The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) by Morgan Llywelyn Read Free Book Online Page B

women, the noises of the livestock, the clear hard striking of the anvil. Across the commonground, Mahka and Alator and some others were racing in a furious game of stick and ball, slamming into each other and shouting with laughter.
    Epona cast one look at the bakehouse, then gathered her long skirts in her hands and ran to join them. “Hai!” she cried. “I challenge you all to a race! I can run faster than any of you!”

Chapter 3
    W ith the advance of sunseason there was more light for longer days of work. Goibban the smith lay sleepless on his bedshelf at night, his mind whirling with ideas, his large hands unconsciously shaping designs atop his blanket. The iron was an endless source of inspiration. To work it was a sacred act of creation: bending, beating, capturing a thought and making it tangible with the melted essence of the ore.
    As a child, Goibban had loitered around the copper smelters on the long blue evenings when the smoke rose high above the mountains. He loved watching as the miners raked out the smelting pits, banking fires at the lode faces of the mine galleries so their heat would split free the ore to be mined the following day. He dreamed of the time he would work with metal; he never wanted to do anything else.
    But copper and bronze did not satisfy him, and gold was too easy. It did not offer any resistance to his great strength, but formed itself to his desire like an overwilling woman, without spirit. If he forgot himself and did not work with the
utmost delicacy he could destroy the shape he sought to create.
    The old master smith died and Goibban, his chief apprentice, took over his lodge and forge in the days of Toutorix, the Invincible Boar. There was always plenty of work to be done but it did not exhaust his vast reservoirs of energy. He fell into the habit of making little toys in the evenings, models of weapons and household goods for the children to play with, and soon he had a crowd of youngsters around the forge whenever he worked. He would glance up occasionally and reward them with a fond, if distracted, smile.
    Then Toutorix had taken a load of iron ore in return for a few casks of salt, and Goibban had found a challenge worthy of his ability. He lost interest in copper and bronze. He wanted only to pit himself against the most unyielding opponent he had ever found, the star metal. Something in the integrity of the material appealed to something deep inside himself. Properly handled and correctly judged as to its temperature and tensile strength, iron could be made obedient. But the slightest mistake could turn it brittle and useless. It became a competition between the man and the iron, and it was the competition Goibban loved. For years now, he had thought of little else.
    When Toutorix called on him for an inventory of work in progress, Goibban announced with pride, “We have enough extra tools to offer some more in trade this season.”
    “Beyond our own needs?”
    “Yes, and we still have raw ore from that lot you got from Mobiorix last sunseason. Fine quality, that. I’m putting together a few items I think the Etruscans and Illyrians might find especially desirable: tweezers, shears, household knives, even a couple of iron plowshares I’ve made according to my own design.”
    “Last season the Hellene traders asked if we had any iron weapons,” Toutorix remarked, avoiding an outright inquiry.
    Goibban stroked his mustache. “We have scythes and chisels, and I’ve been experimenting with some files for sharpening and a kind of toothed knife for cutting wood.”
    Toutorix gazed around the forge, considering. Once he had enjoyed the intricacies of arranging trade based on the bounty of the Salt Mountain, and his dealings with such distant tribes as the Boii, the Belgae, and the Treveri had earned him fame among all the people. This in turn had drawn new traders from the east and the south, the music-obsessed Thracians and the dainty Etruscans with their language like