you should be more careful.”

  “What did you want to see me about?”

  “I was going to tell you not to go to Tanet anymore — but looks like I was too late.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “At least stay away from Hengist’s grave. Things have been a bit… tense since he died.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “We may not have seen eye-to-eye, but he was a calming presence while he lived…” He looks up. “Is that why they attacked you? Because you went there?”

  “They attacked me because I’m not one of them,” I say ruefully. “Because I’m a half-breed. And so are my friends.”

  He scoffs. “They called me a half-Iute all my life,” he says. “Or a half-Briton, depending who you ask. You just learn to endure it. You will rule them one day — then they won’t dare call you anything other than their Hlaford.”

  I sit down next to him at the edge of the tub. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why should I rule them? They’re right — I am a half-breed. I don’t even look like any of them.” I touch my flame-red hair.

  He laughs. “We talked about this. You’re my son. That’s why.”

  “I know that’s good enough reason for you,” I say. “But it won’t be enough for the others. There are other Iutes — proper Iutes — who would make as good rulers as I would, if not better. What if someone challenges me when you’re gone?”

  “I’m not going anywhere yet.”

  “You can’t promise that, Father. Every pirate raid, every border skirmish — every time you ride a horse or go hunting — you could suffer an accident and die. What then would become of me?”

  He l
ooks at my face. He takes me by the chin and studies my bruises and cuts carefully.

  “You’re shaken,” he says. “Some of those blows could’ve really hurt you if they had fallen just a couple of inches away. Are you sure you don’t want me to send Betula after whoever did this to you?”

  I shake my head from his grasp. “That would only make them loathe me more,” I reply. “I can’t go through life protected by the Hiréd, no matter how loyal Betula is to my mother’s memory. How did you make them respect you? You weren’t anybody’s son — you were a slave, a foundling. And you weren’t even a strong warrior. You told me so yourself.”

  “No, I wasn’t.” He nods. “I got beaten all the time when I was your age. I lost more fights than I won — and I have scars to prove it.” He chuckles. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to tell you. You’re still young. You’ll have time.”

  “But I’m not that young! When you were my age, you were already a warrior, and a Councillor in Londin not much later — the hero of Saffron Valley… I know the saga — gods know your scops sing it often enough for me to have learned it by heart.”

  “It was a different time,” he says. “A time of chaos, of war. It was easier to be a hero then — but also easier to die. We have peace now. There are other ways to prove oneself.”

  There is an odd, longing quality to his voice, and a glint in his eyes which I don’t often see.

  “You miss those days,” I note.

  “A part of me does,” he admits, staring into the water, cool and dark by now. “It may be just because I was younger — and happier… Sometimes I think I had more freedom as a wealh slaveling than I do now, as a Rex. Besides,” he adds with a wistful smile, “I lived in Londin, then. And we both know nothing can compete with that place.”

  “Then why did you abandon all this? Ambition?”

  “Ambition?” He scoffs. “I never wanted any of this.” He glances around. “Don’t tell this to anyone but being a king of the Iutes is… boring, most of the time. And wearisome. No, it was never my choice. It was forced upon me — by Fate, by our enemies, by a sense of duty…” He blinks and looks back at me. “It is not a light burden, son.”