A short Iron Age story

The mark was as sure a sign from the Gods as ever they gave.  It hung like a purple fruit from beneath the child’s eye to its jawbone.  When its mother saw it she screamed in anguish.  The father turned his back in shame and left the hut.

But whilst the signs of the Gods may be clear for all to see their meaning is not and as the Priest extended his hands to the child’s throat it let out such a wail as none had ever heard; a monstrous wail that rode on the air for ten or more heartbeats and stilled the sound of every other living creature for minutes after.

The Priest froze and rocked back on his haunches.

And five years later at the Spring Feast as the child was presented to the Stone and Knife, a raven dropped from the air, dead before the Priest.  A bull calf was offered in the child’s stead and there followed a summer of such rich hunting and harvest as any could remember.

All of that was then and the boy had now become a man of fifteen summers.  He had passed the Warrior’s Test the year before and awaited his first kill before being allowed to sit at the convent.

It was not to be long in coming.

The signal was raised by a girl gathering wood. She had seen the forage band and gave the throstle call.  The foragers caught it too and were not fooled.  They found and killed the girl, of course, but it was too late.  The tribe’s warriors were already on their trail.

The band dispersed to divide their pursuers but each was caught and slain. Plum Face encountered the Painted Man by the bluff overhanging a narrow track. One would kill; the other be killed.

Despite the superior speed and skill of the Painted Man he seemed to hesitate as he looked into Plum Face’s eyes, which was enough for the boy to drive his blade into the man’s throat.

He washed himself in the stream, not to remove the blood which he wanted to be seen, but to remove signs of the urine, which he did not.  It did not fool his brother warriors, of course, but they allowed his indulgence as older warriors had allowed theirs.

He sat at that equinox’s convent, no longer as Plum Face but as Young Blade. The purpose the Gods had for him was not known but it was not to die before fulfilling it.