Howling wolves: A Hallowe’en treat from The Bones of the Earth

thedrawinghands: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License

In honour of Hallowe’en that’s coming faster than a headless horseman, I thought I’d present another spooky excerpt from my scariest book so far, The Bones of the Earth.

The setting: eastern Europe in the sixth century, the darkest of the Dark Age. It’s nighttime, three days past the summer solstice and three nights past the full moon. The main character, Javor (pronounced “Yay-vor,” by the way; it means maple) is in his village’s holody, or wooden stockade at the top of a small hill.

Wolves howling brought Javor back to the night. The moon and stars were quickly covered by swirling black clouds. Clouds never move that fast, he thought

The villagers stopped talking; mothers held their children closer. The wind blew dust around the holody.

Javor stood and looked over the stockade—even the trees in the forest seemed to have come closer.

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If you want to find out what’s past the stockade, you can get a longer sample from the Work we’ve done menu at the top of the page. To get the book blurb, click the image on the right. And if you really want to know the story, get the full book from Amazon, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Smashwords or iBooks.