Fireside Tales
Before Builth rose from the great ox pastures and before the last prince fell on the western track, there was the Cymroth. Pride can build the greatest towers but cannot hold them over time. From the ruins of Babylon, survivors walked west for one hundred seasons until they reached Wales. They raised twin forts above the River Wye and called themselves one people. For almost three thousand years they held their ground. Then the centre split. The Ordovices of Powys took the north. The Silures of Brycheiniog claimed the south. Between them lay the Gap.
The borderlands survived under a perilous agreement governed by a single proverb.
When tongues hold still in the Gap, the frost falls on all.
This engineered stalemate kept the villages caught between the chiefdoms weak enough to control and alive enough to be useful. This is where early Wales learned the bitter cost of choosing. A goat farmer's ambition killed his village. A healer fled with secrets both kingdoms wanted buried. A silent child would outlive them all. These are three tales from the borderlands. Three moments when everything changed.
The Solstice
We have a peculiar habit of testing what we can verify and placing faith in what we cannot. A villager will examine every strand of rope gifted by a neighbour, then pray to gods they have never seen that very evening.
Trust breaks easier than rope, and both were tested the night Irfon was born.
The knot held tight at dusk. The billy goat stared at him with beady eyes while he checked it anyway. It did not need checking. The billy knew it. Llyr Pen Ychan understood it too.
The Shadow Trader
Three of them came at dusk, dark shapes moving through dead bracken on the slope above the stream. Milisandra saw them while there was still time to run.
Not much time, perhaps fifty paces before those shapes closed the distance, but a woman carrying a two-year-old child can cover ground when she must.
Mili stood instead.
The Goat King of Beulah
We rarely choose what we are remembered for, and the dead hold no sway over how the living make use of their failings.
The land where Beulah stood smelled of goats.
But that came later, after the success turned from gold to a bitter yellow. At the beginning, there were only five goats and a problem that needed solving.
Read Keep Your Head free.
Keep Your Head is a standalone short story from The Book of the Western Veil.
If you enjoy history, archaeology, mythology, and character-driven fiction grounded in the ancient world, it's the best introduction to the series.
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