Anthology Release, and a short prequel.
My fiction anthology “Tales of the Coeling” is now available for purchase on amazon in paperback and e-book, with the hardback coming soon. “Tales of the Coeling” follows the rise and fall of the Coeling dynasty of Northern Britain, breathing life into long forgotten people. If this is well received I hope to publish a second anthology, featuring more of the Coeling, and revisiting familiar figures from many of the stories, perhaps even telling some stories of the ancestors of Coel, and possible descendants living as late as the Viking Invasions.
You can find “Tales of the Coeling” at the link below
To celebrate the release I have written a ‘prequel’ of sorts, telling a story of how Coel’s ancestor Urbanus came to possess Caledfwlch.
The tower stood on the headland like a broken tooth, its stones blackened by wind and sea-salt, its summit crowned with the twisted remains of an iron beacon-bowl. Once, when the Empire’s reach was strong, it had watched for sails from Gaul and for smoke rising from the northern watchfires. Now it watched only the grey emptiness of the sea.
Urbanus map Gratianus reined in his horse at the crest of the ridge and looked down at it. The garrison had patched the upper courses with mismatched stone; lichen clung to the walls in green scabs. A generation ago, his father’s cohort had built towers like this all along the coast, a chain of signal lights from the Humber to the Wall. Most were ruins now, their fires cold. This one, he was told, could be saved.
He dismounted, feeling the wind tear at his cloak. The smell of the sea was sharp with rot and iron. From below came the noise of picks and shouted Latin, his men clearing rubble from the tower’s base. They were a mixed lot: a dozen veterans of the Sixth Legion who had refused retirement, a handful of locals pressed into service, and a scattering of Gauls and even Sarmatians whose Latin was thick with foreign grit. The sort of company one found on the edge of Rome.
Urbanus walked the perimeter slowly, running his gloved hand along the pitted masonry. The stones were sound enough. What they lacked was heart. Everything in Britain lacked it these days. Ebrauc’s curia had not paid the men for three months. The dux in the north sent orders but no reinforcements. The Saxons came and went with the tides. And yet here he stood, pretending this lonely tower mattered.
He looked east. The sea rolled beneath a sky the color of beaten lead. A cormorant glided low over the surf, black wings cutting the wind. For a moment, he thought of home, of the vineyards near Verulamium where his mother’s kin still lived, the warmth of the southern sun on limestone walls, and then the thought passed like a ghost. He was Roman still, even here at the end of the world, and Romans built.
He turned to his adjutant, a broad Gaul named Marcus, who waited with a wax tablet.
“Two more wagon-loads of stone before nightfall,” Urbanus said. “From the western slope. The old quarry’s spent.”
Marcus nodded, jotting the order with a stylus dulled by sand.
“The men say that slope’s unlucky,” he said. “There’s a mound there. They call it a king’s grave.”
Urbanus gave a thin smile. “Every hill in Britain’s a king’s grave, Marcus. Find me stone that isn’t haunted, and I’ll bless it myself.”
He mounted again and looked once more at the tower, old, stubborn, still standing against the sea.
He liked it for that.
The rain came for three days without pause, soft and fine as mist, creeping into every joint of the tower. When it lifted, the mortar had turned to pulp, and the upper course had to be laid anew.
Urbanus sent out small groups of men to gather stone from the western slope, the same one Marcus had called unlucky. The tower’s old quarry was long since quarried out, a pit of brine and reeds. The slope at least still showed ribs of limestone where the grass had slipped.
He went with them that morning, more from boredom than mistrust. The air was sharp and clean after the storm; gulls wheeled low, their cries carrying like laughter. The men worked with picks and levers, prying stones loose from the sodden turf. Steam rose from the wet ground, faint and ghostlike.
“Here, sir,” one of the Britons called. He was a young man from the wolds north of Cataractonium, skin freckled from the sea wind. “There’s a hollow under this slab.”
Urbanus dismounted, took the man’s spade, and knelt. The slab was a broad one, flat as a door, with a line of darker earth marking its edge. When they levered it up, a gap opened, not deep, but wide enough to breathe the smell of old wood and soil.
They cleared the hole carefully. The cavity beneath was timber-lined, planked like the belly of a boat. The planks were blackened and soft to the touch, preserved by clay and salt. Along its edges ran a scattering of corroded iron rivets.
Marcus crouched beside him, squinting into the dark.
“A boat,” he said. “By the gods, someone’s buried a ship here.”
Urbanus said nothing. He brushed aside more soil and saw what lay within, the shadow of a man, the remains of armor rusted to a mass, and across his knees a long sword, its blade catching the thin sunlight.
It was not like any of the old spathae that hung in the armory. The hilt was bronze, with a waisted grip unlike any he had seen before. The pommel adorned with a bronze cap in the shape of two beasts, the blade, even through a film of damp earth, shone.
Marcus whistled softly. “He’s not been dead long. Twenty years, maybe less.”
Urbanus nodded. The man’s bones were not yet chalked to dust; scraps of mail still clung to his ribs. Whoever he was, he had been buried in haste, perhaps by his comrades after some sea-fight gone ill. The boat was small, a fisherman’s hull, perhaps, but the care taken spoke of respect, even honor.
He ran a hand along the sword’s length. It was as long as his arm from shoulder to fingertips, the edge straight, the metal faintly patterned like ripples under water. The scabbard, though broken, still bore fittings of bronze, a dragon, wings outstretched, with claws to fasten to a belt.
Urbanus rose, silent for a long moment.
“Cover him again,” he said at last. “We’ll leave the stones. Use the other ridge.”
Marcus looked up, puzzled. “And the sword?”
Urbanus didn’t answer at once. He looked toward the sea, where the tide hissed and retreated over the shingle, the sound like slow breathing.
“It would be a shame to leave such a blade.”
Marcus spat into the dirt. “Best to leave it with him, sir. Bad things come of stealing from graves, even Roman ones.”
Urbanus gave a faint, weary smile. “We build from ruins, Marcus. Every stone we lay was taken from someone’s grave.”
He lifted the sword. The damp earth ran from the blade in ribbons, the bronze hilt slick beneath his glove. For a moment he felt its weight not as a burden but as a question, settling cold against his palm.
When they returned to the tower, the sky was already turning the color of pewter. The wind pressed against them, carrying the scent of salt and rot. Behind them, the mound looked as though it had never been opened.
Winter settled early along the coast. Frost glazed the grass on the headland each morning, and the stones of the tower sweated salt by noon. The sea never changed, always flat, pewter grey, flecked with white where the tide broke against the rocks.
The tower’s garrison numbered fewer than sixty souls. In the morning they drilled on the turf with wooden spears, their breath steaming in the cold. Afterward, they fetched water from the cistern, mended their cloaks, and grumbled about pay that would never arrive. At dusk, they climbed the stairs to watch the sea until night hid it from view.
They were a patchwork of what remained of Rome in Britain:
a veteran from the Sixth who could barely lift his shield; two brothers from the wolds who spoke Latin like a prayer learned by rote; three Pannonians who carved dice from bone; and a handful of Gauls who kept to themselves and sang rough camp songs about warmer shores.
Urbanus knew every face, every cough.
The routine was their wall against despair. Orders from the dux still came, written on scraps of wax and carried by mule, but no one remembered the last time an inspector had ridden this far. They were in truth alone.
On calm nights, they tested the beacon. The old bowl, blackened and split, still held pitch. When lit, its flame flared orange against the sea-mist, and for a heartbeat they could glimpse other fires, faint dots along the coast, answering and fading. Then the smoke thickened, the wind shifted, and the illusion of connection vanished.
Urbanus kept the sword in his chamber, wrapped in a linen officer’s cloak. He had meant to catalogue it, to send it inland when the next supply train passed through, yet each time the chance came he found reason to delay. Perhaps, he told himself, it was the season, the roads were bad, the wagons light. Still, the excuses felt hollow.
Some nights when the wind shook the shutters, he would unwrap it. The blade gleamed like still water, the bronze beasts of the hilt catching the lamplight. He ran a cloth along the steel, careful not to touch the edge. It was still as sharp as the day its old owner died, the sort of blade one forged for kings.
He caught himself staring at the reflection of the lamp on its surface and turned it away, uneasy. A commander needed no charms.
Marcus saw the pattern sooner than he did.
One evening, as they shared a jug of thin wine before the hearth, Marcus said,
“You keep that sword close. Close as a wife.”
Urbanus smiled without warmth. “You mistake care for affection. It’s a tool, nothing more.”
Marcus grunted. “A tool that belongs to the dead, not to us. The sea gave it up once, it may come asking.”
“Superstition,” Urbanus said, and drank. “If I feared every ghost in this country, we’d never build anything.”
Marcus shrugged. “Maybe that’s why the ghosts linger, we keep laying our walls on their graves.”
The wind rattled the shutters again, scattering sparks from the fire. Outside, the surf thundered like drums far below the cliff.
When Marcus had gone to his bunk, Urbanus sat a while longer. He thought of his father, Gratianus, who had commanded men on this same coast thirty years before, who had spoken of the empire as though it were a fortress of reason, unshakable. But Rome felt thin now, its voice distant. The sword on his lap was real, bright, unbroken.
He unwrapped it one last time before sleep. The light from the hearth traced pale ripples along the steel. For a moment he thought he saw movement in them, the shimmer of sails, or waves, or perhaps the breath of something older than both.
He covered it quickly and placed it back on his table.
The tower creaked and sighed in the dark like an old ship at sea.
It began with light on the horizon, not dawn, but fire.
The watchman on the parapet shouted down, his voice thin in the wind:
“Beacon to the east, sir! They’re burning early!”
Urbanus was halfway up the stair before the words reached him. The tower’s upper room smelled of pitch and damp. He stepped out onto the parapet and saw it: a single flame burning above the sea-mist, then a second farther along the coast.
He felt the air tighten. “Rouse the men,” he said to Marcus. “We ride now.”
Within the hour they were on the road, fifteen cavalry led by Urbanus, twenty-five men trudging through frozen mud on foot, shields slung across their backs, breath steaming in the pale half-light. The sky was still colorless, the earth stiff underfoot. Behind them, the old tower dwindled against the cliffs, its beacon bowl cold and black.
They followed the ancient coastal road, its paving stones showing through the turf like worn bones. The line moved in silence save for the dull clatter of gear and the rhythmic hiss of the surf to their right.
Marcus rode beside him. “Angles?”
Urbanus nodded. “Aye. The scouts last month saw ships off the Abus. They’ll land in small bands, strip what they can, and vanish.”
Marcus spat into the wind. “Undyed cloaks and axes, carrion wolves.”
“Rome’s wolves once looked the same,” Urbanus said, and that ended the talk.
By midmorning they reached the next headland.
The beacon to the east still burned low, a faint thread of smoke twisting against the wind. The tower’s garrison stood ready on the rampart, their commander, a square, dark-bearded man in dull maille, walked out of the gates as Urbanus and his men approached.
“No attack here,” he said, voice rough from shouting orders. “They passed us by at dawn. Smoke to the south.”
Urbanus nodded. “Then we go together. Leave ten to hold the tower. The rest with us.”
Within moments the small cavalry force had nearly doubled, twenty-five horse, shields slung on flanks, spears resting against their knees. Their combined infantry, forty men on foot followed in loose order along the cliff road, the banners whipping flat in the wind.
The land ahead dropped toward a shallow bay where a second tower stood, squat and old, its walls streaked with soot. Smoke crawled from the beacon bowl. Even at a distance they could see shapes moving around it, Angles, nearly fifty in number, formed in a rough line outside the ditch surrounding the walls, their undyed cloaks whipping like sailcloth in the wind. They had not yet attacked, uncertain whether to risk trying to break the gate or move on.
The defenders within, barely twenty men, stood visible behind the parapet, helmets glinting as they watched the enemy below.
Urbanus studied the field. The ground sloped gently from the inland road toward the tower, with a shallow gully cutting behind it, just enough cover for a flanking charge. He turned to Marcus.
“Take the foot in line. Push straight toward their front, shields high. When they fix on you, I’ll strike from the rear.”
Marcus grinned through his beard. “Yes sir.”
Urbanus loosened the wool wrap from his saddle. Inside lay the barrow-sword, its bronze hilt gleaming. He drew it free and felt the balance settle into his hand, light, familiar, inevitable.
He gave the signal.
“Infantry forward! Horse, with me!”
The footmen formed quickly, veterans at the center, younger recruits at the wings, marching down the slope with shields locked, spears angled against the light. Behind them, Urbanus led the cavalry along the ridge and down behind the tower, hooves muffled on wet grass.
The Angles saw the movement too late. Their line shifted, ragged and unsure. A few loosed javelins fell short, thudding into the turf.
Marcus’s line struck first, the impact heavy and grinding. The air filled with the crash of iron rims and the guttural shouts of men. Spears splintered; blades flashed and vanished. The defenders from the tower poured out to join them, adding their weight to the fight.
Urbanus wheeled his horse around the far side of the tower, the wind in his face. He rose in the stirrups and raised the stolen blade.
“Now!” he shouted, and the cavalry crashed into the Anglian flank.
The sound was thunder, hooves striking, shields breaking, men thrown down under the weight of horse and rider. The enemy line folded inward, trapped between horse and foot. In the swirl of dust and salt spray, Urbanus saw their leader: a tall man in a boar-crested helm and a heavy cloak. The chieftain swung a great axe, cutting a horse from under its rider.
Urbanus spurred forward. The man turned, roaring, and the axe came down, wide, terrible.
Urbanus met it with the barrow-sword. The blades rang like a bell struck underwater. Urbanus turned the parry into a downward cut, the spatha sliding along the axe-haft, and in a single motion sheared through the helm and skull beneath it.
The Anglian fell backward without a sound, the sea’s wind catching his cloak as he dropped.
The fight broke then. The raiders, leaderless, scattered toward the beach while those that stood were cut down.
It was over in moments, swift, brutal, final. The ground ran red, and gulls already circled low.
Urbanus reined in among the bodies, chest heaving. The sword’s blade was black to the hilt, yet when he wiped it clean with his cloak, it shone as if newly polished. Its bronze guard gleamed faintly in the weak sunlight, and for an instant the ripples in the steel seemed to move, like water flowing back toward the sea.
By late afternoon, the wind had turned off the sea. The smoke from the burning ships drifted inland, low and blue, carrying the stink of pitch and wet hemp. The tide was going out, leaving the beach strewn with wreckage, broken shields, oars, and the pale shapes of men face-down in the shallows.
Urbanus walked the strand in silence. His horse was lame from the charge, and his arm ached where a spear had grazed his maille, but he scarcely felt it. Around him, the survivors worked without orders, dragging the dead together, setting torches to small piles of dead men. The sound of gulls had replaced the cries of battle.
Marcus found him by a nearby creek, crouched beside the water washing the sword. The blood came away in long, dark ribbons, curling out into the current like smoke.
“She drinks well, that one,” Marcus said quietly. “Perhaps too well.”
Urbanus looked up. His face was streaked with salt and soot, eyes hollow from the cold.
”It wants to cut. It was made for it.”
Marcus gave a tired snort. “Keep her close, then. But if she asks for another soul, make it an enemy’s.”
He walked away, calling to the men to gather the wounded.
Urbanus remained kneeling in the shallows. The sword lay across his knees once more, gleaming faintly in the dying light. He studied it as if seeing it for the first time, the fine ripples along the blade, the twin beasts of the pommel cap. The weapon seemed a relic of some bygone hero, yet it looked newly born.
He remembered the mound on the cliff, the dead man lying in his little boat, hands folded over this very blade. For a moment he imagined that same hand guiding his in the stroke that had cleaved the Anglian’s helm. He felt neither pride nor fear, only recognition.
The sun hung low over the sea, orange as the smith’s iron. He lifted the sword toward it, the bronze and steel catching fire in the light.
In the old tongue his mother had used when she sang him to sleep, the tongue of his ancestor Cinbelin, he whispered the word that had come to him unbidden:
“Caledfwlch.”
Hard Breach.
The sea gave a long sigh against the stones, and the wind fell still.
When he turned back toward the tower, the first star was showing in the pale sky, and smoke rose from the beacon as the men lit it once more. Its flame flickered against the night like a single, stubborn heartbeat, Rome’s last light upon the edge of the world.
Thank you for reading, if you enjoyed this you can find “Tales of the Coeling” here: Tales of the Coeling. My “Illustrated Guide to the Hen Ogledd” is still coming soon, and I had hoped to finish it earlier, but such a media-heavy book is a huge undertaking, but I have steadily been chipping away at it. Thank you all for your support and patience. I will send out another post soon to my paid subscribers.
Magic!!
Very good , subscribed and ordered the book. I think it will be useful in my tabletop campaign …if I ever get it started