Greenwode
Book
One of The Wode
J
Tullos Hennig
Genre:
Historical Fantasy, Robin Hood
Publisher: DSP
Publications
Date of
Publication: Oct. 28, 2014
Number of
pages: 350
Word Count: 151,000
Cover Artist:
Shobana Appavu
Book
Description:
The Hooded
One. The one to breathe the dark and
light and dusk between....
When an old
druid foresees this harbinger of chaos, he also glimpses its future. A peasant from Loxley will wear the Hood and,
with his sister, command a last, desperate bastion of Old Religion against
New. Yet a devout nobleman's son could
well be their destruction—Gamelyn Boundys, whom Rob and Marion have befriended. Such acquaintance challenges both duty and
destiny. The old druid warns that Rob and Gamelyn will be cast as sworn
enemies, locked in timeless and symbolic struggle for the greenwode's Maiden.
Instead, a
defiant Rob dares his Horned God to reinterpret the ancient rites, allow Rob to
take Gamelyn as lover instead of rival. But in the eyes of Gamelyn’s Church,
sodomy is unthinkable... and the old pagan magics are an evil that must be
vanquished.
Buy Link:
Excerpt
Dark hart and
fiery warhorse both wait: the first patient, the second eager, barely contained.
There is a bow in
her hand. The wind picks up, rustling her damp, white kirtle about her knees.
She knows she must take care with this shot, must gauge well both draw and
release, into that wind.
She knows that
she knows how.
The arrow flames
as she puts it to string: a beacon, a turning point. It flares as she draws,
then spins into smoke and sparks as she looses it, an arc over the altar where
two forces wait, a-tremble.
A beginning. A
signal.
It looses them.
Like demons from any hell ever imagined they leap forward, charge with a
thunder of bare hooves and metal-shod hoofs, and they collide with the darken
brilliance of angels in a war on earth for heaven and hell. It is a battle
never-ending, set up, fixed from the moment two infants came into air and
breath. They love each other. They hate each other.
They need each other….
Yet they are too
caught in the blood-lust to know that they need.
Too tangled in what-has-been/what-will-be to see what is.
She sees what is,
finally. She needs them as they need each other, as they need her. She knows them. They are damh Righ and capull-coille—the King Stag and the Horse of the Wode—they are her
brothers, her consorts. They are the kings who would battle for the right to be
her lord, her twin, her lover, her son… suddenly she is walking toward the
altar. Striding with a purpose, and one which reveals she does belong there, is
merely and explicitly another player in this collision of mummers’ plays, of
celestial creatures given earthly form.
Ivy. Holly. Oak.
Winterking, Summerlord, Maiden….
Ceugant.
It reverberates
into the air about them, halting the battling beasts-cum-men. They turn on her; snarling and bristling.
They are both
wounded. Their blood, mingling on the altar; their breath, commingling in the
air.
She steps on the
altar between them, and they hold.
In the way of
dreams, they are no longer fae beasts in a tilt for dominance, but change:
shape and form and weapons. Horse to belted knight, Stag to hooded archer;
beast to demon to angel, angel to fae spirit to man to god then man. No mere
pawns in a cosmic game, but Hallowed Princes of a broken Realm. Kings of a
Wheel spun wildly widdershins.
She holds out her
hands to them. The knight sinks to one knee, his sword point-down before him.
She reaches a hand for him, strokes fingers through his copper-gilt hair and
down his cheek, lifting up his face to meet hers. Eyes green as the ivy in her
own cinnabar curls peer at her, cool and considering, then he hefts his sword,
offers it to her. Upon it a serpent twists, an eight of electrum coils
never-ending.
She
kisses the serpent on its flat, smooth head; it shimmers like a bronze torc
then… sinks, molding and melding, into the sword. The gilded swath coils about
the knight’s hands, travels up his arms, wreathing his head and sliding back
into the serpent-blade as she claims the knight with a name. “Gamelyn.”
He lowers the
sword to the altar, bows his head.
Beside the silent
knight, the hooded archer waits, still standing but head lowered. When she
turns to him, he lifts his hands; in them he offers the arrow that she loosed.
It burns, blue-white, in his palms—but it does not burn him, and as she reaches
for it, it flares and disappears. In its place is a long, thin arrow forged in
gold. It is fletched with the iridescent tips of peacock feathers, their eyes
watching, always watching.
“So you will
always see me,” the archer whispers, eyes meeting hers, ebon reflecting indigo.
“Always know me, even when the hood must take m' Sight.”
She pins the arrow into her
hair, a token. While she does so, the knight rises, sword in hand, and comes to
stand behind the archer. With a lover’s tenderness, he furls the hood back;
with the stern grip of an executioner, he pushes the hooded archer down to
kneel and tangles strong fingers in black hair, pulls the archer’s head back.
Sword in hand, the knight awaits her bidding. Both of them, now, patient.
Waiting.
She reaches out
with both hands, runs fingers along the knight’s cheek, down his breast and to
where his hands grip the archer’s hair. Breathes upon them.
The breath
wreathes about their clasped hands, wafts, moves, head to tail one singular, sinuous link, soft
snakeskin and gilt illumination. It undulates, over and under their fingertips,
cowls the black hair with green and gilt mist, pours down to wreath his throat,
a living necklet: noose… garrote… torc of a barrow king.
Her fingers
linger, relaxing the knight’s hold, then trail down farther, close the archer’s
eyes. Her lips move, say his name. “Robyn.”
And her brother whispers her
own back. “Marion….”
About
the Author
J Tullos Hennig
has maintained a few professions over a lifetime--artist, dancer,
equestrian--but never successfully managed to not be a writer. Ever. Since
living on an island in Washington State merely encourages--nay,
guarantees--already rampant hermetic and artistic tendencies, particularly in
winter, Jen has become reconciled to never escaping this lifelong affliction.
Comparisons have also been made to a bridge troll, one hopefully emulating the
one under Fremont Bridge: moderately tolerant, but. You know. Bridge troll.
Jen is blessed
with an understanding spouse, kids, and grandkids, as well as alternately
plagued and blessed with a small herd of horses and a teenaged borzoi who
alternates leaping over the furniture with lounging on it.
And, for the
entirety of a lifetime, Jen has been possessed by a press gang of invisible
‘friends’ who Will. Not. S.T.F.U.
Author Links:
***GIVEAWAY***
Kindle Voyage
with wifi.
5 copies of Greenwode-
ebook or paperback winner’s choice (paperback open to US Shipping).
Blog Tour Organised by:
Thank you for the amazing giveway!
ReplyDeleteWow! Fantastic giveaway! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteLove the excerpt!
ReplyDeleteThank you for giving me the chance to win such an amazing prize!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the giveaway
ReplyDelete