Hero Risen
ANDY LIVINGSTONE
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017
Copyright © Andrew Livingstone 2017
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017.
Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com
Andrew Livingstone asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008106034
Version: 2017-10-23
For Valerie
Table of Contents
He paused before the door, running his fingertips slowly down the wood smoothed as much by years as by the plane, letting them fall into the curving groove of the traditional mark of luck in its centre. He was prolonging the moment.
The sounds of early evening were all around him, stark in the deserted village, but he heard none. The smells of dusk drifted over him, but he noticed none. Still he stayed his hand from pushing the door.
It was a strange mix of feelings that coursed through him on the final night of a story:
Nerves – that he might not do justice to those whose tale he told.
Pleasure – that the crowd waited on his words: the result of his efforts the previous two nights.
Sadness – that tonight this telling would come to an end.
And eagerness – a quickening of heart and breath. He would be drawn into the telling, the exhilaration confining his awareness within each moment and shortening time.
It was always so.
It was, these days, what he lived for. Keeping the past alive. Ensuring the deeds he had witnessed did not drift and fade with the shifting winds of memory. Helping the lessons of before to be learnt afresh, the mistakes understood, the heroics and sacrifices appreciated.
He pushed on the door, letting the remaining light spill within and hush the murmur of the throng. He moved inside, his adjusting eyes revealing rings of faces turned his way. Close by, one caught his eye. A boy who had decried the stories outside the hall on the first night; the challenging cynicism in his voice now replaced by eager anticipation in his eyes.
He stepped forward.
He was a storyteller. And he had a story to tell.
She sat beside him each afternoon now. Two high-backed chairs were paired on the balcony, fine sand gathering around their short legs of finely carved wood.