Book 3: 'Arrow Odd'

0.1 BABY HELGI - BORN IN A WAR ZONE

CHAPTER ZERO POINT ONE

BABY HELGI - BORN IN A WAR ZONE  (Circa 839 AD)

"One morning at sunrise Hervor stood on a watchtower

above the fortress-gate, and she saw a great cloud of dust from

horses' hooves rising southwards towards the forest, which for a

long time hid the sun. Presently she saw a glittering beneath the

dustcloud, as though she were gazing upon a mass of gold, bright

shields overlaid with gold, gilded helms and bright corselets; and

then she saw it was the army of the Huns, and a mighty host."

Anonymous; Hervor's Saga.

One morning, King Olmar and General Ygg returned to Gardariki from a scouting expedition and called Princess Gunwar forth to the fortress gate. From a high stone tower of her city wall, Gunwar saw a mighty cloud of dust rising up on the eastern horizon, obscuring the orient pearl of dawn, the sun, and rolling slowly across the plain. An aura glowed gold beneath the dusty cloud, evincing glittering armour and bristling raiment, as the fiery mass of the Hunnish host blazed slowly across the eastern firmament. The brightly arrayed Hunnish horse led the host and kicked up all the dust, and a distance behind which the wind carried the dust away, marched the footsoldiers of the Khazars, with their Roman red rectangular shields, like legions out of the past, and behind them trailed their great baggage train, wains and wagons drawn by oxen and mules and the creaking and groaning of axles threatened to drown out the clatter of spears and rattle of swords.

They had come out of the Mirkwood Forest and marched south and west across the Dun Heath and were now approaching the walls of Gardariki, Erik's Keep. It was her nephew, young Prince Hlod and his grandfather, King Hunn, here to claim, by force of arms, Tmutorokan, the southernmost land of the Hraes'. She wished for a second that her husband, Prince Erik was with her, but she remembered that he must be dead, killed by the Caesar of Constantinople, Emperor Theophilos. She thanked the gods that she was carrying his son and she put her hands upon her swollen belly and she felt her legs and then her feet getting wet and she realized that her water had just broke.

"Not now!" she cried, and King Olmar saw the puddle growing about her feet and he knew what had happened. "Come," he said, "we must get you inside," and he and General Ygg helped her down the granite tower stairs, a man on either side, and they guided her across the streets of Gardariki and into her highseat hall. Her shield-maidens rushed to her sides and displaced the older men and they took her down the hall and into her master suite and they sent for the midwives.

Prince Erik had left Gardariki in the spring, to seek Roman aid from Constantinople, and it was summer before the crew of his ship, Fair Faxi, returned from the great city without him. They brought news that Emperor Theophilos had sent their prince and several crew members on a Roman mission to Frankland. From there, Erik was to be allowed make his way to Kiev, to Konogard, and King Frodi and gain the aid of the Kievan Hraes'. Princess Gunwar had heard their report but she did not believe it. She knew that, if her husband had failed to gain the support of the Greeks, Emperor Theophilos would not allow Erik to go elsewhere for aid. The Emperor was half Khazar on his mother's side and was unlikely to help, but the Hraes' had a trading agreement with the Eastern Romans and it included mutual support, so her husband had gone there to ask for it. But she knew her husband was either imprisoned or, more likely, dead, and the mission to Frankland was likely a trap, a place where princes could be killed without contracts being broken. It was the Roman way.