Free Ravenheart by David Gemmell

Calofair’s luck. Maev not only was beautiful but also was the sister of Lanovar, the chieftain, and all men knew that this brilliant and gifted warrior would bring prosperity to the clan. Through his efforts, the Rigante name would be restored to the Scroll of Clans and lands stolen from the clan would bereturned to their rightful owners. Those were days of golden promise.
    But Lanovar had been murdered by the Moidart, and the Beetlebacks had descended on clan villages, killing and burning. For years those with Rigante blood were forced to stay away from towns and settlements, building homes in the bleak highlands. They survived by raiding Varlish settlements and convoys and stealing cattle and coin or any merchandise that could be useful. Life was harsh back then.
    Maev Ring remembered it without sentiment: the squalid sod-roofed dwellings, the sickness and death among the old and the weak. As she sat now by the kitchen window of her six-room house, she thought again of Calofair, his flesh eaten away by the fever, the wound in his chest festering and angry. He had been beyond speech at the end, only his eyes showing any sign of life. Maev had sat with him, holding his hand. And then, as the light of life had faded, she had kissed his brow. She had been tempted to take a dagger and slash open the veins at her wrists, to fly away from the woes of the world and travel with the spirit of Calofair. She shivered at the memory. Four-year-old Kaelin had approached her, tears in his eyes. “Will Uncle get better, Aunt Maev?”
    It was a summer night, and the last of the sun’s rays was shining through the roughly wrought door of the hut. By its light the twenty-year-old Maev could see the flea bites on the child’s ankles and wrists. His face was pinched and sallow. Maev put her arms around him, drawing him into an embrace. “Uncle
is
better now,” she told him. “He is walking across green hills with comrades he has not seen in years. He is tall and proud and wearing the colors of the Rigante.”
    “He is still in the bed, Aunt.”
    “No, Kaelin,” she said softly. “All that lies in this bed is the coat of flesh that Calofair wore. And we must bury that coat, you and I.”
    Ten years on, and even now the memory brought a tear to Maev’s eye. Angrily she brushed it away and rose from her seat. She gazed around the kitchen at the furniture craftedfrom pine and the iron stove set upon a bed of slate in the hearth, at the windows with leaded panes of clear glass, at the floor with its neatly fitted flagstones. Pots and pans hung from brass hooks above the worktops, and the larder had food aplenty.
    Kaelin walked into the kitchen and sat down at the bench table. “Shula is sleeping,” he said. “I left Banny with her.”
    “She should have come to me sooner,” Maev said sternly.
    “Aye, she should,” he agreed. “Banny said she went into Eldacre to the poorhouse to ask for food. She was turned away.”
    “Where did she get the cuts and bruises?”
    “Banny says it was Morain, Galliott’s wife. She and several other women beat her as she was making her way home.”
    “There is a deep well of bile in that woman,” said Maev. “It shames us all that Morain has Rigante blood.”
    “Will Banny’s mam be well again, Aunt Maev?”
    “We will do our best for her, Kaelin. We will feed her and keep her warm. Do you still have that chailling Jaim gave you?”
    “I do.”
    “Then go to the store man and buy a dozen eggs and three jars of honey. Then go to the butcher and tell him I want double the amount of beef for Holy Day. Then …” She paused. “Can you remember all this, Kaelin?”
    “Aye, a dozen eggs, three jars of honey, double the beef. What else?”
    “Go to the apothecary Ramus and tell him I need some powders for fever and a potion for the cleansing of the blood. If he has any fat hen weed, I will take that, too. The woman has a festering wound on her lower back. Tell him that.”
    “Is that all?”