Wulf's Blut - 1. The Impanni of the Weald

{You know all the steps!} Thought Johanni to himself, {you can do this!}

His left foot forward, Eardwulf took the high guard; his sword held aloft in a two-handed grip. That meant he could only attack or counter-attack with a downward, vertical stroke. Offensively or defensively, he had only one attack at his disposal.

{And he leaves himself open that way,} thought Johanni, {which means he wants me to attack!}

In response the boy took the two-handed mid-guard.

Eardwulf smirked.

{He’s smiling? } Johanni tensed. {He wants me to take this guard?}

He was a towering figure was Eardwulf. Six feet tall and lean; not a bead of sweat marred his dark widow’s peak, all throughout their training. Betwixt that height and that guard, Johanni felt dwarfed, like a toad caught between a boot and the bog.

{But this is the right guard! If I wait for him to attack and parry the downward stroke, I can turn boots and counter with a swing to his ribs.}

But Eardwulf did not move. He kept his guard up and his left foot forward, but he did not attack. {He’s so good at this,} thought Johanni. Eardwulf called it the ‘dance of steel’, and he was indeed proficient. {Or maybe that’s what he wants – for me to let him set the pace. He’s probably anticipating the counter. Fine then. I’ll do this!}

Johanni lowered his stance to waist level – and then thrust at Eardwulf with a forward step. The older man (almost startled!) side-stepped it and swung parallel, bringing his training sword down hard on Johanni’s right wrist. The boy seethed through his teeth with stinging pain, dropping his weapon.

{Again,} he thought. {He beat me again!}

As Johanni dropped to his knees clutching his sore wrist, Eardwulf swung his wooden sword unto his shoulders, pulling what could only be described as a victorious frown.

“If we bore iron into this, I would’ve taken your hand off,” he said.

“Then my hand is most grateful we didn’t,” chuckled Johanni.

“This is no jape, lord. Your form is improving but you’re also overthinking the steps and in a real battle you won’t have that luxury. Those extra moments you take will be your enemy’s opening to attack you. You have to-”

“‘Anticipate, not predict’,” recited Johanni. “Yes, I remember. But it might just be that I’m not very good at this, Eardwulf.”

The boy seethed again. His wrist really was swelling now. They wore no wrist or shin guards today, as Johanni came to believe his training might progress further with fewer safeguards. {If ever there was a decision to regret…}Eardwulf knelt and asked Johanni to show it to him. The boy unbuttoned the sleeve of his white-gold tunic, the colours of the Royal Banner, and exposed the swollen red mark around his wrist bone. Eardwulf’s touch was careful, almost tender, as he inspected the reddening welt. His fingers were surprisingly soft for such a skilled swordsman.

“Nothing is broken but it will be sore for a day or two,” said the older man. “Have it soaked later.”

“I shall.”

Eardwulf did not let his wrist go.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he said. “That wasn’t my intent.”

Johanni smiled. “We were training. I do not mind.”

It was a curious sort of tenderness was the swordsman’s touch, as he slowly smiled back at Johanni with a warmth that softened all the chiselled hallmarks of his warrior pedigree; his furrowed brow, blade-scarred cheeks, his weary grey eyes. In his thirty-three winters of life, Eardwulf had seen far more of the world than had Johanni, and his experiences of it had hardened him like tempered iron – yet there remained within him those tell-tale signs of kindness, that soft touch and that un-habitually warm smile. Johanni blushed.

{Let me go, Eardwulf,} he thought. He hadn’t the heart to say it.

“Your smile is my intention,” said Eardwulf. “And your safety.”

Then a third voice cut the moment in half, booming down from above. “You need a better teacher, brother, or at least someone with better footwork.”

Both Johanni and Eardwulf looked up at one of the four oaken balconies built into the training hall walls. Perched atop the balustrade was the former’s older brother, Ragnar. He wore a churlish, competitive grin upon his lips.
Eardwulf let Johanni go.

“Come now,” said Ragnar as he descended the wooden steps to the training hall floor, “Pick up your sword. I’ll show you a thing or two.”

As he approached them, Johanni did not notice Eardwulf scuttling back with a restrained grimace, collecting the two wooden training swords into his arms; he only smiled as his older brother up and embraced him. “Brother, do you intend to have me humiliated twice in one morn?”

Ragnar smirked. “I intend to have my brother properly trained in sword craft so that he may defend himself should ever the need arise.”

Johanni gestured to Eardwulf. “I have Eardwulf to defend me.”

As his brother turned to his protector, the mood darkened in the hall. That, Johanni did indeed notice.

“Thrall,” said Ragnar to Eardwulf. “You are dismissed.”

Frowning, Eardwulf nodded. “Yes, lord.”

Ragnar watched him return the two wooden training swords to the rack and excuse himself through the door-less archway.

“You needn’t insult him so,” said Johanni.

“You’re too lenient with him,” replied Ragnar. “Never let him forget his place… or his purpose.”

{His purpose is to protect me,} thought Johanni. {And he always has. Despite…}

Despite Ragnar Bloodbane.

The bards had a rich catalogue of lore from which to poach fodder for their ballads. But no event since the Elvish Fall had quite captured their fervour like the Suppression of the Osserians. From here to the Salt Shore they sang songs of the carnage; ‘Bogs of Blood’, ‘A Dance of Swords’, ‘The Bastard’s Bolero’ – unintentionally carrying word of the destruction to all corners of Grünlund, propelling his brother into infamy. Within one short solstice ‘Ragnar the Fatherless’ became ‘Ragnar Bloodbane’ – High Legate of the Royal Legion and scourge of the House of Osser. He inspired fear in allies and enemies alike. But bards only ever tell half the tale. To those that called him Bloodbane, he was not the sweet boy who used to sneak freshly baked sweet buns into Johanni’s chambers. He was not the kind-faced boy who taught him how to ride a horse and make music with leaves, who protected him from their father’s bullying wards and lit candles with him when his mother, Lady Sunna, had died. The bards didn’t know Ragnar like Johanni did.

“Let’s go for a walk,” said Ragnar. “To our old place.”

Happy to do so, Johanni took off the heavy mail jacket atop his cloak, draped it over the wooden dummy next to the weapon rack, and followed his brother out of the training hall. They climbed one of the palace spire’s together, a long spiralling stairwell climbing up to a parapet that soared over both the Palace grounds and the city itself. Johanni and Ragnar walked up to the ledge and (not for the first time) beheld the city of Drangheim from its highest point. It was a massive stonework sprawl stretching from one edge of the panorama to the other; a breath-taking vision of bell towers, shrines, markets, tenements, warrens, watchtowers, shacks, bridges, cabins, laneways, and underpasses. The city was the beating heart of the Kingdom of Drangheim and the cultural capital of Grünlund.

{I will never tire of this,} thought Johanni. He shut his eyes and luxuriated in the cool winds whipping against his skin, at the melody of the distant seagulls wheeling off the river, and the distant echoes of his people, the Impanni Woags, the lifeblood of the city; hammering their swords, bridling their horses, hawking their wares, baking their bread, butchering their meat, weaving their cloth.

Their father’s words – freedom and civilization -- echoed in his mind.

“Remember when we used to sneak up here as children?” Said Ragnar. The view left even him a grinning fool. “I will never forget.”

Sneaking up to the spire was one of their many childhood games. Sometimes they were even bolder and snuck out of the palace to see the chariot races in the coliseum, the two of them screaming their voices hoarse with excitement as brave men and their stallions fought tooth and nail in the encircled sands. {Aggrosh the Wild wheel-to-wheel against Storri Stonehoof,} thought Johanni. {Oh, those times.}

Johanni nodded. “Neither will I. You said, “This is our father’s legacy – and it’s your destiny to rule it -- so rule it well”. Remember?”

Ragnar frowned. “Yes. I remember. But the skein of destiny is cruel, ‘Hanni. The time may have finally come for you to leave this place.”

The younger brother asked the older what he meant.

“It is the Royal Diet,” said the Bloodbane, sombrely. “They have decided to contest the succession in my favour.”

The boy’s shoulders dropped. “…Why?”

“…I do not know. But I cannot oppose the will of the Diet. Speak to father. He’s waiting for you at the Temple of the Gods.”

**********

The inner sanctum of the Palace of Drang sat upon a broad hillock at the apex of the original settlement. At all four of that hill’s compass points, a hundred marble steps (burnished by ivy-wrapped porticoes and sculpted statues) descended to a massive mile-wide diffusion of villas, rose gardens, ponds, and hedge mazes. Here one found the domus of the Legate, Ragnar’s palace-within-the-palace, and the Grand Librarium, where all the King’s scholars worked from morn to eve translating its over 30,000 books and scrolls into the Woaggish runic script. Here were the Royal Bath Houses and Sauna, the Garden of Heroes, the Necropolis, the barracks of the Royal Guard, the Treasury, and most notably, the Temple of the Gods.

Whenever commoners came to the palace, Johanni beheld their stunned gapes and swinging jaws with amusement. That was not to say he mistook it for anything less than the architectural wonder that it was; in fact, he too was once in awe of it, but for him the Palace had long since lost its lustre.

Johanni descended the east-side hundred steps with Eardwulf close behind. Waiting for him there was a wooden litter, accompanied by four men of the Royal Guard, a 500-strong detachment of the Legion serving as sworn guardians to the Palace of Drang. Known by their distinctive broach-fastened violet half-cloaks, white-gold tabards, and steel sword swords; each man bore the tattoo ‘Rex Aeturnus’, upon his left forearm. Johanni once asked Ragnar why the Royal Guard boasted of the King’s eternal rule in the elvish writ rather than Woaggish runes and he answered; That they may know the strength of our resolve should ever they return.

The Royal Guardsmen lowered the litter. Johanni climbed inside.

“Take me to the Temple of the Gods,” he ordered.

Due to the sheer size of the palace grounds the journey from the hundred steps to the temple was around a quarter-fall of an hour glass. The four men ferried him along through a path brooked by water gardens and colonnades until they finally brought him to the temple steps. Eardwulf helped Johanni climb out of the litter when the guardsman set it down.

A woman amongst six smiled from above. “Greetings to you, Lord Johanni, on this glorious morn. Your father the King awaits you within.”

It was not a priestess that addressed him. At the top of the temple steps, guarding the threshold of its ten-foot limestone archway, were six of the most skilled fighters in Grünlund – the Shieldmaidens. Forty specially selected women raised from the age of five for only one purpose – to serve and protect the King. Subjected to solstices of savage, spartan training in combat, hunting, and archery, they emerged as deadly warriors with zealous dedication to their calling.

As ever they stood imperiously, clad in deep steel greaves, ornately-embossed breastplates, iron-plate bracers and winged iron half-helms. Pelts of wolf fur decorated the shoulders of their ankle-length cobalt cloaks and their weapons of choice – the spear and round shield. Ferocious in battle and unmatched in their courage, tales of the Shieldmaidens travelled to all corners of Grünlund upon the bard’s tongue. All Woags knew of the legendary strength, skill and beauty of their order. Even warriors as skilled as Eardwulf knew better than to challenge them.

“Sorry to have kept him waiting,” said Johanni. “If I may pass.”

The Captain of the Shieldmaidens, Gunhilda, smiled down at Johanni with thin, icy-grey eyes. She stood aside. “You may.”

Two of her maids uncrossed their spears from the archway. As Johanni scaled the steps (and Eardwulf closely behind him) the four Royal Guardsmen did not advance – instead they carried the litter away with not a word spoken. It was no secret in the Palace of Drang that there was old enmity between the Shieldmaidens and the Royal Guard.

The Temple of the Gods lived up to its namesake. Its looming walls carried the reverent songs of its priestesses up to its arched roof and beyond. Betwixt its porticoes stood burning braziers to provide light and heat. And at five points along its walls, two to the left and two to the right, semi-circular domed apses held titanic, twelve-foot high marble statues carved in the shape of the gods of the Woaggish pantheon. One to Wug, god of war, one to Ygga, god of the hunt, one to Shora, goddess of the sea, one to Uta, god of the sky, and one to Ka-Uta, goddess of the earth. Here, it was Ka-Uta who stood most prominent with the apse behind the sacred altar. It was to her whom the Kingdom of Drangheim prayed. And there, standing before her pedestal carved in runic script, was his aging father; King Hrathwuld of Grünlund.

Both Johanni and Eardwulf took a knee in reverence.

“My King,” said his son. “Good morn to you and to all who love you.”

Hrathwuld stifled an oily cough. “Come… closer, boy. Leave your thrall at the door.”

Wincing, Johanni advanced forward as a kneeling Eardwulf held his position at the entrance. His sandaled steps echoed throughout the temple. When he came into his father’s presence he again knelt and kissed the withered, wrinkled hand that the King offered him.

“Stand up, my son.”

Johanni stood.

“Take it in,” said Hrathwuld. “The elves built this place to honour their gods. When we expelled them from the city we smashed all their idols to pieces, but over time I grew weary of rubble and ruins. I wanted to replace them with our gods, you see? But to my dismay, no one in all the kingdom knew how to sculpt! So, I gathered all our readers versed in elvish tongue and script, and I had them study all the texts that the elves left behind in their librariums, to harness their learning.”

Hrathwuld glanced up at his commissioned testament to Ka-Uta. “I have prayed to her every morn for nearly thirty-eight winters. It has been so long since I first had these statues built. So many have followed in the smaller shrines they have in the city. And yet, after all this time, our sculptures still pale in comparison to the elvish ones.”

“My king?”

Sweat fell freely through the wrinkled grooves in his brow. “Destruction is easy, Johanni. Building is difficult. Remember that.”

The boy sighed. “Ragnar sent me.”

“I know,” answered Hrathwuld. “The Diet has been swayed in his favour. In a few fortnights, once all the Jarls of Drangheim arrive for the diet, they will vote to declare him aetheling to the throne. And they have every right to in accordance with my loghs. And that is why… the time is right… for you to finally go.”

{The journey,} Johanni thought. Blood pounded in his ears. They had spoken of this privately for many fortnights but now? Now of all times?

“Father,” the boy sighed. “I think it is too late.”

“If I had said that fifty solstices ago, then our people would yet languish in Elvish chains.” The King pointed a crooked finger at the murals decorating the far wall. “Look to your history, boy. Tell me what you see.”

The murals, crafted in the old way of the Woags, were testaments to both their ancient and recent past. And as the King wished, his son described them to him.

“I see ships,” said Johanni. “Hundreds of them. Sailing down from the cold Hyperborean Steppe to land on the rich beaches of the Salt Shore a thousand winters past. These ships carry the Five Great Clans of our people, the Woags, who spread out across this new territory we call Grünlund. The seafaring Arbarii clan settled the Salt Shore and the Salt Isles, whilst the pale-skinned Thoths marched north into the Deepfjord and the unruly Karggars occupied the Grey Wilds. Our clan, the Impanni horsemasters, venture further south with our close cousins the Osserians; crossing the Great River into the Weald. The Osserians then penetrate further east into the Fens. For hundreds of solstices, despite all the clan wars and rivalries, the Woags remain a strong people. Until the arrival of the Elvish Empire…”

“Go on,” said Hrathwuld.

Johanni continued where the mosaics depicted a vast army of elvish soldiers. “Led by one of their imperial margraves, the elves march into all five corners of Grünlund, subjugating us with their magic and sailing thousands of our people to their imperial capital as slaves. For nearly 110 solstices our proud people are mere subjects to their power. Until…”

Johanni continued from a mural depicting a man with a striking likeness to his father. “…Until a boy warrior named Hrathwuld, son of the Impanni chieftain, undertakes a journey. He and his warband traverse Grünlund to rally the remaining four chieftains to his cause – the end of elvish rule. Together they form the mighty Woaggish Army and march south, laying siege to the margrave’s holdfast and driving their remaining army back across the Black Mountains.”

Hrathwuld smothered another cough. “…And then?”

“Jubilant at their victory, the five chieftains convene a moot and declare the boy Hrathwuld king of all Grünlund. He fortifies the southern border, builds up a new legion of soldiers, constructs a great city called Drangheim, and he authors the Codex of Logh, outlawing the evil practice of magic. He selects a Diet, a learned band of Impanni elders and scholars, to ratify his decisions and, when need be, elect a new king.”

“Quite a tale, is it not?”

Johanni glared at the murals. “It is our history.”

“Indeed,” Hrathwuld sighed. “But I fear… that Ragnar and the Diet see only the last 160 solstices of our history. In their hatred of our enemies to the south, they have forgotten our allies to the north, east and west. We are Woags all, Johanni. Diet or no Diet I rule by their consent. Yet despite my teachings, your brother does not understand this.”

Johanni threw a brief guilty glance at Eardwulf, still kneeling silently and dutifully by the archway. “You’re speaking of the Osserians?”

The King frowned. “The Osserians were traitors… but they did not deserve the sentence that Ragnar passed. He would be a strong king… but also a cruel one. And cruelty cannot unify the Woags behind one banner. The next King of Grünlund must be a builder, not a destroyer.” Hrathwuld’s bony fingers, weakened by age, took Johanni by the shoulder and he smiled up at his young son through his wintry white beard. “The next king must be you, Johanni.”

**********

Though there were a great many elven inventions in this world but the best (at least to Johanni’s belief) were the hot baths. As boys he and Ragnar often snuck out of the sanctum to visit the Royal Bath Houses – there was nothing better than a long, luxurious soak after a hard day’s training and tutelage. Johanni smiled to himself recalling the days. Sometimes they were so excited that they dove into waters in their tunics. Sometimes it seemed like there wasn’t a bad day the hot baths couldn’t cure.

{So why am I so…?}

The boy perched himself up against the bath’s limestone edge, his back to the silhouetted screen where Eardwulf kept a respectful distance, standing beside a stone bench with Johanni’s carefully folded mauve tunic and sandals.
Johanni looked to the steamy waters of the caldarium and beheld his rippling reflection; his closely cut blonde hair, wide green eyes, his oval chin and chubby cheeks. He was still such a boy, even in his own eyes. Yet when one looked to Ragnar Bloodbane one saw only a man. His brother was tall and dark and strong, his long black hair splashing over his shoulders; his sinewy body honed and toned by long solstices of harsh training and three successful military campaigns. One could see a king in him. Johanni did not see a king in himself.

“Eardwulf?” He said.

“Yes lord?”

“Is the door locked?”

Johanni turned to his thrall’s silhouette and watched him pat the iron lock securing the doors into the baths. “Yes lord.”

“Then come join me,” he said.

Eardwulf hesitated. “…My lord, I do not think…”

“Are you confusing a command with a request? Hurry, please.”

The Osserian gave a heavy sigh of relent. Even when they were alone, when matters of etiquette between jarl and thrall mattered not, Eardwulf was ever dutiful and obedient. Johanni watched his black shadow wrestle loose the inner straps of his traditional Osserian scale armour. It fell onto the wet flagstones with a heavy splash. He pulled his woollen under-shirt up, unbuckled his belt and scabbarded long sword, unbuttoned his leather breeches, and peeled off his boots. Eardwulf emerged from behind the screen with only a wrap of thin cloth around his waist and cautiously stepped into hot waters next to Johanni. For Johanni, they went as high as his neck. For Eardwulf, barely above his ribs. But he enjoyed them all the same. Johanni smiled as the older man shut his eyes and relaxed into the warmth. It was indeed soothing – when you could enjoy it.

“The heat’s good for the muscles,” said the boy. By the bath’s edge there was a silver platter of red grapes and cheeses alongside a cup of wine. Johanni pointed at it. “Eat.”

Eardwulf sighed. “That food is for you, lord.”

“I’m not hungry. Eat.”

Hesitantly, he did. One by one he took helpings of the platter between his thumb and index fingers, like a child would. It almost annoyed Johanni to see a man eat so reservedly. But he ate well (after all, even in the Palace of Drang, the food allotted to thralls was little better than pig’s slop) and the platter was soon gone. Johanni kept the cup of wine for himself and took a sip.

“My lord has sadness in his eyes,” said Eardwulf.

“Do I?” the boy shrugged. “The heat, perhaps.”

Johanni let his eyes stray from the cup. They found Eardwulf watching him, intently. He had that look about him that said, ‘I will not let this go, although I cannot press you on it’. The boy chuckled to himself. {The thrall is the only one in this whole palace who cares about what I think,} he thought.

“Lord?”

“Were Ragnar not a bastard,” Johanni suddenly sputtered, “then there would be no question of his succession to the throne. That… puerile old logh still found its way into my father’s Codex. He raised us knowing that it was his intent to see me crowned king. And yet… Ragnar was no less a brother to me. He cared for me. More so than our father did… at times. The night my mother died he held me in his arms and told me that no matter what happened he would always be at my side. But sometimes these days…”

Eardwulf watched him pause.

“These days… it’s as if…” Johanni scrubbed his eyes. “…it’s as if…”

“Lord?”

“…I fear that… Ragnar will not except me as his king.”

Eardwulf drew closer to Johanni. “…Do you want to be king…?”

As a boy he did. As a boy he often dreamt of his coronation, of sitting his father’s throne and donning his father’s crown and inheriting his father’s sword, Gunwalla, the Gilded Claymore of Drangheim. But now? Now the great shadow of responsibility eclipsed those dreams. {“It is responsibility that defines a crown,”} thought Johanni in his father’s voice, {“not power or glory.”} The Thoths and the Arbarii were in constant contention over ownership of the Salt Isles. Would he pick a side? If the next harvest was bad, how would he feed his people? Who would he prioritize? Such decisions his father had wrestled with for fifty solstices without showing the slightest sign of hesitation. Yet hesitation was all Johanni felt.

“Duty is all,” said the boy. “It does not matter what I want.”

“It does matter,” said Eardwulf. “Do you *want* to be king?”

There were tears in Johanni’s eyes as he whispered “…no…”

The hot waters sloshed as a strong pair of arms drew Johanni’s wet body into a warm embrace. Eardwulf held the wide-eyed boy close and whispered in his ear, “Do not cry, ‘Hanni. You will always have me. You will always have me.”

‘Hanni. Only Ragnar and Hrathwuld had ever called him that. Thralls did not speak the names of their jarls. They said only ‘lord’ or ‘king’ or ‘master’. Nor were they permitted to embrace their masters. But he was warm and strong was Eardwulf. Johanni felt safe. And without realizing it, he returned the cuddle, his arms curling around Eardwulf’s broad muscular back. The thrall’s woolly pelt of chestnut-coloured chest hair felt coarse against his slick torso but Johanni did not mind. He felt safe. He felt so safe he did not notice the slow circles that Eardwulf’s blunt fingertips drew into his back as they slipped slowly down to his small hips. He did not notice Eardwulf’s engorged and club-like phallus swinging beneath his cloth – not until the Osserian kissed him.

Johanni’s eyes shot open.

It was so sudden. His cheeks flamed red. In that moment, a moment that could not have lasted more than a few seconds, the boy was so stunned he daren’t even move. His arms fell to his sides, still as a doll in a child’s grip. The thrall’s lips were thick and hungry, as was his tongue, as it prised open Johanni’s lips and thrust into the boy’s warm mouth. They moaned together – Johanni with speechless confusion, Eardwulf with the hungry rage of a long-frustrated passion. And then the Osserian’s left hand snatched at the stiffened cock between the boy’s legs… and Johanni snapped back into reality – and he slapped Eardwulf so hard the sound echoed up to the ceiling. The thrall pulled away, let Johanni go, and caught his breath. Johanni, outraged and stunned, caught his own.

“My father would KILL you for doing that…” he finally whispered. “My brother would blood-eagle you…”

“But you would not allow it,” Eardwulf said. “I know you wouldn’t.”

The boy’s cheeks were blood red. “…Get out…”

“Let me stay. Let me explain how I-”

“I SAID GET OUT!”

He was serious. He was shaking. And he was furious. Eardwulf seemed to see it in his eyes. Frowning, the thrall recalled that he indeed was only a thrall and climbed out of baths. He went behind the paper screen to re-clothe into his shirt and armour and sword belt. Eardwulf then turned to the door. But as his hand made for the lock to unbolt it, he uttered something, almost out of compulsion.

“Lord,” he said. “It’s your fear of the crown that makes you worthy of it. It’s the Bloodbane’s hunger for it that makes him unworthy, not his bastardy.”

“Don’t speak of my brother…” spat Johanni. “Leave me!”

Eardwulf left quietly.

**********

Johanni’s slumber was unpeaceful that night. His feathered pillows and silk sheets couldn’t grant him a good night’s rest. He tossed and turned as his mind wrestled with the day’s events. So, when he could not sleep he took quill to inkwell and wrote letters intended for members of the Diet when he returned from his journey. This did not occupy much of his time, so he then summoned a servant to his quarters and asked them for wine. A quarter-fall of the hourglass and she brought him an empty cup and a full ewer. The drink helped. He was soon asleep. But memories both cruel and kind plagued his dreams. Some were happy. He and Ragnar, running through the rose gardens together when they were young. Some were sad – his father beating him over a broken urn in his late mother’s chambers.

Then came Eardwulf.

All night long he dreamt of the muscled Osserian, of his looming frame and unrelenting grip, of his smothering lips and jutting manhood. Johanni saw visions of himself trapped beneath Eardwulf’s weight in a field of grass, his legs spread open and wrists pinned into the dirt. He saw himself groaning with pleasure and pain, writhing beneath him, begging the thrall to stop and not to stop. Eardwulf silenced protestation with a rough kiss and rewarded each call for ‘more’ with a deeper thrust of his jutting cock.

Johanni awoke the following morning face down on the wrong end of the bed. His pillow propped up his feet whilst his entangled arms clutched desperate fistfuls of the silk sheets, which were damp with sweat. And there was an uncomfortable cold spot beneath his belly. Horrified, Johanni wondered if he’d pissed himself during the night. But it didn’t smell that way. When he climbed out of bed and looked at it, to even greater dismay, he found a cooling puddle of his own seed. His cock was still sticky with it.

{Damn you, Eardwulf...} The boy seethed. {Damn you!}

Johanni had not spent much thought on his tastes. As an aetheling, a potential claimant to the throne, it was inevitable that the Royal Diet would pair him with a noblewoman. In spring there had been talk of such a match with Jarl Elkregyn’s daughter, Lady Tanne. A fine girl, perhaps. Dainty, buxom, flaxen-haired. She appeared kind. But she kindled no fire in Johanni. It was in his twelve or eleventh winter when his body began to change; growing hair where previously there was none, his voice deepening; and when his attractions came into being he noted that women and girls garnered no interest from him. Those he did notice, those who did inspire the poetry of lust, those savage and carnal needs, he dared not speak their names. He dared not tell them or even look too long upon them. He was a king’s son and he could not have want he wanted – because the king’s own loghs prevented it.

The elvish, in their day, were notoriously licentious. They took male brides as freely as female ones; held balls and masquerades ending in wanton acts of profligate bacchanalia, and often bought whole households of slaves, many of them Woags, to serve their appetites. The King, an old devotee of Ka-Uta and her call for moral temperance, outlawed all these ‘immoral’ practices. His Codex of Logh forbade ‘men from laying with other men in the manner he would a woman’ under penalty of execution.

For many a solstice Johanni struggled to lock away those fancies. On an almost daily basis he reminded himself how wrong it was to look upon other men with desire and how devastated his father would be to learn that his own son partook of such vices. He resisted temptation wherever he found it – a gold-haired travelling minstrel, a roguish royal legionary, etc -- and devoted himself to his studies. He had been doing so well. And then yesterday…

{Damn you, Eardwulf…} When first light broached the Palace of Drang an hour later, one of the servant girls knocked his chamber door. “Lord Johanni? The King calls upon ye to attend the great hall.”

Already cleaning himself with a bowl that another servant girl had brought him earlier, Johanni called for a fresh tunic and under clothes. When dressed, he opened his chamber doors. Eardwulf stood there, waiting for him.
Johanni blushed, looking away.

“Lord?”

He had nothing to say that would not alarm the servants. Johanni stalked off down the corridor without a word. By obligation Eardwulf followed him to the Great Hall, where a lavish meal of smoked salmon, baked bread and hard-boiled eggs graced the long table. There were platters of cut oranges and bowls of freshly picked berries to sup on. And he had a cup of hot mulled wine to join with it. But there was only one seat.

Johanni asked one of the servants for his father.

“The cold night last moon seized his knee,” she said. “The King eats in his private chambers.”

“And Ragnar?”

“Lord Ragnar prepares your caravan,” she said. “He broke his fast before dawn.”

And so, he sat to eat alone. He did not ask Eardwulf to join him (as often he would during similar occasions in the past) and let the dutiful thrall stand guard by his table at he ate. The salmon and eggs were delicious. The bread was over browned, and he did not care for it. The wine went down well. The oranges went down better. One of the serving girls then cleared his empty platters.

{I suppose I won’t be eating like this for a while…} thought Johanni. {What will it be like out there… in the wilds of Grünlund? }

He contemplated it. Eardwulf’s prior actions had fogged Johanni’s mind but as the morning unfurled, it dawned on the boy that the journey his father had planned for him for so long… was finally a reality. He returned to his chambers (with Eardwulf close behind) for his dressers to robe him in his traveller’s garb; long brown breeches and thick leather boots rimmed with fur, a white-gold tabard bearing the Impanni sigil (the prancing mare) upon its back and secured by a sword belt. The weapon was a steel short sword customized in balance and weight for Johanni’s sword arm by Ragnar’s favoured blacksmith. ‘Hopefully you will never need to use it’, his brother had told him prior, ‘but you must take every precaution’.

Once dressed and armed, Johanni left the inner sanctum of the Palace of Drang. At the bottom of the hundred steps four Royal Guardsmen bore him by palanquin to the palace’s eastward gates. There, he found Ragnar Bloodbane awaiting him with his entire caravan fully prepared and provisioned. Fifty Royal legionaries armed with the traditional Impanni spear and greatshield. With a total of twenty whickering horses and five mules, the caravan boasted a baggage train of ten supply wagons. It was a cold morning. The winds were savage. Ragnar stood before the retinue with his arms folded beneath his buffeted cloak. There was an anxious look in his eye. But he saluted his brother’s approach.

“Rex Aeturnus,” he said.
“Rex Aeturnus,” replied Johanni. “The day has finally come.”

Ragnar frowned. “Indeed. Everything is ready for you. You have a half-century of some of my finest legionaries. All are combat tested and have sworn to protect you with their lives. Fly the king’s banner high and you should be safe… but always be careful. Not all Woags respect the crown’s authority… and be especially mindful of the chieftain of the Thoths, Magnus Magnusson. I hear disturbing reports from my spies in the Deepfjord.”

“Brother,” Johanni smiled. “Our father has been preparing me for this my entire life. I will take every precaution. Do not worry.”

Ragnar’s expression hardened. “You are the trueborn son of King Hrathwuld of Drangheim. There will be those who seek to challenge his authority through you. You must always be alert. You must always be cautious. And understand that should anything befall you – a heavy price they shall pay.”

He was serious. Johanni saw the icy resolve in Ragnar Bloodbane’s eyes as he said this – it was no boast but a statement of fact. The destruction of the Osserians proved that he was a man of his word and he was ready to soak the herepaths in blood if forced to. So, it was up to Johanni to make sure the need never arose. The young man embraced his brother tight.

“Gods keep you brother,” said Johanni. “Watch over father for me.”

Ragnar smiled. “I will.”

At the head of the caravan was Johanni’s horse. It was a saddled white mare. Eardwulf helped Johanni climb onto its back and slot his feet into the stirrups. He was not the best rider, but it was important for the men to see him broach the saddle – the Impanni Woags were historically an equestrian people and he was the King’s son, if nothing else.

“Very well,” he said. “Let us go.”

**********

In ancient times, before the elvish conquest, the Kingdom of Drangheim was known merely as ‘The Weald’. It was a massive sweep of dales, glens, forests and farmland extending out for a thousand miles from the Great River of the west to the Frozen Shore of the east. The Weald was the single largest territory in all Grünlund, nearly thrice as great as the second largest, the Deepfjord. Historically, the Impanni clan settled the Weald by mastering the horse to traverse its massive fields. They learned to farm and plough as well as hunt (for by their very nature the Woags were an ancient seafaring people) and built villages throughout the territory, the foremost being Drang, the village that was destined to become the city of Drangheim. In those eras the Impanni repelled attacks from other clans by fortifying the borders to the two neighbouring territories, the Fens and the Grey Wilds. Though the Great River and its strong currents provided a natural border with the Fens, the ancient Impanni chieftains kept watchtowers at the bridges. The more vulnerable border was to the north. The Karggars often raided northern Impanni villages from their forest forts which made them difficult to pursue by horseback. Thus, the old Impanni chieftains built a chain of small stone forts along the northern border to repel Karggar raids.

When the elvish imperial army marched across Grünlund and cut down Woaggish resistance like a scythe through a wheat field, they found that their great challenge was not conquest but suppressing dissent. Uprisings were common in that era. It was not in the Woag nature to submit meekly to another’s dominion. To suppress these rebellions, the Margraves of Grünlund (a line of elvish vassals to the emperor) emulated the old Impanni fortifications across the entire country. Called burghs; some were repurposed from older Woaggish hillforts and barrows, some newly built from the limestone up in the elvish fashion – festooned with archer’s roosts, ditches, and spike fields. The margraves then interlocked these defensive points by a series of roads, some paved and some merely well-trodden dirt tracks, known as herepaths. These allowed the elvish infantry to quickly mobilize and respond to Woaggish rebellions throughout Grünlund. They also served to foster trade, linking cities like Drangheim to smaller villages and allowing safe passage of goods.

But in the fifty solstices since King Hrathwuld’s victory over the elves, the burghs and herepaths had fallen into disrepair. Johanni witnessed that now for himself. His caravan left the city that morn and travelled quickly up the herepath road to the north. Those paths closest to the city were well-tended. But as they marched further and further north he noticed how damaged they became. Cracks in the flagstones flowered up with weeds and shrubs. Some were so old they smashed to pebbles beneath their horseshoes. By noon that day the caravan had taken one of the herepaths’ north-western routes towards their first destination, the Fens. Past a certain point the paving vanished beneath them and the road became a muddy sludge of broken stone and weeds. When they came across their first burgh, they found it poorly manned, perhaps only fifteen legionaries to its partially crumbled walls.

Hours passed. The winds remained strong and howled around them. Johanni shivered beneath his cloak as he guided his mare forward in a slow canter. The legionaries marching behind him occupied their minds by singing songs of war; ‘Woe to the Margrave’, ‘A Spear for the Spear-Ears’, ‘The Bastard’s Bolero’. Eardwulf did not sing with them. In time they overheard gull song and smelt rime in the air. Soon afterwards the herepath became more stable, the stones older and better tended, as they verged upon a sixty-yard long stone bridge traversing the savage currents of the Great River; Ka-Uta’s Arm. They made to cross it.

“Wait,” said Eardwulf.

“What is it?” Asked Johanni.

Instead of answering, the thrall climbed off his horse and approached the bridgehead. Frowning, Johanni held up his right hand. Halfdan, an ex-Legate of the Royal Legion and Ragnar’s appointed steward of the expedition, saw this and yelled for the men to halt. In well-disciplined unison the legionaries stopped the march, yelling back collectively, “HOO!”

All eyes went to Eardwulf. They saw him walk the flagstones and stop where a deep crack ran up one of the parapet’s stones and stomped it hard. The right-hand parapet shook, and a flagstone beneath the belt course came loose, dropping into the drink. Eardwulf returned to the party.

“The bridge isn’t stable,” he told Johanni. “We cannot cross it with a caravan this size.”

“How is that possible?” said the boy. “Traders have been using this bridge for centuries.” {And my brother marched the Legion into the Fens with it.}

Halfdan scratched his salt and pepper-coloured beard. “Structural damage, lord. The bridges and herepaths into the other territories are all derelict. Solstices ago, the king tried to have them repaired, but…”

{But the Royal Diet controls the treasury,} thought Johanni. “Send a rider back to Drangheim. Tell them that Ka-Uta’s Arm is in desperate need of repair.”

“Understood,” said Halfdan. “But what now, lord?”

Johanni cast an eye to the greying skies above. They had thought to cross into the Fens before nightfall and camp outside the nearest village, but now…

“We’ll make camp here and plan our next move.”

**********

Eardwulf lit tallow candles mounted on spikes to provide a portion of light to Johanni’s tent. The legionaries had set it up with oak post poles, cloth and rope; and brought in a small table for his maps, a feathered pallet to sleep in, and his goods chest of personal provisions. Johanni and Halfdan sat around the table, a cup of wine each, evaluating a map of Grünlund. Platters of picked hare bones and sauce smears sat at their feet – a few of the outriders had had a good hunt that day.

“The King’s plan,” began Halfdan, “was to march into the Osserian Fens and locate the chieftain there,” his finger tapped a point on the map, the old Osserian city of Karburgh, then it moved eastward, “we would then move into the Grey Wilds and seek out the Karggar chieftain, then from there we were to go north to the Salt Shore for the Arbarii chieftain, then sail northeast to the Deepfjord for the Thoth chieftain. It’s the fastest way to travel all five territories. If we wait for our builders-”

“It could take weeks to repair the bridge,” said Johanni. “That’s precious time I don’t have.”

Halfdan nodded. “…Then the only solution is to change course and go for the Karggar chieftain first. Ka-Uta’s Leg is a half-mile northwest of here at the western offshoot of the Great River. We can cross it into the Grey Wilds.”

Eardwulf interjected. “Forgive me, lord, but the southern Grey Wilds are enclosed by a thick forest they call the Oakmire. It’s dense and dangerous and infested with bandits. Should we not wait for the builders and take the safer route into the Fens? As the King wished?”

Halfdan’s meaty jowls spun towards Eardwulf, his jaw gaping. “By the gods! What makes a mere thrall think he has either the right or the authority to question my judgement?”

Frowning, Eardwulf apologetically bowed his head. “Forgive me. I spoke out of turn.”

“Halfdan,” Johanni turned to his steward. “Though he is a thrall, Eardwulf is my sworn protector who has served me well and I value his insight. You need not respect him. But out of loyalty to me as a potential aetheling of the crown of Grünlund, I ask that you respect my trust in his counsel.”

Halfdan sneered. Not at Johanni, but at Eardwulf. Yet he said no more. He fixed the wine cup to his lips and muttered “Of course, lord…” after taking a deep swig. Johanni pitied the hatred in he saw in Halfdan’s eyes. He was not a young man, perhaps forty or so winters in age, and thus old enough to hear personal tales of elvish slavery. Although Woags had taken thralls for millennia, the subjugation of the clans left a fetid stink around the status of ‘thrall’ and ‘slave’. For Woags, thraldom was a fate worse than death. The ignobility of it was a disgrace to gods and ancestors like. It meant that you were a failure as a man; living on your knees rather than dying on your feet.

In his former life, Eardwulf was a thegn to the old Osserian chieftain. He slew one of Ragnar’s own thegns, Trygga the Spear Dancer, on the battlefield. It was not happenstance that the Bloodbane’s punishment for his transgressions was thraldom.

These two men, Johanni saw, would not get along.

“Eardwulf,” he said. “Walk the perimeter to see if our scouts have returned.”

“Yes lord,” said the thrall.

Halfdan, disgusted, watched him walk out of the tent.

“Lord,” he said. “Forgive me but I do not trust that man. Why would an Osserian be content as a thrall to the Bloodbane’s brother? Unless…”

{Unless he awaited an opportunity for vengeance,} thought Johanni. He had wondered the same in his more cynical moments. Did Eardwulf resent him? Was his dagger lying in wait for the just right night? But always the boy quashed those thoughts as nonsense. Eardwulf was his loyal protector for nearly five winters now, if revenge was his goal then he had had more than enough opportunities. And after last night…

“We won’t wait for the builders,” said Johanni, changing the subject. “At first light we proceed as you say – through the Oakmire. Inform the men and get some rest. It will be a long day tomorrow.”

“Yes lord. In the morn, then.” Said Halfdan.

The steward took to his feet and left through the tent door. Johanni soon followed him. As Halfdan passed word throughout the campfires that the caravan would make for Ka-Uta’s Leg and cross into the Grey Wilds, Johanni walked past the cooking pots, tents and guards to the rim of the encampment, where a pensive Eardwulf leaned against an oak tree, his eyes focused upon the black forests across the river. Beyond them was his homeland, the Fens. This was the closest Eardwulf had been to his lands since Ragnar destroyed them – and now they were going the other way.

“Eardwulf,” he said.

The thrall cast his master a sad smile. “Yes lord?”

“What you did to me yesterday… you had no right to do.”

“…I know, lord.”

Johanni frowned. “Under my father’s Codex of Logh the penalty for your actions is execution. Do you realize that?”

“I do, lord.”

“Then why?”

Eardwulf was not an emotional man. One saw little depth in his craggy expressions and flat voice. But for that moment, in the forested darkness beneath the stars, as distant songs of Osserian destruction echoed around the camp, Johanni at last saw something in those thin, weary eyes. Love. The boy caught only a flicker of it before Eardwulf returned his gaze to beyond the river, but he knew what he saw. Love was what it was.

“Because a man wants what he wants,” he said softly. “And I want you.”

The blood rushed to Johanni’s cheeks, as it was wont to. He looked around to see if Halfdan or any of the legionaries were within earshot.

They were safe.

“…I…,” Johanni paused. “…I care for you, Eardwulf. I consider you a friend, in fact. So please… understand that…” there was a lump in his throat. The boy swallowed it as vivid recollections of their kiss in the bath house raced through his mind, “…you cannot have me in the way you want. For both our sakes, let it lie and help me honour my father’s dream.”

Eardwulf’s eyes hardened. “…Your father…? The same ‘father’ who let his son sack my home and slaughter my people? The same father who ordered the execution of my lord and chieftain, Osser Greatfang? The same father who-”

The Osserian stopped himself. He swung towards the river, frowning, his eyes alert. When Johanni asked what was wrong the thrall said “Quiet!” as a row of little flickering orange lights appeared throughout the forest. At first Johanni thought they were fireflies. But the row was so orderly, so tight. And then came that distinctive snap – the snap of a loosed arrow.

“Get down!” Yelled Eardwulf, snatching Johanni with him as he dropped into the wet grass. The boy landed with a thud as a wave of flaming arrows, maybe twenty or so, sailed overhead into the encampment. One caught a horse. Two, a legionary’s left eye and right knee, his scream of agony piercing through the songs, cricket chirps and water rush. Three caught a tent each, including Johanni’s own. And then cries of war roared up from south of their position.

Dozens of men clad in crude boiled-leather breastplates, fur boots and half-helms charged across the flat grassland towards their camp, where all but the guarding sentries were unarmoured or asleep. “Shieldwall!” cried one of the legionaries. Around five or six of the armed guards scrambled to his side and in well-disciplined formation they closed their embossed, five-foot high greatshields together. Then a roused legionary near Halfdan’s tent blew his tusk horn to alert the other men as the attackers crashed into the defensive shieldwall.

The wall was strong and held against the first push – they repelled the charge then collectively thrust their spears at the attackers, sharpened steel piercing through their poor armour. Two of the wild men collapsed into bloody slop puddles of their own disembowelled guts. But all it took was one – one man swinging his sword tip through the eyes of a legionary whose spear caught in the ribcage of his felled foe. The blinded warrior stepped back, screaming, until the ambusher ran his sword through his neck, silencing him for all. That breech in the shieldwall left an opening for the rest to pour through, their bronze swords hacking and cutting and slicing without any finesse or mercy, just savage Woaggish war rage. They cut down the five legionaries in moments, blood and bone fragments whirling into the crisp night air.

The camp was defenceless. Those legionaries who slept rose from their pallets, but there was no time to don their armour – only grab their weapons. Four tents were now completely ablaze. And in that light, Johanni and Eardwulf watched the savage warriors cut and gut the finest men of the Royal Legion.

“Karggars!” spat Eardwulf. Distinguished by their wild braided hair and old bronze weapons, they were doubtless men of the Grey Wilds.

They watched powerlessly as some of the guards at the northern rim of the camp, armed with spear and greatshield, tried to form a phalanx around Halfdan’s tent. The captain yelled for a charge; if they could get into formation perhaps they could drive the Karggars back long enough for a few men to secure the horses and go on the offensive. But it was not to be. The captain froze like ice when a loud and terrifying roar boomed out over their heads – not of a man but a beast – and he saw to his horror a huge bear, russet-furred and long-toothed, barrelling down at them from the east. It crashed into one of their shields, the impact so strong that the soldier toppled over; right before the bear swept its long, sharp claws through his throat. One spearman caught the bear’s right shoulder with a good throw. It roared in both pain and outrage, then bounded on top of him and gored his neck.

By now more than half of Ragnar’s handpicked men were dead as the Karggars swarmed the camp. Some were already looting the supply wagons moored at the wayside. Halfdan was nowhere to be seen. The camp and the caravan were both lost.

“We have to run,” Eardwulf snatched Johanni’s wrist. “We have to run!”

The thrall scrambled to his feet and pulled Johanni up with him. It was too dangerous to go back for a horse but if they ran down river as far as the nearest burgh and hid themselves away, maybe they could survive the night. But as two ran down the river bank a spear sailed over their heads and landed a yard from their feet.

“Hold!”

Eardwulf and Johanni stopped where they were. Behind them were three mounted Karggars, horses whickering. One a young, doe-eyed archer with a quiver full of arrows; the second a towering and muscular one-eyed axeman, and the third a lean-bodied and chestnut-haired man with a smouldering smile and a steel greatsword strapped to his back. This man had the look and composure of a leader as the camp behind him burned into ash and blood.

Eardwulf pulled Johanni behind him and drew his sword. “Who are you?”

“Call me Raider,” he said boastfully. “After all, we are what we do.”

His two cohorts snickered.

“And who is that flaxen-haired youth behind you?” said Raider, pointing a gloved finger at Johanni. “Is he your patron? Or am I mistaking who and whose arse is for sale?”

“How dare you?!” Seethed Johanni. “How dare you do this?!”

Raider smirked. “Hmm. That’s more steel-tongued than you’d expect from a travelling merchant, isn’t it?”

Johanni stepped forward. When Eardwulf tried to hold him back he swatted the thrall’s hand away. “I am no merchant!” Spat the boy. “And you have no idea what you’ve just done…”

A sliver of Raider’s cockiness slipped away. “…Who are you…?”

“My name is Johanni Carian Hrathwuld, son and heir to King Hrathwuld of Grünlund and brother of the Bloodbane…”

**********

The Oakmire was foul.

The pitiless stench of its bogs made Johanni nauseous. Its tall trees loomed so high above that the canopy blotted out the sun and left the forest floor in perpetual darkness; the Karggars lit tapered torches to see their way through. There were no roads to walk by, only a network of well-trodden dirt paths hemmed by thick thorn bushes and underbrush. These paths were narrow (barely wide enough for the Karggars to haul through the wagons) so they marched Johanni and the other captives two by two, each pair of captives separated from the next by a pair of Karggars. Though the smell made him feel faint, Johanni kept his head and studied both his surroundings and his captors. They had tied his hands and lashed the rope to Raider’s saddle. That bloody-jawed bear, which Raider’s men called Growler, ambled forwards on all fours just ahead of Raider’s horse. Bear-taming was an ancient skill of the Woags (in its day King Hrathwuld’s Great Woaggish Army boasted nearly a hundred armoured war bears) but no clan was better at the art than the Karggars – Growler was living proof.

Johanni then looked to his men, and what remained of his caravan. The raid had reduced Ragnar’s half-century of legionaries to six men, two of them badly wounded. Though stripped of their weapons and armour (loot for the Karggars) their captors took no chances and constantly kept them at spearpoint. Close behind was Halfdan and a disarmed Eardwulf. The steward had taken a few cuts and burns in the fighting, but he was alive and (largely) unharmed, growling bitterly at the circumstances. Eardwulf on the other hand maintained his habitual calm. Raider, mindful of the Osserian’s martial skill, had had his hands tied behind his back rather than his front. Every hour or so Eardwulf glanced over his shoulder to check if Johanni was alright.

The boy tried to ignore that as he looked to his captors.

The Karggars were indeed a roguish lot, hardy and strong, with their knotted, wildly overgrown beards and their long, braided brown hair. They wore pendants and tattoos of a war hammer, the sigil of Wo’ar the half-god, son of Wug. They sported their spoils like oddments; where one wore a legionary’s helm the other carried a legionary’s sword and the next wore a legionary’s boots and so on. Those weapons and armour they could not carry were either slung from the supply bags of the captured mules or bundled into the wagons with the rest of the provisions.
Raider’s men numbered at around thirty, eight of them archers. Five of their men died in the fighting, their corpses now draped over the saddles of their pilfered mares. But although his men saw this as a great victory, Raider seemed shrewd enough to recognize otherwise. Johanni watched him exchange anxious whispers with his archer companion (a youth by the name of Frodi), perhaps sensing that he’d made a mistake. Frodi listened to Raider’s concerns then said something that appeared to be reassuring, briefly reaching over to stroke a loose thread of hair out of Raider’s brow, with a touch too tender for friendship.

Johanni then stumbled over a rock.

He fell flat on his face, the sudden tug of the rope startling Raider’s horse. A few of the Karggars burst out laughing. Eardwulf tried to double back to help him up but the second he turned around, one of the Karggars drew his bronze sword and warned him to stay back. Raider stopped the march. He got off his horse, took a water cask from one of his saddlebags, then went over to help Johanni back onto his feet.

“Take a sip of water,” he said.

Cautiously, Johanni did just that. He uncorked the terracotta jug and swigged deep from it. He hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since the raid – and that was half a day ago.

“My brother is a molossus,” said Johanni, “…and you’ve just given him every pretext he needs to sink his fangs into your chieftain’s throat.”

Raider’s dismissive smirk didn’t mask his underlying doubts. Earlier, he had his men throw the naked corpses of the dead legionaries into the Great River to let the currents sweep them off. In half a day’s time they would wash up in the Fens, miles from the campsite, where perhaps they would become an Osserian problem.

“Word hasn’t gotten to the Bloodbane yet, I’d wager. And meaning no disrespect, your ‘lordship’, but until I have proof that you are who you say you are, you’re only what I thought you were – a trader,” then Raider leaned into Johanni’s ear and whispered, “Of course if you’re telling the truth…”

Johanni yelped like a little boy as Raider lifted him up off his feet and swung him towards his horse. He quickly threw his leg over the saddle (so as not to break it) and dropped hard on the leather as Raider climbed up and sat the rear. Outraged, Johanni meant to curse him, but froze when Raider’s strong, tattooed arms curled around his hips and snatched the reins. The boy blushed. He fell silent.

Eardwulf frowned.

“I could slit your throat and dump you in the bog before the Bloodbane ever found out about this…” whispered Raider into Johanni’s ear.

The boy suddenly felt hot. “…Then why don’t you?”

“It would be a waste of a very pretty throat,” crooned Raider, wrapping his gloved hand around Johanni’s milky neck. “And a waste of what could prove to be a very fine ransom -- a prince’s weight in gold…”

**********

The Karggar raiding party marched their captives through the Oakmire’s secluded trails from morn to eve, stopping only briefly for water from a hidden well. They eventually came to a secluded clearing within the heart of the forest.

Hundreds of solstices ago the Karggars cut down an acre of this woodland and built a small fort from the lumber, heaping stacks of heavy stone around its foundations and digging a yard-deep ditch around its walls. Hundreds of sharpened stakes filled this trench, and the bones fragments of long dead men and animals littered the gaps between them. It was one of at least two dozen other forest forts nestled throughout the Oakmire, and though difficult to find, they were infamous in Drangheim. The Karggars used these forts as outposts from which to mount raids on the border villages in the Weald and the Fens. They also represented halfway points in the Oakmire – supply points to re-provision or store loot. According to his father the elves considered the forests forts an irritation rather than a threat; but it was one of King Hrathwuld’s ambitions to join them as burghs to the herepaths. Johanni was beginning to see why.

Raider’s men camped at the fort. They tethered the horses in a logged stable at the fort’s rear wall and dropped kindling into old pit fires dug by prior occupants. There was almost no game to hunt in that wilderness, so they cooked salmon they caught from the Great River and baked potatoes stolen from Johanni’s supply wagons. Sat around their campfires, they drank casks of foreign wine and sung songs in reverence of the War God Wug and his son, the half-god hero Wo’ar. They arm wrestled, played knuckles, and traded tales of their greatest raids.

The Karggars locked Johanni, Eardwulf and Halfdan in a wooden paddock with two spear-armed men to guard them. They locked the remaining legionaries in a separate paddock across the clearing. There were only six left now, the two wounded men died on the trail. Johanni asked Raider to bury them – so he allowed the legionaries to dig the graves. They left them unmarked.

“These foolish men,” muttered Halfdan. His fat wrists chafed red in their tight binds. “I always knew the Woags beyond the Weald were an uncivilized horde of rabble-rousers and sheep-fuckers and bloodthirsty madmen. And here lies the proof of it, as bright as Uta’s sun. Bastards! Not worth one Impanni life…”

“Johanni, are you alright?” Asked Eardwulf.

The King’s son said he was “fine” and kept his eye on the camp. At the centremost campfire sat Raider, with Frodi the archer and the one-eyed axeman he now knew as Thregg the Ghoat (because of his goat’s horn half-helm) sharing a horn-full of mead. Or they were, until two Karggars guarding the northern footpath into the clearing uncrossed their spears. A rider trundled into the camp on an exhausted gelding and dismounted before Raider’s campfire. It was a woman, dark-haired and pale, outfitted in thick grey pelts of wolves’ fur woven together into a full-bodied coat. She embraced first Thregg, then Frodi then at last Raider, who gestured towards the fort. Johanni watched the woman take a torch from campfire and walked her bare feet across the greensward into its innards. Then Raider made his way over to the paddock.

“What does he want?” Said Halfdan.

Raider had his men unbolt the paddock door and walked inside, eyes only on Johanni, whose forearm he snatched. Eardwulf, angered, moved to stop him but his ropes were too tightly bound to a stake in the earth. He could barely move.

“Leave him be!” Growled Eardwulf.

“Calm yourself, Osserian,” said Raider. “If I wanted to kill any of you I would have done it by now. The boy will be safe.”

Johanni frowned. “The boy will go nowhere unless you promise him his companions will be kept safe.”

Raider smirked again, more out of surprise than humour. “You’re stronger than you look,” he said, right before snatching Johanni up by the hips and slinging him over his shoulder. “Come along!” The boy flushed red as a tomato as Raider slapped his arse and carried him across the camp like a sack of flour. His half-drunk men erupted in laughter.

“Put me down!” Yelled Johanni. “Put me down!”

Raider said no.

{Animal!} Thought Johanni. {It’s not enough to slaughter my people and loot my caravan, now he humiliates me? }

Raider carried him across the bridgework over the spiked ditch into the dark guts of the forest fort. Though they lit the sconces along the walls and ignited braziers of fatwood to brighten its innards, the inner hall remained nocturne. Raider set Johanni down on a spot in the darkness where the Karggars swathed the dirt floor with red-painted cedar bark cloth. The woman in wolves’ fur stood there. Torchlight lit her facial features up in orange hues; her black eyes and fanning crow’s feet, her hooked nose and wrinkled brow. She was not young – perhaps fifty winters old or more – with skin the colour of almond milk and her ebon-black mane of hair running in thick, elongated braids as low as her ankles.

“This is the one?” She said to Raider. Her torch’s flame snapped loudly in the dark, empty hall.

“That’s for you to scry,” he replied. “Consult the Gods.”

She then looked to Johanni. “Do not fear, little one. I am Wharla Oldeye, Seeress of the Gods and the Half-Gods. Trust in them as you would yourself.”

The self-declared seeress staked her torch into the dirt then unfastened the bone brooch holding her cloak in place. It fell from her shoulders into a lump around her ankles. Johanni blinked. Save for a small skirt of goat’s wool hanging from her hips and a necklace of wolf fangs hanging from her neck; Wharla Oldeye was completely naked. Though old, her skin was tight, her stomach flat, and her breasts yet firm; the face of a sage and the body of a maid. There was a bowl nearby her. Wharla withdrew a pouch from her cloak and knelt to pour its ingredients into this bowl – foal bones, sacred herbs, myrrh, and grey ash. Raider passed her a cask of mead. She took a mouthful then spat the mist over the bowl, then gestured for Johanni to give her his hand. He hesitated, then looked at Raider, who had his hand on his dagger.

“Do it,” He said.

Johanni gave her his hand. Wharla put his fingertip between her lips – and bit it. He snatched his hand back. She smiled, his blood on her teeth, and spat it into the bowl. And then she muttered a series of strange, woeful incantations in the Old Tongue; the ancient language that the Woag mystics once spoke upon the merciless ice of the Hyperborean Steppe a thousand winters past. As she did this, a pale green smoke rose up from the bowl like a fog and surrounded Wharla Oldeye from toe to nostril. Her eyes went white as they rolled backward into her skull and her mind shifted unto a plane utterly distinct from the one her body occupied.

Now Johanni understood was going on.

“Magic,” he said. “The King outlawed magic!”

Raider scoffed. “You really think Hrathwuld’s Codex applies out here in the Grey Wilds? We Karggars are true Woags. We follow only the Old Loghs,” he then turned to the enrapt Wharla. “What do you see, Oldeye?”

“THE BOY…” Her voice became gravelled and ashen, louder than her slim throat ought to be capable of. It was a voice that was not her own, “…THE BOY… SON OF THE KING… IN FLESH AND IN HEART… HALF-BLOOD OF THE BLOODBANE… A KEY THREAD… THE KEY THREAD… IN THE SKEIN OF THE HALFSPEAR’S FATE…”

Raider frowned.

“TRUST… IN THE GODS,” she said, “… TO LIGHT… YOUR WAY…”

And then Wharla collapsed. Raider quickly grabbed her naked body before she fell. Johanni, speechless, watched the pupils return to her dark eyes. Raider helped her back into her cloak. “What did they say?” Asked Wharla.

“That he speaks the truth,” said Raider. “…THREGG! THREGG, COME IN HERE!”

In moments Johanni heard heavy footfalls booming toward them like horse hooves. Then Thregg lumbered in. He was so tall he had to bend down just to fit through the entrance. Raider told the Ghoat to take Wharla to his tent, so she could rest and regain her strength. Nodding, the Ghoat hauled the seeress into his arms and carried her out of the fort.

Raider and Johanni were now alone.

The silence was deafening, save for the snap of the torch’s embers. The Karggar had his proof now. The boy was no trader. He was the son and potential aetheling of King Hrathwuld, and yet somehow more importantly, he was the half-brother of Ragnar Bloodbane – whose men Raider had so unceremoniously put to the sword. How deep could you bury a blunder like that for it not to come back and haunt you? Johanni and Raider locked eyes… and a chill went down the former’s spine as the latter went for his dagger.

“Please…” Johanni stepped back. “…don’t.”

Raider drew it. Its steel was thin and sharply honed, perfect for a quick and merciful thrust between the ribs. It gleamed in the torch light.

He cut Johanni’s ropes with it.

“Apologies,” he said earnestly. “I… may have erred this day.”

**********

A day after Wharla Oldeye saw the truth of Johanni’s heritage through the word of the Gods, Raider and his party emerged on the northern side of the Oakmire. From the saddle of his own horse, the white mare, Johanni watched the thorny woodland around him disperse into a gigantic plane of open flatland. The territory of the Karggars was enormous. East or west, one could ride for days before they saw so much as a hill upon the horizon. But worse than that… the land was barren. Its soils were dry and rocky. Take up so much as a clump of it and it crumbled to dust in your hand. There was not a single blade of grass in sight for miles around. And no game, either. No deer, no hares, no birds, not even worms or beetles. There was nothing to eat nor anything to grow. These were the Grey Wilds. Cold and blustery, and darkened by a crown of perpetually grey clouds that almost never rained.

{How can anyone live here? } Thought Johanni.

Raider and his warband provided the aetheling and his men with wolf’s pelt cloaks to stave off the cold. Halfdan, his horse returned to him, rode alongside Johanni as Eardwulf led the remaining legionaries on foot, unbound, no rope nor chain. Raider retained their weapons. ‘Not even your sword I can return,’ Raider had said, ‘not until we reach Greyspear’.

Johanni (and an utterly affronted Halfdan) agreed to his terms. Reaching an accord did not change the fact that at this moment in time they were at Raider’s mercy.

There was a mountain in the distance. It was the only visible spec for miles in any corner of the horizon beyond the south. Johanni pointed it out. “I saw that mountain in the murals in the Temple of the Gods,” he said. “That is Greyspear.”

“Yes,” said Raider. His white-maned stallion cantered just a few yards behind Johanni’s mare. “Our chieftain, Erik Halfspear, lives inside the fortress our ancestors carved into its guts. At its base sits Yveryth, the largest village in the Grey Wilds. It’s the grim little turd stain we call home.”

They did not reach it for nearly half a day. The ride was long and cold but as their hoof prints beat dust clouds out of the cracked earth, and the savage winds bore down upon them from the west; the mountain of Greyspear climbed higher and higher in the horizon like a spearpoint, until the group rode in its shadow. Less than half a mile from Yveryth, Raider led them to the rim of what seemed to be a deep hollow in the earth. In truth, as Frodi went on to explain to them, it was a dried-up lake.

Raider, Frodi and Thregg all dismounted.

“From here on we six are alone,” said Raider. “Me, Frodi, the Ghoat; you, your steward and your thrall.”

“Your game?” sneered Halfdan, scratching the rope welts around his wrists.

“There is no game here. We go to Greyspear while the others proceed to Yveryth. Your men will be safe,” Raider looked to Johanni. “You have my word.”

Johanni nodded. “Lead on then.”

The lake’s slope slanted sharply from its pebbly bank – the only way down was to slide down. Raider and Frodi went first then Thregg second. Eardwulf followed Johanni as he slid down next, then came Halfdan (in more of a tumble than a slide, earning him a few chuckles from Raider and Thregg). Wharla Oldeye, the Karggars and the surviving legionaries proceeded onward towards the town.

Bone dry weeds snapped beneath Johanni’s heels as Raider led him and the others to an arch-shaped tunnel bored through the hard soil wall of the lakebed. Frodi and Thregg lit torches (sticks swathed in oil rags) by striking sparks with flint. They lit the way for Raider and Johanni to follow. Eardwulf and Halfdan followed them.

The tunnel was long and deep and black. The walk felt long, especially after such a long ride to Greyspear from the Oakmire; but as they drew closer to the fortress in the heart of the mountain, Johanni noticed something along the walls.

“Murals…” He said.

They were crudely carved but detailed, the indentations painted in yellow and red ochre. They depicted events of Woaggish history both old and new. Before long he spotted a carving that appeared to be a crowned rider at the head of an army, pointing a bejewelled sword at a horde of spear-eared infantry. “Is that my father?”

“It is,” said Raider, as he pointed out another figure in the mural, “And the man next to him is Gad Greyspear; the previous chieftain and father to the current chieftain, Erik Halfspear. Gad was the first one to join Hrathwuld’s quest and the first to declare him King. They were war-brothers, those two. Even amongst us Karggars, Hrathwuld’s name still commands respect.”

“Then why you would attack men bearing his banners?”

“Well lord, to be fair to us it was dark and we could not see your banners,” when Johanni did not return the smile Raider sighed in defeat. “But to be blunt… the King has not always been loyal to our chieftain…”

Eardwulf frowned. “Did he not destroy the Osserians for you?”

“Ah! The thrall speaks! But it was the Bloodbane who destroyed your people. We were just his excuse.”

“What did you mean when you said that my father has not always been loyal to your chieftain?” Asked Johanni.

“Oh, fret not, lord! He will like you,” Raider leaned into Johanni’s ear but whispered loud enough for everyone to hear it, “He’s keen on blondes, you see…”

Eardwulf clenched a fist.

“Mind your foul tongue around the aetheling,” warned Halfdan. Raider smirked at him but didn’t bother to retort. Just ahead of Frodi and Thregg were two arched wooden doors secured by iron. Raider’s allies gave then a shove. Internal bolts gave way and the twin doors yawned open into an enormous cavern fitted with logwood platforms and pillars, wooden beams, stone pillars and a pendulous network of rope ladders and bridges interlocking dozens and dozens of tunnels and cave dwellings. As many as a hundred Karggars, both male and female, dotted the fortress from cave floor to cave wall hauling fire wood, boiling water, mending linens, hammering new weapons or sharpening old ones. There was a twenty-step ramp to a central platform guarded by two Karggar spearmen. Johanni watched those men nod to Raider with surprising deference as he led him and his cohorts up the steps where an aging man, white of hair and tattooed across his face, arms and body with wolves’ teeth, stood in wait. Though his back was crooked and hunched, he looked to have been a tall man in his youth.

“Uncle,” said Raider. “You’re looking well! I’ve… brought guests.”

The old man glowered at him. “Wharla told me about the message you sent her before she rode off to meet you,” he coughed. “…I always knew you were reckless. But I never fathomed you could be so stupid. Ignorant boy! You bring shame to your father’s name!”

Johanni expected some clever retort or sarcastic smile to come from that. Instead Raider looked away, like some chastised child sent off to bed with a ringing ear and an empty belly. {So at least he respects his chieftain…} the boy thought.

He stepped forward and knelt, respectfully.

“Oldfather,” he said. “I am Johanni Carian Hrathwuld, trueborn son of King Hrathwuld, Chieftain of the Weald and elected ruler of all Grünlund. Though I mislike the circumstances of my arrival I thank you for receiving me. On behalf of my father, I have urgent matters to discuss with you.”

The old man smiled. “So respectful. So polite. You are your father’s son indeed. But I am not the one with whom you must speak.”

“I… don’t understand. Are you not Erik Halfspear, chieftain of the Grey Wilds and lord of the Karggar Woags?”

“No,” He pointed a hooked finger at the now silent Raider. “He, in all his boundless stupidity, is Erik Halfspear…”

**********

Night reigned over the Palace of Drang.

Though the city it ruled yet churned with life in its secret markets, raucous mead halls and clandestine brothels, silence preserved the Palace. Unknown to all but to a few, a silent cortege of Royal Guardsmen broke their scheduled patrol around the High Legate’s domus; and stood watch around the porticoed entryway of the necropolis; a sweeping forested cemetery where once the elves interred their noble dead and honoured them with towering stone monuments decorated with frescoes. Though it was in the Woaggish tradition to burn their dead the Impanni adopted this practice of burial. And so, deep below the boneyard sprawl of the necropolis, ran a network of subterranean tunnels entwining various underground crypts and mausoleums purposefully dug and paved to house the dead; one of which specifically built for the interment of fallen shieldmaidens. Inside this crypt, known as the Hall of the Shieldmaidens, was an eleven-foot limestone statue built in commemoration of the women buried beneath it. Her name was Knuthilde.

Ragnar Bloodbane knelt before her tomb.

He was deep in thought; of the past, of the Diet, of the succession. But he was a soldier to his core and ever-alert. He heard his father approaching long before that raspy voice ever spoke a word; so distinctive was the echo of his walking staff and the shuffle of his slippered feet. Tap, tap, tap as it wrapped the cold mossy flagstones.

“The crypt is dank,” said Ragnar. “The wet air is not good for your health.”

King Hrathwuld smiled. “Is that your… charitable way of suggesting that I am not welcomed down here?”

“Take it as you like.”

The King’s smile fell into a frown as he turned to Knuthilde’s painstakingly crafted obelisk. It had taken his finest sculptors nearly two solstices to make it, but the work was worthy of her. Even in death she bore her spear and round shield, her winged helm and her side sword. A warrior must have her weapons if her soul is to traverse the bowels of the underworld and make it to the Hallowed Plane, the sacred realm of Wo’ar, where history’s greatest heroes could forever hunt, ride, drink and battle under the half-god’s eye.

“My son,” said Hrathwuld. “Understand that I loved her too.”

Ragnar frowned. “I do not believe that any more than she did. She was your whore, like all the rest of the shieldmaidens. She was just the only one unlucky enough to be sired with a bastard. I pity her.”

“My Lords!”

Sudden footsteps scuffled down the distant steps into Knuthilde’s crypt. A messenger trundled in on urgent footsteps, catching his breath. “My lords,” he said, huffing and puffing, “an urgent missive!”

Ragnar took it and dismissed him. As the messenger withdrew, he untied the small roll of parchment, opened it, and read it. He frowned.

“What is it?” Asked the King.

“It’s Johanni,” said the Bloodbane. “He’s been captured by the Karggars…”

**********