They jumped into the ebb flow on the banks of the river. The impatience of the warband was evident in their grim expressions. They were eager to find the treasure they knew the settlement boasted.
“That is my ancestral home.” Ingcél pointed Dond Desa’s war hammer up the slope leading away from the river. The conical thatched roof of a feast hall and the timber of a defensive palisade were just becoming visible as the river mists receded. The ships of the joint fleet were pulling up onto the mud of the riverbank, accompanied by much congestion and whispered curses. They had anchored in the mouth of the river overnight and then sailed at first light to reach the settlement while the morning mists were still clearing. There was an air of excitement about the band of warriors. They had raped and pillaged their way across the kingdoms of northern Alba, becoming veterans of bloody murder as they went.
Most of the men thought it was not before time when they sailed up the river and reached the settlement at Uerulámion, the seat of the Catuvellauni—the clan that ruled the kingdom north of the river, one of the wealthiest and most powerful clans in the southern kingdoms of Alba. The settlement would doubtless have riches in abundance for the raiders to steal and women in abundance for them to rape. There would be heads aplenty for the trophies of war. This day promised to be the culmination of all that the warband had desired. The end to the first half of the bargain the brothers had struck with Ingcél. The end of the reaving in Alba.
“The tastiest morsel is always left until last,” Ingcél had explained to the men, who were frustrated because he seemed to be avoiding what they knew to be the richest prize.
The warriors had heard Ingcél boast of the settlement’s riches while sitting at their night fires on beaches around the barren north. They started to dream of the wealth they would gain.
And now the promised day had arrived. The tension in the warband as they pulled the ships up onto the riverbank mud could be felt in the air, like the smell of sulfur after a close lightning strike.
“Your family are there?” Lee asked as he looked up the rise between the drying fishing nets.
He had expected the strength of the clan capital to reflect their reputation. What Lee was looking at appeared to be a sleepy fishing village.
“No. Just my elder brother, Lud.” As he spoke, the warlord swung at a blade of grass with Dond Desa’s war hammer.
“Your brother will not greet your return with arms extended in welcome?” Lee asked.
It was apparent that Ingcél was feeling some deep hurt. Something had happened to cause this man to become the person he was, and Lee suspected he was soon to find out what it had been.
Ingcél hit out at another blade of grass before he answered, “He betrayed me to Caesar, the Warlord of the Romans, in exchange for the throne of Uerulámion.” Ingcél paused before he continued.
“There was a battle at the Devil’s Dyke, in the forest,” he waved the war hammer in the general direction of the dyke. “I lost and had to run from the agents of Caesar or die at their hands.”
Lee nodded his understanding. He had heard of the Romans, armies from the south of Gaul, beyond the mountains, clad in iron and led by a fanatic on a white horse called Caesar. They were considered small but fearsome in battle, and their weapons were formidable. The tribes in Gaul had been battling them for many summers before they finally invaded southern Alba.
“Where are they now, these Romans?” Lee asked.
“They sailed back to Gaul. That is why we have come here,” the Briton hesitated while something crossed his mind. “I pledged to return my father, Heli, to his throne when I was given the necessary means. Now the Romans are gone, and my brother is vulnerable.”
“The Romans are gone, and you have enough followers to put the settlement to the sword,” Lee surmised.
“Yes, Lee, with your help, I now have the strength to punish my brother for his wrongdoing.” Ingcél showed his gratitude by patting the Irishman on the shoulder.
Lee nodded, feeling belittled by the gesture but too cautious to let it show. Ingcél had started the truce as the underdog with fewer men, but now he had many more followers than Lee. After each reaving, the warband of Ingcél was bloated with disenchanted warriors joining his ranks. Rather than die for a weak lord or by a knotted leather thong, they elected to join the Briton in droves.
Lee knew why they were joining Ingcél. The droves knew by reputation that he was a man of strength and utterly ruthless. One they could easily follow. The fleet was also growing. Each new coastal settlement razed brought one or two more ships. The men knew that the longships of the settlement on the Thames would increase the fleet size to twenty. Each ship carried fifty warriors, so there would be room for one thousand fighting men. A warband of that size would be feared throughout the kingdoms of Alba and Ériu and maybe beyond. Not many clans could command such a number.
Lee did not feel much bitterness towards the warlord. He had known it would only be a matter of time before his warband became part of the army of Ingcél. Any hope of preventing the Briton from taking control died with Dond Desa on the beach in Caergybi. Lee and his brothers did not have the strength of will to oppose the reaver, nor did they have the experience necessary to convince warriors to follow them rather than him.
“Come, let us build a cairn on the beach,” Ingcél said, breaking into Lee’s thoughts.
Lee nodded his approval of the gesture. Building a monument to those about to die in battle was necessary as part of the passage rituals. Without a cairn, how would Camulos, the God of war, know a battle was about to be joined?
The cairn grew each warrior chose a votive stone and placed it on the pile. With the warriors distracted and the ships taking forever to unload and settle on the banks between the drying nets, Lee felt sure the defenders would be well prepared when the attack arrived. Eventually, the warband gathered at the edge of the woods facing the palisade. At a wave of the war hammer, they walked towards the settlement. And then stopped some distance from the palisade. They stared at the village, wondering at their luck. Despite the warband raiding throughout northern Alba for several months, Uerulámion was unprepared for them. The defensive palisade was unmanned, although the gates were closed. Smoke from the cooking fires inside the roundhouses wafted lazily above the settlement.
Ingcél stood with his arms crossed and the shaft of the war hammer leaning against his stomach, its head in the dust. He was staring with a look in his gray eyes that could only be described as loathing.
“You were forced to flee from this sleepy village?” Gar asked with a sneer.
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Ingcél stared at him over his shoulder with dead eyes. Lee moved his hand toward the pommel of his sword. The Briton looked as if he was about to attack Gar.
Instead, he said, “Were I you,” with a smile and a calm, reasonable voice, “I would not speak to me for the rest of this day and probably not for many days to come.”
Gar held up his hands, palms first, and backed away. The warrior’s smile was chilling him to his core. He had never met anyone who scared him as much. Even Dond Desa, when he was in a rage, had not scared him as badly.
“We attack with speed and without mercy. Keep the young women for later; everyone else dies.”
With that proclamation, Ingcél picked up Dond Desa’s hammer, strolled to the settlement gates, and knocked on the wood as if visiting a relative.
“Good morrow, Uerulámion,” he called as he swung the hammer with more force and watched the warriors of his warband stream over the palisade as if it was a sand wall built on the beach by a youngster.
One who had crested the outer defenses opened the gate with a grin, and Ingcél strolled into the settlement. Lee watched him go before turning and mounting the palisade to watch the reaving unfold.
The raid seemed over before it had begun. Lee had only been standing on the palisade for a few moments. Already, the defenders were throwing down their weapons and pleading for mercy, which fell on deaf ears. The attackers continued to kill until an unearthly stillness fell on them.
Lee looked over the settlement as Ingcél walked from the feast hall. He blanched at the sight of the warlord, who was covered in gore from his head to his feet. Only his eyes seemed clear of the blood. Da Derga, the Red God, flashed through Lee’s mind. He could not look away as the warrior lifted his father’s war hammer above his head and roared like a wounded bear.
“Bring my treacherous brother over here to the center,” the bloody apparition called, looking back over his shoulder towards the feast hall.
Lee looked where the warlord was looking. Two warriors dragged a man from the hall. His head was lolling, but Lee could hear sobs, so he knew the man was still living. The warriors threw him to his knees in front of Ingcél. The warlord smiled down on the man.
“Look, brother, it is a wonderful day to die. The sun is shining, the morning mist has gone, and the birds are singing. You should feel honored to meet Donn on such a day.” Ingcél tilted his head as if listening to a whispered plea. “No, you are right, Lud. You will not meet Áedh. The weak are not welcome in his mound.”
Ingcél punctuated each statement by thrusting the fearsome war hammer into the empty air. Lee watched the brother’s head as it followed each thrust, like a puppy dog following a piece of meat being lifted to a diner’s mouth.
“Show mercy, brother. We are of the same blood,” Lud pleaded.
“You showed no mercy when you betrayed me to the Romans, Lud. And for what? To take a kingdom that was our father’s? I will not show any mercy today, Brother,” Ingcél said and sighed before swinging the hammer in an underarm arc. It struck the kneeling man under the chin, and Lee heard a sickening snap as the man’s head flew back at an unnatural angle.
Lud’s body slumped to the ground. It seemed evident to Lee the man was dead, but that did not stop Ingcél from systematically striking the remains with the war hammer. Up and down, up and down. Head, torso, legs, and arms. Systematically beating each area of the bloody corpse. There was no expression on the face of the warrior. The son of Dond Desa had never seen anything quite as chilling. The living warriors in the settlement, attackers and defenders alike, were utterly cowed by the episode. The only sound throughout Uerulámion was the muffled thump of the hammer striking flesh and the chorus from the birds of the forest, blithely singing in ignorance of the bloody ritual.
***
Two days after the raid, Ingcél was sitting on a horse just inside the gates, watching a party of riders approaching. Lee could see the king, Ingcél’s father, at the head of the party. His mother and younger brothers were behind the king. The warrior had sent messengers throughout the immediate lands to find his family and invite them back to the settlement where they belonged. One of the messengers had returned earlier in the day and told him of his family’s imminent arrival.
Lee watched the riders rein in before the warlord. Even though Ingcél had washed thoroughly in the river, by the look on the faces of his parents, he might as well have been covered in the gore of their eldest son.
“Well, father,” he said, “I told you I would return.”
The king mumbled some inaudible response and fidgeted in his saddle. His wife and children seemed equally unsettled. No one in the party would look directly at Ingcél as if they feared looking at him would turn them to stone.
“I have reclaimed your kingdom for you,” Heli’s second son said, expansively waving at the settlement.
“What do you expect from me, gratitude?” the king asked. “I have no gratitude left for the man who murdered my eldest son.”
“I want to—” Ingcél’s mother started to speak, but Heli’s look froze the words on the tip of her tongue.
“I have returned your seat to you, Father. Surely a little gratitude would not be amiss,” the warrior continued.
Lee was beside him, so he could not see the smile, but he knew it was there by the way the warlord’s younger brothers blanched. The same smile he had witnessed two days before when Lee had feared for his younger brother. The same smile that had been there as Ingcél beat his dead elder brother to a bloody pulp. He did not understand why this old man did not dance to Ingcél’s tune. Surely, swallowed pride would be a better alternative to being pulped.
“Although not long, our journey was arduous. We would like to eat and rest,” the king said, still not looking at Ingcél.
“You can have the royal roundhouse, Father. It has been prepared for your arrival, and, of course, those are your rightful lodgings.”
With that, the warlord turned his horse and rode into the settlement without a backward glance. Lee shrugged and followed with Gar and Rogain.
That night, Lee sat drinking in the settlement feast hall with Ingcél and some of the warband. The women of the settlement who had survived the horror were serving. Ingcél’s family had retired to the royal roundhouse as Ingcél had suggested. The warlord had been drinking mead since they retired. His mood became more dangerously quiet as the evening progressed into night. He kept looking toward the roundhouse where his mother and father slept, even though he could not see it through the wooden walls of the feast hall.
“Just a little gratitude, that is all I wanted,” Ingcél mumbled into his mead.
“I am sorry?” Lee had not heard clearly.
“More gratitude. More gratitude. My father should show more gratitude. I hate them for all they have done to me,” he said, the words barely audible.
“Why did you invite them back?” Lee asked.
He did not really care what the madman’s motives were, but he knew that he needed to offer platitudes, or risk Ingcél’s wrath, and did not want to anger him.
“Come, I will show you,” Ingcél said, with the same smile Lee had quickly come to fear.
The warlord quaffed his cup of mead, stood up and went to the back of the feast hall. Lee could see the warlord’s sword and Dond Desa’s war hammer propped against the hall’s rear beams. Ingcél picked them up and strode from the hall with purpose. Lee followed him, resigning himself to what he guessed would happen.
Ingcél knew his parents were sleeping in the royal roundhouse, and his brothers were in one of the nearby houses. He lifted the oxhide covers of the two houses nearest the royal roundhouse before locating his brothers. After hearing them breathe in sleep, he strode to the sleeping place of his parents and lifted the oxhide cover. Despite the darkness within, Lee could see the steady rise and fall of the sleepers’ chests. Ingcél left the oxhide draped over the roundhouse wall, under the thatch, so the night’s light would lighten the interior and walked into the semi-dark. Lee stopped by the door and watched the warlord walk to the hide-covered bed and nudge it with his foot.
“Cassibelanus, is that you?” a womanly voice asked from within the small mound of hides.
“Yes, Mother. Are you pleased to see me?” Ingcél asked as he threw back the hides and slashed his sword across her neck, severing her jugular. The sound of his mother fighting to stem the blood flow woke his father. He looked to see his wife fighting vainly to hold onto a life spraying into the dust on the roundhouse floor.
“What have you done?” Heli demanded.
“All I asked was a little gratitude, Father,” Ingcél said, ignoring his father’s question.
“What have you done?” Heli repeated as he leaned over and tried to save his wife.
“I have killed her, Father. As I am going to kill you. And then I am going to kill my remaining brothers. It is the punishment I mete out to those who betray me.”
“We did not betray you, Ingcél. That was your brother Lud, who has paid the ultimate price.”
“But you did nothing to stop him, Father, and that is as bad as committing the act.” Saying which, Ingcél swung the war hammer and crushed his father’s skull with a sickening thump.