David Gemmell – Rigante 3 – Ravenheart

‘What are you making?’ he asked her.

She glanced up at him, and he saw that her eyes were green, her face unlined. It was a face of great beauty, ageless and serene. ‘I am crafting a boughstave longbow.’

‘Is that elm?’

‘No, it is yew.’

Gaise sat down and watched her. ‘It does not look like a bow,’ he said, seeing the knots and dimples on the rough wood.

‘The bow is hidden within the stave. It is beautiful and complete. It merely needs to be found. One must seek it with love and care, gently and with great patience.’

Gaise shivered at the memory.

The room was cold. His father allowed him only one bucket of coal per week and, with only four lumps left, and three more days to go, Gaise had decided not to light the fire last night. Instead he had put on warm woollen leggings and a nightshirt before climbing into bed. The sheet and the two thin blankets did little to keep him warm and he had draped an old cloak over the blankets to add a little weight and warmth.

The young noble swung the old cloak around his shoulders and padded across to the fireplace. There was kindling there and several chunks of wood beside the coal bucket. Anger flared in the young man. The Moidart desired him to be tough, so he said. That was why he kept his son cold in the winter, why he mocked his every effort, why he had killed Soldier. This last thought leapt unbidden from an unhealed wound in the young man’s mind. He had loved that dog, and, even though three years had passed, the hurt he felt at its slaying still clung to him with talons of grief. It had been an accident, the Moidart had said. The hunting musket had a faulty hammer spring. It had struck flint before the Moidart placed his finger on the trigger. The red-haired retriever had been sitting alongside the Moidart, and the lead ball had smashed his skull.

Not for a moment had Gaise believed the tale. As a child he had loved a white pony, which the Moidart then sold. After that it had been Soldier, which the Moidart slew. When Gaise had first attended school, and made friends, he had arrived home full of joy. The Moidart had removed him from the school, hiring Alterith Shaddler and others to tutor him privately. Then there were the beatings, administered when Gaise failed to achieve the high grades the Moidart demanded for his school work. These had stopped since Gaise had reached fifteen, though it was not, he believed, his coming of age that had ended the beatings. It was more to do with the rheumatics that had afflicted the Moidart’s shoulders and back. He could no longer lay on the lash as once he had.

Gaise wondered if life would have been different had his mother survived the assassination attempt. Perhaps then his father would not have hated him so. He shivered again, as a cold wind blew through the curtainless window behind him.

Gathering the cloak more tightly about his shoulders he leaned forward and, upon an impulse, picked up the pewter tinder box, struck a flame, and applied it to the crumpled paper and wood shavings beneath the kindling in the fireplace. The paper caught first, orange flames licking out over the kindling. Gaise felt the first of the warmth touch him, and he shivered again, this time with pleasure. As the larger kindling accepted the fire Gaise added several chunks of wood and two of his precious coals.

Fire shadows danced on the walls around him and a golden glow filled the room. Gaise felt the muscles of his shoulders losing their tension, and he relaxed before the flames. It must have been thus for the caveman, he thought, safe and warm, free for a time from the many perils of the day. He thought again of Connovar and pictured him sitting before an open fire, planning the battles against the armies of Stone.

The dream came back to him then, the walk in the woods and the damp, musty earth, the woman crafting the bow. She was quite small, with long white hair pulled back from her face and tied in a single braid hanging between her shoulders.