Free Mordraud, Book One by Fabio Scalini Page A

rebels will never reach Cambria, you can be sure of that. Dunwich needn’t worry. And you neither.”
    She knew nothing, he told himself. Indeed all her ideas were totally wrong. He’d found getting back into the mercenary routine very tough. He didn’t need to be nagged from morning till evening those few times he returned home. He’d had to contact his old friends, struggle against the suspicion of the younger men who couldn’t comprehend why a man of his age would want to go back to fighting. That was precisely the problem: he didn’t feel old. Or rather he didn’t want to feel old.
    So h e did all he could to prove he wasn’t.
    “ Play with your son for a while – he hasn’t seen you for three months...”
    “ Later.”
    Eglade ’s eyes were mournful beyond the bearable. Varno decided to humour her, at least that time. He got up to join Mordraud in the living room, sat on the settee and watched the boy as he played. He still looked tiny, yet he must have been eight. It was absurd how he couldn’t get used to this, he reflected in distress. Mordraud stopped the spinning top and stood up to go to his side. Neither of them said a word at first, like two perfect strangers waiting for a coach. In fact, that was exactly how Varno felt: he did not see the child as his own son. Mordraud, instead, would have liked to tell him many a thing, and ask him even more. But he was embarrassed, he felt uncomfortable. He only managed to open up a little with his mother. With Varno it was a pitiful collection of primitive half-phrases and episodes of awkward silence.
    “ When’s Dunwich coming home?”
    Mordraud ’s great torment. He remembered almost nothing of his brother, except for some extremely rare visits lasting a few days. But he could still recall the brief period they’d lived and played together, when he’d been very young. Dunwich had seemed like a blue-eyed giant.
    He still was a sort of hulk, but merely in Mordraud ’s mind.
    A mountain concealing him with his sha dow, preventing his father from noticing him.
    “ I don’t know. Sometime next year maybe...” Varno replied.
    “ Why does he come home so little?”
    “ I really don’t know, Mordraud! Why’s it so important to you?!” he burst out, annoyed at the boy’s insistence.
    “ Mummy misses him so much...” he stammered. He’d have liked to add that he missed him too, but he didn’t feel his father was interested in his opinion. Some days everything seemed to go fine. They would stay in the garden together, exchanging the odd word and playing at hunting out the hens’ eggs.
    But these moments grew ever rarer. Fading even before they finished.
    Now his f ather returned for a mere few weeks, then set straight off again. Unfortunately it was always during winter, when Mordraud could play outside less: the weather was cold and it often snowed, so the boy had to stay in the house.
    Varno didn’t like being shut up indoors. Mordraud had already worked this out.
    “ Shall we go outside?”
    “ And what do you want to do out?”
    “ Well... I’d like to learn how to use a sword.”
    The request took Varno by surprise. For him, his sword was a mere work tool. Nothing special. He’d started handling one in secret, in the company of a few kids from his village, during the tiresome long afternoons when they’d hang around after skipping the work in the fields. He’d learnt the rest in battle.
    Nothing more than a work tool .
    “ Why do you want to learn to use a sword?!”
    “ Well, you go off to war... And if I were to go one day?” Mordraud retorted. The real reason was quite another, but he didn’t state it openly. He knew his father wasn’t interested in any case: he wanted to learn how to protect his mother. He didn’t actually even know what a war was.
    “ You’re too young for these things.”
    “ Let me try. If I don’t manage it, I won’t ask you again.”
    Varno smiled, caught unawares by the promise. A wave of affection