It was the year my people captured Eoforwic, when my people became a kingdom. Today, churchmen would call it 580 Anno Domini. I knew it − and still know it − as the year I was born. Lilla once told me that he became a bard and a poet for purely selfish reasons. It was not to satisfy the demands of a king or his audience, pleasing though that might be, but because he wanted men to never forget him. After he died, he wanted men to say with pride that they heard him speak. Maybe then, if their children listened with awe and envy when they repeated tales Lilla had once told them, well then he would rest content. I also want men to remember me. It is why, having learned in my later years to read and write, I am setting my story down so that others may read it when I’m gone. I want them to remember the man I was, the kings I have followed and the friends who lived through these times with me. These years were chaotic, dark and bloody. It seems unfair to me − after all we went through − that no one would know our names twenty years after we had died.
