The lord’s hall is scattered with empty tankards. "Twas quite the feast, my lord." says Cyneswith. She lays on his lap and looks up at his face, a smile upon her own.

"Twas." says the King, bluntly.

He wipes his eyes as the pair begin to arise from a long wooden pew upon which they slept. "Go, Cyneswith. We need not have a tale of adultery." She groans, puts on her silk mahogany gown and waltzes away, sipping an almost empty wine cup and grabbing a carrot from the chaotic mess of tables and loose party food.

"I won't say a word, lord King." She snaps a bite of the carrot and winks as she leaves.

A patter of soft feet fills the void left by the King's woman.

"Wait, boy."

The messenger boy pants and keels over, a red flush on his cheeks and sweat sprinting down his forehead. The King slides a pure white silk long shirt over his sturdy, naked frame.

"I have a message for you, lord King Osmund." The boy holds a muddied scroll in front of him. It’s bound together by a blue and gold seal.

"I said wait, boy!" The King barks.

"But It is war, sir! King Offa has declared war!"

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A thorn bush rustles.  A boy sits amongst it.

Soldiers. 

Their faces are covered by bejewelled silver and gold masks. Their helmets are rounded, and their armour is avoided of battle, with a sharp moustache silhouette of gold sitting above the mouthpiece of each helmet.

The boy gasps. "Mercians!" he squeals quietly to himself.

Each step of their furious march thumps the earth beneath them. A soldier at the back of the band hoists a flag, donning a gold cross upon a blue rectangular background; the royal banner of King Offa.

The boy stays in his bush, covering his mouth with his hand.

They pass.

"Real Mercians!" he whispers to himself in amazement. He must warn the village.

He bounds down the trail in the opposite direction towards his home -

"Stop."

A sword hovers calmly at the boy’s neck. Each breath from the boy pushes the blade closer to his fragile, untouched skin.

"What did you see?", A deep voice says.

The boy's blue eyes resist to look upwards. His breaths speed up.

"Speak correctly and you will live. Speak wrongly, then I shall do what I must.”

"No- I saw nothing, I swear upon it!" The boy squeals.

The sword remains at the boy’s neck.

"I- I will say nothing to no one!"

The man turns and walks away, following the steps left by the soldiers. The boy now has a proper look at the man. A man of giant frame, he wears a hood and cloak of a dark brown colour. His boots are of a thick leather, with 4 or 5 miniature daggers sheathed in small loops of leather. He has a swift smoothness to his movements, like a lady at a Lord's ball.

He points his sword downwards, dragging it from side to side, cutting the footstep prints out from the mud. Until he stops.

The boy gasps.

The boy sprints.

"I swear it! At least 50 of them! All in armour, and ready to fight I bet!" Aethelred bounces in his seat, his eyes ablaze and his face blush.

"Oh, shut up Aethelred.", a teenage boy says, smacking his lips as he pops a walnut in his mouth.

"There's not a chance in hell that Mercians would be as south as here, and you wouldn’t be left alive to see it. You know what they say about Mercians?"

The teenager starts to line up the walnuts on the table.

"They go from hamlet to hamlet and take our women." He smashes the first nut.

"They break into our homes in our sleep and set things on fire." He smashes the second nut.

"They kill our horses, so we have no chance to flee." A third nut, crunched.

The teenage boy grins as Aethelred squirms.

A middle-aged woman waddles in holding a large basket full of apples. "Stop that Berthold, you're scaring the poor lad."

"He saw 50 Mercians, mum. 50! And he took them all out with a twig dagger!” Berthold laughs, ruffling Aethelred’s short blonde hair.

"Aethel, my little prince, don't you worry about bloody Mercians down here.” She flicks the nut dust off the table and pinches Berthold’s ear.

"Now come on, bedtime for you two." Their mother escorts the two youngsters up the stairs, shutting the door behind them as the leap onto their hay beds. She turns and enters another room, with a burly balding man sitting at the end of their similar bed.

"Did you hear that?” Her tone is now serious. “Aethelred saw 50 Mercians."

"I know." The burly man pulls his left boot on and stands up. He has a shortsword dangling from his wide waist, and a small leather cap on his small, round skull. A pigskin leather garment is strapped to his chest and a dark green cloak drapes over his thick back.

"Be careful darling." She kisses him on the cheek.

"C'mon Elswith my love, I’ll be fine. A measly band of yellow belly Mercians couldn't harm old me." He chuckles as he makes his way to the door.

"The lantern awaits you downstairs, Lord Pendraic." Elswith says, sarcastically.

Pendraic smiles back as he shuts the bedroom door.

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Lord Fenweal sips on a cup of his finest wine from his grand Roman storage and smiles as he shuts the scroll.

"Understood." he says, placing a gold coin on the windowsill in which he looks out from. 

Alwin hesitates.

"For you, young messenger! For the troubles! You've done well… very well indeed."

Alwin pockets the coin and bows.

He begins to leave before Fenweal grabs his arm, dragging him back in one sharp thrust.

"Your name?”

They both enter a silence.

“Nobody, sir. I’m a nobody with no name.”

Fenweal lets go, laughing as the boy shrugs him off and walks away.

“You’ve been trained well. Oh, and burn that scroll, boy!”

Fenweals' cackling laugh follows Alwin out of the grand Lundeniwic fort.

As Alwin reaches the freedom of the outside, the river's scummy scent and seagulls caws greet him. Lundeniwic is the jewel of the south-east and is goverened by the disgraced Lord Fenweal, who now bows to King Daebert of Essex. Alwin looks around. Market stools bustling with customers from far and wide, hundreds of ships in the port upon the Thames river, men of vast wealth wandering at ease; stability was evident here. No matter the horridness of Fenweal, he kept his land in peace and prosperity.

The truth is life was far from stable for the British people of 762 AD. It had been 200 years since the Anglo-Saxons made their way to British shores. 200 years and still the land is up for grabs. 

Kingdoms have been taken, formed and destroyed, with the groundworks of an era called the Heptarchy being created; The seven Kingdoms of England.

First came Kent, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom which lies in the south-east along the English coast facing the English channel. The Saxon Kingdoms then arose, including the rest of the south, with Wessex, Sussex, and Essex, alongside the Anglian kingdom of East Anglia. In the north of England is Northumbria, a hybrid Kingdom of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic predominance and finally, to the midlands and west dominates Mercia, which is also Anglo-Saxon.

Alwin himself is the son of unknown parents, a loose soul to no village or people. Some say he looks Saxon because of his rigid, square face. Some say he looks Anglian because of his red, chestnut hair and tall, lanky frame. Regardless, he does what he can survive, and he will do whatever for whomever for silver, food, or whatever keeps him alive. Alwin ties his horse to a wooden post and removes the small homemade bag, the letter ‘A’ ruggedly sewed into its side in a dark purple thread.

He grew up as an orphan, taken into a woodland camp under the wing of a Roman wanderer simply known as Aurelius, whom this bag belonged to. The camp sat in the deep shadows of Everdon Stubbs, a rich woodland in the northern realm of Mercian territory. Aurelius was an expert in sly and ranged combat; the arts of a woodland stalker. He taught Alwin everything he knew, until he vanished in the night, on the assumed 18^th birthday of his adopted apprentice. Alwin was left with no goodbye, only the small bag which now dangles from his horse. Alwin was left in the woods of Mercia to fend alone and Aurelius never visited Alwin again.

Now 21, Alwin continues to survive. A pawn with no side to play on, he works alone for anybody who may need his services. He makes his silver predominantly as a mercenary messenger, a secretive agent of the powerful, delivering notes from Lords to Kings, Scum to Vermin. Loyal to no one but coin, Alwin survives.

He enters a tavern and takes a seat, opening the scroll in which he delivered to Lord Fenweal.  "Mercian movement near the Sussexian border;  a large man found dead in the woods alongside 10 dead Mercian soldiers".

“Why on earth would there be Mercians as south as Sussex?” he whispers to himself. Alwin wants to know the truth. The more he knows, the better. Information is just as valuable as the silver in which he stacks. He rolls the scroll back up and leaves the tavern, hoisting himself onto his steed.