The Paradise War by Stephen R. Lawhead Read Free Book Online Page A

table with red-faced, fussy pride. Clearly, she was enjoying herself massively.
    It wasn’t until the dishes were being cleared away that talk turned once again to the absent aurochs. “It’s very strange, you know,” the farmer said, gazing into the coffee mug gripped between his hands. “I crossed that field but five minutes earlier. There was no a sign of the beastie then.”
    Simon nodded sympathetically. “It must have been something of a shock.”
    The farmer nodded slightly. His wife, who had been hovering over the table, broke in. “Oh, that’s no the half of it. Tell them about the spear, Robert.”
    “Spear?” Simon leaned forward. “Excuse me, but no one said anything about a spear. There was nothing about a spear in the—ah, report.”
    The farmer permitted himself a slow, sly, prideful smile. “True, true. Ah haven’a told anyone else, have I?”
    “Told them what, exactly?” I asked.
    “The beastie in ma field was kilt wi’ a spear,” Farmer Robert replied matter-of-factly. “Clean through the heart.” He turned his head to his wife and nodded. Morag stepped to a small nook beside the big stove. She reached in and brought out a slender length of ash-wood over five feet long. It was tipped with a flat, leaf-shaped blade of iron which was affixed to the shaft with rawhide. The blade, rawhide, and wooden shaft were much discolored with a ruddy brown stain that appeared to be blood.
    She brought the ancient weapon to the table. I stood and held out my hands. “May I?”
    At a nod from her husband, she gave it to me, and I held it across my palms. The weight of the thing was considerable—a stout, well-made weapon. I turned it over, examining it closely, butt to blade. The wood of the shaft was shaved and smooth and straight. The blade, beneath the patina of dried blood, was hammered thin and honed razor sharp. And it was decorated with the most intricate pattern of whorls imaginable; the whole surface of the blade to the very edges was covered with these precise, yet flamboyant, interwoven swirls.
    A curious feeling drew over me as I stood holding the spear. I felt as if I knew this weapon, as if I had held it before, and as if holding it now was somehow the right thing to do. I felt a strange sense of completion, of connection . . .
    Silly of me. Of course I had seen such a blade before, many times before—in countless photographs and more than a few actual specimens— and knew it well enough to identify: iron-age Celtic, La Tène Culture, seventh to fifth century BC. The British Museum has hundreds, if not thousands, of the things in its collection of iron-age artifacts. I had even handled a few of them in the research department at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The only difference that I could see between this one and the rust-encrusted relics of the museums was that the weapon I stood holding in my hands looked for all the world as if it had been made yesterday.

5
T HE C AIRN
     
    I t’s all a prank. A hoax. And you’re a stupe for falling for it. I bet they’re laughing at us right now. Conned some city folk with the ol’ vanishing aurochs stunt. How clever we are! What a great joke! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
     
    Simon shifted the Jaguar into gear and the car rolled onto the road. “You don’t believe Robert and Morag. Is that what you’re saying?”
    “Well, I didn’t see any extinct beasties. Did you see any extinct beasties? No? Golly, what a surprise,” I scoffed.
    “What about the picture in the newspaper?”
    “The rag probably gave him a hundred to pose for the picture and another hundred to keep his mouth shut,” I rallied. “But we didn’t see any aurochs, because there was never any aurochs to see.”
    “We saw a fine example of an iron-age spear.”
    “Grant made that up himself to make a good story better. Give me half a day in a machine shop and I’ll make you one just like it.”
    “You really think so?”
    “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Simon. Wake up and smell the