Anyone here ever been shot with an arrow? This is the first writery thing I have done in ages. I am trying to get across the idea of how dangerous travel was in Europe in 1000 AD, specifically in this Europe where there are creatures that poison you with a look, and diseases that come with the wind, and the unquiet dead. The speaker here is a younger version of Wulfric, one of my main characters, and the problem is at the time of the book, hes having to do exactly what hes warning people about here. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A man or a maid does not rise up one morning and say “Tomorrow I leave for Rome.” Commonly a man – and it is almost always a man, not a maid, only a madwoman will walk alone, and unless God sets an angel on each shoulder, she will set out and never arrive – commonly a man who sets out on a great journey will gather his children together. He blesses them, and holds them close, and kisses each and every one. He embraces each of his kin. Then lastly he goes to his wife, holds her close and kisses her, makes her say to him the names of those she can call upon amongst the kith and kin, should he not return. If he passes a church on his way to the gate, and if he is that way inclined, he enters on his knees. He bows his head, and empties his soul, and repents, lest he die unshriven. And then he goes out to meet his fellows at the gates. Each man is armed, with his spear or his staff or his seax. They embrace, and swear terrible oaths to each other, and then together they head out. No man goes alone unless God or man has harried them – the cast out, the crazed, the one with blood on his hands. In desperation sometimes two go out together - one to stand watch, one to sleep - to the moors and the forests and the wild places. But two is often too few – plague, fever, a fall from a horse – and bodies are often unburied. Even a band of four or five is a morsel to twelve or ten. More so if that twelve or ten is on horseback, or strikes first with arrows, if the first you know of death is when you feel the thud and the hot, sharp burn, and look down to see the arrow in your thigh or hand or belly. Wulfric of Riems, His Rhetoric. On the terrors of travel, and the rigours of the road, and the madness of wandering the world. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I dont know if this works or not at all.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 23:03:55 +0000
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