INTERLUDE 1
(1069, CE)He was William now. The name had been his for almost twenty years, ever since the Old Woman had given him the face of the man to whom it had originally belonged. That man was now dead, buried in an unmarked grave near the beaches of Normandy.
Tall and proud in a ringmail shirt, he stood upon a hilltop with his head uncovered. His face was pale now – too pale to be handsome, in his estimation – and marked by a thick, graying beard. “Watch them run.”
The hill sloped gently downward to a flat plain of brown grass covered in the white flecks of a light snowfall. On that plain, several men in tunics of green and brown ran for the distant treeline. Those trees were bare now. Not a leaf to be seen on any branch. That would make for easier hunting if he were so inclined. F
