A little boy, playing with his shaggy dog beside one painted wagon, called up to his mother, who suckled a recently-born baby at her heavy breast, ‘Can I have the bright golden eagle that the man in leopard skin carries on that stick, mother?’
The woman nodded, smiling down gently at her son, ‘Surely, Geromac, it shall be yours. Your father shall get it for you, sweetest. You will look fine leading the village boys with such a standard. I will call to him and tell him that you are to have it.’
She called out to the long-bearded man who held in his prancing horses twenty yards away. He nodded and smiled.
‘We have a warrior for a son, Beth,’ he shouted.
And they were all pleased, the three of them.
At sunset that wagon lay smashed to firewood. The boy lay with his mother and her baby, s
