Saxon: The Book of Dreams (Saxon 1) by Tim Severin Read Free Book Online Page B

place.
    ‘Bastard thieves must have given themselves a bad fright,’ he said as he finished. He gave me an odd look. I realized that my eye patch had slipped in the excitement. He could see
that both my eyes appeared normal. Fortunately it was too dark to make out any colours.
    ‘I never knew that eels could move so fast,’ I mumbled, turning my head aside.
    He spat over the side of the wagon.
    ‘They go mad when they know that rain is coming.’
    It seemed an odd thing to say on such a fine clear night, but the next morning a grey-black line of thunder clouds was massing on the western horizon as Arnulf harnessed the oxen. The clouds
spread rapidly, blotting out the sun, and the light dimmed though it was not yet noon. All around us the forest waited in baleful silence until we heard a moaning sound in the far distance. A
savage wind came tearing through the trees. The leading gusts ripped off leaves and sent them swirling through the air in a mad dance. A lone raven flashed past, helpless in the gale and was
whirled out of sight. Soon the upper branches of the trees were bending and twisting as the main weight of the storm raced across them. There was a random cracking and snapping as twigs, then thick
branches, broke free and came spinning to the ground. A long-dead and enormous oak, gnarled and its heart already rotten, leaned sideways until the roots gave way. Then it came crashing down with a
thump that shook the ground, half blocking the roadway and prising a massive clump of brown earth, the size of a small cottage. Within the wind’s howl was a drumming noise, and finally the
rain arrived. Heavy rain drops rattled on the ground; puddles appeared in an instant and joined together. Rivulets of yellow-brown water raced down the slope and turned into churning streams.
    Arnulf’s oxen were halted by the ferocity of the storm. They stood patiently, their tawny hides soaked to a dullish brown, their hooves gradually sinking into the mud. Osric and I crouched
in the shelter of the cart, the water rising around our feet. Arnulf pulled up the hood of his cloak and hunched in the lee of his beasts. For perhaps an hour the storm beat down on us, and then
eased to a steady, soaking rain. We began to move. The oxen sloshed through the mud, and the wheels of the cart left deep grooves that instantly brimmed with rainwater. I imagined I could hear the
eels thrashing and roiling excitedly in their tank.
    Heads down, we plodded on, scarcely noticing that we were finally leaving the forest. The rain continued all that day and the next night, a miserable time spent under the wagon once again. At
dawn on the second day it was still raining heavily as we took to the road once more. There were no other travellers, and when I finally looked up and took an interest in our surroundings, I saw
that we were approaching the outskirts of a large, sprawling township.
    Arnulf pointed. A mile ahead of us the ground sloped upward. There, surrounded by a web of scaffold, were by far the largest buildings I have ever seen. Still under construction, they already
dominated the town.
    ‘Big Carl’s newest palace,’ Arnulf said, wiping the rain from his face. His wet birthmark glistened like sliced beetroot.
    He led the way deeper into the town. The citizens were all indoors, shutters closed against the sheeting rain. Stray mongrels and pigs scavenged in the miry side lanes and flooded ditches. The
closer we came to the new palace the more substantial were the houses. I assumed they belonged to wealthy merchants and members of the royal entourage. Occasionally a servant or a slave on some
errand darted between the houses, dodging the spouts of water gushing from the roofs and gutters. Drenched, we slogged on until we had entered on the royal precinct. It was a vast building site.
Materials lay everywhere: heaps of timber; piles of cut stone; stack upon stack of bricks. Here at last was some activity. Under long, low shelters and