Haven (War of the Princes)

by A. R. Ivanovich

  “Axton,” the old man barked. “Do you know this girl?”

  I heard movement behind me and spun to see a square, solid palomino horse come a little farther into the light. I expected the rider to be someone as rough as the gritty old man or the woman with the scarred face.

  I was completely unprepared for what I saw when the rider who answered to Axton came closer to get a look at me. He was young, easily the youngest of the group, with blonde hair that brushed his shoulders, framing the most beautiful face I had ever seen. His fine, symmetrical features were just masculine enough to remind me very clearly that he didn’t share my gender. If they were standing beside one another, he would have made the thuggishly handsome Sterling Mason look like a brute in comparison to his perfection. It was a very striking first impression, and I gaped in spite of my situation.

  I flushed instantly under Axton’s scrutiny, wildly unprepared to see someone so attractive.

  It didn’t escape me that we were probably close enough in age that he would know me if we were from the same town. And he answered the way I knew he would. “I’ve never seen her before.”

  “Look at that coat,” someone else said, and I took the opportunity to break eye contact with Axton. The other speaker was a rugged, middle-aged man with a crossbow aimed at my head. “Unusual tailoring isn’t it?”

  “Could be Eastwater. She might be a spy,” someone suggested.

  “Isn’t the first order of a spy to blend in?” Axton said in a droll tone.

  “Why take any chances?” the woman said.

  “I’m not a spy,” I said meekly. “Rune is very badly injured, I helped him get here, and I’d just like to go home.”

  I was being honest. I didn’t see any reason why I wouldn’t be allowed to turn and walk away from them, but they held their circle around me.

  “Listen to her accent… what is that?” someone asked.

  “Do I look like a cultured enough ‘gent to have left the region? Idiot,” another soldier responded. “Axton, do you know it?”

  The beautiful young man stared at me, leaning casually forward over his saddle. “Never heard it before.”

  The old man squinted at me and set his jaw. “Collect her.”

  The words rang in my ears, hardly taking any meaning. It wasn’t until I saw the horses closing in on me from all sides that I understood. They weren’t letting me go.

  I cried the name of the only person I knew who might be my friend. “Rune!” But he lay still.

  Seeing and hearing them all press toward me in unison was like a trigger for my newly discovered claustrophobia. I sucked fast breaths through my mouth and nose in panic, and bolted for the nearest opening between horses, abandoning the lantern for the darkness of the sparse wood.

  I was no match for the horses, and knew it, but I had to try. They intercepted my path, flanking and cornering me until I was no farther than I’d started off. Attempting to dart past them didn’t do any good. They were too many. Finally, my knees buckled and I sank into the tall grass, overcome by exhaustion.

  I was captured.

  Chapter 13: Breakwater

  Being taken away was surreal at first. I felt strangely numb as they bound my hands in front of me and forced me to sit astride a tall chestnut gelding with the scar-faced woman. Maybe they thought it was a courtesy to seat me with someone of the same gender, but she was meaner than the men she rode with.

  Someone attended to Rune, announcing that he was still alive. It was as though no one had listened to a word I said. I was relieved to see that they didn’t treat him with the same mistrustful hostility as they did me. A spare horse was brought forward and he was bound to the saddle so that he wouldn’t fall. The old bearded man took charge of leading his horse.

  Looking at Rune, slumped over his saddle, barely alive, it struck me what a fool I’d been. I had blundered into risking my life over a person I hardly knew. My compassion for the injured was suddenly small beside my desire for self-preservation. What was I thinking? I should have first blamed the curiosity that drove me to search for a way out of Haven Valley. I should have stopped at the cemetery, or the tomb, or the warnings on the wall, or the aquamarine pool. Who would submerge themselves into a pond with dry water anyway? Was I insane? Why couldn’t I have stopped there?

  Why did I jump off of that cliff?

  Why did I help Rune?

  A very subtle pang of guilt stabbed at me when I remembered his helplessness, how in his fevered state he kept thinking that I was a ghost or an angel. He even thanked me for speaking to him like a person... for acting like a friend.

  But what good would it do? It might be too late for him, and there I was, being abducted in a world no one had seen in seven hundred years.

  The flare was stamped out, a rider was sent up ahead and another behind to scout. The lantern Rune had given me was extinguished, and we were enveloped in darkness that was flawed by a great many stars. The riders pulled on goggles that glowed dimly through blue, green, or yellow lenses. I guessed that they allowed the wearer to see in the dark, because none of the riders carried lights.

  I couldn’t see anything but black shapes obscuring the stars as we rode through the trees at a purposeful canter. There was no color in this outside world, only night, and there were no friends, only strangers.

  I wanted with all of my heart and soul to be home, and I could feel my lucky sense, like a beacon, always telling me which direction would take me back to Haven Valley… back to Rivermarch. But as we rode, I could feel the growing distance as keenly as I could feel the rope binding my wrists.

  Grendel would still be wreaking havoc on the cemetery hedges, but the grumpy pony wouldn’t stray. My dad would leave the living room light on for me. The clay heron I didn’t finish would be sitting on my desk. My bed with my pillows and blankets were warm and awaiting my return like everything else. But how could I get back when I was being stolen farther away by the second?

  By tomorrow my dad would notice I was missing. Ruby and Kyle would realize I was gone. They would go looking for me. Someone would find Grendel at the cemetery in the morning and return him to my dad. It was a clue! It was somewhere to start looking. Even Professor Block knew I had been asking about a way out of Haven Valley. There was a perfectly good trail to pick up. If they found the badger hole in the mausoleum they’d see the candles leading down to the empty tomb. They’d find the pool and they’d have to check it out.

  They’d send people after me, wouldn’t they?

  No, they wouldn’t.

  My heart sank into the depths of my gut. Tears began to trickle from my eyes and soon flowed freely down my cheeks.

  No one would come looking for me. I knew it as well as I knew the sun would rise at dawn.

  I was notorious for disappearing at a moment’s notice. I’d hitched rides to Pinebrook and gone off to explore so many times, everyone had come to expect it. I knew for certain Ruby would look for me, up to a point. Once she realized I had already gone off, she’d accept it, like she always did, and wait for my stories when I returned.

  An ill feeling set in when I remembered the last thing I’d said to my father, and my tears surged. I told him I was going to find my mother, my real mother. She lived far away, at the westernmost edge of Haven Valley. Once he realized I was gone and entirely unaccounted for, he’d assume I had followed through with my threat. What was worse, he wouldn’t even worry.

  “There’s nothing here to hurt you, and I trust your choices,” were his words.

  He trusted me. I always looked at it as though he didn’t care about me, but I was acting like a spoiled child. He trusted me.

  And here I was, in deeper trouble than I had ever been before, with no one to help me, and without any idea of what to expect.

  I sniffled and the scarred woman groaned in disgust.

  The pounding of hooves drew closer as another horse caught up with ours. With the faintest hint of light from his goggles, I could see that it was Axton who h
ad come up to ride beside us.

  “We aren’t being followed, for the moment,” he announced without much volume. “I don’t know what sent that Lurcher off. He could have taken a few of us down, but he’s disappeared. Is she crying?”

  The scarred woman grunted with distaste and I ignored them both. I was wishing that something would happen that would allow me to escape before I was even one step farther from home. I didn’t want to appear weak to these people, but my tears persisted and betrayed my strength.

  What would my little brother think when his big sister didn’t come back?

  I couldn’t see Axton’s expression, and I didn’t care to. All I knew was that he was there.

  “Some spy,” he said and kicked his horse to a gallop, flying ahead of us.

  I couldn’t have had any idea how long we rode, but my despair and fatigue were on equal footing when the sky began to lighten. We were on a road, by that point, with golden grass blanketing the flat land on either side. The trees were scattered behind us, and much farther beyond them, blue gray with distance, were a colossal set of familiar mountains. I had never seen them from this angle, but they were as familiar as my reflection. It was the border that encircled Haven Valley. My home was somewhere impossibly deep at their center.

  Fields gave way for farms, and we passed many a tall wooden watchtower. Small streams crept under wooden bridges that we crossed, and when we rounded a modest orchard, the view opened to reveal the largest body of water I’d ever seen. I would never forget that moment for the rest of my life. It was the first time I’d seen the ocean.

  Haven Valley had some decent sized lakes, but this put them all to shame. I couldn’t see the other shore no matter how hard I strained my eyes. The vast blue sea was breathtaking. The land sloped down to partially encircle a small, calm bay and a quaint town that sprawled not only on the land, but also over the water itself. Every building, from the small cottages to the few towering multi-leveled structures, was built with olive colored stone.

  Farmers and sentries were the only people stirring at such an early hour, but neither paid us any attention as we made our way into the town. Streams snaked out to the bay, sprouting with green and yellow reeds. Tall plants and trees with fan shaped monocot leaves leaned overhead. I’d never seen such strangely shaped foliage. As we neared the town, my breath caught in my throat when I saw a creature I had only read about in books, an elephant, wading into one of the inlets beside a stream-front cottage.

  I stared at it both with a mixture of fear and awe as we passed by, heading into the town. No one seemed to mind its presence.

  Our packed dirt road became paved with tan and olive cobble stones, and by the time the first ray of sunlight touched the ground, we had wended into the shadows of houses, making our way toward the shore of the bay and the impressive keep that sat on the water beyond it.

  A sign on a shop we passed said Breakwater on it. Rune had mentioned the name before. I figured that was where we were.

  A flock of egrets soared away from the keep on the water and back toward land, passing over the reed fishing boats out for their early morning catch.

  I didn’t have time to admire any other feature about my exotic surroundings. The low stone pier that connected the keep was short, and as we arrived, I realized that the old man and Rune were no longer with us. My captors forced me to dismount, rushed me into the dark, descending corridors of the keep’s dungeon, and locked me in a cold, damp cell.

  They didn’t speak a single word to me, only tossed a scratchy blanket at my feet and left me alone in my prison. I wondered when they had taken my messenger bag, but I couldn’t remember.

  High above, a tiny, barred window shared its light and the unfamiliar salty smell of the ocean.

  I traded tears for shock as I curled up in a ball under the rough blanket in the corner of my cell and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

  Chapter 14: The Wounded Dragoon

  At the point just between asleep and awake, I felt the warmth of blankets around me, a soft pillow under my head, and the familiar comfort of a cushioned bed, and I knew that everything that had befallen me the night before must have been an elaborate nightmare.

  I squeezed my spare pillow in my arms, smiled and fell back to sleep, dreaming about going to the Fairgrounds with Ruby and playing practical jokes on Kyle. Sterling was in my dream too, on the outskirts of our little group. He stood there, watching me skeptically, untrusting. I was wondering what his problem was when Ruby interrupted me, telling me that I was dreaming and I was going to be late for school.

  My heart leapt in my chest and the imagery swirled away as I forced myself to awaken. I had to hurry or I’d be late and Calvin might have something else to bully me about.

  Convincing my tired body to sit upright amid the rumpled blankets, I rubbed the sleep from my still closed eyes. I sighed tiredly, feeling the tangled mess of wavy black hair twined around my arms, over my back, nearly to my waist. It would take some effort to get it under control before school.

  There was a knock on the door. It was probably my dad, reminding me about breakfast. He liked it when I made cinnamon toast for him before he left for work.

  “I’m up,” I said groggily, through a yawn, and forced my sluggish eyelids open.

  They widened and I stopped breathing. Each of my heartbeats slammed like a drum in tune with the events of the night before.

  Ba-bump… cold water hitting me as I jumped from the cliff.

  These weren’t my clothes.

  Ba-bump… Rune telling me to run away and leave him.

  This wasn’t my bedroom.

  Ba-bump... the breathing eel face of the monster in the dark.

  This wasn’t even the cell they left me in.

  Ba-bump… the circle of riders descending upon me.

  Someone had knocked at the door and I unwittingly said that I was awake. There was no time to hide, explore or consider my options. What an idiot I was for letting myself forget about the unfathomable mess I was in.

  There came the distinct sound of a key being placed into the door across the well-furnished room. I scrambled out of the silken sheets, throwing aside the heavy burgundy drapes that hung in a canopy around the four-post bed.

  The lilac linen shift and matching loose trousers I now wore were so distinctly not mine that I felt encumbered by them, despite their quality. My bare feet touched the cold stone floor and I scanned the room, passing over dark wood armoires, exotic potted plants, and masterful paintings of mechanical vehicles hovering over stormy seas. I spotted floor-length shutters with light leaking through their slits and ran for them, shouldering into them even as I heard someone fussing with the lock to open the door to the room. Escape was all I could think about.

  There was a latch on the shutters and my shaking hands fumbled to open it. The door was just creaking open when I slammed myself against the wooden frame, forcing its panels to swing wide.

  The foreign scent of salty water blasted me, the wind lashing my hair over one shoulder and plastering my light clothes against my body as I stumbled onto a two-foot balcony. I caught myself on the small railing, grasping the wrought iron bars with all my strength as I nearly pitched off into the choppy sea four stories below.

  I gasped in surprise, having thought for some reason that my room was on a ground floor, or at least over land, not perched above a sheer drop to violently surging waters. The cradling arms of the bay and the endless ocean beyond were the only familiar sights I’d come across since waking up.

  As I stood there, frozen against the railing, trying to reclaim my breath, it calmed me just a fraction of a measure that I was still at least in Breakwater. Evening’s mild blush was slowly seeping up from the horizon, coaxing the ocean to change its colors. The dynamic movement of such a vast body of water had me momentarily transfixed.

  “Oh! Please don’t!” cried a frightened, feminine voice from the doorway inside of the room. I turned to see a girl, maybe a bit older than myse
lf, crouched over an end table with a tray of food. “I’m sorry I scared you. The young lord told me to bring you something to eat. I’ll leave, just please, don’t jump!”

  Did she think I was insane? I wasn’t going to jump from that kind of height. I chose to ignore the fact that I had already jumped off the Clockwork Ferris Wheel and a cave cliff in a matter of days. Those things were inconsequential compared to what faced me now. Jumping from this height into the churning water below would have been suicide, and I was still much more interested in self-preservation.

  I peeled myself around to face her, my hands still clinging to the railing behind me. My instinct and common sense both told me that the safest way out was through the doorway she was standing in.

  She gave me a very shaky smile, reached up to a cord that hung near the doorway, and gave it a tug. There came a musical note, and she backed away with her hands up. I could hear the sound of pounding feet in the hall and I froze where I stood, crippled with apprehension.

  Four men rushed through the doorway, halting where the girl had been standing. One of them was younger and familiar. He stood ahead of the rest, his cropped uniform jacket open, shirt un-tucked, and long blond hair threatening to obscure his perfect eyes. It was Axton. For a moment, he shared the serving girl’s frightened expression upon seeing me against the rail, but for no reason I could fathom, he calmed visibly and then turned to the others.

  “I’ll handle this. Resume your duties,” he ordered.

  The men, older though they were, nodded respectfully before promptly marching out. The girl hesitated with uncertainty.

  “Rosie,” he addressed with a disarming smile. “She’s fine. I promise. Trust me.”

  I could instantly see his affect on her. She cast her long lashed eyes downward in response to his attention. Pink rushed to her cheeks. It was clear why they called her Rosie. “Yes, Lord Axton.”