From our January 2024 Publication Day, this Theo de Monchy's historical fiction title, where a grand battle is waged by one man fighting for his life and everything he holds dear.
The synopsis to Theo's book reads:
Bjørn Eriksson is the fourth-born son of a wealthy Norse jarl, and a captured slave. While Jarl Erik accepts him as his son, Bjørn's place has always been last in line. Eager to earn fame and glory at the point of a sword, and write his own saga, he has waited patiently for sixteen long years to prove himself ready to join his father's fleet and sail the whale road...
Intrigued and ready to read? Here is the first chapter:
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Arleigh woke with a jolt, the smoky blackness of her home shrouded in silence but for the sound of wood gently striking wood as her husband lifted his father’s battered shield from where it hung on the wall. His smiths-hammer was tucked through the leather belt around his waist with his hunting knife sheathed at the small of his back. The brass-decorated bone handle caught the light and glinted dully in the dark room.
Outside, Arleigh could hear the distant alarm horns warning the villagers of danger, and she knew what had woken them. Torr was no warrior, at least not by profession, but his height and build, moulded by years of beating metal into submission at the anvil, had seen him recognised by their thegn as a man of strength and muscle. When the horns called, Torr was expected to stand in the front of the fyrd’s shield wall and defend his home. Some called it an honour. He had been called up before, his movements almost routine, but something told Arleigh that this time was different. It would be the last time. As she watched him heft his ash spear and remove the leather sheath protecting the leaf-shaped blade, her mind filled with visions of him walking towards his death, never to return. The thought stilled her breath for a moment, and she imagined she felt the flutter of new life – their new life – kick from deep within her belly. But the fyrd had been called up, and no sentimental begging from the blacksmith’s wife would change the fact. The dragons from the North had come. Bending to kiss his wife, Torr smiled his tired, soot-stained smile, filling her nostrils with the metallic smells of the forge as his toughened leather jerkin scratched roughly against her cheek. As the blacksmith, Torr had managed to scrimp and save enough iron to craft himself a simple helmet and a single iron-backed glove to protect his spear hand. Beyond this, he wore nothing but toughened leather and a thick quilted jerkin for protection.
‘At least he has a spear,’ Arleigh thought to herself as she looked into her husband’s forest-green eyes for the last time. As a wall-breaker, Torr was fortunate enough to carry the length of ash-and-iron to accompany his shield, a gift from the thegn for those he asked to stand in his front ranks. Anyone behind the second line carried what they could find. Some were fortunate enough to carry spears, but others went with whatever was close to hand. Mae’s husband carried nothing but a three-pronged pitchfork, and her own brother had only a scythe.
‘Goodbye, my love,’ he whispered in her ear, a gentle smile playing in his eyes.
‘Don’t go, Torr, not this time,’ she whispered suddenly. ‘Take your bow and hide in the woods. We can tell the thegn you were hunting when the horns blew. If you answer the call this time, you won’t return to me; to us,’ she said, taking his large hand and placing it gently on her belly, her eyes on his. ‘I know it as surely as the Lord is my witness.’ Even as the words left her mouth she regretted them, feeling as if she had sealed his fate by giving voice to her fears.
‘I have to, Arleigh. As a man and as a warrior. I have to go.’
The emphasis on warrior wasn’t lost on Arleigh as he took her hand and gently closed it around something hard and metallic.
She could only watch as he stood and hefted his war gear. To her, he looked like Mars, the ancient Roman god of war. To the men from the North, he would be little more than a farmer with a spear. The wolves came with swords and axes, wearing shirts of iron and watched by their heathen gods, silver-sick and hungry for blood. Torr would be nothing but a lamb for slaughter in their eyes.
Arleigh knew this, just as she knew that this was the last time she would see her husband or wake up in their small home in Shorewitchshire. She didn’t know how she knew – perhaps it was a premonition from the Lord – but somehow she was sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Just as she knew that nothing she could say would change Torr’s mind.
‘Get a stew going, my love,’ Torr said, breaking her train of worry. ‘The hares from yesterday will need cooking. I’ll be home for the evening meal. I promise.’
And then he was gone, closing the door quietly behind him on its leather hinges. Only then did she open her hand, finding Torr’s small silver cross resting in her palm. It was the only shred of silver they owned, earned as part of a payment from the thegn for his son’s sword. With a sigh, she slipped her head through the cord and let the warm metal rest against her heart.
Preparing for the inevitable, she wiped her tears away and dressed quickly, donning a simple dress with a stained and patched apron over the top before going outside to retrieve the hares. She quickly skinned and gutted them before chopping the meat and adding it to the pot over the central fire, adding onions, carrots, chopped cabbage and some wild rosemary, as well as ale and water from the well. The stew would slowly cook through the day for a husband who would never return to eat it. Only additions of water would be needed to keep it from getting too thick. When she had finished with the stew, she began preparing for the reality of Torr’s death.
Walking outside, she took a deep breath as she made her way towards the smithy. Torr kept a pony there in a small stall that he’d taken in payment a few years prior from a farmer who couldn’t pay for a scythe blade he’d ordered. The piebald was small and strong, with healthy yellow teeth and a pattern that reminded her of flowers in a meadow. She quickly set about loading the mare with blankets and food, a small wood axe, a flint, and her needles and thread. Last, she threw two waterskins over the saddle and secured Torr’s hunting bow and quiver before ducking back into the inky blackness of her home to retrieve her own belt and the eating knife she carried on her side. If the Norsemen came to Shorewitchshire – when they came – they wouldn’t find her on a bed of straw waiting for them with her legs open and her breasts bared.
At eighteen, she was still youthful and beautiful, and stood out amongst the older women of the village. She knew that men lusted after her long brown hair and green eyes, and her smooth skin that was untarnished by age or disease. More than once Torr or her brother had had to step in when men from the village drank too much and forgot themselves. She knew that to the heathen-Norse she would be a prize worth taking, and there would be no hesitation if they sought to satisfy their desire when they found her, especially after their time at sea. She would run, and her son would survive to grow tall and free.
Fighting back tears, she tied their meagre purse of coins to her belt as she watched the rest of the village women and old men go about their daily lives. Shorewitchshire had fought off the Norsemen once before, and everyone appeared confident that they would do it again. The thegn was a skilled tactician, and all the men who fought for him – both his household warriors and the fyrd – had experienced battle under his leadership. When the war horns blew, he could muster an army of sixty-three men; twenty from his own household with the rest coming from the village and surrounding farms. Given enough time, that figure could grow to eighty-five as the men from the outlying farms joined the ranks. They had every reason to be confident.
But still, Arleigh wanted to be prepared. In her heart of hearts, she knew that this was the end of Shorewitchshire. So, pony loaded, and knife sharp, she stirred her stew and watched the horizon, waiting for the inevitable.
