SFF Saturday

 

Happy New Year!! One of my goals this year is to make significant strides in the WIP I’ve been posting here, partly because of posting here, so thank you!

SFF Saturday is a group of authors who post snippets of SFF prose and poetry for comment. You can check out other SFF Saturday posts, too.

My snippet is another few lines from a work in progress called Herald (at the moment). Eventually, the project be a fantasy loosely based on the Hundred Years War, but it’s in the very early draft stages.

Previous Snippets:

• First
• Second
• Third
• Fourth
• Fifth
• Sixth
• Seventh
• Eighth

When we last saw Denis and the enemy King of Angth, the king had not yet killed Dennis. Hurrah! Denis asks for time to finish his task and the king informs him that he’s also sent his herald to name the dead, along with one of the captives he holds.

The Duke of Anjay had been taken captive as well. He, out of all of those taken, would know the names of the ignoble dead. Denis turned, too quickly, for the guard’s blades came flashing toward him. Denis’s heart leapt to his throat.

Only the Red King’s raised hand stopped the swords from touching Denis.

“Do have a care. I need you alive and unharmed.” A faint smile parted the king’s lips, then disappeared.

Denis stepped back, more from the threat laced into the king’s statement than from the naked steel hovering nearby.

 

SFF Saturday is a group of authors who post snippets of SFF prose and poetry for comment. You can check out other SFF Saturday posts, too.

My snippet is another few lines from a work in progress called Herald (at the moment). Eventually, the project be a fantasy loosely based on the Hundred Years War, but it’s in the very early draft stages.

Previous Snippets:

• First
• Second
• Third
• Fourth
• Fifth
• Sixth
• Seventh

When we last saw Denis and the enemy King of Angth, Denis had just stood up a little to fast and it a little too close to the king. The king’s companions were not happy and draw their weapons.

Denis ignored the naked blades. “Too many names.” He looked across the field. “And not enough.” Blinking back the sudden moisture, he kept his gaze on the battlefield. “Grant me leave to continue, Sire. There aren’t enough of us, I fear, to finish before sunset.”

“I’ve set my Herald to the task. The Duke of Anjay follows to name those William does not know.”

 

SFF Saturday is a group of authors who post snippets of SFF prose and poetry for comment. You can check out other SFF Saturday posts, too.

My snippet is another few lines from a work in progress called Herald (at the moment). Eventually, the project be a fantasy loosely based on the Hundred Years War, but it’s in the very early draft stages.

Previous Snippets:

• First
• Second
• Third
• Fourth
• Fifth
• Sixth

Denis, the Soleil d’Or Herald of Revena  has just called the name of a fallen Angth soldier, at the behest of the Angth King–Denis’s enemy.

The man’s body shimmered as his name leaped into the sky and joined the others, leaving a trail of silver to dim the afternoon’s light as the letters journeyed toward the enemy camp.

Before the king could see him teeter, Denis placed his gloved hand on the ground to steady himself. “Gods’ speed to you.” Once he felt stable again, he pulled his glove back on.

“How many have you called this day?” The Red king closed the last of the distance between them, his boot mere inches from Denis’s knees.

Exhaustion carved away care. Denis stood despite his proximity to the king. Steel rasped against hard leather as the blades of the king’s escort cleared their scabbards.

 

SFF Saturday is a group of authors who post snippets of SFF prose and poetry for comment. You can check out other SFF Saturday posts, too.

My snippet is another few lines from a work in progress called Herald (at the moment). Eventually, the project be a fantasy loosely based on the Hundred Years War, but it’s in the very early draft stages.

Previous Snippets:

• First
• Second
• Third
• Fourth
• Fifth

When we last left Denis, he figured he hadn’t much time left to live. He knows his prince won’t ransom him. And he stands before the enemy king, who somehow knows exactly who Denis is.

Denis de Mont, Soleil d’Or Herald, straightened to his full height. “I will speak his name, Sire, if you wish it.”

“I wish it.” The king stepped closer to the body, closer to Denis. “He was Robert Smith of Hunting.”

No title. Denis knelt once more before the dead man, this time he reached through aether to touch the Rampant Dragon Herald’s book. A peal like that of a bell rang through Denis’s mind and the book opened its pages to him. He striped off his glove, touched the icy hard flesh of the dead, and spoke in Angth. “Robert Smith of Hunting, killed on the fields of Varlane this ninth day of Setun’s month, be remembered.”

 

SFF Saturday is a group of authors who post snippets of SFF prose and poetry for comment. You can check out other SFF Saturday posts, too.

My snippet is another few lines from a work in progress called Herald (at the moment). Eventually, the project be a fantasy loosely based on the Hundred Years War, but it’s in the very early draft stages.

Previous Snippets:

• First
• Second
• Third
• Fourth

When we last saw Denis, the enemy King of Angth had just asked him to speak the name of a fallen Angth soldier.

Fear inched toward terror. Denis had left the golden mask, the tabard, and the white rod of his office behind and donned the clothes of an ordinary pursuivant to walk the field without show, just another man doing his duty for king and country. Hidden by anonymity.

Only two from all those who walked the field could set the names of an enemy to rest–The Rampant Dragon Herald of Angth and the Soleil d’Or Herald of Revena. Only they could record names in each other’s book and in war, both could be held for ransom.

This king had never seen the Soleil d’Or Herald unmasked, yet he knew Denis.

The furrows above the king’s brow deepened, as did his voice. “Herald.”

Denis’s ransom was too high for his prince to pay. He’d be dead by morning.

SFF Saturday is a group of authors who post snippets of SFF prose and poetry for comment. You can check out other SFF Saturday posts, too.

My snippet is another few lines from a work in progress called Herald (at the moment). Eventually, the project be a fantasy loosely based on the Hundred Years War, but it’s in the very early draft stages.

My first snippet is here,  the second is here, and the third is here. These lines follow those.

Fear slammed into Denis, chilling his skin even more. He knew that voice, though the man who possessed those tones should not have been walking the field of the dead.

Denis should have heard his–their–approach, for the man who spoke was never alone. He bowed to the King of Angth and to the two men who trailed their sovereign like wraiths.

“I know his name,” the king said again. “Will you not speak it?”

The Red King they called him, though his hair shone like gold and his eyes were as blue as the sky above the haze of dead names. Denis turned away and regarded death on the ground. “Surely one of your own pursuivants must name him, Sire.”

“Must they?”

SFF Saturday is a group of authors who post snippets of SFF prose and poetry for comment. You can check out other SFF Saturday posts, too.

My snippet is another few lines from a work in progress called Herald (at the moment). Eventually, the project be a fantasy loosely based on the Hundred Years War, but it’s in the very early draft stages.

My first snippet is here and the second is here. These lines follow those.

Denis knelt over another body. So many men, so much blood, and for what? To reclaim land given honorably to a foreign king one hundred years before? He turned the dead man over. The coat beneath the layers of gore and mud lacked heraldry and the clothes were not Revenan–an enemy soldier. This man was neither worthy by the prince’s count, nor one of their own.

The blood of the tiny Angth army should have coated this field–their nobles dead in the mud, feeding blood to the earth. Instead, unnamed Revenan dead would scream their names at the gods tonight.

Heart-sore, Denis climbed to his feet. There were other dead to count, others to name.

“I know his name.”

SFF Saturday is a group of authors who post snippets of SFF prose and poetry for comment. You can check out other SFF Saturday posts, too.

My snippet is another few lines from a work in progress called Herald (at the moment). Eventually, the project be a fantasy loosely based on the Hundred Years War, but it’s in the very early draft stages.

I posted the few lines two weeks ago, here. These lines follow those.

The others, those conscripted to die as fodder for the archers and horses? Their names mattered not, only their number. Their bodies would be turned, nameless, into the sodden earth unless a love one claimed their body and asked a pursuivant to speak the name of the dead. Weeks of marching and the sea stood between these dead and their families. There would be no such requests.

A necessary shame, the prince had said. Too many souls to name before the sun touched the horizon, before their ghosts rose and voiced their anguish.

Despite the order, the names Denis knew, he voiced. All pursuivants on the field did likewise, for they did not answer to the prince but to Soleil d’Or Herald.

I thought I’d give Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday a try.

SFF Saturday is a group of authors who post snippets of SFF prose and poetry for comment. You can check out other SFF Saturday posts, too.

My snippet is the opening lines of  a work in progress simply called Herald at this point. It’s the very beginning of an idea; more of a sketch than anything else. Eventually, the project be a fantasy loosely based on the Hundred Years War. However, I have far more research to do, first…

But this is one of those projects and characters that lingers in the back of my mind… so I thought I’d shake it out into the light a bit.

Whispers of names filled the air and tinged the sky gray in the afternoon sun. Denis de Mont combed the battlefield, his voice, his magic, adding to the haze above. He counted the dead. Set down a record of those whose names mattered.

Those who mattered. The prince’s words twisted like a blade in Denis’s heart. Their honored dead. Counts and barons. Landed nobles. Knights. Those names found their way to the Soleil d’Or Herald’s tent and twined themselves into ink and onto the pages of the Record of the Dead, written in the hand of the one who spoke their name.