The Hostility of Hanno: An Outlaw Chronicles short story by Donald Angus

Author:Donald, Angus [Donald, Angus]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781405528870
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2013-06-19T23:00:00+00:00

Discover the fate of Hanno

in the latest epic novel of

The Outlaw Chronicles

Warlord

Read the first chapter now…

I have been thinking much upon Death of late; my own demise mostly, but also that of beloved comrades. I do not fear the Reaper – I like to think that I never have – and yet I can sense his presence just over the next rise. Death is not the enemy; no, he is an old, old friend coming as promised to collect me and take me on a strange journey. And perhaps when he raps at my chamber door with his bony knuckles I shall even be pleased to see him, weary as I am: for he will take me to a place where I shall see the face of God and, I earnestly pray, be reunited at last with those whom I have loved and who went on before me.

Friend or enemy, he is coming, and soon. I can feel it in my old and creaking bones; I feel it in my bladder that now needs to be emptied almost hourly in the long night-time, or so it seems. I feel Death in my aching kidneys, in my shortness of breath and my constant, grinding weariness. But I have a task to complete before his shadow stains my threshold: I must set down another tale of my young days as a bold warrior, another tale of my friend Robert Odo, Earl of Locksley; a lord of war, a master thief, King Richard the Lionheart’s loyal lieutenant, and the man the people remember best as the outlaw Robin Hood.

I have not recalled this part of my life for a long time; it has been five years since I last took up the quill to write about my strong, youthful self. My daughter-in-law Marie, who, with her husband Osric, runs this manor of Westbury on my behalf, had convinced me that it was not good for me to be dwelling on ancient battles and fruitless quests. She told me with uncommon firmness – it was indeed little short of a command – that I must pay attention to the present, that I must accept the life of the man I am today, white-haired, stooped, and well past sixty winters, and not pine for the man I was and for all my glorious yesterdays. And I think she may be right; for a while, for a year or more, I spent my days at Westbury inside the hall at my writing stand, setting down the old stories of Robin and myself. It was not a healthy life: my eyes grew blurred and tinged with blood, my hands ached from the long hours of scribbling, and my legs protested at their forced stillness, for I stirred little beyond the courtyard for months on end. The unbalanced humours in my torpid body made me irritable, even angry; worse, my mind became clouded and confused. In these past five years, with the writing stand dismantled and packed away

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