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Back A Night of Flames
Chapters (76)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise forMATTHEW HARFFY
  3. BY MATTHEW HARFFY
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright
  6. Dedication
  7. Maps
  8. Epigraph
  9. Contents
  10. Place Names
  11. One
  12. Two
  13. Three
  14. Four
  15. Five
  16. Six
  17. Seven
  18. Eight
  19. Nine
  20. Ten
  21. Eleven
  22. Twelve
  23. Thirteen
  24. Fourteen
  25. Fifteen
  26. Sixteen
  27. Seventeen
  28. Eighteen
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-One
  32. Twenty-Two
  33. Twenty-Three
  34. Twenty-Four
  35. Twenty-Five
  36. Twenty-Six
  37. Twenty-Seven
  38. Twenty-Eight
  39. Twenty-Nine
  40. Thirty
  41. Thirty-One
  42. Thirty-Two
  43. Thirty-Three
  44. Thirty-Four
  45. Thirty-Five
  46. Thirty-Six
  47. Thirty-Seven
  48. Thirty-Eight
  49. Thirty-Nine
  50. Forty
  51. Forty-One
  52. Forty-Two
  53. Forty-Three
  54. Forty-Four
  55. Forty-Five
  56. Forty-Six
  57. Forty-Seven
  58. Forty-Eight
  59. Forty-Nine
  60. Fifty
  61. Fifty-One
  62. Fifty-Two
  63. Fifty-Three
  64. Fifty-Four
  65. Fifty-Five
  66. Fifty-Six
  67. Fifty-Seven
  68. Fifty-Eight
  69. Fifty-Nine
  70. Sixty
  71. Sixty-One
  72. Sixty-Two
  73. Author’s Note
  74. Acknowledgements
  75. About the Author
  76. An Invitation from the Publisher

“I know who I am,” I said, pushing myself up. I did not truly believe my own words, but I could not face talking to the Welshman further.

It was later that same day, with my head still throbbing and my thoughts in turmoil, that I first noticed Cwenswith. I had seen her before, of course. She was pretty and one of the few girls close to my age in the settlement, but I had never paid her much attention. Until then.

A while before, Runolf had seen Gersine and me loitering and had shouted at us to make ourselves useful. Not wishing to admit I could not keep up with the older men, despite my headache, I had hurried to do Runolf’s bidding. Perhaps taking pity on me after the night’s escapades, he told Gersine and I to carve as many trenails as we could. The shipwrights needed dozens, if not hundreds of the things, and it was something Runolf knew I was capable of, even in my sorry state. The dexterity that allowed me to scribe clearly formed letters on the page, also gave me the steady hand and good eye to make the wooden pegs that would serve to hold much of the ship’s strakes and thwarts together.

Gersine and I sat together on stumps of timber, splitting small logs with a hand axe, then splitting those pieces again, until each log provided four of the trenails. After splitting, we used a sharp knife to pare away the wood, leaving one end thicker than the other and rounding the ends so that the mallets would not split the wood when the pegs were driven home. From the offcuts of the logs, we whittled the wooden wedges that would later be hammered into ridges cut into the thick ends of the trenails, thus expanding them and holding them in place. It was not the most strenuous of activities, for which I gave thanks to Runolf, but it demanded concentration.

It was when we paused, deciding to go over to the smith to sharpen our knives, that Gersine nudged me. The wind had blown the clouds away in the night and the sky was a brilliant blue. The low winter sun shone bright, but with little warmth. I was taciturn and had been poor company ever since Gersine rode up at mid-morning, tethering his dappled stallion beside one of the storage huts. I had grumbled constantly at him while we worked on the trenails, criticising his carving, picking up pegs he had finished and comparing them unfavourably against the example that Runolf had given us to copy. Now, perhaps wishing to deflect my bad mood away from him, Gersine pointed to where the sun gleamed from Cwenswith’s golden locks.