Hero Born

Hero Born

Book One of The Seeds of Destiny Trilogy

ANDY LIVINGSTONE

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015

Copyright © Andrew Livingstone 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015. Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Andrew Livingstone asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-759306-4

Version: 2015-04-28

For Valerie

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

‘When hope is dying, we crave inspiration. And at that hour, we look to heroes.’

The storyteller paused. The ensuing silence spoke as eloquently as the lack of comprehension on the face of the boy behind him. Just moments before, the young voice had cut through the first haze of dusk, stopping him in mid-pace.

‘There aren’t really any heroes, are there?’ It had been a simple question, a challenge born of childish bravado. But the storyteller could no more leave that seed of doubt behind him than a dog could ignore the scent of a rabbit. It was not his nature. Instead, he must plant a seed of his own.

He drew the sounds and the smells of the early evening deep within him: the wheat in the surrounding fields stirred by the breeze; the vestiges of the cooking fires; the heavy musk, the stamping and the grumbles drifting from the stables; the lazy drone of the insects and the cries of the birds seeking them one last time before handing the predators’ dayshift over to their nocturnal cousins.

It was a land basking in the contentment of peace, when heroes were not needed. When heroes were forgotten. There are some who say that peacetime is a curse; that we only appreciate what we have to fight for. He had grown to see much truth in that in recent years. Although he would never welcome a return to even the slightest of the horrors he had witnessed on these and other shores, still he marvelled at, and despaired over, the human spirit’s desire to dismiss and trivialise that which it did not see for itself. And, therefore, to lower its guard.

It was the mind’s greatest defence against terror turning to madness. It was also its greatest weakness if the cause of that terror were ever to return.

Still the storyteller paused, fewer than a dozen steps from the village hall. The weakening autumn sun was setting behind him. That was the way he liked it. Inside, the villagers would be waiting, packed on benches around the concentric circles dug down into the ground, galleries that focused on the stage below in unconscious and incongruous mimicry of the gladiator pits of the southern continent. The world over, people desired performance, whether the blood was in the words or on the earthen floor.

It was an oppressively atmospheric arena. And, tonight, it was his arena.

He would enter with the sun behind, a silhouette in the doorway framed by the deep amber rays. And so the performance would begin. The performance of a master craftsman, and one who loved his art. They would share that love, for they always did. That was what fed his soul, what pulled him from village to village, town to town, day after day, night after night, telling after telling.

He turned, a smooth and balanced movement. Three boys sat on a broken plough propped against the wall of the blacksmith’s workshop. The largest, slightly older and perhaps trying to impress, stood up awkwardly but with determination.

Clearly deciding that failing to understand the storyteller’s reply rendered the man’s words irrelevant, the boy pressed on. ‘You must know that. It’s just all stories to entertain people, isn’t it? You add things into it and make it more exciting. You make one person amazing to make it a better story. Admit it.’

The storyteller cocked his head in curiosity. What sunlight was left managed to reach far enough into his deep hood to reveal wry amusement. ‘Is that really what you think?’ His voice was soothing, measured and cultured, with a foreign hint to his speech.

The boy was defiant. ‘I asked you first. Tell me you admit it.’

The man smiled. ‘What I think is irrelevant; it can be dismissed. But what I know is different. It is fact, and can never successfully be disputed.

‘And I know that there can be heroes.

‘They are born, but often the potential they possess never meets with the circumstances that offer it release. Indeed, often when those circumstances arise, there is no one who happens to be there with the qualities needed to face them and triumph.

‘A hero’s light is always shining, but it is most bright when the world around is in its darkest hour.

‘And so, occasionally, perhaps just once in several lifetimes, fate allows the circumstances and the one person to coincide. And when that occurs, the hero is born.’ The smile became a grin, and he crouched before them, beckoning them closer.

‘Picture it: there is a battle, a vast battle, and the fate of a nation rests on its outcome.’ His voice lowered, drawing them in. ‘There is no glory, there is no honour, there is no chivalry: it is horror, it is terror, it is screaming and dying with your face pressed in the mud and the boots of friends and enemies trampling you as your tears run into the mire: it is war. And in the midst of the mayhem, there is an island of order: a group of men moving with calm assurance through the carnage. They use their weapons with the economy and efficiency of master craftsmen, with a skill born of years of surviving where others have perished, despatching all in their path as they move steadily and irresistibly towards the leader of the host opposing them. And at their head strides a figure, of no special height, of no special strength, hair plastered black on his face by the grime of battle and his pale eyes fixed, unwavering, on the enemy leader. His sword, a curious black blade, is in his hand, but he swings at no foe. He walks directly at the leader, and the men with him follow, and still they kill all in their path. And the leader turns, and notices them. He pauses as his eyes lock with the stare of the figure bearing down on him, then barks an order and the forty men of his personal guard, the finest warriors of his huge army, turn to meet the small band. The one at their head, eyes locked only on the enemy leader, seems oblivious to the death confronting him. The men beside him roar and run past, closing with the élite guards. Despite the overwhelming numbers, they clear a path for the bare-headed youth. The leader, a great champion of his people, tall and broad-shouldered, his blond hair oil-slicked back from his angled, handsome features, cradles his great war axe in his arms. The merest gesture of his head restrains his guards. He studies the youth, and laughs. He enjoys his sport. With contemptuous ease, terrifying skill and more speed than the eye can follow, the heavy axe swings up and slices down at the centre of the youth’s head. But, with all eyes on the flashing weapon, almost imperceptibly the youth sways. He turns, the axe missing by the width of a blade of grass. The youth continues to spin, his movement as fast as the axe itself had been. Even before the axe has embedded itself in the turf, his sword has flashed in the sunlight and he finishes his turn, facing the leader once again. It takes a moment for all to realise that the leader is not as he was. His head is spinning over his guards. It bounces once, and rolls, coming to rest face-to-face with a dead farm boy who had left his parents that morning full of ideals to fight the evil of the man now facing him in the mud. A silence has fallen over this small part of the battlefield, an unreal island of hush amid the clamour of men straining to kill one another, and the youth starts walking again, between guards too confused by the inconceivable to know how to react. As word spreads of the leader’s death, so also spreads panic and fear, and his army starts to flee the field in disarray. The youth ignores them. He walks, still, to the body of the farm boy and the head of his former foe. He kneels and, oblivious to the tear running down his cheek at the sight of the dead boy, no older than himself, he closes the eyes of the lad so that, even in death, he need not look upon the face of evil.

‘Then he stands and, looking neither one side nor the other, walks from the field, to be where only he knows.’

The storyteller rose, and smiled gently, an amused glint in his eyes. ‘So tell me: would it not be a terrible shame if his story were not to be remembered? Say someone knew such a hero and knew that the deed just recounted was not even the greatest of his achievements. Such a man would be bound by his conscience to tell his story, would he not?

‘So that is what I do.’

The boy’s resolve faltered under the storyteller’s piercing gaze. ‘Do you mean that you knew such a man? It is all actually true?’

The man turned to the waiting doorway. ‘Oh, yes. And you should thank your gods that it is so.’

Now the curious one, the boy stepped forward. ‘Why is that?’ His companions stood silently, drinking in the man’s words as much with wide eyes as with their ears.

The storyteller started forward. ‘If you want to know, then step inside, and let the story begin.’

He unlatched the door and pulled it so that it swung slowly open as far as it would go. A haze of smoke drifted into the opening and mingled with the sun’s rays as he stepped into its midst. A hush settled like a blanket over the packed interior. From deep within his hood, he stared slowly around the waiting faces, before starting down the stairs.

He murmured softly to himself, ‘Indeed. Let the story begin.’

Chapter 1

He stumbled, just enough to tip him beyond the point of balance. He knew there was no stopping the fall. There never was, these days. And he knew to brace himself against the impact would be too much to ask of old bones. Instead, he dipped and turned his shoulder, hitting the ground rolling. Instincts that once saved him on the battlefield and in the duelling circles now served to save brittle bones. Momentary pride at avoiding injury gave way to irritation at the irony of the comparison. His roll had left him with his cheek pressed against the cold flagstones of the floor, the breath punched from him, and wishing he could somehow move himself forward to a time when the pain coursing through his shoulder might have dulled to a throbbing ache. Maybe he could lie here until then. The floor was cool enough, respite from the searing heat of the balcony he had been escaping when he fell. He twisted, enduring the sharp sting from his shoulder in favour of a more comfortable position on his back. He could easily lie here, watching the dance of the dust in the single shaft of sunlight that entered the gloom of his chambers. There was plenty of it to watch, after all. The layer was thick on the floor, as it was everywhere else in his sparse rooms, and the area around his fall was swirling with it. Pity it had not been thick enough to cushion his fall. Why not just lie there? His two criteria for a successful fall had been fulfilled: break nothing and do it when no one was there to see. Why not lie there, indeed? What else did he have to do but watch the dance of the dust? He sighed, and brushed a long lock of white hair from across his eyes to allow him to better see the dust. Hair that had once been not white, but as deep brown as the soil under the freshly watered plants in the garden far below his balcony. Hair that had once been held in place by more than just the plain leather strap that bound it now. His eyes hardened at the thought.

No.

This was no way for one born to rule to behave. To give in. To be found.

He levered himself onto his front, gritting his teeth against the pain, and gathered his knees under him. Slowly, he raised himself to his feet.

‘Always get back up,’ he growled. ‘Always.’

Carefully, he moved to the full-length mirror at the far side of the room. He drew himself erect, and looked the image in the eye.

‘If I never see you again,’ he said, ‘be sure that the last time we met, my head was held high.’

****

The boy stumbled, then went down hard as several larger bodies hit him in close succession.

His cheek pressed into the hard-packed dirt, the precious bundle of rags clutched to his chest, the wind knocked out of him and the shouts of opponents and team filling his head, he wished he could somehow move himself forward an hour when the game would be just a pain-fuelled memory.

One of the large boys lying on top of him pushed his face harder into the ground and seemed to read his thoughts. ‘Why don’t you just give up, little boy?’ he snarled. ‘Give us the head and in minutes we can all be off enjoying the Midsummer Festival.’

He cursed the stubborn pride that never seemed to let him back down; a trait that had done him more harm than good, but one that he had found as hard to change as it was to fathom. Not pride, stupidity, he corrected himself. He desperately wanted to give his antagonist a smart reply. Instead all he could manage was a suggestion as to where the boy could stick his suggestion. Not exactly witty, he supposed, but it would have to do, as his face was, predictably, pushed into the earth again.

‘Have it your way,’ the youth smirked as several of the village boys pulled him away. ‘Next time we’ll hit you so hard they’ll need to scrape you off the ground to take you home.’

Climbing to his feet, still slightly winded and unsteady, he believed them. He felt a hand on his arm, and looked up to see his older brother, a tall lean boy, built for both strength and agility, universally popular and everything his smaller sibling wished he could be. But where the pair contrasted physically, they shared a quirky sense of humour: something that had made them easy, and inseparable, companions throughout their childhood. Inseparable even on the sporting field: with only eleven months between them, they had been born in the same year and were therefore of an age to play in the same fixture of the annual apprentices’ game.

The tall boy half smiled. ‘Enjoying being a punchbag today, are you, Brann?’

Brann grinned. ‘I am used to it.’ He started to move back towards the rest of his team, then stopped. ‘Callan, call Gareth over, will you? We have a few seconds before we restart and I have an idea.’

Under normal circumstances, Brann would quite happily avoid Gareth whenever possible. The apprentice blacksmith tended to determine the worth of his peers by their strength and size: a formula that left Brann firmly at the bottom of his popularity stakes and meant that the small boy was usually treated with little more than contempt… on a good day. But Gareth was also the leader of their team and so, unfortunately, Brann faced the uncomfortable prospect of speaking to the oaf face-to-face. Spitting out some stray dirt and rubbing his bruised shoulder, he was reminded that there were worse things in life.

Gareth skidded to a halt beside him. ‘This better be quick – and important. If we don’t start now, we’ll have to hand the Head over. What is it, runt?’

Maybe it was stupid, Brann thought. It would be easier just to let them get on with the last few minutes of the game and be done with it. But he could not stand the thought of not knowing if it would have worked or not.

He looked up. ‘I’ve had an idea.’

Gareth snorted. ‘I knew it was a waste of time. There are no “ideas” in this. You take the Head, get it passed them, go up the cairn and put it the basket. That’s it.’ He turned away. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have bothered with anything the feeble runt had to say.’

Brann grabbed at his arm in desperation. ‘No, wait. It is not complicated.’

Gareth wheeled round, his look dangerous. ‘Are you saying I’m stupid?’

Self-preservation and general love of life just managed to overcome Brann’s temptation to answer with the truth. Callan stepped in quickly. ‘Of course not. He is saying it will not take long to explain it.’

Gareth sighed. ‘What is it, then? And hurry up.’

Brann took a deep breath. ‘Look, we cannot batter through them. Too many of them are too strong, or too quick, or both. And they are organised. Once they get set in place, we’ve got no chance of getting through them.’

‘So? We know that. Spit it out, man.’

‘So we have to try something else.’

‘But there is nothing else. All that anybody has ever done in this game, we’ve tried today.’

Callan smiled slowly. ‘But that does not mean we have to do just that, does it? If we do something new, they will not be ready for it.’

The two tradesmen appointed to enforce the few rules the game possessed had started to shout across to them. Gareth stood up. ‘We’ve got to get on with this. If you have anything of value to say, say it now, and quickly.’

‘Right.’ Brann took a deep breath. ‘This is it. Pretend I am injured, and that is why you are over here just now. Restart the game, and work the Head round to the other side of the cairn.’

‘And?’ said Gareth.

‘And throw it over here.’

‘Throw the Head away? Are you mad? We might as well tell them we’ll put it in the basket for them.’ Gareth was disgusted.

But Callan grinned and slapped the ground in glee. ‘Not if we get it over the cairn. There will be no one here.’

‘Except him,’ Gareth grunted in acknowledgement. ‘I know I’m slow, but I get there eventually. Is that it?’

Brann shrugged. ‘That’s it.’

Callan looked at Gareth. ‘Are we going to try it?’

Gareth unceremoniously shoved Brann back to the ground. ‘Not just try. Do. There is no way we’re going to lose to those towny scum.’

Brann felt the baking earth pressing against his face again. Gods, I hope not, he thought. Please don’t let all of this be for nothing.

The dark-haired man stumbled, slightly, as the crowd jostled and surged with excitement.

He moved, but only in the manner of one who allows himself to be moved, just enough to regain his balance and then brace himself. Somewhat in the manner of an experienced warrior, an observer might think.

But no one was watching him. All eyes were fixed on the game unfolding before them as they shouted themselves hoarse. The man, too, watched the sport intently, but there the similarity with his fellow onlookers ended. He stood, silent and impassive, absorbing every detail. And finding more of interest than he had expected.

He had seen more spectacular sport in cities near and distant, from the magnificent gladiatorial arenas of the sun-hardened Empire far to the south, where decadence was masked by a veneer of civilised laws and customs, to the tracks where humans and animals raced, sometimes even against each other, in the more fertile lands at nature’s border where sensible weather stopped and the short sea-crossing began to these rain-drenched islands. Lush and green they may be, but damp and miserable they were, too. He had grown up in a land where the winters were cold, deadly cold, but at least it was honest cold that you could clothe yourself against. Here, the insidious damp worked its way past however many layers you piled on, and seeped into your bones, setting you shivering with an unhealthy regularity.

Which was why he was thankful that his work had brought him here during what must be their meagre summer. A scant few weeks of blue skies and heat that were welcomed with joy and appreciation by the locals but that, to a foreigner, were more of a taunt: here is what the rest of the world gets for much of the year.

And what lay before him was no grand arena, but a field of short grass and hard earth outside a market town in name and function only compared with the larger and more grandiose – but, if truth be told, more lacking in soul – settlements farther south in these islands; it was in truth a glorified village of no more than a thousand or so residents, although a suggestion to any of the inhabitants that it was anything less than a town would be met with outrage and suggestions of lunacy.

Heavy rope, dyed bright red, lay on the grass to mark out a circular area, around a hundred and fifty paces across, and along that boundary the roaring and beseeching crowd was gathered, three, sometimes four, deep and jostling each other as much from excitement as from their attempts to gain a better view. In the centre of the area stood a cairn of large rocks, roughly the height of three men and at least ten paces across the base, with a battered wicker basket (apparently a veteran of many such a contest) sitting at the peak.

The action raged around the cairn. As far as the impassive stranger had been able to determine, the idea was to scale the cairn and place a tightly bound bundle of bright-coloured rags, apparently weighted by rock or metal in its centre, in the basket. Two teams competed to do so: one defending the cairn while the other attempted to break through and scale the rocks. Rules seemed few, and were therefore easily deduced. The team in possession of the rag-bundle, which was around the size of a man’s head, attacked the cairn relentlessly until the defenders managed to wrest the ball from them – at which point the team’s roles were reversed.

Tactics seemed only slightly more numerous than rules. Either a player, or group of players, would attempt to force a breach in the line of defenders through brute force by becoming a human battering ram, or one player would dodge and weave his way as far forward as possible, usually aided by team-mates who would try to block, often violently, the defenders’ attempts to reach the carrier. If the player with the bundle looked as if he were about to be caught, he would try to hand it over to a colleague to allow the attack to continue. If, however, the player was caught by the defenders, or if the bundle of rags was intercepted or snatched, the fun began. An almighty mêlée would ensue, with players from both sides piling in to try to retrieve the rags in a maelstrom of flailing limbs and frantic dives.