The Sons of Adam: The sequel of The Immortal Collection (A Saga of the Ancient Family Book 2) Read Online Free Page B
Author: Eva García Sáenz
worried me. It really worried me.
Iago rested his chin on my shoulder.
"He beats Nagorno in the arts of war and strategy. He has a panoramic vision of knowledge which gives him an advantage, it simply gives him an advantage. Gunnarr is all that and more, raised to the highest power. If Nagorno is ten steps ahead and I'm fifty, Gunnarr is a thousand. You can't beat him if you try to play his game. It's just best to withdraw and forfeit playing.
Ok
"And what drives him?" I asked, after thinking for a while.
"What?"
"Everyone is driven by something: a trauma, a challenge, a debt, a passion."
"He adored me, and I adored him. Despite how different we were. But what I did to him..., the betrayal..."
"What happened?"
"Gunnarr's right to be mad and upset with me. He trusted me and I betrayed him, I didn't realize the pain that my unconsciousness and frivolity caused him. I wasn't a good father, I wasn't even a good person."
"I find it hard to believe what you're saying, Iago. That's not the man I know."
"Stop looking at me like I'm perfect, that time I wasn't the hero of the story."
"You didn't answer me."
That made him laugh.
"Not today Adriana, not today."
"Tell me something," I pushed, "I need to know what we're facing here."
"Then maybe I should start with his birth," he gave in.
"That'll do for now. Let's go home, let's forget about the museum for today. We'll have something to eat, light the fire, have an afternoon of scandalously good sex and when you've cleared your head you can tell me the story that you find so hard to tell."
6
Bear skin
IAGO
Current Denmark, 800 B.C.
I'd been listening to the songs and spells for five nights, but the men didn't have access to the rituals to propitiate a good birth, even though in the skali, the big house, privacy was virtually impossible. We'd built the main house of our village in the same way as the Danish, a large, long building made of peat, with no rooms, doors or walls to divide the housing.
"Let me through, I said!" I shouted for the umpteenth time at the silent wall of women who were standing between the bed of my wife, Gunborga, and my poorly controlled impatience.
My father and Nagorno, or Nestor and Magnus as they were known when we were living in the land of ancient Denmark, were also on edge. The pregnancy had lasted for twelve lunar months and I knew that it held the secret hope that the new child would be like us.
After such a long pregnancy, Gunborga died of exhaustion, but the newly born was still alive a few hours later. Pricking her finger with a needle in the seventh month of pregnancy to draw symbols on a piece of linen that she kept until the day of the birth of her firstborn, or the Biarg rune to ease the birth, which she had carved into the bedpost had done nothing to help my late wife.
It was going to be an abnormal birth and we all knew it. She was carrying an enormous child inside her, and many thought that it was going to be a double birth, but I could only hear one heartbeat through her swollen belly, strong as that of an adult.
"Let him pass, but make sure that he doesn't become attached to this monstrosity. He's going to have to expose him," croaked the seidkona , an old women with a double chin with white hairs growing from it.
The old clairvoyant gave me the baby with a look of disgust. She was talking about the northern custom of úborin börn : when a newborn was deformed, the father had the right to reject it and expose it to the elements of the night so as it would die.
"We´ll see, old woman. We'll see," was all I said. I signaled my father to give her the proper food, porridge with goat's milk, and then I threw her out of the skali .
Under this beam, I am in charge, I repeated to myself, looking at the ceiling.
I had made Gunborga carve that inscription in the beam that held up the building,
Iago rested his chin on my shoulder.
"He beats Nagorno in the arts of war and strategy. He has a panoramic vision of knowledge which gives him an advantage, it simply gives him an advantage. Gunnarr is all that and more, raised to the highest power. If Nagorno is ten steps ahead and I'm fifty, Gunnarr is a thousand. You can't beat him if you try to play his game. It's just best to withdraw and forfeit playing.
Ok
"And what drives him?" I asked, after thinking for a while.
"What?"
"Everyone is driven by something: a trauma, a challenge, a debt, a passion."
"He adored me, and I adored him. Despite how different we were. But what I did to him..., the betrayal..."
"What happened?"
"Gunnarr's right to be mad and upset with me. He trusted me and I betrayed him, I didn't realize the pain that my unconsciousness and frivolity caused him. I wasn't a good father, I wasn't even a good person."
"I find it hard to believe what you're saying, Iago. That's not the man I know."
"Stop looking at me like I'm perfect, that time I wasn't the hero of the story."
"You didn't answer me."
That made him laugh.
"Not today Adriana, not today."
"Tell me something," I pushed, "I need to know what we're facing here."
"Then maybe I should start with his birth," he gave in.
"That'll do for now. Let's go home, let's forget about the museum for today. We'll have something to eat, light the fire, have an afternoon of scandalously good sex and when you've cleared your head you can tell me the story that you find so hard to tell."
6
Bear skin
IAGO
Current Denmark, 800 B.C.
I'd been listening to the songs and spells for five nights, but the men didn't have access to the rituals to propitiate a good birth, even though in the skali, the big house, privacy was virtually impossible. We'd built the main house of our village in the same way as the Danish, a large, long building made of peat, with no rooms, doors or walls to divide the housing.
"Let me through, I said!" I shouted for the umpteenth time at the silent wall of women who were standing between the bed of my wife, Gunborga, and my poorly controlled impatience.
My father and Nagorno, or Nestor and Magnus as they were known when we were living in the land of ancient Denmark, were also on edge. The pregnancy had lasted for twelve lunar months and I knew that it held the secret hope that the new child would be like us.
After such a long pregnancy, Gunborga died of exhaustion, but the newly born was still alive a few hours later. Pricking her finger with a needle in the seventh month of pregnancy to draw symbols on a piece of linen that she kept until the day of the birth of her firstborn, or the Biarg rune to ease the birth, which she had carved into the bedpost had done nothing to help my late wife.
It was going to be an abnormal birth and we all knew it. She was carrying an enormous child inside her, and many thought that it was going to be a double birth, but I could only hear one heartbeat through her swollen belly, strong as that of an adult.
"Let him pass, but make sure that he doesn't become attached to this monstrosity. He's going to have to expose him," croaked the seidkona , an old women with a double chin with white hairs growing from it.
The old clairvoyant gave me the baby with a look of disgust. She was talking about the northern custom of úborin börn : when a newborn was deformed, the father had the right to reject it and expose it to the elements of the night so as it would die.
"We´ll see, old woman. We'll see," was all I said. I signaled my father to give her the proper food, porridge with goat's milk, and then I threw her out of the skali .
Under this beam, I am in charge, I repeated to myself, looking at the ceiling.
I had made Gunborga carve that inscription in the beam that held up the building,
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