Godborn by Dan Davis

Author:Dan Davis [Davis, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2020-06-17T22:00:00+00:00

21. A Mighty Gift

Kounos led Herkuhlos to the northern edge of the fortress to one of the smallest houses. It was dark and damp within. No fire had been lit in the hearth for a long time and even the yotunan’s warriors seemed hardly to have given it any notice. A few decorated jars were smashed and the pieces scattered. Some shallow pits dug here and there about the floor as if their search for hidden stores had been hasty and superficial.

“This is your house?” Herkuhlos asked.

Kounos sighed as he looked around. “No wife to tend to it. Whenever I returned to Pelhbriya I brought my acolytes to serve me until we returned to the grove.”

“Where you create weapons?” Herkuhlos said. “Weapons like your spear?”

Kounos smiled sadly and moved to the centre of the house, looking down at the hearth. “It is a sacred place. There is power there.”

“And that power goes into your bronze,” Herkuhlos said, understanding something of it. “Through you?”

“The god has always favoured me,” Kounos said, crouching by the cold hearth. “When I was a boy, the kerdos was an old man. He lived at the forge and never came to the fortress. I wanted always to be a warrior but when I returned from my wandering, there was an accident.” He began to pull up the flat stones from around the hearth. “It was my fault. My foolishness caused a fire. The fire burned my father’s house and might have taken the rest were it not for the rains.” Kounos stopped to hold out his scarred arm. “I suffered this. My sister’s face was burned. She lived but no right-minded man wanted her after that and so I was sent to the forge.”

“As punishment?”

Kounos continued to pull up the stones. “My father thought so, though other men were honoured to see their sons apprenticed to the kerdos. I hated it. I hated the kerdos. I hated the work. It was beneath me as a warrior to spend my strength in the making of things, like a common craftsman, like a herder. All I wanted was to fight and to win fame and to one day become the chief. Hand me that broken piece of wood there.”

Herkuhlos did as he was commanded. “Your father was the chief?”

“His brother was.” Kounos began to dig with the stick, driving it into the earth under the hearth and dragging the soil and pebbles out. “I was the best of my generation and I knew it was my destiny to rule my people. But the god decided otherwise.”

“What happened?”

“First, I started to hate the work less. Or perhaps I grew competent first. We prepared the ore. We learnt the songs, the lore, the rites, the tools. Gradually, I felt the god in me.”

“What does that feel like?”

“Just as I say. When I was taught… well, these things are sacred. But when I worked the fire, I felt the god in it. When I worked the metal, I felt it there, also.

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