The sea crashed unendingly against the sides of the Lordly-Isle, with all the fury of an ox. Carrying with it the dreaded burden of still more men and families that had become not only a burden to the people of the province but also a source of hatred.

  Dark was the sea that day, and darker still did the heavens soon become hinting at their own great displeasure with the arrival of the north-men onto the fair land over which Vyrtgeorn reigned. The wind threw itself upon the shore, upon the land and upon her great and magnificent towers with all her might to no avail it seemed. All remained eternal, though the fear among the inhabitants who had built Bretwealda into what she was not so eternal.

  Gl?dwine’s ships at last arrived into port with a hiss that echoed from ship to ship, with every ship’s crewmember breathing a massive sigh of relief. None were immune to the apprehension that had gripped them, with every lip mumbling prayers of thanks to Njord the god of the seas. Taking in the sights of the massive city of Auldchester, built by the line of Roparzh King from millennia ago, burnt by the Dark Elves then rebuilt and expanded upon by the Romalians, the Valhols were amazed and dazed by the large buildings that populated the city, the most preeminent being the royal castle which lay at the heart of the city forum. The stones utilized to build the great keep and many of the oldest buildings had once been damaged in a great blaze many centuries ago, when Roma first invaded. Since that time they had been replaced, with the sons’ of Roma having replaced those damaged stones in their entirety with marble stones that outshone any and all that had come before them.

  Such had been the care and respect with which Roma cared for all that was old in their provincial-isle that few were the buildings and monuments of the line of Roparzh they did not reconstitute or preserve. There were also a great many they had beautified beyond the imaginings of the Brittians so that they had called the rule of the Romalians liberty, and the chains they wore freedom as it was said in Roma.

  Looking on all this with bemused uncertainty, Hroegar could hardly decide whether he should admire the city and its great fortifications or look on it with disdain. He might well have admired the local people if it were not for how plump so many of them were, and how they looked on the newly arrived Valhols with visible disdain. It was a sentiment he more than returned.

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  Hroegar never a particularly eloquent or poetical sort of man, could not have described the Brittians in this manner, however the fury that the crowds looked on their arrival with and bellowed against it was not unlike how a small dog might begin to bark at a larger canine. The Valhols for their part were visibly displeased at this poor treatment.

  Disciplined as they were from a hard life in the north, they could not help but look to their chieftain for direction, with Gl?dwine ever charming attempting to soothe the Brittians. The tongue he spoke then was wholly unfamiliar to the hardened north-easterly barbarians who stared at him in amazement.

  The newly arrived families and warriors could not have known that the tongue he spoke was a mixed one that mingled Romalian with the Brittian tongue. The latter tongue was one which had more in common in those days with Neustrian and the ériu tongues than the Valhol one.

  The crowds were hardly pleased, and continued to glower at them. There was not one man who looked as though he were eager to welcome the newcomers to their island. Some of the women looked on them with interest yet most remained no less guarded, for they had borne witness to one too many of the crimes of the Valhols.

  Most of the crime, bar-brawls and also murders could be attributed to them, for which the Valhols had won for themselves a considerable amount of suspicion.

  In turn the children excited greater alarm than any of the newly arrived men or women, for they signalled by their very presence the aim of the foreigners. They had arrived thereupon the Lordly-Island not to simply invade, but to remain and take what was theirs. The children though paid little mind to the inhabitants of the island captivated as they were by the beauty of the great towers and stone-fortifications that loomed high over them all.

  “Men can build homes as high as the heavens?” Sigewulf gasped amazed and no less struck by the beauty of the buildings of the Brittians and Romalians than most of those around him. Certainly they had seen the home of the goddess Senuna, which was far in a way more impressive than any of the hovels and small temples that dotted the northern Valhol lands.

  “This is Bretwealda? The Lordly-Isle?” Sigewulf gasped stricken to his stomach and knees with awe at the great wonders built up by generation after generation of the men of Roma and Bretwealda.

  “Yes, my dear boy, this is the Lordly-Island,” Gl?dwine assured him with a small smile, a hint of pride in his eyes.

  “It is magnificent! I did not know men could build such impressive monuments!”

  “You did not? But the palace of the goddess Senuna was built by Dwarves, Men and Ogres,” the captain of the large fleet informed him.

  “What? It was?”

  “Indeed,” Hroegar grunted no less amazed than his son, “I suppose we had best not take them lightly when the time comes to cross blades with the sons’ of Bretwealda.”

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