The wind never stopped here.

Atricius ran, hard and fast, through the woods of Fokluth, buffeted by the gusts

at his back.

The many branches above and around him rattled and shook in the wind blowing in from the open ocean a few miles away.

It always carried an icy edge that chilled anyone standing in its path to the bone.

More often than not, rain came with it in great sheets of driving bullets that stung where they struck skin.

Patricius had thought he knew rain and wind and cold before the raiders

snatched him from his home in Britain and brought him across the sea to this foreign land.

He had been wrong about so many things. That was six years ago. Six years of cold, wet nights

camped on green hills with the flocks of sheep his master made him ten.

Patricius hadn't felt warm since the day the Irish slavers came to his father's villa and herded him, and so many others, onto wading boats. Then came the short, storm-lashed crossing,

the long forced marches along muddy roads with chains and ropes chafing at his limbs.

The incessant blisters on his feet

and the sting of his master's hand. It was cold and wet up in the hills with the sheep,

but at least there he wasn't constantly at risk of a beating for a wayward word or perceived

cheat. His bare frozen feet sank into the mud of the forest path. His soaked wool tunic clung to his chafed legs.

But now Patricius heard the voice of God telling him it was time to leave.

He thought it was God's voice, at least.

He had sometimes wondered if it was despair or madness speaking to him,

or one of the ancient spirits of this benighted land.

But here and now, in the woods of Focluth, he was certain it was

God. Patricius would return now. God would make it so, because Patricius was now a slave of God.

...