Conqueror

I
MERCENARY AD 607
I

Wuffa liked to smash windows in the dead city.

He walked north through the empty streets, sling and stone in hand, knives at his belt. He whistled a sad fireside song of the brevity of life. It was late afternoon, and the low southern sun cast long shadows from the heaps of rubble. It was a long time until night, but already the hairy star was visible, its streaming tail a banner sprawled across the pale spring sky. He disturbed rabbits and rats and mice, and a few birds pecking for food in the gaunt shells of ruined buildings. The city was so old that it didn't even smell any more, save of the green things, the weeds and grass that pushed their way through the cobbles.

The comet, the hairy star, alarmed many men. The Saxons had always shunned the old stone cities. Here they had built a new trading settlement, by the bank of the river to the west of the walls. Certainly Wuffa's brothers wouldn't risk catching Woden's eye at such a time by walking alone in the ghost-plagued ruins of an ancient city. But Wuffa was of a practical turn of mind. It was a big world, and Woden would have more important things to worry about than a lone youth looking for a bit of sport.

In this, as it turned out, he was wrong. Wuffa's life would turn today. He would always wonder if he had after all angered the gods of the city, or the sky – or perhaps he had fallen under the cold gaze of the Weaver, who worked men's lives like threads on his iron loom.

There. A wall stood tall, facing south towards the river. It was all that was left of a collapsed building, an unlikely relic somehow resisting the weather. And the low sunlight picked out a square of gold, a window still paned with unbroken glass, high but not beyond his reach. Perfect.

He selected a loose cobble from the road and took his leather sling. He stood before the ragged wall, squinted up and hurled. The cobble pinged against the wall perhaps half an arm's length below the window, and birds clattered up from a gaping frame. Wuffa picked up another cobble and launched again. This time the glass burst with a soft chime that echoed from the jutting walls.

Satisfied, he looked for another target.

Of course he should have been at work. Today had been a busy day, for a whole fleet of Norse ships had come sailing up the great river to be berthed and unloaded. Wuffa's father Coenred was employed by Aethelberht, the Kentish overking who owned the city, to oversee the trade that trickled through the huge old concrete wharves along the river. Wuffa, twenty years old, the second son of Coenred's third wife, was expected to do his share. But trade bored him. He especially hated the desolating stink of the slave pens. Recently there had been hundreds of slaves to be shipped out, British-Roman captives from the German kings' campaigns in the west and north.

And he itched to fight. Wrestling matches with his brothers were no longer enough. There was no peace in Britain, and it wouldn't be hard to find an army to fight for, a war to win, a fortune to make, although he would have to leave home to do it.

In the meantime all he wanted was another window to smash. He bent to pick up another cobble.

He saw something move. Across the street, beyond a low wall: large, heavy, a flash of golden hair. Without thinking Wuffa pivoted and fired off the cobble. He heard a satisfying thud of rock on flesh.

'Ow!' His target straightened up. It was a man, dressed in a leather tunic and trousers, with a ragged shock of blond hair. He was carrying some kind of spade. And he was clutching his balls. He glared at Wuffa and began striding across the road. He was big, with muscles that bulged through his sleeves. He spat abuse in a Norse tongue of which Wuffa could make out only one word: 'Arsewipe'.

Wuffa was a Saxon warrior, son of Coenred, and he stood his ground, his hand hovering at the hilt of his seax, his bone-handled knife.

The big Norse came to a halt not an arm's length from Wuffa. The Norse was about Wuffa's age, around twenty, and they were both blond and fair-skinned, and dressed similarly in leather tunic and trousers. But Wuffa wore his hair in the Saxon style, shaved at his forehead and long at the back of his neck, while the Norse wore his yellow mane loose and ragged.

Wuffa recognised this man. 'I know you,' he said in his own tongue. 'You're from the fleet at the wharf.'

The Norse fired out more insults.

Wuffa tried again, in Latin. 'I know you.'

At least that stopped the flow of abuse. 'So what, arsewipe?'

Britain was an island populated by Roman-British, Germans and Irish, with traders always streaming over from the continent. Most adults knew a little Latin, a relic of empire, the only common tongue. This young Norse was no exception. Though he evidently didn't know the Latin for 'arsewipe'.

'I am Coenred's son. We are unloading your boats-'

The Norse kicked a loose rock. 'And is this how you greet your trading partners, with a cobble in the balls?'

Wuffa held his gaze. They both knew they had a choice here, either to fight it out or resolve their difference. Wuffa said, 'I should be working. Even if you don't kill me my father will finish me off for you.'

The Norse laughed. But he warned, 'You have to say it.'

'All right. I apologise.'

The Norse grunted. 'Very well. Your little girl's throw did not harm me anyhow.'

Thus the matter was closed.

'I am Wuffa, son of Coenred.'

The Norse nodded. 'Ulf, son of Ulf.' He squinted up at the wall. 'If you are not hunting Norsemen's balls, what are you doing?'

'Smashing windows,' Wuffa said, a bit ashamed. He hefted his sling. 'It helps improve my aim.'

'Of course it does.'

'And you?'

Ulf showed him his spade. 'Looking for coins. Sometimes the Britons bury their treasures, in the hope of returning some day.'

'They never do.'

'And if they did they would be disappointed, for Ulf the treasure-seeker has been there before them. Well, arsewipe. Do you want to continue throwing stones like a baby or will you help me dig?'

There was a kindred spirit here, Wuffa thought. He pocketed his sling. 'Let's dig. But stop calling me "arsewipe". How do you know where to look?…'

Ulf held up his hand. 'Hush. Can you hear that?'

It was singing, voices joined in a melody high and clear as the sky, drifting on the afternoon breeze.

The young men exchanged a glance. Postponing their treasure hunt they set off across the broken city, curious, ambitious, unperturbed by the monumental ruins around them, living in their own present.