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The Silurian is Art
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Category:
Historical Fiction
Publisher: Two Riders Productions
ISBN-10: B00BGYMEBM
Type: Fiction
Pages: 365
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
If Longhand and White-tooth changed the Fox’s life, nothing compares to this…
BEDWYR'S LOSS
Great trauma and loss meets Bedwyr now. Freshly broken from his time in Cadwallon Longhand’s warhost, reunited with Arthur, it is time for him to begin the long journey to regain his place in the Clan Bear – and go to war against the mighty Angle warlord, Colgrin. Is the Fox fully recovered enough to survive this massive battle? What will he lose that will change him so deeply? For if Cadwallon Longhand failed to make Bedwyr his, what will come to him now to cause so much trauma? The Silurian, Book 4: Bedwyr’s Loss, continues the intense and dangerous life of Bedwyr the Fox, back at Arthur’s side and fighting for his very life…
Excerpt
My nightmares bred my fever; the dreams at first were always of the battle and that Angle, chopping me, of me trying to understand how I had let it happen. It was Fate. I imagined myself escaping my Fate and instead, I chopped him…but the nightmare only got worse and worse and I fell into it like falling into a peat-bog, or a deep dark sea, I went down and down where it was hard to breathe…
I lay in darkness, total and consuming darkness, where I heard a sound. It was a pig-grunting sound, always coming closer and closer through the darkness…then it eats me. It eats my flesh alive, it devours my arm, I lie and watch it eating its way up my arm towards my shoulder, my horror is so complete, it robs all my life to fight back…the thing is a great swollen and bloated pig, with huge tusks out of its gobbling mouth, it licks my arm before beginning to eat me.
I can feel it eating its way up my arm and I am not a man, I am nothing but food to that stinking thing and it cares nothing for my pain and horror, I am a lump of meat for its gapping mouth and its gnawing belly, yet as it comes closer to my shoulder, its face turns into that of a man…and yet it still eats me alive. The man is not the one who chopped me, it’s Colgrin. It’s every Saxon who ever tried to kill me. He looks at me as he devours me and laughs with my blood dripping from its fangs, its great pig-body swelling till I wake in terror and scream…
Arthur always came when I screamed the night down…
Sometimes he got into bed with me to hold me, other nights he bathed my sweat, or gave me drinks to cool me, or helped me up to piss out my terror. I shook and trembled and sobbed like a weakened fool, it was my mind that made me sob, not the strength of the true me, the warrior I knew myself to be. This thing went on for night after night and was weakening me even more, no potion could cure it, no draught could stop it. Darfod tried to talk me out of it, Dorian did to. I began to rely on him, he was extraordinary.
He was Silurian after all, and there was something about that nation from Guent…
I told Arthur of this one night as he sat with me before sleep.
I told him, “All you Silurians are so beautiful. Dorian is…”
“You like Dorian?”
“He’s…all right, I admit it. But your people, your nation, you Silurians are gorgeous to look at. But not Cadarn…”
He laughed at this, told me, “Cadarn is handsome.”
“Not to me.”
“Who else is beautiful to you?”
“Your cousin, Morganna. She turns my head, I swear, she…” and I stopped. I had almost told him that I had once shagged his cousin, Morganna…
He looked at me strangely, he said, “If you’re up to talking about shagging, then I think you’re getting better. Do you want a sheep?” I laughed and it hurt. “Go to sleep then,” he said, “it’s late, and you keep me awake. You know, there are things happening outside, out there. It’s already been put to the Bishops to make me Imperator. I think they are organising it right now. Once I have that, should I march on Rome?”
“Don’t be a cock-head. Rome is fallen, what would that gain you? A broken Empire?”
“You’re right. The whole Imperator idea is outdated, but in Britain, it can hold us together for years longer, till they kill me in the end.”
“Who will kill you?”
“My own family, my father or my uncle, Lot. He will rebel against me, he will try to tear me down and he will use Medraut to do it. I can see it all. None of them know how far ahead I can see, and even though I’ve foreseen it, I cannot stop it. Not unless I kill Medraut, and I won’t do that, not even to save myself.”
“So if I survive this maiming, will I see you die after all?”
“Only these nightmares are wrecking your healing,” he stroked my face. “And your wound, there’s still trouble with it, so maybe…maybe you still have a long journey to go. And I’ll go with you. Nothing will tear me away, not even a Saxon invasion.”
“And Isleen? Won’t you go now for her?”
He got up, paced a moment, then said, “Go to sleep…”
He went to his own bed and I tried to sleep, I did not want to sleep, as sleep only brought me the horror…
And it came again that night, and because of it, the worse thing happened that could happen, even worse than my own loss…as the pig ate me again, I woke up, but the dream did not stop, or else, I couldn’t tell if I were asleep or awake, as it kept on eating me even though my eyes were open. I tried to stop it and grabbed my arm, it was not there.
I grabbed my shoulder and felt down, there was nothing beyond and I knew the pig had already eaten it and I gave out my horror for one last wretched time…I had to get up and when I did, I went crashing through the room, trying to find a way out, I had to get out or else that thing would eat all of me. I crashed into the table and knocked everything onto the floor, mugs and jugs shattered as I tried to leave, finished, depleted.
I felt him come to take hold of me…
Arthur of course, but in my nightmare, he was my devourer, I pushed him back, then back again towards his cot and knocked him down onto it, and where I found the strength, was only through madness and fear. The forces of my dream-world devoured my reason as my arm was gone to the worms, squirming all around it and eating it, my arm! My arm! My fighting arm! I was not a warrior anymore, and how would I fight from then on? I was no warrior anymore, but a cripple…how could Arthur have me in his army now? How could I be a warrior ever again?
I cried at him, “I’m nothing now! How can I be your champion? My fighting arm is gone! Gone! And I am no warrior, and you did this to me! No, no, I did not mean that…” and I fell over him, he pulled me close, he tried to calm me. I said, delirious I knew it, “Everything’s against me, what Longhand did to me…he told me, you know, I found it out from him, him of all people, what happened to my father, Arthur, your father murdered my father…don’t you know that? So why not help me? Help me now…”
He lay staring at me, ripped up like a boy who had been beaten, for I had let it out. He stared at me, then pushed me aside and stood up, he was breathing hard and fast. He stood panting like a madman, “What did you say? And say it was your nightmare!”
“It was, it was, it was my nightmare, it is a nightmare! I dreamed it, I dreamed it in nightmares, what you told me…your family, the ones to rebel against you and bring you down, I dreamed it, I’m sorry, I did not mean what I said, I cannot do this anymore…”
I slumped to the floor and sat in darkness.
I think my arm was bleeding again. Arthur stood looking at me, then picked me up. “Your dreams are evil,” he said, he took me back through the mess on the floor to my cot, he lowered me down and left me, went outside and called for someone to come and clean up the broken crockery…
And once this was done, he ordered drinks and some food, for I was starving. I ate with a shaking hand. I had to learn how to use my right hand. I hated it. It was all wrong and I was un-balanced. We had some kind of midnight supper, and I shook like a bastard, or a coward who could not face his own end.
But the food made me feel better.
He watched me eating, using my right hand, the fumble I made of it. He said, “You’re going to have a hard time pulling on your prick now, you’re going to have to pull it off right-handed like I do.” He laughed and went into the full act of it, pretending to pull himself left handed and moaning and groaning. He made me laugh. I had not thought of that. If I needed to pull on my prick, it was not going to work and I would truly suffer then. I said, “I’ll get you to do it for me…”
He threw a piece of bread at me. He never mentioned the thing I had said to him again…
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