Prince Howel agreed. “So thought I, knowing his reputation! Surely he had some urgent business to hand. Now word has come back to me that he is guesting, among the Saxons of western Gaul. It’s friends and kin he has among them.”
“Aye, true, he has,” Wulfhere said. “By Wotan! This is good hearing!”
“Ye’ve but now come to these coasts,” Morfydd said. “Strange that ye heard naught of it on the way.”
“Not so, strange. It was by night we traveled, and careful we were by day, to lie well hidden in lonely places. It’s hardly our best fighting condition we’re in at present.”
Wulfhere glowered at the Gael, and spoke from indignance. “But yet ten times better than most! Ah! Hengist and Sigebert both within our reach! That caps it, Cormac! We’ll not be leaving here until we’ve finished with those whoresons!”
“Both of them? God’s light!” Howel laughed merrily. “Your hate for Sigebert I know. What have ye against Hengist, Captain?”
Cormac’s eyes rolled upward. “Och, ye know not what ye ask. I trust ye’ve ample time and to spare for listening.”
“WHAT?” Wulfhere thundered, drowning out Cormac’s voice ere the Gael had finished speaking. “What have I against the swine? Know ye naught of his history, Prince? Hengist is a jute, for one thing, as I am a Dane. There be more death-feuds between our peoples than-than betwixt the Saxons and your own! We Danes moved into Jutland and drove out the Jutes with weapon-steel, generations agone. Some remained… as thralls, or carles or warriors in service to Danish chiefs, and sure it is we found many of their women worth the keeping! Many others fled in ships to the coast of Frisia, a sodden land and no good home. The sea’s an invader that steals the fields little by little. They can either humble themselves to a mean life fishing and fowling, or take to the pirate trade. I’ve no time for Jutes, but I grant ye this: they be not so lacking in manhood that they will choose the former!”
Wulfhere wet his throat and continued.
“Hengist was one of those stayed in Jutland. He served my grandsire, Hnaef. Now, Hnaef’s sister Hildeburg was wed to a Jutish chieftain in Frisia, and there Hnaef went with his hearth-companions-Hengist among them, may monsters eat his corpse!-to visit his brother-in-law. All went well at the beginning. Then, because of bad blood and old feuds, trouble arose. The damned swinish Jutes…”
Wulfhere paused, swallowing, his face having gone dark with fury. “-the pig-sired Jutes did treachery on their guests and attacked them in whelming force in the night. Though they had been surprised, the Danes of course got themselves into battle-order and made ready to sell their lives at high price. They fought. Grandsire Hnaef was cut down and slain, early in that fight. His companions were grief-stricken-and enraged! They fought like blood-hungry demons, they did, slaying and hacking and slaying until the Jutes gave back before them. Then came Finn, the Jutish chieftain, he who had done death on his wife’s own brother. That leering traitor offered them their lives an they’d swear peace and friendship! Aye! Now I put it to ye, Prince. What is a man to reply to such an insult as that?” Wulfhere shook his head. “Yet, the alternative was death. Too, Hengist was now become leader of the Danish company. Ye see? That damned Jute. Belike he felt his Jutish blood speak to him, though blood-ties should never count above loyalty to a chieftain.”
Howel made a faint grimace at that. Cormac was Cormac; set of face and slitted of eye, he showed nothing. Still, he felt as Howel did. They were Celts. Ties of blood and kinship to them were supreme.
“The snorting pig prevailed upon the Danes to accept Finn’s terms! A shameful, disgraceful thing it was, but never has Hengist known what scruples are save for tripping better men with. He’s a Jute. They suck treachery with their mothers’ milk. Worse than Franks, the Jutes.” Wulfhere paused then, seeing that Howel, who knew more of the ax-throwing Franks than he did of Jutes, was openly incredulous. “Aye,” Wulfhere repeated. “Worse than Franks, Prince! Anyhows-Hnaef’s band was not altogether lost to shame. They gave no thought to returning to their own country with such a tale. Among the isles and lagoons of Frisia they remained, living as neighbours to Finn’s Jutes.”
Wulfhere paced a step, swung back to fix fjordblue eyes on Howel. “That did not last long. Word of what had befallen wended back to Hnaef’s kinsmen in the north of Jutland. Naturally they made ready to pay Finn and his fellows a visit, and in numbers, all armed and war-shirted.”
“Well, naturally,” Howel said nodding. “How old were you?”
“I was not! Hengist is old, Prince, old-he’d lived too damned long twenty years agone! He gave aid to those Danes of Jutland’s north! Aye! He who had broke his oath to Hnaef once Hnaef was dead, now broke his oath to Finn the Jute whilst Finn yet lived, and helped the Danes to slay him! Victorious, the Danes returned home, and their kinswoman Hildeburg with them. Hengist was left in Frisia-in power!”
Wulfhere paused and stared at Howel until the prince shook his head in disgust, and the giant went on.
“Thought ye the Franks were treacherous, eh? Now Hengist became a pirate chieftain-and one for the reckoning with. Natheless Frisia was and is no good place to live. He looked about with his pig’s eyes, bethinking him of a better place to make his home.”
“Aye, and I know what happened after,” Howel said.
Wulfhere went on as if he’d not heard. “Was the worst thing that halfwit king of the Britons, Vortigern, ever did! To hire Hengist and seven shiploads of his wolves to fight the Picts, once the Romans were well gone and Britain unprotected by the legion and beset from many sides. Thor’s thunder, any man who knew Hengist could have predicted the outcome. He commenced calling in other sea-rovers who wanted homes in a land that squelched not under their feet. In great numbers they came, like called pigs to the trough.”
Cormac, from in-sloping Eirrin that squelched under foot as often as not, and well familiar with Britain’s fogs and fens, was almost smiling. Almost.
“When Vortigern saw what was happening,” Wulfhere said, when a movement of facial muscles indicated Howel might essay to speak, “he sought to stop it. Too late, too late. He dealt with Hengist, prince among princes of treachery. Naturally, Hengist turned against him. And now now old Vortigern’s dead and Hengist’s a king himself. In Britain, as well ye displaced Britons know… calling himself not Jute but Englisc, along with the Saxons who have also moved in, jowl to cheek with Angles.”
“King,” Cormac said, and again in the tongue of Eirrin: “Righ! King of a tiny patch like Kent! King over as much of Britain as his hand and hams will barely cover!” Wulfhere was his old friend, a friendship conceived in prison and born in escape and grown asea to be ripened by the saving each of the other’s life, more than once. One sneered at one’s friends’ enemies.
“All this I know,” Howel said, indicating the wine. “Still, Kent is a wealthy little patch of Britain.”
Wulfhere jerked, sloshed the wine he was pouring and glowered. “Hengist swore loyalty to my own grandsire and then proved false! He is Loki’s left hand and my own blood-enemy. Aye, blood-enemy. I snatched some loot out of his hands, years agone. He revenged himself by taking captive eight of my men. At my offer to ransom them, he laughed. The leprous pig-snouted dog hanged them with his own hands, then sent me their corpses with the message that he wished me joy of them!”
“Peace, Wulf,” Cormac said quietly. “Ye cannot have thought on you that other folk know the story of all the blood-feuds ye have with all the rovers afloat! Blood of the gods, it were simpler to tally those ye have not enmity with. They cannot number above a dozen.”
“Listen to him!” the huge redbeard snorted. “Ye have made foes of your own in plenty, battle-brother. Hengist for one! Ill-will hung betwixt yourself and him ere ever I met ye. Who was it took that grey madman’s battle-standard of white horsetails from the middle of his camp, and has crested his helmet with ’em every since?” And he indicated mac Art’s helm, which was unusually ornate for his sombre, unbejeweled attire, with its flowing crest.