The Tale of a Northern Atlantis E-Book

alastair macleod

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

photocredit - Richard Stonier - "bittern in flight" "The queen was young, her face pale her feature fine. Vlado had never been in her presence and her beauty struck into his heart. She was clad in a sleeveless tunic of finest buckskin. Around her shoulders was a short buckskin cloak trimmed with fur. Her neck was adorned with beads of amber and jet alternated with mammoth ivory. Her slender arms bore the royal tattoos, and at her wrists were delicate bracelets of white fish bones. Her long blonde hair was braided through with coloured cloth and pulled back and up into a top knot held with a carved ivory pin. On either side of her head, from a black leather band encircling it, hung feathers of the Great Bittern."

Leseprobe

Alastair Macleod

The Tale of a Northern Atlantis

or the Flight of the Bittern

"to the people who once lived beneath the North Sea"BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Atlantis

The time is 9,500 BC. The great ice mass, that once covered nearly all of Britain and Northern Europe, has over hundreds of years of warming, split into two, one mass retreating to the North now forming an arc from Scotland to Norway, the other retreating South to the Alpine region. Their melt waters have been flowing onto the new low lying land between them, land that at first formed a land bridge between Britain and Europe. As the melt waters increase, a great shallow freshwater lake has gradually, formed dotted with islets.

Beyond the city ring dyke, and threaded with islets of reeds, the light brown shallow waters of the great inland lake went on and on, stretching away on all sides towards a horizon beyond which he knew lay low rounded hills. From the reed thickets bitterns boomed and herons stabbed for eels on the mud flat edges.

Out here in the cool open water, fish were plentiful; a shoal of arctic char churned the calm surface. It was a late summer evening and the sun’s rays had weakened in the west to orange, slanting low on the surface, now peppered with the black shapes of many waterfowl; large flocks of widgeon, tufted duck and teal, their calling and flapping carrying clearly across the surface. Here and there a pair of mute swans with cygnets floated like royalty above their smaller subjects. A dagger shape of geese flew low then wiffled downwards for a watery night roost amongst their kin.

It had not rained for many days and the lake had moved lower exposing mud and sand bars. Flocks of waders probed busily with their beaks.

Vlado set the sail on the reed boat and, catching the cool evening breeze, turned

and set course for the outer ring dyke, which lay green in the distance. While the air around him pulsed with the calls of birds and wing beats the reed boat made barely a rippling sound.

Not for nothing was the lake called the bird sea, for here they were numerous.

Small tribes lived in the marshes, some on floating reed houses others on low islets of shingle or mud. They met their own need but traded with the city for amber, stone implements skins and women. For the lifeblood of the city was trade. It lay at the mouth of a great river down which came traders with goods and ideas, some said all the way from snow capped peaks to the south.

The marsh people used the reeds not only to make rafts and houses for themselves, but they made boats, sturdy and capable of sailing on the open lake.

It was in one of these that Vlado had explored the far reaches of the lake .The big reed boat drawing little water from its reed bundle hull, was ideal for the shallow lake.

It was in boats like these that some of his people had left the city and set up trading colonies.

Vlado steered for the wooden dock by the watergate.

This outer ring dyke was two fields wide, a grass topped banking of mud and shingle. On its flat top grazed sheep tended by a few boys in short tunics. There were also small circular enclosures with high stone walls to keep the animals off. Here were special plots where plants were grown for the queen and the royal household.

At the watergate the warriors smiled in recognition and waved him through into the inner water circle. The wind died and his men took to the oars sweeping gracefully through towards the opening in the next inner dyke. The city was approached like this. Three circular dykes each broached by one water gate, the outer dyke topped by green turf had only livestock on it. On the next dyke behind a wooden palisade, formed of peeled larch logs coloured silver with age, was the habitation of the citizens and slaves. Smoke drifted up from small round conical reed thatched huts clustered together. Little jetties jutted out into the waters, a few children still playing in the water; women, washing clothes or cooking outside, waived at the men.

The third circular dyke was topped with a rampart of yellow sandstone. The setting sun was lighting it up, catching the colour in the rock, making it glow like gold. Behind it, smoke also curled up. Men were visible on the ramparts watching him row towards the final watergate.

Here he was stopped and checked for goods and weapons.

Cleared, they rowed on through into the final circle of water. He looked back. Behind him on the third dyke at the foot of the stone rampart lay the huts of the Atlans themselves. The conical thatched huts here were larger, more substantial with reed walls standing on stone foundations, the doorposts decorated with paintings of birds and fish.