Unpublished - October 21, 2025
From the unpublished historical fantasy novel FINN'S LEGACY by C.M. Hind. This excerpt is shared for portfolio purposes only and does not constitute first publication.
Hengest held his breath until the Sea-stallion’s keel scraped against the beach at Hjerting, then released it explosively. When he released the steering oar, his fingers cricked. Home waters. Safe waters. The season was over. They’d survived their raid into Wendland—barely. Beygad’s sacrifice, arrows hissing through that cursed forest, Friðuwulf nearly caught... Redwyn’s dream had haunted him all summer. But here they were, home at last with the season ended. Her vision hadn’t come to pass. Even seers can be wrong sometimes.
“Hengest!” Hnæf called from the Knucker over the clacking of crewmen shipping oars. “A word before you go?”
His gut churned. Before you go—that phrase never preceded good news. Well, sooner started, faster finished. “Sure, chief.”
Hengest dropped into the surf and joined Hnæf as he strode beyond the waves but well short of shoreline shacks and storage huts. “I know what’s on your mind. I blundered, endangered the boy. You should—”
Hnæf raised a palm. “Friðuwulf is well, thanks to you. And praise Gaut, you survived—I’d sooner apologize to the Wends than face Redwyn’s wrath.” His teeth flashed in his beard.
“Then what are we to discuss?”
Hnæf scratched his head. “I know we had planned to spend winter preparing for our journey to Britannia, but I wonder… might you accompany me to Finnsburg instead?”
“To Frisia?” Hengest’s heart sank.
“Friðuwulf must return home. He is a man now, my fostering complete. King Finn has invited us to celebrate Yule in his hall.” Hnæf's distant smile suggested his mind was already in Finnsburg, perhaps picturing his sister, Hildeburh.
“Why do you need me?”
“A single ship is easy prey for rovers seeking one last victory before winter. Two ships, far less so.”
Hengest nodded. “Others might captain a second ship. Odd, Guthlaf, Sigeferð...”
“But you are my most trusted captain, Hengest. And you have sailed those waters before, under my father.”
Hnæf’s logic was sound. Hengest was a better navigator. But still he hesitated. Redwyn’s ominous dream lurked in his head. Burning bones and a shroud of ravens. Sorrow would strike this season. If he went with Hnæf, this season wasn’t over after all.
Hnæf’s expression softened. “I know you miss your family. I do not ask this lightly. Think of it as one last service to me.”
“Can I think on it?”
“Of course. Whatever you decide, let me know by high Haligmonaþ. I would miss your seamanship, and your company as well. But Friðuwulf’s safe return is my duty, and mine alone.”
But my duty as oath-bound is to be your shield. Especially if Redwyn’s omen spoke not of himself, but rather of Hnæf. A wyrd-thread may have snagged on the Whisperers’ loom, and one tug might undo a life’s work.
Hnæf returned crew, leaving Hengest alone with his thoughts. His mind awhirl with worry and uncertainty. If confronting Redwyn worried Hnæf, Hengest feared to admit he had even less courage.
#
Seven days Hengest had been home, and still he had not spoken with Redwyn about Hnæf’s request. He knew what she would say, what he would reply, and how their words would curdle into an argument that would leave them both wounded. So instead, he fled into distraction. By day, he threw himself into his croft’s labors, trying to outpace winter’s approach in case he decided to follow Hnæf. He mended wattle fences and helped his thralls gather and stack the last hay harvest in his byre to dry—tasks that kept his hands occupied and his mind from straying.
Evenings, he devoted himself to Oisc and Rowena. He let his timid boy mount his shoulders like his horse namesake and taught his curious daughter several Leastæc wresting holds, all of which led Hengest to cry mercy or collapse.
At night, he lay with Redwyn, sometimes waiting until their children had quieted in their loft above, but more often not. Redwyn could not get enough of him, nor he of her. In those moments, with her glossy black hair spread across their sleeping furs and her breath hot against his neck, thoughts of oaths and lords seemed as distant as sunbaked Serkland. After those passionate encounters, guilt would wash over him. To speak of leaving would feel like a betrayal.
And then on the seventh night after his homecoming, her dream returned.
Redwyn thrashed in her sleep. Hengest dared not wake her—wise women said that startling a sleeper might prevent their soul from returning—but he placed a gentle palm upon her shoulder to assure her sleeping mind of his presence. She bolted upright, and his startled yelp triggered her own frightened cry.
“What? Who?” she gasped, flailing in darkness.
“Just me,” he murmured, keeping his voice steady despite his racing heart. “A nightmare tormented you.”
Redwyn trembled beneath his touch. “The same dream,” she whispered, “the one that first came to me on Bhelten.” She sank against the furs. Thatch rustled as Brother Wind probed the eaves.
She gave voice to the images that haunted her.
“I dreamed… I saw our chestnut mare, her belly swollen with foal. Cold and darkness confined me, like a grave barrow, while a shroud of ravens consumed a wolf and an eagle. A woman with a thrall-collar around her neck, shielding her two children—a girl and a boy! Grasping hands tore them from their home.”
“And the dead dove, a lone blade in moonlight, those blazing bones?” Hengest prodded, though he knew her answer.
“Those as well.” Her voice was hollow. “Again, I woke with a sense that sorrow would claim those we cherish before our mare births next spring.”
Hair prickled his arms. “It’s over now,” he offered, tongue souring at half-truths.
“And a figment,” she admitted with a sigh. “Yet I was certain. I can usually distinguish between night-fancy and true omen.” Her fingers traced ridges of scars across his chest. “But with this raiding season passed and you home safe until thaw, I must have been mistaken.”
Hengest lay silent, lips moving without sound, stomach knotted, skin cold yet damp—like a gutted fish in the bottom of a boat, leaking life. Timber creaked as the house settled.
After a span of telling silence, Redwyn shifted. “What are you not telling me?”
He could avoid this moment no longer. “Hnæf has asked me to accompany him to Frisia,” he said, his words tumbling forth. “To return Friðuwulf to his parents.”
“Hengest, no!”
“It’s one voyage. Then—”
“Then what?” Her voice pierced darkness to his core. “Then you’ll finally take us to Britannia? That plan you’ve been making with Hnæf all year?”
He went still.
“You and his father stole me from Britannia ten years ago,” she continued, each word precise as a knife. “A captive. Never once have you asked if I wanted to return. But when Hnæf has this idea to seek service and settlement—in my homeland—and suddenly you’re aflame with plans to migrate.”
“Redwyn—”
“Hnæf always comes first. And yet your oath to him weighs nothing against my dream.”
He groped for her in the dark.
She twisted. “Don’t touch me.” Her breathing, quick and shallow as a cornered hare’s.
Anger flared in Hengest’s chest. Without another word, he left their bed, snatching a spare woolen blanket. The cold floor bit his bare feet as he stumbled past the dying hearth-glow and into the byre where a warm, earthy smell of cattle and hay enveloped him.
Cows shifted in their stalls. A horse whickered at his intrusion. He found his way by memory to an empty stall and made his bed in fresh straw. As he lay there, anger gave way to shame. He, who had braved storm-tossed seas, skulked in his own byre rather than face his wife’s wrath. Some hero. Sleep came in scattered moments. When gray light seeped through cracks in the byre walls, he was already awake. He squinted as his thrall Eadwig swung open the byre doors and drove their cattle to pasture. The boy cast him a curious glance but asked nothing.
Carrying basket and stick, Redwyn led their children across the yard to gather goose eggs from nests near the pond. Hengest hurried to their chamber. Trousers. Boots. He had pulled a clean tunic over his head when a voice stopped him.
“Going somewhere, hero?” Redwyn blocked the doorway.
“To meet with Horsa.” Truth, but incomplete—that meeting with his sister not until noon. Piling half-truths like cairn-stones.
“Rather than speak to me?”
“I thought you were angry.” Unable to meet her gaze, his yes drifted instead to the silver torc at her throat. Had she donned it with purpose? To remind him she was no longer his captive, but rather his wife?
“I am. But we will settle this now. Why must you follow Hnæf?”
He had rehearsed his justifications through the long night, similar same arguments to those he’d offered at summer’s start. But circular reasoning would only lead them back to this impasse. Instead, he spoke the truth that haunted him: “Your dream may foretell Hnæf’s doom. If he fell because I wasn’t at his side, I couldn’t bear such failure.”
“You are entitled to your own life, Hengest.”
He grasped her hands.
“When a man dies, he bequeaths two things. The first is wealth—hacksilver, a homestead, perhaps a fine sword. A man may trade away or lose such things. But the second, his good name.” His grip tightened. “Would you have me leave our son the legacy of an oath-breaker? One who pledges when convenient and then forgets when duty calls? Instead, I would have him proclaim that he is Oisc, son of Hengest, well-known as pledge-worthy and loyal. That is why I must go.”
Redwyn wrenched free of his grasp. “Do not drag our children into this, nor phantom descendants yet unborn. You fret over what men will say of you while you breathe.” Her voice crowded the small room. “What Hnæf will think of you. Always Hnæf. Have you no care for what I think of you?”
Her words stung like salt in an open wound. Because they were true? Because he had no good reply? “You can’t understand. You never could.”
He stormed past her, brushing her shoulder so that she stumbled. He heard her sharp intake of breath but didn’t look back, refused to look back. Outside, the morning air bit with winter’s promise. Geese honked as his children gathered eggs, unaware of a tempest breaking between their parents.
