Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

On the seventh day of our visit, while Ambrose was elsewhere greeting friends and renewing old acquaintances, I met Vortigern's friend and ally Hengist the Dane. "Dane" was a term I had not heard before Ambrose used it mere days earlier, but Hengist was insistent that such was his race. I, who had but recently thought of all the invaders of our land generically as Saxons, took note of this additional distinction and said nothing.

Hengist was an enormous man, more in the sense of bulk, be it said, than mere height. He was tall enough, a handsbreadth taller than any of his fellows, but Vortigern stood taller than he did, as indeed did Ambrose and I. In terms of sheer size, girth and physical power, however, Hengist stood alone. Only two men I could recall rivalled him in sheer massiveness, one of those being Huw Strongarm's factotum Powys, and the other Cullum, the giant Hibernian Scot whose boar spear I had seized to fight the bear that day in front of Athol's stronghold.

On that first occasion we met, Hengist had walked unannounced into the private chamber Vortigern reserved for his personal use in his own Hall, pausing on the threshold as he realised that the king was not alone. Standing there in the doorway, stooped over slightly to avoid scraping the lintel with the massive helmet he had not removed, he appeared to fill the space completely, blocking the light from beyond.

"Oh," he growled, peering into the dark interior. "Your pardon, Vortigern. I was unaware you had company. I'll come back." I realised that lie had spoken in Latin and sat straighter, showing my surprise, so that he cocked his head to one side and narrowed his eyes, looking at me more closely now. "Ambrose? Is that you?"

"No, Hengist, it is not. Come in." Vortigern rose to his feet quickly and stepped to where the big man stood hesitating. The king took him by the arm and drew him forward to where I now stood, having risen to my feet with my host. "This is Merlyn Britannicus, Ambrose's brother. Remarkable resemblance, is it not?"

Hengist stepped forward and his eyes grew wide as he scanned my face, so that it occurred to me again that I might never grow accustomed to the shock people betrayed on seeing the similarity between us two. Hengist recovered quickly, however, and greeted me affably, removing his helmet and shaking out his thick, iron-grey hair as he explained that he had just returned from an inspection tour of their coastal garrisons. I noted that word "garrisons" in silence, reflecting that I yet had much to learn of Vortigern's allies and the extent of their duties and activities, as well as their strength. He seated himself across the table from Vortigern and me and took the large mug of ale proffered by a silent servant, drinking deeply before setting it down and turning the full force of his personality upon me.

Reassured by his fluent mastery of my own Latin tongue, I allowed myself to relax and enjoy his company, asking him openly after a time about his evidently deep friendship with the king, who slouched easily in his high- backed, armed chair and waved an open palm at the big man, giving him leave to tell me all he could.

It transpired that their fathers had been friends when both of them were very young, in the closing days of Rome's dominion here in Britain and elsewhere in the Western Empire. Vortigern's father, a powerful magistrate under Roman rule, although a king in name alone, had travelled into the Dane Merk, as Hengist called his homeland, on a diplomatic mission of some kind to Hengist's grandfather, and had remained there, with his family, for seven years. The two boys had become close friends at the outset of that mission, and by the end of the seven years each had been fluent in the other's tongue. During that time, Vortigern had formed a deep liking for the Danish folk among whom he lived, and a great admiration for their prowess in war. Theirs was an infertile land, its soil thin and sour and suited only to the conifers that covered it. In consequence, the Danes for centuries had sought a great part of their sustenance abroad, sailing in galley-style craft crewed by fighting men since, in addition to having to fight to obtain their plundered cargoes, they frequently had to fight to retain and defend them on the journey home.

In later years, after the Roman presence had been withdrawn from Britain, Vortigern had attained the titular kingship held by his father. By that time, however, with the Romans gone never to return, his people had looked to Vortigern himself for real leadership and protection. Soft and weakened by four hundred years of largely peaceful occupation by the Roman legions, they were incapable of defending themselves against the escalating depredations of the raiders who swarmed across the seas from the western coasts of the Germanic and northern lands in ever-growing numbers.

Faced with disaster sweeping in from the seas on great banks of oars, Vortigern remembered his boyhood friend and his warlike people, and travelled across the sea himself to seek out Hengist in the Dane Merk. He found him without difficulty, for Hengist himself had become a king of sorts in his own right: paramount war chief among his folk. Vortigern had then offered his friend a proposition: in return for their military support and active assistance in the defence of his lands, he offered Hengist and his people land in his own domain in Britain—sweet, rich farmland to replace their own thin, unprofitable fields in the Merk. Hengist had required little time for deliberation. He had put Vortigern's proposal to his people in their moot council and it had been accepted. Preparations for departure had begun immediately; five years had been required to effect their exodus completely.

At that time, Vortigern and Hengist had both been young men, not yet twenty years old and full of restless visions. Since then, more than thirty years had elapsed. Now Vortigern's territories were secure and unthreatened, and he and his Danish allies had begun to push their borders outward, embracing the lands to the south and west abandoned by their former inhabitants, who had either fled or been killed by the swarming raiders from the sea.

I had sat silent through Hengist's recital of this tale, but now he stopped, his gaze fixed on me.

"I can see from your face that something troubles you, my friend. Do you have a question to ask me?"

I glanced towards Vortigern, then cleared my throat.

"Well, yes, I do, but I fear it will merely show my ignorance of how things truly stand in this region. As you know, our lands of Camulod lie in the far west and we have problems of our own with raiders from the seas. But we have only Celts to deal with, mainly from Hibernia. The Picts from the far north come down our way but seldom, and we have had a few visitations, though none recently, from Gaul. Most recently, we have had incursions by African pirates, seeking marble stone." Both men watched me closely, nodding politely. I paused, collecting myself, then blurted my question straight out.

"If you and yours are the Danes, and the people we encountered some days ago to the south of here are Angles or Anglians as Ambrose says, then who, exactly, are the Saxons?"

Hengist let out a great, booming laugh.

"Who indeed?" He laughed again, then sobered abruptly. "The Saxons, my friend Merlyn, are similar to many other races in that they are a fiction: a creation of the arrogant Romans, who called themselves Masters of the World. There are Saxons out there, be sure of that, but they all come from one territory, in what Rome termed the Germanic lands. They are a blond people, warlike and not easily subdued, and they fought long and hard against the Roman Eagles. But in the end they were absorbed, as were we all. In the interim, however, so well had they defied the Roman conquest that their name became an eponym for savagery, so that all the Germanic peoples and their northern neighbours became known to Rome as Saxons. To us, however, the differences are clear. There are the Angles, or the Anglians, whichever you prefer, and the Jutes; there are the Friesians, who call themselves the Goths—the Romans, bureaucratic to the last, called them Visigoths and Ostrogoths. Then there are the Norsemen, from the lands abutting ours. North of those are the Sverigen, and to the east of them the Letts. And there are also Saxons. But even we, the Danes, the folk of the Dane Merk, were Saxons in the eyes of Rome."