“How's that?” asked the Captain.
“I'll live,” he replied and, with help, put on his furs once more. “We should go,” he said and looked in the direction they intended to walk.
“Talbert?” the Captain asked. Haggart shrugged. “That boy can run when he wants to.”
They began the slow march out of Sturgenvad and walked across the wastes until midday. The sun was dazzlingly bright and Haggart's eyes stung with every step despite a weak effort to shield them with his forearm. His shield, hanging from the cord on his good shoulder, began to chaff the skin and every mile drew it to his attention like a wailing child that refused to sleep. The Captain wore a pannier on either shoulder and had discarded his axe at the cave mouth, given that it was chipped and without its shaft. He'd taken a mace - the one that had so badly injured Haggart - as a replacement and hung it from his belt.
“I wish you hadn't taken that thing,” said Haggart as they stopped for a minute or two to drink.
“It was the best of a bad bunch if you ask me,” replied the Captain. “I may just have one made when we get back to civilisation. If we come across any more of these armoured men then this will be the weapon of choice.”
“Let's hope we don't come across any more,” he said and slumped to the floor despite the cold ground beneath him. The Captain sighed and dropped their luggage, eager to grab a couple of minutes himself.
“Keep your mind on that Inn,” he said to Haggart when he started to doze. “Think of the lovely Frau.”
“I'm thinking about that bed and the hearth,” he replied.
“It would be nice to have someone to nurse you back to strength,” he laughed.
“Talbert might already be there.”
“Maybe.”
The Captain avoided his gaze. “What's wrong?” asked Haggart.
“Talbert. I saw him run.”
“Yes, so did I. What of it?”
“Did you see the direction he ran in?”
Haggart thought about it for a moment. “Surely he knew the way back?”
“If he did, he did his best to hide it. He went north towards the woods back there.”
Silence. Then, “You didn't send him to his death, Captain. If he'd have stayed...”
“I know, I know,” he replied, waving the thought away as it buzzed around his ears.
“It was you who said to let him sink or swim. It was obvious which way we came from. And did he come back? Did he even look to see if we'd won?”
“I suppose not.”
“Well then,” he said, getting to his feet awkwardly. “There's not a lot we can do about it now, is there?”
*
The days slipped past as they trudged their way west across the hardening compact ice that was hidden beneath a pleasant layer of crunchy snow. The sun relented on their third day and made room for tremendous storm clouds which battered the mountainsides with a furious vengeance. On these days the two travellers hid in any shelter they could find whether it be a barn or in the roots of a collapsed tree, or even in the ice itself as it gathered around rocks to form a natural hovel.
But time moved steadily past them, as steadily as the fat white clouds overhead or the falling flakes that drifted carelessly to the ground. A week. Then another. They were never short of water and each night they melted fragments of their tortuous path back into their skins. But their food stores began to dwindle despite the rationed meals and hunger became as familiar to them as the wind or the ice or the sky.
At the end of the third week Haggart had lapsed into a fever despite his constant attention to the cleaning of the wound and cold beads of sweat ran down his face and back, soaking his furs. He drank often, rested often and was chivvied often by the Captain who worried that the end wouldn't come soon enough.
Then, one horrific night of the most sever weather they'd encountered, they crossed a frozen stream and stomped slowly up a hill side and saw it. A light. The luminous eyes and mouth of the Inn, that seemed to them to be a simple fiction in their delirious minds, rose up out of the white ash and frosted nightmare landscape to greet them.
“Haggart!” yelled the Captain over the roaring wind. “The Inn!”
“The first round is on you,” he replied with renewed vigour. “I got the last one...”
It took several days for the fever to break, but good mead and plenty of food besides a crackling hearth soon had Haggart on the mend in more ways than one. Frau had never left his side and had cleaned and covered his arm with amazing tenderness every morning.
“There is no sickness in it,” she'd said when he felt the last of the heat in his skin finally leave him. “It will make a nasty scar though.”
“Add it to the others,” said the Captain. “Now that you're better, I'm going to go with Varn to Minivad and secure us horses and transport back home. Perhaps Thomas will be there, or news of his whereabouts might be.”
“And Talbert?”
“Aye, I'll be looking for him too.”
The Captain left and Frau came and sat in the chair beside him. “It must be hard to kill you two,” she said.
“People keep learning that. Yet...”
“What will you do once you reach home?”
He hadn't told either of them about the vision since they'd arrived and he was still reluctant to do so now.
“We'll carry on looking for Jurgenbraw. There's nothing else for it. Those people at Sturgenvad deserve nothing less.”
“And you say they are all gone? All... fed to these machines?”
“Yes.”
She stood up and went to fill her glass. “It's horrid to even think of such a fate,” she said.
“Frau,” he began, getting up. “When we've gone, is there somewhere you can go?”
She stared at him with a penetrating gaze. “You think he will come for us?”
“I can't be sure but...” Her face went pale and her hands trembled.
“We helped you,” she whispered, defeated. Haggart nodded. “We will have to flee.”
“Do you have any family nearby? Someone you can turn to?”
“I have family on Slow. Will your friend be able to take us?”
“I will do my best to arrange it - it's the least we can do.”
She smiled but it was as forced as she could manage. He went to put an arm on her shoulder but she flinched away from him and hurried out of the room, her hand covering her face and the tears already falling to the floor.
The Captain returned later in the evening with three fresh horses and supplies for the journey home but his face was a deathly pallor despite the busy atmosphere the Inn was enjoying or the mead that Haggart passed to him.
“What is it?” he asked, offering him a seat by the fire. He shook himself out of his furs and sat down.
“Thomas the Red is due in tomorrow, such is our good fortune. But I have bad news I'd rather not say, yet I must.”
“Is it Talbert?” he said.
“No - there is the only brightness in such a dreary tale. I went to my... trader... to weigh in that mace and also to see if on the off chance he'd been in there. The man behind the counter, a weary looking soul if ever there was one, said the boy had been in only the day before and traded nearly all his belongings, save for the shirt on his back, for a passage north.”
“North? Why north?”
“I've not got a clue - but the good news is he's alive at least.”
“Why didn't he come here and wait?”
“I think he'd given us up for dead and...” He stopped.
“And what?” asked Haggart.
“I think he's lost his bottle. I think he's fleeing.” Haggart cursed him so loudly that the others in the parlour turned suddenly in their chairs and went very quiet.
“That coward!” he said. “Does he think us that pitiful?”
“Be fair, Haggart - he's never seen something like that before. For all his bluster that lad has only ever faced a few farmers dressed up as soldiers. You forg
et that we're hardened to it.”
“Still,” he held, “It's a bloody shame. Though, as you say, at least he's alive.”
“Aye. Now to my next news.” He leaned forward in his chair and kept his voice low. “There is news from home. Your vision was accurate - the City has fallen.”
“How do you know?”
“My trader friend remarked that he'd had no word from his brother who runs a Forge in the City nor has he had any stock from home.”
“Is that it?”
“Hold on - I have more. So I went down to the docks and spoke to the Harbour Master.”
“The fat man in silk?”
“The same. Though there was no silk today. He was as white as the snow outside, Haggart. When I asked him for news from home, he couldn't answer. He pointed to the piers.”
“And?”
“They were empty, Haggart. Not a single ship has come in from home. No grain. No fruit. No food at all. The only ships that were docked were the ones that had come from the Islands or Slow. There has been nothing from Ulfwen for over a week.”
“Odd enough. You say Thomas will arrive tomorrow?” said Haggart.
“Aye. He's coming south from Slow, his voyage hasn't taken him near home since he dropped us off. He plans to set sail for there as soon as he's loaded up again, though we'll find out more when he arrives.”
“This doesn't bode well, does it?”
The Captain shook his head. They drank in silence until Varn arrived with plates of stew and a loaf of bread and they ate like men starved.
“What did he give you for the mace?” asked Haggart once he'd eaten his fill. Since the fever had left him his appetite had returned with a passion and he was eager to put some of the weight that he'd lost back on. Even the Captain was looking gaunt after their time on foot and he shuddered when he thought back to that journey, amazed that they were still alive.
“Now then - get this. He asked about that mace before I'd finished questioning him about Talbert. It caught his eye the moment I'd entered the shop and I thought to myself 'here's a bit of loot coming my way'. So he says to me, 'where did you get that' - pointing to the metal. I says 'found it up near Sturgenvad in a tomb'. An obvious lie, but hear me out. He says 'go back and get the rest then'. I says 'why?'. He says 'because that there mace is over 200 years old and worth a small fortune'.”
Haggart shook his head as he mopped up the last of the stew with the heel of the loaf and cursed the Gods. “What did you do with it?”
“Well, he went and got the Smithy from the harbour side and we arranged a little deal. He has a very nice hammer with a bladed edge on his racks. As my trader couldn't rustle up enough coin to pay for the mace, he did a deal with the Smithy to give me the horses, the saddles and the hammer for nothing. The trader got the mace in exchange for a year-long promise to supply our Smithy friend with metal at a cut price.”
“It sounds like a fair deal to me,” said Haggart.
“Oh, he also threw in a new shirt of mail for you and something to go over that shoulder. Looked like a big insect to me but apparently it's for your sword arm. Yours is a common injury, he says. Looks very pretty.”
“Thanks. But there is more good news in all this.”
“What's that?”
“Even magically raised 200 year old soldiers can still die.”
“This,” said the Captain as he gestured with his spoon, “is true!”
Then Haggart thought for a while. “But will they stay dead?”
*
The following morning was dark with brooding grey clouds that gave the sky the appearance of having been bruised by a heavy blow. Haggart was sat in a harbour side pub that had a large open front that looked out onto the docks. Normally, he thought, there would be no end of ships and sailors coming and going, the shouts, the racket of livestock, the smell of tar and fish and sweat mingling with the cries of the gulls overhead. Now there was nothing but the tense faces of bored carpenters and the dismal empty nets of angry fishermen.
As he drank a second mug of coffee and ate some more of his eggs he watched the seas as they rolled away in the distance and waited with bated breath for the first signs of a sail on the horizon. It was an activity the whole span of the harbour was caught up in.
“No one is sailing there,” said the Captain as he walked in through the open front. “They say it's been cursed. There are wrecks on the waters for miles. Whatever ships are in dock say they will only sail north to the Islands or not at all.”
“Will Thomas sail though?”
“Who knows but he?”
There was a cry from the loft of a merchant vessel and people began to gather on the harbour to crane their necks and extend looking glasses towards the horizon. They joined them quickly, pushing into the swelling crowd to see.
“It's Thomas the Red!” someone yelled. Yet, as the ship came into view it was clear there was something wrong.
“Look at his mast!” another voice yelled. “She's been attacked!”
The ship was giving too much leeway as it came into dock and in the end the workers had tow her in with cutters and rope. As she slammed into the fenders it was clear that the crew were in a bad way. Thomas the Red was at the wheel, barely, and the only hands he had left were struggling to gather up the sails. No sooner had the vessel stopped than the harbour crew were aboard to aid their comrades and the Harbour Master was making his way down the pier to greet Thomas and find out what he knew.
“The Gods man, what happened?” he cried as Thomas was helped over the rail.
“Ships, great black Corsairs, black sails, like something out of a nightmare. I’ve never seen such ferocity before. They came on us in the night. We lost twenty men before we could slip away and even then they gave chase all the way here.”
“Where did they come from?” asked the crowd in broken sentences of horror.
“They had orders from the King...” said Thomas.
“King? There is no King!”
“There is now.”
CHRONOLOGY
1257 - William Dern (The Captain) is born.
1267 - Haggart is born.
1268 - King Jacob dies. His son, Aaron, takes to the throne.
1270 - Gorm uprising begins in the East.
1276 - Robert Talbert is born.
1278 - James Shankworth is born.
- Gorm retreat across the sea.
1279 - Haggart joins the army at 12 years old.
- The Battle of the 3 Kings.
1280 - 1st year of peace declared.
1281 - King Aaron invades Gorm homeland.
1286 - John Haggart born.
1287 - Gorm subdued. King Aaron returns.
1288 - War of the Southern Lords.
- Lorrie is born.
1290 - Tribes from the Frozen North invade.
- The Abergwen is sunk.
- Haggart receives the vision and the rune.
1296 - 2nd year of peace declared.
1297 - Gorm rebellion.
1298 - Secretly formed Council overthrow King Aaron. King Aaron executed.
0000 - The Council declare a new calendar to mark the end of the monarchy.
- The Pardoning begins, lasting six months.
- 'The Sundered Helm' is opened by Haggart and William Dern.
0010 - Haggart sees the vision of the dead army.
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR...
2015 is shaping up to be an exciting year. Last year 'The Wolf and the Bear' did better than I'd imagined especially considering I'm not a household name nor the creator of a famous TV series just hitting season 5. This year started with the completion of 'Haggart's Dawn' and by summer I hope to be bringing you the post-apocalyptic adventure, 'Cornered' in its entirety. I'll be attending Europe's biggest Paintball festival, 'North Versus South' for the third year running, hiking, camping and generally making the most of my brief time on this good earth.
A writer is only as good as his readers think he is. I believe that's a
good way to look at life as an author, especially an Indie author such as myself who has no agent to please or contract demands to meet. When 'The Wolf and the Bear' sold over 1,000 copies, I began to realise that whatever attracts the reader to a book isn't so much the cover or the blurb, but the reviews and ratings other readers give it. The writing world has changed over the years, thanks to the Internet and e-publishing and I want you, the reader, to know that what you do now will shape the next book you read.
Twitter. Facebook. Amazon. You can reach hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people with a single sentence, a solitary post, a new hash tag. Do you want more of what you just read, or was it so bad that you want to spare others the torment? Now is the time to act. Now is your chance to influence what you'll be reading over the next few years.
Did 'Haggart's Dawn' bore you? Did it thrill you? Are you on the edge of your seat wanting to know what Haggart intends to do next now that Ulfwen has fallen? Either way, good or bad, your review, your tweet, your status update will either ensure you find out or guarantee you'll never know.
The choice is yours...
Martyn J. Pass
March, 2015.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @martynjpass
Haggart's Dawn Page 25