The waves crashed against the shore with a fierceness that had not dulled in their more than million years of life. The shore had hardly dulled or retreated either, to give the enemy of the sea her due. To the contrary the shoreline seemed to have to her eyes only grown, so that it menaced now the quay with ever more water, she thought with a small smile. The rain had not helped she knew, as it tended to pour down upon the Lordly-Isle with ever increasing fury. An island is a land where no man may rest easy, her father the former lord of Nairlam had always loved to say.

  “A man who rests easy is a man after all, who lacks not only fear but also knowledge,” he would say to any who might listen, “It is why, men of this island are constantly battered by storms. The storms that batter us do not weaken us but strengthen us.”

  He had had many proverbs, and many sayings that he had passed down to her, as he had had no other children. He had fathered a number of sons and daughters, yet none save she had reached adulthood.

  The memory of him was never far from her memory whenever she visited Auldchester. He had walked those very halls many times for he had been one of the most formidable warriors in Brittia. So much so that he had won for himself the approval of the Romalians, who had esteemed him enough to grant him proconsular authority over the lands and tribes of Norlion that he might help lead excursions into the northern lands. He had also aided in the reorganizing of the northern forces so that the Romalians could rest easy, and concentrate upon taming Cymru and Ergyng which had begun to be colonized by érians and become a hot-bed of rebellions.

  This dual problem of érian pirates and colonists, combined with the residents of the western hinterlands rebelling and throwing out their regional governors. It was entirely the fault of the Romalians, she told herself resentfully, what use were they if they could not guarantee the stability of the realm in those regions where they had pushed the most recalcitrant and violent of the Bretwealdan tribes.

  Pushing these thoughts from her mind, as she followed after her husband Judica?l, himself a tall blond haired man of some forty years, with grey eyes and a long beard. He was muscular, and with a hesitant streak that while it had guaranteed him the favour of her father, had yet to wholly win over a great many of those who populated the vast estates and lands of Judica?l. His father had been a formidable giant of a man, with a robust air about him, a loud laugh and a steely edge honed to a fine point by years of military service to the Romalian governors of Brittia.

  Alana could not quite put her finger upon why the castle felt different. It was the same stone building built so long ago by the Romalians with wooden extensions and three stone towers that she had played in as a young girl. She had visited it a number of times in her girlhood, though she had not realized it then but she was a hostage.

  Now at the age of twenty-four almost twenty years after she first stepped foot into the hallowed halls of Auldchester, here she was again. This time though, the happy memories of the reign of King Llyr II were wiped away. How had they been erased? By a storming of the fortresses of Britannica? Or was it by a thousand arrow-wounds? No, it was none of these things that had seen the realm of Roparzh II’s great kingdom and preserved in some form by the Romalians changed.

  It was the Valhols. They had arrived at first as little as five hundred men at the start, with those men having arrived nigh on a century prior. Arriving as Foederati they had swiftly proven their quality as warriors in a number of battles in the north of the Lordly-Island. Afterwards they had returned home, only for their descendants to return seventy years later, this time under the command of Botwulf who fought well for Maximus for a full decade. This barbarian commander had of course died in the midst of another war against those from the north as the Pechs had begun to use érian ships to circumnavigate the Wall of Kadrianus. This had increased the frequency of attacks, with some Pechs even somehow managing to assail the Great Wall and to overtake some parts of it, due to how most of the Romalians had retreated from the Lordly-Isle.

  It was because of this departure that the native people of Brittia were now defenceless. Her tribes without protectors save for the most token of defences in the shape of a great wall and three Legios composed each of six-thousand men save for that of Legio XII Bretwealdas which had declined to a mere two thousand men. This decline was as much on account of an inability to find recruits as it was from a great many losses suffered over the course of the great wars and skirmishes with the Pechs.

  It was with a great deal of disconcertment more than six years prior that the nobility of Romalian Brittia that they had heard of how Vyrtgeorn had slaughtered a great many of the men of Legio XII. Quite why was still not entirely evident to Alana, who wondered if it had something to do with the King’s passionate dislike for Roma. A dislike she never could quite divine the cause of, and lacked the nerve to ever ask him.

  It was as they neared the end of the long fifteen meter long winding hallway within the old Romalian estate that husband and wife came to a halt near the windows. At present they were on the fourth of the seven floors of the building, with the two in the east wing where they had through the openings (which lacked curtains of any sort) able to discern down in the quay a number of ships beginning to pull into the harbour. They were the same sort of large long-ships twenty meters long that the likes of Vengest and Witta had arrived hither in. Both husband and wife stopped short as firmly as all the people of the city of Auldminster did, for none had seen so many ships in a long time; there had to be forty ships!

  It had been only a year since twenty of the same sort had arrived, carrying more reinforcements and now there were forty, Alana thought her mouth gaping open. How was Brittia to hold them all? House them all? It was beyond all reason she thought, it was pure madness if Vyrtgeorn truly believed the Valhols’ presence to be in the best interest of the kingdom.

  Where they were few nigh on a century prior, all had changed. They were still few a mere fifteen years before. Then they had come merely as warriors, with some of those men taking on Brittian wives, or even Cymran ones, with one or two having even stolen away women from the Pechs. Few had brought any women with them at that time, and none had brought with them any sons’ fifteen years prior.

  And now they were everywhere. Not simply in the fields and in the keeps, but everywhere in the castle, numbering by the thousands. It was an odd feeling to look on them and know that this was her land, her home. Yet it was now theirs. It was for this reason that she could not abide them, and had begun to ponder just how things had gone so wrong. At first all had seemed well, yet when most of the Romalian troops had retreated from the isle of Bretwealda, promising to return many were terrified of what it could. The moment that Vyrtgeorn had called for the Valhols to reinforce him all had seemed well at first, even Alana had believed in the lies of the King. The foreign barbarians would do battle with the northern Pechs on behalf of the sons of Brittia. No more Brittian men would be drafted to mount the walls as had become custom in the past several years since the departure of Roma and her subsequent collapse.

  But then a number of the men of the north, notably of the Norlam region had revolted and had chased out with the assistance of the only legion remaining in Bretwealda Witta and Vengest. It had resulted in the death of Witta to the horror of his brother so that Vyrtgeorn had been forced to cast the remaining Valhols out from his realm.

  And where had they gone? Not far. Some though had gone back to Valhol, at first everyone had believed they had done and would not return.

  How foolish they had been, Alana mused as she wandered the halls of Auldchester’s chief palace, Auldminster her thoughts going back to Vengest’s revenge. He had returned in force, with ten times as many Valhols as before. Where before he had had five thousand, he had returned with fifty-thousand and had crushed Beorn for having dared to kill his brother. The man’s head had been paraded grotesquely throughout the old capital before it had come to decorate the main gates. It had remained there atop the gates, where the ravens had pecked out the eyes and flesh even as it rotted away.

  “A disgrace is what it is,” Judica?l muttered to himself, “The castle is in disrepair, why has it not been properly repaired and set in order?”

  The troubles of which he spoke were ones that Alana had noticed more than once, during her prior stays in the castle, since the beginning of Vyrtgeorn’s reign. The stone and wooden fort had endured for more than two centuries so that to see it in disrepair was as terrible as a sword-wound. The pillars and columns utilized by the Romalians had been neglected until they began to crack and crumble with every year that passed.

  “This place has been a disgrace since the reign of King Wictgils and Governor Maximus,” Alana grumbled only to add by way of explanation, “Or so my father always used to say to me, whenever we visited.”

  “Must I hear of this again?” Judica?l sighed wearily.

  “But it is!”

  “Do stop, I am aware that you spent much of thy childhood here, and it is not what it once was, but we shan’t have this disagreement here.” He answered sharply with a significant glance all about them.

  Alana felt her frustration with him grow all the greater until a part of her wished to shout and shake him, swallowing her exasperation she muttered. “Do not speak to me as though I am a fool, when it was yourself who began this by complaining about what has become of Auldchester.”

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  “I suppose I did, it was a mistake though,” Judica?l murmured wearily, running a hand through his hair. “We must not speak of such things at present, not while the servants might be listening, else you would have us be accused of treason like so many before us and executed.”

  “I would have us stand and fight,” Alana retorted evenly, weary of the conversation also.

  Judica?l smiled if wearily so. She could see then the toll that the invasion by Vengest and Witta had taken upon him and that he longed for much the same as she. Once again the young woman felt grateful to her father for having wed her to him, even as she worried about the haunted air that hung about her lord and husband.

  Her husband for his part was to murmur to her just as they drew near to the door to the throne-room, “As would I, my love however there is no courage in needlessly throwing our lives away. This is precisely what would happen were I to rebel, without allies and without support. Tush now Alana, for we have arrived and I would not offend our King with such talk since as all know little offends him more.”

  It was on the tip of Alana’s tongue to remark that there was little that did not otherwise offend Vyrtgeorn. Bitter as she was to see him bow and grovel before a man such as their King, she regarded the great doors to the throne-room with a great deal of reluctance in her heart.

  *****

  It happened that when the lady Alana entered the throne room, it was to find King Vyrtgeorn pacing the length and breadth of the hall. A stout man of fifty-five years of age, he was bearded with short silver hair and vivid blue eyes and was always dressed in a hauberk, iron-breeches and greaves. He had dressed in that manner since the first assassination attempt it was said had been attempted some fifteen years prior. Since that time he had become ever more violent and petty towards those around him. This vindictiveness reflected in his eyes and his words during every single one of Alana’s visits, so that she often asked herself if mayhaps her husband’s loyalty to the man was a mistake.

  As to the throne room itself it was a poorly lit, and poorly decorated almost ramshackle room of only ten meters in length and width. It happened that it was home to a large three meter tall wooden throne with a large bear-fur cloak thrown over the back of it. The bear was said to have been one that Vyrtgeorn had hunted and slain. Alana had her doubts, though a competent hunter she knew him not to have killed the beast on account of how it had been Vengest who had delivered the bear’s fur to the King.

  Judica?l who had entered the throne-room with her, was to fall to one knee before the King who waved him back onto his feet with visible impatience. By the man’s side stood Vengest, who’s eyes continued to blaze with the same fury that now seemed to always possess the man since his brother’s death.

  Tall blond of hair, and thickly bearded he was thirty-nine years old and had been fighting in Brittia for a dozen years, and was still young looking and muscular. His hauberk was decorated with the emblem of a wolf, while he wore over his shoulder a fur-cloak made from wolf-skin that was kept in place with a bronze brooch.

  “On thy feet Judica?l, I have no need of a man who kneels overlong but a warrior is what I require at present,” Vyrtgeorn growled furiously at the startled lord who struggled back to his feet.

  Startled, Alana attempted to intervene on behalf of her husband, whereupon she was soon silenced by the furious ruler, “Milord, all that Judica?l meant was that you have his undying fealty and-”

  “Judica?l guard thy wife’s tongue, it is only as a courtesy that I have allowed her into my presence at present.” Vyrtgeorn bellowed startling the young woman who looked at her husband in bewilderment, with him no less startled.

  Neither of them had seen him in such a mood in some time, so that neither one nor the other quite knew what to do to appease. He was always a vicious man even at the best of times, so that neither one nor the other quite knew how to manage him or what to make of him.

  By his side was the blond-haired, bearded Vengest. A man of above average height at six-feet, with clear blue eyes and a once smiling face, dressed in a hauberk and with a wolf-cloak thrown over his shoulders, he had once been handsome. Even Alana had thought him intriguing looking when she had first met him when she was twelve years of age, however since his banishment and return to the kingdom, he looked wilder. There was an air of violence, and rashness about him that combined with the haunted gleam in his eyes along with how he looked thinner, and had let his beard and hair run loose and ragged, so that he resembled a starved, dying wolf.

  “Not only should she guard it, but she should remain on guard to keep from losing it,” Vengest hissed as menacing as a serpent.

  Judica?l stiffened, visibly displeased by the threat even as Alana drew back, frightened. Instinctively she bowed her head and muttered a quick apology, her cheeks burnt with shame when she heard one of the other women suppress a snort of laughter. The humiliation was more than she could bear, so that she met the gaze of the other woman, with a furious one of her own. It was one of the daughters of Ealdwald, the lady Wihtburg if her memory served correctly (and it ordinarily did).

  It happened as it were that the lady spoke then, if in fawning tones to the King, “My liege it appears that the lord Judica?l is not near the man you or even Vengest are. Never could I imagine the ladies of thy house, especially not thy wives ever speaking in such a manner. It speaks to the difference in the sort of men thou are, and the divide between thee and he.”

  Her words were the worst of the insults, for Alana treasured Judica?l and would never knowingly do aught at all to harm his interests. It was thus that she fell into a mortified silence, even as her husband purpled with rage at the lady’s slights.

  Most of those around them chortled at the young couple’s expense, so that if looks were daggers each of them might well have been felled in that hour.

  Talk was to resume on the subject that most interested the King, who having ordered Judica?l to one side alongside the lord’s wife, turned now to Vengest. “Vengest what of the war in the north, against those who continue to defy my claims to the throne?”

  “The Romalians such as they are, are caught between the invading Pechs, and my own forces. The trouble lies in that with Cymru and the northern peninsulas to either side, with a great many tribes in those places, we are caught out.”

  “Tell me in the plainest speech; can we conquer them or not?” Vyrtgeorn growled irritably, never one to like speeches that were not utterly direct and straight as an arrow in nature.

  Devious as he was by nature, Alana could not help but observe how much the man disliked it in others, with only Vengest being able to get away with such a vice and still retain the man’s affection. She wondered if it had something to do with how the two had fought in battle together, or Vengest’s charm.

  The man was young to have risen so high, had lovers it was said in every village of Brittia and had the scars even on his handsome face to show for his battle-prowess. Blond of hair, blue eyed and wolf-like in appearance he was often called the Wolf of Finnesvaldr for his victory and bloodthirstiness demonstrated in the aforementioned battle.

  Shuddering at the thought of what had taken place in the village north of Vuldruin and how brutally the warlord had put the revolt down, just after his return from exile two years prior, Alana near jumped out of her scream when a sudden burst of sound exploded.

  The noise echoed forth from outside, and was the combination of three great sounds; one was a war-horn which all knew at once to be that of Gl?dwine. Famous for how it could echo from as far as the eastern shore and across the Channel, for it to be blown nearer to their side of the shoreline meant that it resounded all the more.

  The second great burst of noise was the cries of those on the port while the third great din of noise was that of shouts erupting throughout the city as criers travelled across it and into the palace.

  “What is that sound?” Vyrtgeorn wondered to no one in particular, as a great din suddenly exploded throughout the whole of the city. The sound was one that shook everyone it seemed, from the likes of Vengest, Ealdwald and his sons’ to the nobles, to even Judica?l and the wives of those nobles that were present.

  As one every single one of those present raced away from the great throne-room of the King to the windows, throwing open the doors to the grand hall as they did so. It was once they stood before the great windows that they stared with gaping mouths and wide eyes at the great ships that had just arrived.

  “What is this?” Brenius exclaimed visibly alarmed, “More of them?”

  “Indeed, though they are a year behind the time I had expected them, it is good to see them arrive at last,” Vengest declared with more than a little triumph and amusement. The first to recover from his amazement at the sight of Gl?dwine’s ships, he turned then to Vyrtgeorn, “You see sire? It is just as I promised, almost ten thousand men have arrived, and with another thirty thousand not long thereafter, when the other recruiters and ships I have sent to Valhol return.”

  “Really now? Wonderful, with such numbers behind me, along with the forty thousand already present, hereupon my island we shall soon have all in flawless order once more, just as it was before those filthy Romalians abandoned the isle!” Vyrtgeorn crowed at once, with a great laugh one that was as triumphant as it was full of relief. “Soon, lord Wyrgeorn and all others who have rebelled alongside him against my authority such as Maelius will have a taste of our steel Vengest!”

  This moment with the King was to remain forevermore in her mind, as the young woman as she watched as the dozen or so ships of Gl?dwine made their way into port with a sense of cold dread. Her husband might well have had his concerns allayed with the promise of a high position on the King’s council, yet his position was almost certain from the very beginning. It was for this reason that she could not help but question his decision to submit to Vengest. Frustrated she watched as the largest boats she had ever seen in the whole of her life, came to a complete halt, so that thousands of warriors streamed down from the planks that were hastily thrown up connecting the ships to the port.

  It was with a glance to the town near to the quay that she saw how amazed, and even frightened the Brittians were by the vision of so many Valhols in their midst. The men from the east along with their wives and children seemed to pour out, and pour out, and continue to pour forth from the ships that had carried them forth from the distant eat.

  How could there be so many of them, she asked herself more than a little disturbed. While the Brittians aged, and had steadily less children than they had before, these Valhols arrived in ever greater numbers. Their ferocity such that only the Romalians, Elves and Wolframs seemed capable of matching them, she told herself disliking to see so many of them thereupon the Bretwealdan shore.

  “This is a disaster, how could there be still more of them? Thousands upon thousands the prior year, and even more the one before that and now thousands more?” Judica?l murmured his voice filled with horror and amazement at how many there were.

  “And each one of them come hither to serve my crown,” Vyrtgeorn remarked with a hint of triumph in his voice, “That I may better king over this land of ingrates, fools and weaklings!”

  If any took offence from his condemnation of his people they spoke not of it. None could quite bring themselves to speak in that hour, so amazed and frightened were they by the men and stores of weapons that were in the midst of being brought ashore.

  Only the sons’ of Valhol looked eager and pleased with themselves, with Alana forced to look away to hide the horror and feeling of sickness that pervaded her. Looking down at the port, she met the gaze of one man, a blond-haired savage in furs with vivid dark blue eyes. He was helping a young boy down from the ship and happened to raise his eyes when he caught her gaze, with the lady seeing in those eyes an untamed ferocity not unlike that of a bear. Never before, did she ever happen to pray as hard as she could for the return of Roma.

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