Sword in the Storm Read Online Free PDF

he was too young to understand the enormous ramifications of the affair. All he knew was that he no longer saw his father as regularly and could not understand why.
    Meria herself did not speak about it. She tried to give her children the same amount of love, attention, and care, but she was distracted often, and many times they would find her sitting by the window, staring out over the hills, her eyes moist with tears.
    Connavar, as would always be his way, tried to tackle the problem head on. A month after the separation the ten-year-old walked across to the Big Man’s house one evening and tapped on the door. Ruathain was sitting by a cold hearth, a single lamp casting a gloomy light over the main room. The Big Man was sharpening his skinning knife with a whetstone. “What are you doing here, boy?” he asked.
    “I came to see you,” Connavar answered.
    “You saw me today in the high meadow. You helped me mark the cattle.”
    “I wanted to see you alone. Why are you here? Is it something I did? Or Wing? If so, I am sorry.”
    “It has nothing to do with you, Conn. It is just … the way of things.”
    “Was it what Mother said to you?”
    Ruathain gently raised his hand, signaling an end to the questioning. “Conn, I shall not be talking about this matter. It is between your mother and me. However, no matter what passes between us, know this: She and I still love you—and Wing and Bran—and we always will. Now go home to bed.”
    “We are all unhappy,” said Conn, making one last attempt.
    Ruathain nodded. “Aye, all of us.”
    “Can we not be happy again?”
    “You will be, Conn.”
    “What about you? I want you to be happy.”
    Ruathain rose from his chair and walked across to the boy, hoisting him high and kissing his cheek. “You make me happy, my son. Now go.” Opening the door, Ruathain lowered Conn to the porch step. “I shall watch you run home in case the Seidh are out hunting small boys.”
    Connavar grinned. “They will not catch me,” he said, and sped off across the field.
    In the months that followed Ruathain and Meria rarely spoke except for those times when the Big Man came to visit Bran. Even then the conversation was coldly and punctiliously polite.
    Connavar found it all impossible to understand, even though he had heard from the kitchen the last angry words between Ruathain and Meria. But they were just words, he thought. Words were merely noisy breaths. Surely they alone could not cause such damage.
    A year after the separation he finally spoke to an outsider concerning the problem. Conn had become close to the foreigner Banouin. The dark-haired, olive-skinned merchant had arrived in Rigante lands twelve years before, bringing with him a baggage train of ponies bearing dyed cloths, embroidered shirts, spices, and salt. His goods were of high quality and rightly prized. He had spent three months among the Rigante, buying bronze and silver ornaments from the metalworker Gariapha and quality hides from the Long Laird’s curious black and white cattle. Those hides, he said, would be highly desired back in his own distant land of Turgony. When he came for the second year he paid for a house to be built and spent the winter and spring among the people, a practice he continued ever since. In his third year he took to wearing the plaid leggings and long blue shirt tunic of the northern Rigante. No one took offense, for such was Banouin’s charm that all knew he wore the attire as a mark of respect.
    For his own part Banouin had also taken a liking to the fierce, strange-eyed Connavar. They had met one evening three years before, when Conn had climbed through the window of the small warehouse-stable where Banouin kept his goods. Unknown to the eight-year-old, the little merchant had seen him creeping through the long grass and hadwatched him scale the outside wall, easing himself through the window. This took some nerve, since, with the permission of the village council, Banouin always