‘Is this how Rome treats her friends?’ Dagr asked, his hand on resting on his sword hilt.
‘Friends? You are no friends of Rome! We had an agreement, to work together until the outlaw was captured. We have him, and now that agreement is at an end. Leave.’
And just like that, I watched Dagr, Warin, Ishild and Birgir as they were ushered from my presence. ‘Kill me,’ I said to Silus, ‘do not make me beg.’
‘As much as I would love to Alaric, and really, I would, I have my orders. Your life is to be spared, you are to be released back into Germania.’
‘To what purpose? I would rather die than live to be Rome’s puppet!’ I meant every word.
‘Ha! Always so full of yourself! Your army is destroyed, you have no men, no lands to call your own. Tell me how you could be of service to the empire?’
It was true, all of it. What possible need would Rome have of me? ‘Then why? Why can I leave?’
‘Fucked if I know, just following orders. I do, however, feel as if I should give you a little present, before you go on your way.’ For the first time I noticed I was now surrounded by men in russet tunics, each showing me his teeth, their eyes void of pity. ‘Hold him,’ Silus ordered.
Hands grappled me, I was forced from my knees to my back, where I lay writhing and kicking. Silus and his men had good cause to hate me, as did so many men in and out of the empire. Whatever the ‘present’ was, I knew it would be nothing good.
‘Do you know how many men I have buried over the years, men forced to their graves by you and your ambition? Your schemes? Why, I have lost nearly two hundred just fighting you today! Their deaths will not go unavenged.’ Silus rasped his short sword from its scabbard and thrust the blade into a small fire that burned to my right shoulder. I turned my head to look at that blade, and for the first time saw its beauty. It was short, as all Roman swords are, maybe half the length of my own. The pommel itself that sat on the end of the bone hilt was not the bland round orb that ordained so many Roman swords but was carved into the head of an eagle. The iron blade was patterned with gentle swirls which seemed to move in the light of the fire.
When Silus judged the blade to be sufficiently heated he removed it from the fire. It glowed a deep orange; sweat poured down my face and I could feel my whole body shuddering in fear. ‘So, Alaric, here is something for you to remember me by.’
Without further ado or ceremony, Silus thrust the tip of the simmering blade down into my left eye. I felt first an intense burning, followed by a wave unbelievable agony. ‘And that’s the last we’ll ever hear of him,’ I heard Silus say, before I passed into oblivion.
EPILOGUE
(Five years later)
King Warin breathed deep the sweet summer air as he gazed out over the walls of Viritium. Life had been good to him, he considered, as he watched the last desperate peasants rush for the gates before they were closed for the night. He was king of both the Suebi and the Chauci now, thanks to the timely death of his father Dagr the year before. The old man had become a nuisance in the years that had followed the death of the outlaw Alaric at the hands of Rome.
Too many times had his father tried to interfere with Warin’s justice, his people. Always writing to offer his ‘advice’ on some matter or other, but Warin knew they were nothing more than barely concealed orders. He was his own man know, free of the shackles of both his father and his enemies. He was effectively the king of all the north, for no free tribe left had the strength or will to oppose him.
He was about to turn from the walls when a scuffle at the gates caught his attention. Two of his guards had stopped and were questioning a hooded man. Warin studied the newcomer, immediately feeling some small jolt of recognition, even though he could not see his face or hear his voice. But there was something about the way he carried himself, the way he moved his arms when he spoke. A long sword poked out from the back of his deep blue cloak, and Warin could see a knife hilt protruding from the top of his left boot.
He stayed a moment longer, deciding whether he should go down and get a closer look at this stranger. ‘Lord king,’ a voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘The queen asks for you lord, she says to tell you that she feels ‘this is the night.’’
Warin smiled. The one sour note on his reign so far had been his inability to put an heir in his wife’s belly. The gods knew it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Ishild remained the striking beauty she had been on the day they had married, the one advantage to her remaining barren being her body had stayed unburdened by the demands of childbirth. He felt the same heat in his loins then that he always felt when he thought of her naked. The swell of her breast as she held him to her chest, the thrusting of her hips as she straddled him… ‘Tell the queen I will be there directly.’ He set off for his bedchamber, all thoughts of the stranger vanquished from his mind.
Warin sighed as he spilled his seed, his body collapsing on top of Ishild. He lay there panting for a short time, breathing in deep the smell of their coupling mixed with the jasmine of her perfume.
Eventually he rose and filled two wooden cups with water from a jug on the table in the corner of the chamber. Turning to his wife he stood silent and enjoyed the sight of her in the candlelight. ‘If that doesn’t put a pup in you, I don’t know what will,’ he said with a half-smile, passing her the cup of water.
‘Tonight is the night, my woman has consulted the spinners. You must regain your strength, my husband, I will not let you sleep yet.’ Ishild put her arms round his shoulders and pulled him in close. Four wise women, she had consulted now about her empty womb, and four wise women had gone to meet the gods with a knife in their back, having all told her the same thing: ‘It is impossible, some women just cannot bare children. I am sorry, truly’ It made her feel vulnerable, and ever suspicious of her husband.
Warin had, she knew, whelped bastards on two of the serving girls in their hall. Brazenly they had shown off their growing bellies as if they were his queen. She knew Warin felt no real desire for either, and had only taken them to his bed to be sure it was not his seed that was to blame for their childless marriage. Night after night she allowed him to do more and more unthinkable things to her body beneath the sheets, whoring herself to him, keeping his eyes fixed only on her. She made sure to eat sparingly and exercised each morning, keeping her body firm and flexible. She had no wish to be cast aside for some fat milk cow who would give Warin a horde of children. He must stay infatuated with her, she would make sure he did.
Throwing aside her water cup she turned the king on to his back and wrapped her thighs around him. Warin moaned in pleasure, as she knew he would. Sitting up, she let her hair fall so it nestled in curls just below her graceful neck, then she shook her body ever so gently, so her breasts wobbled playfully, just inches from his face. ‘You are a vision, and a tease,’ he said, squeezing her buttocks.
‘How much do you love me?’ she whispered.
‘Gods, more than life itself,’ he groaned as he felt his manhood begin to ache. Warin lay back, groaning again. As much as he enjoyed the occasional romp with one of the serving girls, and the satisfaction the swell of their bellies in the months after gave him, there really was no other woman for him other than Ishild. No other woman that could meet his carnal desires.
A soft thud on the other side of the door to their chamber disturbed Warin from his pleasure, but only momentarily. ‘I see Amalia remains as clumsy as ever,’ Warin muttered, reaching down to grab a handful of Ishild’s hair.
‘She grows worse the fatter she becomes, but you would know nothing of that, of course,’ Ishild said innocently.
With a creak the door to their chamber opened, a gust of wind rushing through the room and extinguishing the light. ‘Damn you, Amalia!’ Warin cursed, rising to his feet and searching for the means to relight the nearest candle. ‘You know opening that door lets the wind in, and my wife does not like to sleep in shadow.’
Warin turned, ready to strike the serving girl, whether she c
arried his child or not. He had been so close to reaching a climax for the second time that night, and no woman could bring him there quite like his wife. ‘It is not the shadows you should fear, dear Warin, but what hides within.’
A man stepped into the chamber. He wore a cloak of deep blue, and in his right hand held a long sword with a pommel of black leather. He had long, dark hair, which he wore free flowing past his shoulders. His right eye was as black as the night and as Warin looked into it he saw not a flicker of emotion. His left eye was covered with an off white bandage. He had a great beard of the type Warin could only dream of growing, thick and curly, beneath it sat a golden torc, depicting the Allfather sat atop his throne, winged by his Ravens Huginn and Muninn.
‘No… no’ Warin stammered as he staggered back into the chamber, knocking the water jug off the small table.
‘Yes,’ the man said, an evil grin fixed on his face.
He raised his sword high, paused for one sweet moment, and then exacted his revenge.
HISTORICAL NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. There never was (to my knowledge) a Germanic warrior named Alaric, and he did not lead a notorious band of outlaws that called themselves the Ravensworn.
The Roman empire in the reign of Antoninus Pius – Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus – to give him his full name, was largely at peace. There were wars in northern Britain, leading to the building of the Antonine Wall, which stretched Roman control of Britain a further ninety nine miles north. Rome would not however, be able to hold it for long. In the east there were the normal skirmishes between the Romans and the Parthians, and on the Danube and Rhine frontiers there were continual raids from and skirmishes with the unruly Germanic tribes.
Rome, for a number of reasons, never were able to stretch their dominance into Germania. Germania was some distance from the Mediterranean, her people very different to those in Hispania, or Greece, or Africa. They were not one people, for a start, but tribal and tended to hate each other as much – or maybe more – than they hated Rome. They lived in small villages or towns, they had no roads and that made each tribe very much isolated from their neighbours. Rome made many attempts to conquer the eastern banks of the Rhine river, and for a time managed to hold some sway of control as far east as the Elbe. But by the mid second century, where this story takes place, those days were long gone.
When researching into the tribes of Germania, one must begin with Tacitus. Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a renown orator and writer in his day. A keen historian, the surviving portions of his two major works the Annals and the Histories examine the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and the cacophony of the year of the four emperors. His other works were Agricola, which was an account of his father-in-law’s triumphs in the conquest of Britain, and Germania. It is fair to say Tacitus did not think much of the native Germani people, or their land. On just the first page of Germania it reads: ‘Who would leave Asia or Africa or Italy and seek out Germania, with its unlovely scenery and bitter climate, dreary to inhabit and even to behold, unless it were his home?’ Sounds a bit like Britain, don’t you think?!
It is believed Tacitus wrote this some time at the end of the first century AD or early second century AD. Even though this novel is set just half a century later, the change in the tribes would have been dramatic. It was survival of the fittest in the wild lands, small tribes were being swallowed up by the large ones, villages were becoming towns, towns becoming capitals, capitals becoming fortresses. The Suebi, Marcomanni and the Quadi are known to have been three of the most powerful at the time, and Rome did never quite figure out what to do about them. Divide and conquer, was the usual modus operandi for Rome, though with Germania the ‘conquer’ part remained forever elusive. Through bribery and cunning they would continually pitch one tribe against another, their frumentarii agents scouring the land, whispering in the right chief’s ear, dropping pouches of gold into the right hand. That was their only solution, keep them fighting against each other, help them to ‘forget’ that if they ever did unite they would pose a genuine threat to the ‘Pax Romana.’
And that is where we find our Alaric. Outlawed from his tribe, he has a deep and unrivalled hatred of Rome and her meddling into Germanic affairs. This is, of course, not the first time I have met Alaric Hengistson. My debut novel, The Centurion’s Son, is set on the Danube frontier roughly twenty years after this book concludes. Alaric was the antagonist in both that and the sequel ,War In The Wilderness. If you have read them both then you will know his fate, if you haven’t, then I shall not spoil it for you here. There has never been any doubt in my mind that Alaric is anything over than a scoundrel. He is however, extremely enjoyable to write!
I finished writing War In The Wilderness in February 2018, and immediately threw myself into planning the third in the trilogy. But I found my mind wandering, my thoughts continuously going back to the same character. So, I thought, why not take a few months and write a short story, get the noise out of my head and then fully focus on the job in hand.
That short story ended up taking ten months to write, and became Oathbreaker, a full length novel. I had absolutely no plan for the story, which was a first for me, and found writing it to be my most challenging and enjoyable writing experience to date.
I have one or two sins to confess, and for any Roman historians reading this I better bare them now. Tacitus was, by the mid second century, almost certainly long dead. There is no record of his death and we do not know when and where that happened. By the reign of Antoninus he was most probably entombed in one of the many mausoleums that filled the cemeteries around the city of Rome, and not running the frumentarii agents in Pannonia. It was a split second decision to throw him into the story, I only decided I was going to do it as I found the clerk in Carnuntum speaking his name. My descriptions of Carnuntum, Ulpia Noviomagus and Colonia Ulpia Traiana are all of my own imagination. There is an excellent book called Handbook to Roman Legionary Fortresses by historian M.C. Bishop which gives us a basic understanding of the shape and layout of every known fortress in the Roman world, so I let my imagination build on those groundworks.
For further reading on Rome or the Roman army I would highly recommend the following books, which I have found most useful in the last couple of years: Roman Military Equipment, by M.C. Bishop and J.C.N Coulston; Marcus Aurelius, by Frank Mclynn; The Complete Roman Army, by Adrian Goldsworthy is an absolute must for those researching the legions. I could name another twenty, but I shall leave it at those for now. We are very fortunate to know as much as we do about Rome and her empire, but the amount of knowledge lost to time is staggering. For those of you looking for primary source authors then check out the works of Suetonius, Tacitus, Plutarch, Virgil, Ammianus Marcellinus, to name but a few – the stories they tell shine a light on a long lost world.
I will end by thanking you, the reader, for walking Alaric’s path with me, I hope it has been as enjoyable to read as it was to create. If you haven’t yet read The Centurion’s Son and War In The Wilderness, then please do hop onto Amazon and check them out. The final instalment of The Centurion’s Son trilogy is titled Shield Of The Rising Sun, and I am finally about to commence writing it, right now.
Until the next time,
Adam Lofthouse, January 2019
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Adam has for many years held a passion for the ancient world. As a teenager he picked up Gates of Rome by Conn Iggulden, and has been obsessed with all things Rome ever since. After ten years of immersing himself in stories of the Roman world, he decided to have a go at writing one for himself. The Centurion’s Son is Adam’s first novel. He lives in Kent, with his wife and three sons.
Follow Adam on twitter: @AdamPLofthouse
Or find him on Facebook: facebook.com/AdamPLofthouse
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