Hubba leant down, his breath hot and reeking on the helpless fisherman’s face.

“Where is your King of Wessex?” he breathed, pressing a knife to the man’s throat. “Where is this King Alfred?” His yellowed teeth glittered in the moonlight. “Answer quickly, Saxon.”

The fisherman’s eyes bulged, glancing between the pile of bloody corpses beside him and Hubba’s sneering face.

“K-king,” he stammered and flung an arm wildly behind him. “Fort. The f-fort. Cynuit. That way!”

Hubba sliced the man’s throat and bellowed orders to his men who were looming in the darkness behind him.

“How will we find our way in this impenetrable dark?” one asked.

Hubba flicked the blood from his knife and bared his teeth once again.

“We burn it all,” he growled.

*

The winter’s night was ripe with the stench of sweat and blood. Fires crackled and in the distance a man screamed. The camps had been deserted. Save for one giant of a man in bloodied furs and dented armour.

“Alfred!” Hubba howled, swinging his sword at shadows and dancing flames.

He caught the distant cries of his men on the wind as they fled back to the ships.

“Valhalla deny them,” he cursed, spitting at their cowardice.

Artricity. Like electricity but warm, the sun warming Amy’s face on a chilly autumn afternoon. Her first walk home from the bus stop alone since moving to this quiet and boring town. She scuffed her shoes that her father had polished the week before, the undone laces beginning to fray. Shoes were the key to a good first impression, he had once philosophised at her, if they see you take the time to care for your shoes, they’ll know you’re as meticulous as you are formidable.

Amy listened to half of it and did not bother trying to understand the rest. It was just another one of his crazy ideas, like buying a little shop and moving himself and his family to Devon to sell trinkets and tat. Unfortunately, his recent divorce from Amy’s mother had rather accelerated things and before she knew it, her father had sold their home and had half their belongings packed and labelled two days after the papers had been signed. Amy wished he had bothered to ask her for her opinion.

She took a left turn and scuffed her way towards the lifeboat station. A cold wind blew the sea into small, frothy waves that slapped the gritty shoreline. ‘The beach’ as her father called it, was not even proper sand but just a smear of dirt, rocks and seaweed. Amy thought it looked miserable even on a sunny day, stretching towards the burrows and mudflats scattered with sheep and dog walkers. Her father had told her stories of golden sand dunes and southern sunshine. He had described a town of brightly coloured houses all criss-crossed with fluttering bunting. Amy saw faded colours and chipped paint and knots of string around gutters where bunting had been cut away.

She turned away from the lifeboat station into a small park, if it could really count as a park. There were not any swings or slides let alone much space to run or play. It could not have been more than 100 yards in length and only contained a few flowerbeds, two benches facing the bay and a large chunk of stone. It was this stone that she walked towards, kicking up clumps of grass as she did so.

The stone was one of the few memories Amy had of a family holiday here when she was seven years old. She had gazed up at the two and a half tonnes of granite whilst her father told her the story carved into its surface.

“Before the eye of Odin, here is the final tale of Chief Hubba the Dane and his invasion of Wessex,” her father began. He gestured first to a carved raven then swept his hand towards a figure of a man in armour, carrying a sword. Chief Hubba.

“To secure his King Guthrum’s victory, Chieftain Hubba sailed his 800 viking warriors to this very spot in order to fight and kill King Alfred of Wessex.”

Her father led her by the hand to the other side of the stone.

“What a sight it must have been for the Saxon men and women to see a fleet of Viking longboats appear around the burrows and into the bay! A sight short-lived, for the vikings quickly slaughtered any Saxons nearby, sparing only one fisherman long enough for Hubba to interrogate as to the whereabouts of King Alfred.

“For a common fisherman, who spent his life on the water or this little town he called home, all important people looked alike. He knew a very great and important man was not far away and gestured earnestly to Fort Cynuit as the place where King Alfred may be hidden. However, it was not King Alfred readying his defences against attack but Alfred’s most loyal right hand man, Lord Odda.

“Thinking he had discovered the hiding place of King Alfred, Hubba thanked the fisherman by cutting his throat and led his men to lay siege on this Fort Cynuit.”

At this point, seven year old Amy was quite upset by the number of horrible killings and her mother had scolded her father and cut the story short.

Twelve year old Amy walked around the rock, brushing her hand along the boats and the raven but she paused in front of the impression of Hubba. It was a small figure in a helmet and holding a sword. He did not seem to match the fierce viking she had once had nightmares of and who was once again visiting her in her sleep although she did not tell her father about that. She crouched down in front of the stone and placed a hand on the stone Hubba’s chest. She thought about the dream from the night before.

A giant viking in armour and furs was silhouetted before large bonfires and burning buildings. Amy could smell the smoke that filled her nostrils and caused her to cough. The viking looked at her and reflected in his eyes the fires flickered and twisted. She realised his drawn sword was dripping with blood and when he drew back his lips to grin she saw rotting black teeth.

“Alfred,” he murmured, looking away from her to something in the distance. He clenched his jaw and let out a shout, almost like a howl, “ALFRED!”

She had woken up in a cold sweat, her heart wildly thumping.

She could not get back to sleep after that and went to school tired and haunted by Hubba’s fierce cry and the lingering smell of smoke. She was so distracted that she had not heard her name being called and was smacked in the side of the head by a football.

Her teacher had laughed as had many of the students on the other team but their laughter was drowned out by the yells of frustration from the team she was playing for.

“Girls,” muttered Toby, as he ran past her in pursuit of the ball now in the other team’s possession.

Amy liked football, she was good at football, PE was her favourite class but her team avoided passing to her after that. She doubted she could have proven herself even if they did. Tiredness slowed her down, made her limbs heavy and clumsy.

It also left her feeling angry. She glared at Hubba then and stood, aiming a kick into the carving’s chest. It resulted in a stubbed toe and she stumbled backwards, nearly falling. She imagined the carving was smirking at her.

Embarrassed and cross, Amy left the park quickly and paced back to her new home. It was a terraced house that used to be a bank or something and was built on top of a small shop that Amy’s father had taken on with the house.

The house was painted yellow which Amy hated and had started to lean because it was so old so that the windows did not fit properly which meant Amy’s bedroom was always cold. Her aunt, who was helping them move in, had tried taping over the gaps as a temporary fix that Amy knew would be left and probably forgotten about.

As Amy stomped up to the front door, her father beckoned at her through the shop window. He was surrounded by boxes and ripping delivery notes off them.

“Hey Amo,” he said.

“Hey.”

“How was school?”

She considered telling him about PE but decided she was too tired to repeat the story. She said, “Fine.”

“Come help me with these deliveries,” he said.

“Dad, I just got home…” Amy moaned.

“It won’t take long,” he answered.

Amy sighed and shrugged her bag off her shoulders.

The shop was small with a few shelves and tables to display items for sale. The previous owners had decided to retire or move away or something like that and the combo of house and shop was too much for her father to resist. He had not enjoyed his London job she knew, and had been on the hunt for a new lease of life. She had not realised that he had been looking outside of the city, let alone as far as the westcountry.

“Lots of history there, Amo,” he said as he showed her images of moorland and coastlines on the internet.

The shop was connected to the house by a door with coloured glass which was a second entrance into their porch. Amy gazed at it longingly as her father loaded her up with piles of patterned scarves to arrange on a hat stand, jackets and dresses to put on the hangers and coasters and comical cards about the countryside to display in one of the windows. At least none of it was particularly heavy.

After a while, her aunt came downstairs, apparently to check whether Amy was home yet.

“Peter, honestly!” she said when she spied her niece wrestling cushions into a large wicker basket. “You could have at least let her get changed out of her uniform.”

“She doesn’t mind helping out her old man,” her father said.

“I’m right here, you know,” Amy grumbled.

“Cup of tea, Amy?” her aunt asked.

Amy nodded and followed her through the coloured glass door.

“I’ll have one, too, if you’re offering,” her father called after them.

Their house was two storeys, the ground floor made up of the shop and porch and on the second floor were the sitting room, dining room, kitchen and bathroom. A small door and narrow set of stairs led up into the roof where their bedrooms were.

Amy kicked off her shoes and slumped onto a chair whilst her aunt boiled the kettle.

“Bangers and mash for tea?”

“Sounds good.”

“Alright day at school?”

“Yeah.”

The rooms were scattered with boxes, not unlike the shop. Her father had bought new furniture but otherwise they had brought everything from their home in London. Her aunt reached into one and fished out Amy’s hot chocolate mug. Amy did not really like tea as her aunt had recently come to understand but had argued that it sounded childish to be offered hot chocolate or juice seeing as she was nearly thirteen now.

After a while, Amy asked, “Is it true that Vikings didn’t really wear horned helmets?”

“Well, Peter is the one to ask about the Vikings but yes, I think that’s right. Are you studying about them at school?”

Her aunt placed the hot chocolate in front of her.

“Nah, not really,” she replied. “I think we’re doing World War One.”

“You think?”

Her aunt sat down next to her, looking out of the window at the pub opposite. It was painted yellow, too.

“Is everything OK at school?”

“You asked that already.”

“I know, I just…” Her mother crossed her hands together then uncrossed them again. “You’ve barely mentioned anything about it. What are the teachers like? Have you made any friends?”

Amy tried to avoid the questions by busying herself with her hot chocolate. She blew on it then drank, regretting it instantly as the hot liquid burned the roof of her mouth.

“Alright, well, just tell me, OK, if there’s anything wrong or you need help with…”

“I will,” Amy said.

Her aunt stood, looked at her niece for a few moments more before taking a cup of tea downstairs to her father. Amy seized the opportunity to escape and ran upstairs to her room.

It was not a bad room, she supposed. She quite liked the triangular roof and she could look out at the houses to the bay and see the town on the opposite side. She could almost convince herself the sea was the Thames cutting its way through the city, her real home.

She dumped her bag and threw off her blazer and tie before reaching for her laptop and making herself comfortable on the bed. She had convinced herself she was going to find out more about viking armour but inevitably ended up looking at a set of photos she had poured over since they were uploaded at the weekend.

Her friends. Wandering about London taking silly pictures in their favourite cafe and parks. With a picture of her between them. All captioned with how much they missed her and wished she was there. A picture of her photo in front of a hot chocolate, of it on one of the Trafalgar lions, it featured in every selfie and group photo. It had been a lovely surprise to wake up to on Sunday morning and each new comment cheered her as her second week of countryside misery began. But now it was Thursday and there was not much else to say about these photos. The jokes had been made, the adoration had been expressed. Amy was eager for more pictures to be added with her photo featured in the centre. The only photo to be added since was a picture of her best friend and another of their group sharing spiced apple cinnamon drink of the season. Something they had done together the previous year. She looked at their smiling faces then slammed the laptop lid closed.

She looked out of the window. The sun was low in the sky now, yellow light highlighting the azure blue water. Little boats bobbed about, white sails fluttering. She posed herself in front of the view and took a photo.

When she posted it online, the caption read, “I love my new home.”