Chapter Two



[video=youtube;bl4Sw5qJBgE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl4Sw5qJBgE[/video]







“All right, dunga! You'll be back with me before long- enjoy your break while it lasts!”





Bjarni's mocking words misted in the cold March air, then dissipated as I put down my spear, my muscles tense almost beyond belief.





The ground was still frozen, even with spring supposedly coming in a month or two. Everything around me was cold and stifled: the weather, the ground, the weapons. The men.





Even Ottarr seemed grimmer than usual on this cold afternoon. “Hastein's clever. He means to freeze us all so the Brets will have to slash through the ice to get at us. You'll see. You'll see.”





It was said with his usual assurance: he said so, so it was without question fact. Even the slightest doubt was ridiculous. It was an effort sometimes to put up with his occassional learned theories, but it was not as bad as dealing with my own countrymen in the camp.





“I'd like that.” I said, walking past him. He had a broad, still-freckled face at the age of (according to his approximate count) twenty-two. He smiled a lot, which got him regular beatings from Bjarni.









Rumors flew in the Daneg camp of Salomon coming to retake his port, or Roue Charles the Frank coming to avenge his vassal's defeat by Hastein. Another told of a coalition between Salomon and the Roue of Navarre, a mountain country populated by a people which, like the Breizhiz, refused to assimilate into the peoples which invaded and destroyed the Roman Empire. All those fables were born of an alliance between boredom and the paranoia of an army stationed in a distant, hostile land.





The version you heard was generally determined by the amount of drink the teller had imbibed.

Thus, we were always being placed on alert and released again. Ottarr had put forward the theory that Bjarni was an agent of Salomon, sent to condition us to take alerts as false so that we would be sleepily abandonding our posts as the Breizh riders charged at us.





Whether or not that was true, Bjarni didn't let us enter Naoned. He kept us in tents with miniature fires burning outside, trying to keep away the biting cold, to usually little avail.

There were other Berizhiz in Hastein's growing army, men feeling the cold winter winds blowing in the Daneg direction. They detested Bjarni's decree almost as much as they detested me, and I them.





So it was back to the tent I shared with Ottarr. As I tried to get some rest before the next training march, I heard a drop hit the top of the tent.





Then it was a torrent, turning the frozen ground into a cold field of mud.

Thus passed most of the year, in cold misery and, when it was too much, tears at night, remembering my family.





**********************





The events of the summer proved Ottarr wrong; why would Hastein send us north in the summer if the scheme was to use ice as our defense?





Naoned was showing signs of recovery on the last night before the march north. Bjarni had finally let us enter the city, and we knew that for many of us it would be the last time we'd see it.





Inside the city we took our various pleasures liberally: drink, edible food, other things. I hope Iudicael will not think less of me when I say I took my share of all of those. I had lived a hard freezing life for the past few months, and thought it my due to have some pleasure before I marched off to what could very well be my death.









I remember thinking, or a twisted ale-drowned form of such, on the floor of some low establishment that night.





Perhaps it would not be such a bad thing to die from one of Salomon's arrows shot from the walls of Monkontour. I'd never see the face of the man who killed me, and thus harbor no more grudges than I already did when I went to face whatever the dead faced. I was no longer sure it was God and his angels. Why should they judge the dead when they did not aid the living?





I had no family; maybe some distant cousins in relation and location alike. In all likelihood they knew nothing of me, so that they would not mourn me. The family I knew was long dead now. Perhaps Ottarr would mourn, in the addled way he sometimes spoke in, but then he'd go on theorizing on the devious plans of his commanders, all the while wailing at the misfortune they caused him.

















We marched out the next morning, headaches and nausea from the night's revelry be damned. Hastein rode at the front of our approximately two thousand men on a fine horse from the Muslim lands of the south.

We struck out north-east, and at first I hoped that we'd be quartered for the first night in Pontbrex.





We weren't. I would later find out that while we were originally supposed to, a plot had been discovered by the Pontbrexers to kill Hastein and invite Salomon to retake Naoned and its county. I was never told what their motive was, but my best guess is that it was to gain tax relief from a grateful Salomon and thus help rehabilitate the damage to their pockets my father and Hastein caused them.





Whether that was true or not, we didn't step foot in Pontbrex the entire march, only glimpsing it briefly on the second day.









At the time, like most soldiers, I didn't know the overall plan for Hastein's campaign, nor its aims. All I knew was that after two weeks marching through the heat of July and August we arrived at the walls of Monkontour.





Hastein gave a brief speech about the plunder in Monkontour being tenfold that of Naoned, and the possibility of taking all of Breizh with the fall of its capital, but I wasn't listening. The speech was directed at the bulk of the army, Daneg who'd sailed with Hastein all the way from their homeland, and were bitter over being stuck here instead of burning up the Saxons with the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok.





That night, as the campfires lit up the desolate hill country outside the tall walls of Monkontour, I had my longest conversation with Ottarr.





It started as we retired for the night. The night was unusually hot, and I felt suffocated. The war, the discpline, the threateningly tall walls of Monkontour, they all threatened to close me in until I choked to death.





“Ottarr,” I began, “will you miss me?”





Ottar looked surprised as he turned to me in response. “Of course I will. Who else would I tell the truths I deduce to?”





As we neared the tent, I sat down on the ground, and Ottarr followed. “Jokes aside.” I said. Ottarr's face slackened, and he said: “Why do you ask?”





I never told anyone in the camp about my family; nobody asked, and I believed they would see me as unmanly if I talked of my emotions and misfortunes too much.





I paused for a moment before answering. “My parents are dead.”

Ottarr seemed incredulous for a moment, before looking downward at the uncaring ground.

“Mine are too.”













A hot wind blew over us, and scattered Ottarr's long black hair. There was no more need for words.





************************************************** *





It was the third day of the siege when Hastein asked to see me.





The weather was hot as ever, but a scent of rain hung in the air. Bjarni opened the fold of our tent and bawled: “Bret! Hastein wants you!”





I opened my eyes, and shot out of my sleep. I stood up and walked out, slightly dazed by exhaustion. I'd stood a long, long watch the previous night, and with the sun still not quite up I assumed Ottarr was still on his own watch.





I stumbled into the almost-dawn darkness, and Bjarni held me up roughly so I wouldn't be grass-stained before his chief.





Hastein was staring up at the walls when I met him. He didn't smile and turn in acknowledgement, in fact he didn't seem to have seen me at all.





Then, he turned to me, and there seemed to be a glimmer of emotion in his pale face. “Alwen.” he said, “I have a job for you.”





I knelt. “I am my lord's to command. Always.”





He motioned for me to get up, then whispered a few sentences in improved Frankish.





I considered his words for a moment, then nodded.

*************************************

Night fell on Monkontour and its environs, and on a desolate Daneg camp.





I stood alone before the gate, steeling myself for what was to come.

“I beg entry!” I shouted in my most accented Breizhoneg. A laugh sounded from someone above me. “Lost, little boy?” he asked.

“I am a free citizen of Naoned, and a subject of our Roue Salomon, and I demand a meeting with him!” I said, with all the courage I could still muster.





“Let him in, Tamas” said a deeper voice on the walls, and in a short time the squeaking iron gate was up, and I walked through, apprehensive.





Two guards, presumably the ones I'd heard, came to escort me. They took me through unlit streets, heading into the center of the town. Close to the walls some houses were damaged, likely thanks to some exceptionally strong Daneg who'd thrown large stones over the walls. I made note of the exact route from the eastern gate to the Roue's abode, which I struggle to describe as a palace.





Salomon de Poher, Roue e Breizh, was sitting on a throne under multiple torches, looking grimly at the door as it opened to admit me. His fingers trembled on either stone side of the throne, and worry twisted his plain face into one resembling a Roman statue I'd found once in Pontbrex.





He straightened in his sitting position, then said: “Who are you?” as the guards, having examined me for weapons, released me to walk towards the throne.





“My name is Alwen, son of Mihael Artin, who was ever a loyal subject of the Roue.” I knelt before the throne, trying to appear as servile as possible.





“Artin. I remember you. Family slaughtered by the Daneg in Pontbrex. Very sad. Do you want me to flick my fingers to bring them back or are you prepared to wait until I've crushed your Daneg friends?”





I struggled to keep up the facade of servility to this unpleasant man. “My lord, you may have heard that I had gone over to the Daneg. It is partly true. I did indeed train with them and keep up the illusion of having joined them, but all the while I was plotting their downfall in your name. Their cruel chieftain Hastein learned of my plot to betray them to you, so he left me behind 'so I could see how Salomon dealt with the faithless'”.





Salomon considered this for a while, looking everywhere but at me. I imagined vague thoughts flitting through his stupid head, vainly struggling to produce wise action.





Finally, he said: “What, then, is your plot to bring about the downfall of the Daneg?”





Immediately, I said: “If you open the gates to let them into the city, you can lull them into a false sense of victory. Once within Monkontour, they will divide into small bands roving the city for plunder and women. They will not expect the death awaiting them within each house.”





“A sound plan.” Salomon said, and motioned for me to leave. “I believe I shall execute it soon. Begone.”





No mention of gratitude, reward, or any sort of recognition. I thanked God or the several thereof that I had virtually secured his downfall.





***********************





By my estimation, the fall of Monkontour began at midnight.





Wandering the streets with a torch, I heard soldiers being dispersed throughout the city. Finally, approaching the walls, I heard the gate being pulled up by its chain.





It took an hour or so before the Daneg entered. They were silent as the single column walked into the city. Hastein was on foot, and I filled him in on the sucess of my part in the plan. He nodded, and set off after me as I guided them to the palace.





I put out my torch, and Hastein kept the men as quiet as possible, all so that the hidden Breizhiz detachments would not be able to jump out at us and disrupt the march. We headed up a street leading west from the east gate directly to the palace, which was apparently equidistant from each gate in each of the four directions.









Salomon was fidgeting on his throne when we burst in, having forced the weakly-protected doors. His face was a mask of betrayal and fear as Hastein ran in, sword waving threateningly.

Two helmeted warriors were, in apparently the blink of an eye, at the throne, holding spears to Salomon's throat.





The guards had already been dispersed throughout the city, and the Daneg were spreading out through the main hall of the palace. There was no possibility of rescue.













Salomon began to speak, and the spears came closer and closer to punching through his throat. He made no attempt to escape or call for aid, though. All he said was: “I have friends on the outside. They're coming, all too soon.”