‘Where do I go now?’ he asked.
‘Where the trackway takes you,’ laughed the men on the walls, and turned from him.
The naked man fled from the settlement and ran through the tall stands of purple heather, vanishing into the dawn mists as they slowly dispersed. His cry, as he was consumed, was neither a cry of despair nor a cry of hope; it was not a cry of joy or a cry of anger; it was not the cry of a man or the cry of a bear, but something that was a part of all these things.
It might have been the cry of the wind.
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Also by Robert Holdstock
Mythago Wood
1. Mythago Wood (1984)
2. Lavondyss (1988)
3. The Bone Forest (1991)
4. The Hollowing (1992)
5. Merlin’s Wood (1994)
6. Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (1997)
7. Avilion (2009)
The Merlin Codex
1. Celtika (2001)
2. The Iron Grail (2002)
3. The Broken Kings (2006)
Novels
Eye Among the Blind (1976)
Earthwind (1977)
Necromancer (1978)
Where Time Winds Blow (1981)
The Emerald Forest (1985)
Ancient Echoes (1986)
The Fetch (1991)
Night Hunter (writing as Robert Faulcon)
The Stalking (1983)
The Talisman (1983)
The Ghost Dance (1983)
The Shrine (1984)
The Hexing (1984)
The Labyrinth (1987)
Raven (as Richard Kirk, with Angus Wells)
Swordsmistress of Chaos (1978)
A Time of Ghosts (1978)
The Frozen God (1978)
Lords of the Shadows (1979)
A Time of Dying (1979)
Writing as Robert Black
Legend of the Werewolf (1976)
The Satanists (1977)
Berserker Trilogy (writing as Chris Carlsen)
1. Shadow of the Wolf (1977)
2. The Bull Chief (1977)
3. The Horned Warrior (1979)
Collections
In the Valley of the Statues: And Other Stories (1982)
Robert Holdstock (1948–2009)
Robert Paul Holdstock was born in a remote corner of Kent, sharing his childhood years between the bleak Romney Marsh and the dense woodlands of the Kentish heartlands. He received an MSc in medical zoology and spent several years in the early 1970s in medical research before becoming a full-time writer in 1976. His first published story appeared in the New Worlds magazine in 1968 and for the early part of his career he wrote science fiction. However, it is with fantasy that he is most closely associated.
1984 saw the publication of Mythago Wood, winner of the BSFA and World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel, and widely regarded as one of the key texts of modern fantasy. It and the subsequent ‘mythago’ novels (including Lavondyss, which won the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1988) cemented his reputation as the definitive portrayer of the wild wood. His interest in Celtic and Nordic mythology was a consistent theme throughout his fantasy and is most prominently reflected in the acclaimed Merlin Codex trilogy, consisting of Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings, published between 2001 and 2007.
Among many other works, Holdstock co-wrote Tour of the Universe with Malcolm Edwards, for which rights were sold for a space shuttle simulation ride at the CN Tower in Toronto, and The Emerald Forest, based on John Boorman’s film of the same name. His story, ‘The Ragthorn’, written with friend and fellow author Garry Kilworth, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and the BSFA Award for Short Fiction.
Robert Holdstock died in November 2009, just four months after the publication of Avilion, the long-awaited, and sadly final, return to Ryhope Wood.
www.robertholdstock.com
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Robert Holdstock 2014
Shadow of the Wolf copyright © Robert Holdstock 1977
The Bull Chief copyright © Robert Holdstock 1977
The Horned Warrior copyright © Robert Holdstock 1979
Introduction copyright © SFE Ltd 2014
All rights reserved.
The right of Robert Holdstock to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2014 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 1 473 20211 5
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Berserker SF Gateway Omnibus: The Shadow of the Wolf, The Bull Chief, The Horned Warrior Page 53
