Read Online Raven's Warrior by Vincent Pratchett - Free Book Online Page A

landscape like precious jewelry. She has always given openly, so that man and beast may live and prosper from one generation to the next.” My eyes closed once more to search with my thoughts the visions I had left behind, and she waited quietly and patiently for more.
    â€œOn all sides she is held by the sea, sometimes gently caressed, and sometimes savagely pounded by the fury of her wild lover. From ocean and sky she draws the weather, and it falls as rain. This rain is what keeps her and makes her whole, and it is the rain that speaks her very moods. Sometimes it falls light and gentle like a mist that delights the senses, but sometimes it drives heavy cold and hard and carries the taste of ocean salt, like tears. From these heavenly tears of sorrow and joy, all life does come.” My memories now welled up within me and spilt out in truth unstoppable.
    I spoke slowly so that she could more easily understand, “I knew no parents, my father died at the hands of the Norse raiders and my mother was taken never to return, but that was longer ago than I remember. When God takes with one hand he gives with the other, and for a child with nothing I had something beyond measure. I had the land of my ancestors written upon my heart. Its people, my people, were written upon my soul. With the passage of time, my body grew strong and I acquired the skills of war.”
    My voice bounced within the confines of the small room, “In this great land, my land, where farmers till and toil, a man with a sword has his place and purpose, for farmers are bound by land and family, and I was without either. The short sharp iron gave me a way to carve my niche and fill my belly, I did not prosper, but I did survive. Battles were my bread and their spoils my butter, for morality does not feed the body. The scarred furrow of war was the trough at which I drank, and at this trough I did drink deeply.”
    Silence settled in the room around us, my thoughts returned from my world to theirs. Her head was bowed, and her hands rested on the rough-hewn countertop. I had spoken for the first time of my parents and my homeland. I looked down upon the delicate plant that lay before me, and my thoughts journeyed home once more. Vividly my mind’s eye beheld the savage Norsemen, and once again my mind’s ear heard the screams from the darkness, but to these thoughts and memories, I could never give a voice.
    As the lass looked down at the plant that I had been holding, a solitary tear fell upon its coiled roots, and the grey soil that still tenaciously clung to it turned mud black.

The Roots Are Severed
    â€œDo not cry for me,” I said softly, “For I have shed enough tears for both my homeland and my clan.” I spoke no more, for although my words did purge my soul, they came with a price of awakened pain and sorrow. There would be no more speech, but memory tumbled and rose within my mind like a gollum made from the clay of what was once my birth land, and this effigy conjured from events long past emerged and walked with a life and power both terrifying and unstoppable.
    At a young age I had my fill of blood and killing, and had in pocket enough coin to buy some land and make a family. The nature of thirst and hunger is a craving for what is missing, and family and land were the things of my childhood that I did not have, now I felt them for the first time within my grasp and attainable. I traveled back over hill and sea to the place from which I was born. The time of two moon cycles brought me home to the town called Kilkenny. From where I had come, I had at last returned.
    I mixed openly for a fortnight with the local farmers and the people of this region. They knew me not, but my warrior past was marked upon my body and did at times bring glances of fear and suspicion. I enjoyed watching as they passed their days and lived their lives of commerce and trade. I knew I was no farmer, but I had some skill around a