Yul the Younger

By Julius Wright

The Roman Empire is coming apart at the seams, relying on German recruits and foederati to hold the empire together. The eastern and western empires are ruled by incompetent young men who allow their German warlords to rule for them, but imperial elites conspire against the generals. Yul the Younger is a Saxon boy negotiating life in the empire

• Language: English
• Publisher: Best Book Writers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869169273

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Yul the Younger

By

Jules Wright

Copyright © 2024 Jules Wright

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Table of Contents

Map of Old Roman Britannia, 400 AD

Map of Limes Rhenus (Rhine Frontier) of the Roman Empire, 4th Century AD

The Boar Hunt

Sailing Home

The Night Raid

Cannibals

School Daze

The Farm

A Homecoming of Sorts

The Banquet

On the Road

Initiation

Outside Othona

Abduction

Crossing the German Sea

Departure

List of Characters

Map of Old Roman Britannia, 400 AD

Map of Limes Rhenus (Rhine Frontier) of the Roman Empire, 4th Century AD

The Boar Hunt

The birch and pine trees dripped in the heavy fog as I crawled through the underbrush. The sounds were eerily muffled by the fog, and I could hardly see my own hands. What a fool I was to go after wild boar by myself, but he had been terrorizing local farms, killing a farmer and his wife and a few children, plus plenty of dogs. A fool, yes, but not a moron. I had taken a boar spear and wore chainmail stolen from my goat-turd of a cousin. I was lost, and every sound made me start, cursing my impetuous nature. My paternal grandfather, Yul the Elder, favored my cousin, who was also called Yul. Yul’s (my cousin, that is) father, Yarold, was a great beorn, or warrior, famous throughout the Saxon lands and beyond. My father, also Yul, was a bean counter for the Romans in Britannia.

In fog, the air is heavy and still, and sounds echo as if they're from one direction, then another. Every footfall sounded like distant thunder to my ears. I tried to keep still and listen every few feet. My sister's husband, Yunthar, had taught me to use a sword, spear, and shield, yet he was quick and nimble, whereas I was tall and strong. Even my cousin’s armor was stretched tight about me, hardly falling to my knees, which were supposed to be half-way down my shins. His helmet was also too short, exposing my chin and making the eye holes too far up, so I had to tilt my head down, which turned out to be a good thing.

As I remarked earlier, I was alone. I had wanted to join my uncle, cousin (same age and name), and brother by marriage, but they denied me, so I had crept into the forest at night after taking my cousin’s armor, helmet, and shortened boar spear. I traveled like a nightwalker, a demon of the darkness. Still near the farmstead before dawn, I could hear the bratty Yul whining that his armor was missing, so I laughed at the goat-turd-eating twerp to myself. He mewed about the theft, but the men decided that the hunt would have to wait until the fog burnt off after the wolf-hour – what we Germans called the predawn darkness. I could have slipped back to the farmstead, but I did not like earning a good beating without earning some adventure as well.

I was also angry with my grandfather for favoring my turd breath cousin again. My grandfather was short but had been an agile beorn, so he saw himself in my cousin. He had been a good warrior but had gotten fat and lazy earlier than most men, content with a sandy farmstead near the sea. Rumor was that he had been expelled from the council for drinking too much and forced to come southwest along the coast, where he met his wife. My grandmother was made of oak and old leather, and so was her cooking. She saved Yul from himself, but both my paternal grandparents favored their daughter and her warrior husband. They were upset with my father and mother for moving to Britannia and working for the hated Romans. My father was not a warrior but a civil servant, a bean counter. He was also very successful, and his success made Yul the Elder envious.

As I said, I was tall and strong, even at fifteen. I was also very fast, but I was clumsy, like a puppy that shoots up too fast with paws too big for his legs. I was not gregarious but often happy in my own company, reading histories and sagas. Unfortunately, I was a student at a monastery school, so I had to read Christian dogma and boring philosophies. My grandfather, uncle, aunt, and cousin were all dark-haired and swarthy as well, whereas I was fair-haired and light-skinned like my sisters and mother. I looked much more German than my paternal side, which irked them. They had gotten mistaken for Romans or Gauls, and they hated that and hated my family for looking properly German. I was also bluntly honest, being a terrible liar. I have always hated Loki for his lies and not having the honor of Thor. I knew my size and strength made me a better hunter than my cousin. Did I mention I was (and still am) stubborn as a mule?

My grandfather had grown so lazy that he had breasts like a woman, and when one time I laughed seeing his boobs, I got a good beating. My parents thought going home to Saxon lands every summer was a good idea to honor my grandparents and learn of our ways when the rest of the year, I was learning the ways of the Roman Britons. My father was a sober, lean, strong, hardworking, and sly man, but below the surface, his temper was amazing, like a swift summer storm that rips pines from the sandy soil of the Saxons. My sister, Arteis, had my father’s personality and work habits, but also his anger. She was eight years older than me and a good athlete, swift but slight. When we played too hard, her anger at me was vicious. She even tied me to a tree when I was three, for annoying her. My mother was upset at her, but my father knew I had it coming, and in his wisdom, punished neither of us, even though my mother wanted some discipline because we had embarrassed her. My mother was often very concerned about her standing as a German in a Roman colonia. She dressed and acted as a Roman dominia and invited over Roman Briton women to our solarium to drink wine (not ale) and gossip. As such, I would politely disappear to my room to read or to the woods and marshes for adventures.

As for my cousin, when I visited in the summer, we would compete at games, and he might win at games of agility, but I would vanquish him in games of strength. I did not care if he won at tossing a coin in a circle, but when we wrestled or boxed, he would cry that I somehow cheated when I invariably won. He often feigned an injury to see me beaten by our grandfather, but I would save up my hurt to beat him down or move his things about to annoy him. When I did beat him down, I would laugh that he fought like a crone or baby, which made him so angry that he would get too close to my big fists or wooden training sword.

While I loved to fight my cousin because he often belittled me or, worse yet, my father, I feared my sister’s wrath, Arteis was not as tall as most of our family, and she was slightly built. But she was fast and strong and had no issues with hitting me or her husband, Yunthar when we deserved it. She was (and still is) eight years older than me, and she often put up with my brattiness until I took it too far. One time, she tied me to a tree and doused me with water from bucket after bucket. I can’t exactly recall what I did, but I think it involved throwing sticks at her from the woods when she was fetching water. At other times, her anger was less constrained, erupting like Thor bashing his hammer, Mjolnir, on his great oak shield with lightning flying from his eyes.

Lost in daydreaming, I did not notice just how quiet the woods had grown. Normally, the birds would have been chirping at the autumnal dawn, but all I heard was the dropping of dew in the fog and maybe some snuffling in the underbrush. I stood to listen and brace my spear into the base of an oak. I raised my shield just in time as the brush exploded into the world of red eyes, grey fur, and tusks. The boar, in all its wild anger, rushed headlong into the spear that was braced by the father oak held. However, I had not aimed well enough to kill. Instead of going into the hog’s mouth, it struck home in his shoulder. It squealed in pain and rage, driving the long, sharp point deeper into its shoulder, but it got close enough to rake my exposed right knee with its left tusk, opening up my flesh, and mingling my blood with his. The shield and chainmail saved me from being split open from thigh to stomach, but the tusk did plenty of damage to my knee – I still have the scar to this day. Scars we survive are lessons. With the spear well lodging in his shoulder, I smashed the shield down on his thick skull and let go of the spear with my right hand pulling out my long-hafted axe. The dumb brute was too angry and dimwitted to pull back to release the spear, so I struck down again and again on his skull with the axe. Being young and rash, I bashed his thick skull, not his vulnerable neck. Over the din of the pig’s squealing and my roaring, I heard Arteis’ cry for help. No matter how much we feuded as siblings, we cared a great deal for one another. Her call was a paean that filled the listener with terror. The woods erupted again as Yunthar swung down his lead-weighted axe with a mighty blow, crushing the boar’s spine, nearly separating the head from the body in one blow. Next, my uncle and cousin appeared, stabbing the boar in the side and flank.

In the immediate aftermath, I could see the boar’s head smashed to a pulp like an undercooked oatcake, the mass of red and grey hanging drunkenly half severed, and my cousin stabbing again and again at the dead pig and claiming he had landed the killing blow.

I had just enough wit to say, You don’t kill a pig by stabbing its ass, moron. The next thing I saw was stars as my sister clubbed my helmet with a heavy bough from the floor of the woods.

She was crying and screaming, If anyone is a moron, it’s you. Taking on a full-grown boar by yourself.

Yunthar had picked her up as she swung the bough at me again. My uncle took off his son’s helmet to assess my wounds, as I was laughing, overcome by the exhilaration of surviving and my first true battle. He looked sternly at me, but he was always cool and clear-headed. The look, however, on Arteis’ face would have frozen Hel with fear. My cousin was calling me a thief and coward for taking his armor, spear, and helmet.

I replied, Such things are a waste on you, dwarf. Haorald, my uncle, separated us before we fought again and ordered his Yul home.

When we got back to the palisade, my grandfather demanded that I strip right there, take off the helmet and armor, and drop all the weapons. When I protested the shield and axe were mine, he struck me with the back of his hand but still having the helmet on, it hurt him more than me. He turned in anger, and I took off the armor and helmet. The spear was still back with Yunthar and Arteis at the killing sight. I saw my grandfather coming back red-faced with a thick stick. Yunthar and Arteis intervened, pleading that my knee was bleeding steadily and a beating could wait until they staunched the bleeding. Yul the Elder spat on me, cursing me and declaring that I no longer could live under his roof or within his palisade. Yunthar and Arteis took me to my mother’s parent’s farmstead. In ways, my paternal grandparents were cruel and biased against my father’s family, while my mother’s parents were patient and kind, loving their entire family.

My grandmother and sister bathed me, stitching up my wound with pig gut and sinew. They mixed in boiled cow urine with the wound before closing it up to stop contagion. My grandmother, Freyja, made sure I ate well and made me drink sweetened milk to heal up. My knee was sore, but I was up walking as soon as I could, hating to be stuck in bed with little to read. My maternal grandparents took to reading like an otter to water. When they had traveled down the coast from the land of the Jutes, they found the soil less exhausted for farming and found that the Romanized tribes close to the frontier read Latin. Seeing reading to learn about the world and gain prestige, they became avid readers and took to some Roman habits of farming and trading for money, something the Germans farther to the east and north did not do. They bartered things like amber for tools and weapons. While my grandfather saw trading rare amber as good, he saw using coins to buy tools, weapons, and scrolls as better, and more reliable than searching the beaches for amber or taking boats east and north to fight for amber.

Frejya’s kitchen produced wonderful food, and she could preserve fruit from summer in ways others simply could not. Frejya was slight but always up early and to bed late, taking care of us all with good cheer. Rex, taking the Roman name for a king, was quiet and wise, slow to anger, and quick with a smile. He loved to play games of chance with his old friends at night around a fire. He had raided the British coast in his youth like my other grandfather, but he did not boast of his raiding. He had also defended our lands against other tribes raiding but, again, said nothing of this. I only heard snippets from my sisters now and then. He was a humble, patient, and caring man. I have always imagined that as a warrior, he was subtle, calculating, and brave, did not no need to brag or live in the past. He had a smithy on his farmstead where he would tinker with tools and weapons to see how they worked, what made them good or bad, and emulate the good and improve the bad. He and my grandmother also grew fruit trees and kept bees. In looking back on these days, I recall their home as sweet and safe, a place to nurture goodness, humility, trust, and a stable, loving family ethos.

My knee did not heal properly at first, so my grandparents got me good and drunk to dull the pain and made me bite down on a stick as they cleaned it out with a metal file to scrub out the necrotic flesh. The pain was intense, so I passed out. When I awoke, my knee was on fire, and I felt wriggling under the bandages: maggots to eat the dead flesh. To this day, I can feel when rain is coming from my knee. When I drill, my right knee grows tired faster than my left and swells up at times. When it gets sore over time, I roll a tight bandage over it to keep the swelling down and stabilize it. The scar is still ugly, but hair (now grey) covers it well enough.

At some point, I had to go back to my parent’s villa in Britannia, Camulodunum (Colchester), to be specific. Yunthar was a good sailor, so he would take me across the German Sea with his crew in his longship. It was time to go back to the hated monastic school in Verulamium (Saint Albans) in Catuvalleni lands. The Britons crowed about how Boudicca, with her Iceni rebels, had sacked the Roman town a few hundred years ago. The Romano-British monks and students treated German, Pict, and any non-British students like pariahs. Life there was hell, but my parents wanted me to know the Roman system and its British subjects. I just wish they had found a better way. I had been at this school since I was seven, and being fifteen now, this would be my last year there: one way or another.

The next morning, we set off from my grandparent’s farmstead with a party of sailors on horseback. The late summer morning was heavy with moisture, as usual, signaling a hot ride. In total, there was a dozen of us, with a few thralls and women joining us to bring back the horses. Yunthar and Arteis led the party, and we passed Luthar’s farmstead, where he and his son joined us. I noticed that my sister wore a frown at this detour, but I imagined it was more than just the delay. She liked Luthar and his son, Wuthar, but these two and their housemen seemed a bit superfluous to escort me from the inland farms to the mouth of the Albis (Elbe), where Yunthar kept his long ship. Yunthar and his family were all good traders, which is what they claimed they were going to do by joining us, trade with the Britons and Romans. They had packhorses, but I saw more spears than raw wood and armor than raw iron, things we traded with the Britons and Romans. I knew full well why Arteis was upset with Yunthar and his crew. By noon, we had come to the mouth of the Albis, bleeding into the German Sea.

Sailing Home

Yunthar and Arteis were arguing, as usual, about the trip. My sister wanted to come along, but Yunthar kept saying having a woman on board was bad luck. Arteis had sailed often with Yunthar and his crew, so it was obvious something was hidden beneath the surface, not just Ran’s net. I took note that Yunthar had brought his older brother, Luthar, and nephew, Wuthar. While these three were all good traders, they