The Hearth and the Spear

A short story, plus thoughts on what makes "epic" fantasy epic.

May 23, 2024

For this week’s newsletter, I’ve decided to share an excerpt from my work-in-progress, a yet-untitled epic fantasy novel. Despite being a part of a much (much) larger piece, it ought to work entirely on its own, without much further context or introduction. So I won’t give you any, except to say that this takes place in a country being invaded.

Don’t worry, you won’t be lost.

Enjoy.

In the soft glow of embers from the hearth, through the haze of smoke that wafted up in the dark, under the old and rotting thatch, a woman spoke to her husband.

“I’ve seen you scraping the rust off your grandfather’s spear,” she whispered to him, but he did not avert his eyes from the coals. She was stroking the bare head of the little bundled one asleep on her lap. Their other children were curled up under the blanket, on the mattress in the corner of the room, their home. The woman hoped they would not hear.

“Yet you linger here,” she addressed him again. “Day after day. Why do you not go?”

What answer could he give that he had not given already?

So he gave them all. As he had before.

We have seven mouths to feed. One is too old to work. Only one can feed at your breast. It is only myself and the eldest who can do the work, and you, sometimes, when the baby allows.

There is hardly any grain in the pantry, and the pig too thin for slaughter. All day I work and work—he told her as he had before—so that you and they and I can live through the winter.

“But,” she said as she had before, “if you go, and take our son, then the two largest stomachs will go with you. The food may last, then. I will manage.”

But the husband asked, as he had before: who will be here to protect you? Your father is dead and so is my own. I have no lord. To leave you and your mother here on the lonely edge of town? It is only me and the Words standing between you and danger.

“But,” the wife said again, “there are worse threats coming from afar. They too must be dealt with.”

If I am gone and do not return, he asked, how could my spirit have peace, having left you?

“Yet I see you cleaning your grandfather’s spear…” the young mother said again. Her husband replied that a spear can be used for wolves as well as war, but the woman knew this for the deflection that it was and she ignored it.

Instead, in that quiet moment, she said something she had not ever said before: “I worry for you. You polish the spear and it eats away at you. I see it. I see you. If you do not go, you will have no peace in your heart.”

And the father said something he had never said before:

I am afraid.

You are too young to become a widow.

They are too young to be fatherless.

“Better that they have the memory of a father to be proud of, than a husk of a man grown bitter with regret.”

Now their eyes met.

“Do you believe this?” the man asked.

“You think it unforgivable if you leave? I think it unforgivable if you stay. I married you, saying that I wanted you, or else no man. Do not let your fear rob my husband from me. Stay or go, it does not matter: these will be the hardest days of our life. I would not be parted from you. But you must go, my love. You must. For our sakes. For yours.”

The night passed on for the man and the woman. The space between them closed to nothing. They wished the dawn would not come. They cried and tried to laugh and hoped to not wake the children. They gave affirmations and love, with word and heart and body.

In the bitter morning that came, the husband lifted up his grandfather’s spear. He took his father’s helmet from where it was buried in the deepest trunk. He packed only a single day’s ration of bread, his cloak, and his other tunic.

And he began to walk.

He forced himself to go a mile beyond the village before letting his ribcage open with ugly sobs. When the crying stopped, he forced himself onward again.

Until a voice came calling, and he turned to find his son. The eldest.

The boy was scarcely thirteen. He had his own sack, with his own bit of bread. He had a sling on his belt, and a bulging purse of stones. He held the family hatchet in his hand. He had left the better woodaxe for his mother.

“Your mother knows you left?”

“She told me to go. I didn’t ask, but she knew I wanted to come.” His cheek turned up in a bashful smile. The boy tried to hide it with mature gravity.

“How was she?”

The boy shrugged, his smile gone, not wanting to say.

The man grabbed his son’s head with both hands. Forehead to forehead. Breath on breath. Heart opened to heart, with all the words that men can never say.

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Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

This anecdote actually takes place in Chapter 14 of my novel, about halfway through. I think (well, I hope) it works on its own merits, though it ought to have much more weight once the reader is more established within this setting and the particular conflict that father and son are walking into.

I included it, however, because I think it’s really these sorts of stories—the stories of “the little people,” that really makes epic fantasy epic. Sure there are monsters and heroes and high stakes to Save the World from the Dark Lord / Evil One so that there can be Peace, but at the end of the day I think it’s the little things that matter more, in that the “Big Things” can only matter because of the little things.

In Lord of the Rings, Mordor is all the more harrowing because we know and love the Shire.
In Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Pryrates is more terrifying because we saw him through the eyes of Simon the servant boy.
In Harry Potter, the arrogance of Lucius Malfoy is detestable because we love the comfort of the Weasley house.
And in The Wheel of Time, who could forget the one-off story of the father bestowing the sword of manhood upon his son moments before they both die in the apocalyptic battle of Tarmon Gai'don?

That’s why I wrote this. I’ve concocted this whole world in my head, and these stories help get it out. I’ve fallen in love with that world, and if you can see these people, feel what they feel and understand what they do, then I hope you’ll fall in love with them too.

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If you like what you’ve read here and want me to keep making stuff like this, you can help me do that by liking, commenting, or sharing this piece. You can also see all my writing by visiting this page.

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