Another Sample

Here is another sample of my writing. This is all me--no co-writers. Please comment! Let me know if this interests you. I can email you the chapters I have so far. This book is almost done, but I need help deciding how it should end. Comments are welcome!

Alba, North of Britannia: 90 AD

Rígh Earnan of the Luirg tribe of Alba sat on his horse, waiting for his children to catch up. He looked at the group, following their father from a distance. The gods had blessed him with three sons and two daughters before his wife had died. He wanted to teach the boys to hunt, but the girls were much too young to be left alone. At the top of the hill, Earnan sighed and looked up at the cloudy sky. The overcast heavens above him nearly matched his gray head and beard, which he stroked thoughtfully as he looked down at the ground and spotted something of interest.

“Come, Duncan!” he called to his eldest, encouraging him to lead the others and hurry them along. “We’ve a lot to do, and not enough sunlight.” Why hadn’t he left the girls with one of the women at the dun? They were only a hindrance to him, and he knew they would do nothing but complain while out in the hills. They were further than they had ever been from home, and he knew the girls wouldn’t like that.

The children caught up on their animals, and went on to follow their father down the hill to a stream at the base of the hill. Earnan got off his horse and squatted down by the stream. He looked downstream to the wooded area and looked at some deer tracks in the grass.

“Duncan, Taran, Nevin! Look at this!” the father instructed. The boys got off their animals and squatted down near their father.

“What is it, Da?” the youngest of his boys, Nevin, asked. At four, he was eager to learn how to track and shoot. Nevin’s sandy hair fell into his face, hiding his bright blue eyes. He moved the hair out of his way and inspected where his father was pointing.

“A deer,” Earnan answered. “He’s headed into the woods.”

“Are ye sure it’s a buck, Da?” Duncan referred to the masculine pronoun his father had used. Duncan, sixteen, and his brother Taran, twelve, had been hunting and learning to fight for a few years now, but they still had much to learn from their warrior-Rígh father. They looked similar in all except height. Both were slender, but strong, especially for their age, with strong features, like their father. They also possessed the same sandy brown hair that Nevin had; again a trait received from their father.

“How old do you think he is?” Aileen asked, causing her brothers and father to look back at her in question. She was not there to learn to hunt. She was there to simply wait for them to come home. When she got no answer, Aileen raised her eyebrows at her family. Earnan rolled his eyes and sighed, turning back to the stream. Aileen took her two-year-old sister, Nessa, off the small mare they had ridden and set her on the ground before pulling her own bright copper hair into a bun, keeping it in place with a bronze decorated pin. She watched the males of the family go off into the woods with their spears and bows and arrows, feeling forgotten and useless. Nessa played with some leaves and sticks nearby, and Aileen simply waited.

At nearly sundown, the men came back, carrying a small buck, tied up with ropes. Aileen gathered her sister up in her arms and went to the horse. When the men were loaded and ready, she followed them towards home. There was not enough light to bring them all the way home, so they built a fire in the valley and set up camp.

Dinner was late that night, as Earnan had to prepare the buck with only a little help from Duncan. Aileen was pulling her bright red hair back into a bun again (since the previous one had been pulled out by Nessa) when Taran informed her that Da wanted her.

“Yes, Da?” she said, taking a seat on a tree stump near the fire where the deer was cooking. At eleven, Aileen was already quite the lady of the house. When her mother died giving birth to Nessa, she immediately had to fulfill the role of mother, helping her father to raise the younger ones as best she could.

“Aileen, your… question got me thinking,” Earnan began. Duncan, who was standing nearby, glanced up and listened.

“Aye?” she responded.

“You have quite a bit of responsibility on your shoulders, girl,” he continued. “But I also realize that you are able to handle a lot. You’re a very strong girl.”

“Thank you,” she said, wondering where the conversation was going.

“You ought to be strong, being Ríbhinn and all. Anyhow, this isn’t easy to say,” Earnan went on, shifting uncomfortably as he looked at his daughter’s small frame. “I think you should learn to defend yourself. We’ve heard of the Romans taking over whole towns along the border in the south, and we don’t know if they will continue to move north, towards us.”

“Da, that was years ago—”

“And it’s been going on in Alba alone for over ten years! Britannia was defeated many years ago—the Romans will be very hard to defeat!” Earnan exclaimed. “You are Ríbhinn of our tribe, Aileen. If something ever happened to your brothers and I, I want to at least give you a fighting chance at survival.”

Aileen hung her head at this morbid notion.

“And I want you to teach Nessa, when she’s old enough,” he added.

Aileen stared at her father blankly. What was she to say?

“You already have a curiosity for hunting and things outside the home, where your usual duties are, but I want you to learn more.” He paused, looking into her light blue eyes. “You deserve more of a chance than what you’ve got now.”