Free Sword in the Storm by David Gemmell Page A

shoulders, gathered branches for kindling, then hauled them down the hill. Several work teams of adults selected trees for cutting, then set to with ax and saw. There were many dead trees, and they were felled first, and then stripped of branches sothat the older boys could saw the trunks into rounds that could be rolled downhill.
    On either side of a fallen trunk Connavar and Braefar dragged and pushed a four-foot double-handed saw. Stripped to the waist, sweat streaking their tanned skin, they worked the serrated blade deep into the wood. Braefar had an old cloth wrapped around his blistered right hand. Blood had stained the cloth. Younger than Conn by a year, he was a head shorter and twenty pounds lighter than his half brother. It was as if nature had played a cruel trick on the swordsman Ruathain. The son of the slender Varaconn looked more like Ruathain every day, tall and powerful, already showing prodigious energy and strength, while the swordsman’s own son was sparrow-boned and puny.
    It was a source of some shame to Braefar, who, though he could outrun the fastest Rigante tribesman and shoot a bow as well as most men, could not yet wield a bronze longsword or wrestle a bull calf to the ground. His skin was soft, and no matter how hard he worked, he could build no calluses. Every time he was called on to use the copper saw, his hands bled.
    The two young men had worked all morning, and as the sun neared noon, they laid aside the two-man saw and sat in the shade of a spreading oak to eat. Scattered clouds drifted across the blue sky, dappling the green valleys with shadow, and darker clouds hovered around the Druagh peaks, threatening rain in the late afternoon.
    The brothers shared a meal of bread and honey washed down with cool water from a cold spring that trickled down the nearby rock face.
    “You have been very quiet today,” said Conn, tipping a cup of water over his sweat-soaked red-gold hair.
    For a moment Braefar was silent, and when he did speak, he did not look Conn in the eyes. “I think you like the foreigner more than you like me,” he said.
    The comment surprised Conn. His half brother was neverone to complain and disliked emotional confrontations. Conn understood now why Braefar had seemed so distant these past weeks. “I’m sorry, Wing,” he said. “You are my brother, and I love you dearly. But Banouin knows much of the world. And I am eager to learn.”
    “What is there that he can teach?” Braefar answered sourly. “We learn how to farm, how to ride, how to shoot, how to fight. We learn the great songs of the Rigante. What more will we need?”
    Conn finished the last of his bread, then licked the honey from his fingers. “Do you know what a ‘soldier’ is?” he asked.
    “A soldier? No.”
    “It is a man who fights all year round.”
    “Such a man is an idiot,” said Braefar. “Who works his farm while he fights? Who gathers his crops or feeds his animals?”
    “He has no farm. He is paid in gold to fight wars. And because he has no farm, he does not have to return home in late summer to gather his crops. Banouin’s people have armies of soldiers.”
    Braefar laughed. “They must be very bored in winter, when all their enemies have gone home.”
    Conn shook his head. “Their enemies have no homes. For the soldiers follow them and kill them and take over their lands.”
    “That is stupid,” said Braefar. “What can you do with land that is far away from yours?”
    “Banouin says you force the surviving people to pay tributes to the conqueror. Gold, or corn, or timber, or cattle.”
    “It still makes no sense,” insisted Braefar. “You can eat only so much bread. And cattle need wide grazing lands. If someone offered Father a thousand more cattle, he would refuse. There would not be enough grass for them.”
    Conn chuckled. “It is complicated, and I do not fully understand it myself. But these armies of soldiers march intoa land and conquer it. The plunder they take