The familiar comforting smells of hot water, burning wood, cooked meat and human sweat mingled pleasantly to greet his entrance. How quickly the years had passed, Gruffydd thought, since he had first brought the infant Nimue to be cared for by the chief cook of the Venonae garrison. Although she ...
Bronze lamps had been lit and Percivale and Gareth moved around the spartan room, preparing for the king’s rest and comfort, while Odin leaned impassively against the heavy, wooden door.Their lord’s frugal habits meant that Percivale and Gareth had little to do but put away the High King’s scroll...
Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests? Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud? Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts? Or kings be breakers of their own behests? But no perfection is so absolute That some impurity doth not pollute. Shakespeare, ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ ‘Daughter?’ An angry...
Dressed now in the best finery that the Saxons of Anderida had to offer, including a great cloak of white wolf pelts bound at the shoulder with a dragon pin in bronze, he was an imposing and regal figure. Targo had insisted he do honour to the scum by wearing the torc of the Saxon chieftain, a ma...
Storm clouds were gathering, and a mist of rain obscured the sun. As he lay on his soft woollen pillows, Ambrosius’s face was so pale that he already looked like a corpse with his blued lips and haggard face, while the lamplight bleached the gold of his hair to the colour of pale ash. The light c...
Myrddion awoke with those first frail shafts of light, but on this particularly ominous day his eyes were gritty from too little sleep and soured after the haunting dreams that had pursued him during the night. Throughout the meagre hours of darkness that followed the burial of Willa Major, the y...
K. Hume [King Arthur Trilogy 04] The Last Dragon CHAPTER XIOF LOVE AND WARThe soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear.Daniel Defoe, Of Academies: an Academy for WomenThat season was to live in Arthur’s memory as the last months o...