Bear & Cub Part II Chapter I: The Great Replacement of Brittians

Yep we're back with this story!

The waves crashed against the shore with a fierceness that had not dulled in their more than million years of life. The shore had hardly dulled or retreated either, to give the enemy of the sea her due. To the contrary the shoreline seemed to have to her eyes only grown, so that it menaced now the quay with ever more water, she thought with a small smile. The rain had not helped she knew, as it tended to pour down upon the Lordly-Isle with ever increasing fury. An island is a land where no man may rest easy, her father the former lord of Nairlam had always loved to say.

“A man who rests easy is a man after all, who lacks not only fear but also knowledge,” he would say to any who might listen, “It is why, men of this island are constantly battered by storms. The storms that batter us do not weaken us but strengthen us.”

He had had many proverbs, and many sayings that he had passed down to her, as he had had no other children. He had fathered a number of sons and daughters, yet none save she had reached adulthood.

The memory of him was never far from her memory whenever she visited Auldchester. He had walked those very halls many times for he had been one of the most formidable warriors in Brittia. So much so that he had won for himself the approval of the Romalians, who had esteemed him enough to grant him proconsular authority over the lands and tribes of Norlion that he might help lead excursions into the northern lands. He had also aided in the reorganizing of the northern forces so that the Romalians could rest easy, and concentrate upon taming Cymru and Ergyng which had begun to be colonized by Érians and become a hot-bed of rebellions.

This dual problem of Érian pirates and colonists, combined with the residents of the western hinterlands rebelling and throwing out their regional governors. It was entirely the fault of the Romalians, she told herself resentfully, what use were they if they could not guarantee the stability of the realm in those regions where they had pushed the most recalcitrant and violent of the Bretwealdan tribes.

Pushing these thoughts from her mind, as she followed after her husband Judicaël, himself a tall blond haired man of some forty years, with grey eyes and a long beard. He was muscular, and with a hesitant streak that while it had guaranteed him the favour of her father, had yet to wholly win over a great many of those who populated the vast estates and lands of Judicaël. His father had been a formidable giant of a man, with a robust air about him, a loud laugh and a steely edge honed to a fine point by years of military service to the Romalian governors of Brittia.

Alana could not quite put her finger upon why the castle felt different. It was the same stone building built so long ago by the Romalians with wooden extensions and three stone towers that she had played in as a young girl. She had visited it a number of times in her girlhood, though she had not realized it then but she was a hostage.

Now at the age of twenty-four almost twenty years after she first stepped foot into the hallowed halls of Auldchester, here she was again. This time though, the happy memories of the reign of King Llyr II were wiped away. How had they been erased? By a storming of the fortresses of Britannica? Or was it by a thousand arrow-wounds? No, it was none of these things that had seen the realm of Roparzh II’s great kingdom and preserved in some form by the Romalians changed.

It was the Valhols. They had arrived at first as little as five hundred men at the start, with those men having arrived nigh on a century prior. Arriving as Foederati they had swiftly proven their quality as warriors in a number of battles in the north of the Lordly-Island. Afterwards they had returned home, only for their descendants to return seventy years later, this time under the command of Botwulf who fought well for Maximus for a full decade. This barbarian commander had of course died in the midst of another war against those from the north as the Pechs had begun to use Érian ships to circumnavigate the Wall of Kadrianus. This had increased the frequency of attacks, with some Pechs even somehow managing to assail the Great Wall and to overtake some parts of it, due to how most of the Romalians had retreated from the Lordly-Isle.

It was because of this departure that the native people of Brittia were now defenceless. Her tribes without protectors save for the most token of defences in the shape of a great wall and three Legios composed each of six-thousand men save for that of Legio XII Bretwealdas which had declined to a mere two thousand men. This decline was as much on account of an inability to find recruits as it was from a great many losses suffered over the course of the great wars and skirmishes with the Pechs.

It was with a great deal of disconcertment more than six years prior that the nobility of Romalian Brittia that they had heard of how Vyrtgeorn had slaughtered a great many of the men of Legio XII. Quite why was still not entirely evident to Alana, who wondered if it had something to do with the King’s passionate dislike for Roma. A dislike she never could quite divine the cause of, and lacked the nerve to ever ask him.

It was as they neared the end of the long fifteen meter long winding hallway within the old Romalian estate that husband and wife came to a halt near the windows. At present they were on the fourth of the seven floors of the building, with the two in the east wing where they had through the openings (which lacked curtains of any sort) able to discern down in the quay a number of ships beginning to pull into the harbour. They were the same sort of large long-ships twenty meters long that the likes of Vengest and Witta had arrived hither in. Both husband and wife stopped short as firmly as all the people of the city of Auldminster did, for none had seen so many ships in a long time; there had to be forty ships!

It had been only a year since twenty of the same sort had arrived, carrying more reinforcements and now there were forty, Alana thought her mouth gaping open. How was Brittia to hold them all? House them all? It was beyond all reason she thought, it was pure madness if Vyrtgeorn truly believed the Valhols’ presence to be in the best interest of the kingdom.

Where they were few nigh on a century prior, all had changed. They were still few a mere fifteen years before. Then they had come merely as warriors, with some of those men taking on Brittian wives, or even Cymran ones, with one or two having even stolen away women from the Pechs. Few had brought any women with them at that time, and none had brought with them any sons’ fifteen years prior.

And now they were everywhere. Not simply in the fields and in the keeps, but everywhere in the castle, numbering by the thousands. It was an odd feeling to look on them and know that this was her land, her home. Yet it was now theirs. It was for this reason that she could not abide them, and had begun to ponder just how things had gone so wrong. At first all had seemed well, yet when most of the Romalian troops had retreated from the isle of Bretwealda, promising to return many were terrified of what it could. The moment that Vyrtgeorn had called for the Valhols to reinforce him all had seemed well at first, even Alana had believed in the lies of the King. The foreign barbarians would do battle with the northern Pechs on behalf of the sons of Brittia. No more Brittian men would be drafted to mount the walls as had become custom in the past several years since the departure of Roma and her subsequent collapse.

But then a number of the men of the north, notably of the Norlam region had revolted and had chased out with the assistance of the only legion remaining in Bretwealda Witta and Vengest. It had resulted in the death of Witta to the horror of his brother so that Vyrtgeorn had been forced to cast the remaining Valhols out from his realm.

And where had they gone? Not far. Some though had gone back to Valhol, at first everyone had believed they had done and would not return.

How foolish they had been, Alana mused as she wandered the halls of Auldchester’s chief palace, Auldminster her thoughts going back to Vengest’s revenge. He had returned in force, with ten times as many Valhols as before. Where before he had had five thousand, he had returned with fifty-thousand and had crushed Beorn for having dared to kill his brother. The man’s head had been paraded grotesquely throughout the old capital before it had come to decorate the main gates. It had remained there atop the gates, where the ravens had pecked out the eyes and flesh even as it rotted away.

“A disgrace is what it is,” Judicaël muttered to himself, “The castle is in disrepair, why has it not been properly repaired and set in order?”

The troubles of which he spoke were ones that Alana had noticed more than once, during her prior stays in the castle, since the beginning of Vyrtgeorn’s reign. The stone and wooden fort had endured for more than two centuries so that to see it in disrepair was as terrible as a sword-wound. The pillars and columns utilized by the Romalians had been neglected until they began to crack and crumble with every year that passed.

“This place has been a disgrace since the reign of King Wictgils and Governor Maximus,” Alana grumbled only to add by way of explanation, “Or so my father always used to say to me, whenever we visited.”

“Must I hear of this again?” Judicaël sighed wearily.