Hawk

By Murray Pura

I am the man Morah. I have a story to tell.

It is a story of history, a story of faith, a story of love.

Five hundred years after the birth of Christ, a fledgling faith is on the verge of extinction. Visigoths, Vikings and Picts have destroyed a way of life brought to these northern lands by the Romans.

Except…on a small island off the British coast, faith in a God who walked the earth still thrives. Here, a young man named Hawk takes up a quest to find the deeper truths of God and bring them home. He is prepared to stand against the forces of darkness unyielding and overcome them.

This quest could cost Hawk everything – his life, his love, his faith.

The story begins…

• Language: English
• Publisher: MillerWords, LLC
• Release date: Feb 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393215943

Murray Pura

I'm born Canadian, live in the blue Canadian Rockies, sound Canadian when I talk (sort of) ... but I'm really an international guy who has traveled the world by train and boat and plane and thumb ... and I've lived in Scotland, the Middle East, Italy, Ireland, California and, most recently, New Mexico. I write in every fiction genre imaginable because I'm brimming over with stories and I want to get them out there to share with others ... romance, Amish, western, fantasy, action-adventure, historical, suspense ... I write non-fiction too, normally history, biography and spirituality. I've won awards for my novels ZO and THE WHITE BIRDS OF MORNING and have celebrated penning bestselling releases like THE WINGS OF MORNING, THE ROSE OF LANCASTER COUNTY, A ROAD CALLED LOVE and ASHTON PARK. My latest publications include BEAUTIFUL SKIN (spring 2017), ALL MY BEAUTIFUL TOMORROWS (summer 2017), GETTYSBURG (Christmas 2018), RIDE THE SKY (spring 2019), A SUN DRENCHED ELSEWHERE (fall 2019), GRACE RIDER (fall 2019) and ABIGAIL’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE (Christmas 2019). My novels ZO, RIDE THE SKY and ABIGAIL’s CHRISTMAS MIRACLE are available as audiobooks as well. Please browse my extensive list of titles, pick out a few, write a review and drop me a line. Thanks and cheers!

Book preview

Legion

Beginnings

I am the man Morah. I will tell the story.

You have not heard it before. I don’t care how old you are or where you are from. You have been told there is nothing new under the sun but this story is.

It changed your life. It changed everyone’s life, living and dead. It turned our world into another kind of world. But no one knows. They do not know.

Before I die you will have it all in your breath and blood and then you can do with it what you will.

Only you cannot go back and change it.

No one can. It began and it ended and it continues.

The beginning was the birth of Galahad.

You may have heard that Lancelot, the great knight of the Round Table, thought he lay one night with the woman he loved, Guinevere. But he was tricked by Elaine of Corbenic, a princess, and the daughter of King Pelles, and he lay with her instead, for she wore a magic ring that altered her appearance. It was in this manner that Galahad, who was destined to be the greatest and the holiest of knights, was conceived. 

All this is so.

Galahad was born in the castle of King Pelles, Elaine’s father. He was given into the care of a great aunt who was abbess of a convent and there he was raised.

They say he was born Midsummer’s Eve. The night is also known as St. John’s Eve for many hold it on June 24th, six months before Christmas Eve, in honor of John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus of Nazareth, who was born six months before our Lord.

This is what people have been told.

But Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, was born in the spring, at Passover, when shepherds watched their flocks by night, for it was the lambing season. This was early April. It was also at Passover that he died and rose again.

Galahad was born just after Passover. On the first of May. When people in the Gaelic lands celebrated the pagan festival Beltane. It was 499 years after the birth of Jesus. And pagan bonfires burned in the night all around the castle.

That Galahad was spirited away to a convent is so.

That he was destined to be the one who found the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus drank from at the Passover meal, The Last Supper, is also so.

But there was another destiny.

And there was another child born.

For as Elaine writhed and tossed in the pains of childbirth, locked away from everyone else in her bedchamber, the midwife did not tell her that two infant boys emerged from her womb one after the other, the first fair and lovely, the second dark and loathsome. The dark one she hid away in a basket and covered with a soiled blanket. The child did not cry. The fair one, Galahad, she placed at his mother’s breast. The dark one she took from the castle after she had opened the bedchamber to King Pelles and his court and after he had placed silver coins in her palm.

She raised the boy in poverty and obscurity in her hut in the woods. They called her a witch, but she was the farthest thing from a witch, for she spent her days in prayer and fasting and in sewing garments for those with leprosy. She raised the boy in kindness and grace. When he was eight, she felt the leprosy take hold of her so she traveled north from her native Albion, or what the Romans called Britannia. She made her way past Hadrian’s Wall and the Antonine Wall to Alba, which is Caledonia by the Roman tongue, and asked a man to row the boy across to the Holy Isle of Skyrl. The lad never saw the woman he called his mother again.

So Galahad was raised in a convent among nuns and his twin raised at a monastery, which had monks and nuns who never knew marriage, as well as those who did, many of them raising families of their own. Children were underfoot all the time on Skyrl for so it was in the early days before Rome came with different rules. Galahad’s twin was raised to believe that the holiest men were the happiest men for he saw lives that were full to the brim on Skyrl and all the lives were lives of prayer. The boy learned the Holy Book and the holy tongues of Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin, and Gaelic and was blessed by a sun that rose in the glittering waters of a northern sea and set there too. It is said he grew to have the sweetest voice, and the sweetest visage, and the manliest of frames, so that by the time he was sixteen he appeared as a handsome man of twenty, with golden locks and fair skin, and flashing eyes. In fact, he looked like his brother Galahad, who was already in pursuit of the Holy Grail.

But no one knew the story of the boy who had been rowed to Skyrl and given into the care of the good monk Hamish, who was tall and lean and dark and kind. No one had any idea the boy was the son of Sir Lancelot or the brother of Sir Galahad. Sir Galahad! Whom the sages and bards said was of the bloodline of King David just as Christ the Lord was! No one knew anything about the past of the boy who had been brought to the Holy Isle so many years before. All they knew now was that he loved to read and to sing and to pray, was steady with a bow and quick with a sword – for these too the monastics of Skyrl, both men and women, married and unmarried, did not frown upon – ran at a good gait, and had the eye of every young maiden among them.

On his eighteen birthday, the date of which they only knew because of a scrap of cloth which had been fastened on the inside of a pocket – May the one and eight year before this year – he would be honored before the Lord God and the whole community and take his vows. One would be a vow to Jesus Christ. The other a vow to the people of Skyrl. The third a vow that would last but five years but that would transform him completely – the vow of a Nazarene. His hair would be cut one last time and then never cut again for five years. He could not drink wine at Communion. Could not drink any beverage with alcohol in it. Could not touch vinegar to his lips. Could not take anything made from grapes, not juice, not raisins, not the grapes themselves. Could not touch a corpse or enter a graveyard. In addition, there would be a holy task he would have to perform that would take him far from the Holy Isle. Once it was accomplished, once the five years had ended, he would be permitted to return.

His eyesight was sharp and keen. Where others could see clearly for a mile he could see for two or three. Sometimes, when he ran quickly, it looked to others as if he were flying. When the men jousted with sticks or parried with swords he was so fierce his opponents feared for their lives. So with the eyes and the flight and the fight in him, the morning Hamish came to fetch him from the chapel, where the young man had prayed and fasted all night, to take him to where his head would be shaved and his vows made before the people of Skyrl, Hamish spoke only one word and called him by only one name.  Hawk.

The Ring of Skyrl

Moon’s Day, May 1, 517 AD (Peter’s Day)

So everything is ready then? asked Hawk.

Hamish nodded, walking beside him as they crossed a green field that sparkled with new flowers. The people have gathered and are kneeling.

Will this take very long?

It will take as long as it needs to take. Why? Are you so anxious to leave us and be on your way?

I’m not. I wish I were already in the boat and being rowed back here by Dakarish the Oarsman. I just want to get it over with, that’s all.

They crested a small hill and down below, in a circle around a blue pond, were the three hundred men, women, and children of Skyrl.

Hawk paused to gaze at the assembly. Who cuts my hair?

I do. Hamish smiled. "God grows it back. It will be plenty long enough for you on May 1st, in the year of Our Lord, Anno Domini, 522."

That sounds so far away I can’t even imagine it.

Hamish spotted the troubled look in the young man’s blue and green eyes. God will be your companion. And the angels. And our prayers will always be with you.

I know.

Fear is natural. It is not a sin unless it holds you back from doing what is right and holy. None of us can see what is ahead. Only the few feet in front of our face and the hills that look purple and blue in the great distance. But God is in those hills and in that distance. He is in tomorrow and all the days ever after. Even in death he is there.

Have any failed to return to Skyrl once their Nazarene vow was completed? asked Hawk.

Hamish’s eyes grew dark. Some.

Do you know what happened to them?

No.

They might not have perished. They could have changed their minds. Followed God and Christ by a different route.

They could. They are in the Lord’s hands. We still pray for them. You know the Prayer for the Lost? That is for them.

I always thought it was for the dead.

No. For those who take the vow and do not return. Living or dead. The Prayer for the Loved is the prayer for the dead. You know that.

Hawk was peering out at the sea that surrounded the island. There are three ships bearing down on us from the north.

Hamish squinted in the sharp morning light. I don’t see them. Are you sure?

They’re hugging the coastline.

What kind of ships?

It’s the Danes. King Cochilaicus. I recognize the square sails and the symbol of their god. Hawk pointed. The first ship has moved away from the coast now and is heading this way.

Hamish shielded his eyes with his hand. Oh, to have the eyes of a hawk. Yes, I see it. The others are right behind it. He began to walk down the hill. "We will tell the others. The Danes are friends to us. They will be our honored guests at your skyrl."

I have not seen them since I was sixteen.

Yes. And you bested a lad a foot taller than you in wrestling. You can be sure they have not forgotten that.

Will I wrestle him again today?

Hamish shook his head. You will not. There is no fighting, not of any kind, not even mock fighting, on the day of your eighteenth birthday when you take your holy vows.

The Danes might not know that.

They will be told.

They were nearing the Ring of Skyrl, the three hundred people and more who knelt waiting for them.

Hawks’ eyes ran back and forth over the assembly. Who gathers up my hair once its cut?

One of the young sisters. A virgin.

Which one?

Skaytha.

Skaytha. It felt to Hawk like a wind went through him from top to bottom. And she keeps it all five years?

Well, she stores it safely in the chapel and keeps an eye on it. Hamish smiled. Do you fear Skaytha?

No, of course not.

Many good men fear her beauty.

I don’t. But a flush spread over Hawk’s face.

It doesn’t matter. You won’t see much of her for the next few years. She takes her own vow in December.

And goes forth with two older sisters and only for three years. Why is it different for the women?

Hamish put an arm around Hawk’s shoulders. That is how it has always been. God’s will be done. Come through the opening in the Ring and stand with me by the pond.

Hawk stood by the blue pond in a simple brown robe that fell just below his knees.

All eyes were on him but only Hamish spoke.

Here is the boy, Hawk. Today he is a man. Today he takes his vows. Do you bless him?

We bless him, all the people said, even the children.

It sounded to Hawk like the movement of waves on sand and rock.

His first vow is to God. You have taken the vow to heart, Hawk?

I have.

You will recite it?

I will.

There is only one God and I shall serve him. There is only one God and I shall follow him. His face is the face of Christ. His heart is the heart of Christ. His love is the love of Christ. His might is the might of the Maker of heaven and earth, the forger of thunder, the hurler of lightning, who rides on the wings of the wind. He is my Master and I am his Messenger. Forever.

The people said amen and rose to their feet, holding hands, child to mother, son to father, daughter to daughter, man to man, brother to sister.

Your second vow is to the gathering of God’s people at Skyrl, said Hamish. You have taken the vow to heart, Hawk?

I have.

You will recite it?

I will.

Hawk extended his hands towards the circle. He slowly turned so that as he spoke his vow he placed his eyes on everyone at least once.

God is our God and we are one people. If I am across the sea, I am with you. If I am on the other side of the