Knights of the Dawn (Arcanum of the Dolmen Troll Book 1)

by R. J. Eveland

  The raven on the roof of Good Sons’ Inn had its head on a pivot. It was slowly turning to observe the knight with the sallet. In addition to the knight’s unique helm, the gilded trim work on his armor was another thing that separated him from his followers. The man was studying the approaching castle ardently, upright and firm in his saddle like a rock. Beyond the village and athwart the road, he espied the figures of lords and gents obscured by a knee-high mist. They were waiting patiently for him to arrive before the smoggy siege camp.

  A diaphanous pall of bluish haze tenderly swaddled the black pavilion like a cravat. Tendrils of gray mist weaved throughout the tents like stone tracery. Spearmen and footmen of all sorts were rising from the smoky fires to join their lords around the road. Every tent was empty. Boots trampled the furrows. The entire camp was gathering, yawning, whispering, standing in formation to greet their arrivals. For the first time in their lives, Foulmouth’s minstrels didn’t know which song to play. Charles stood behind the lords Highcross and Lafender, holding Foulmouth’s banner up high. Those giant green teeth were mirrored reflections of the giant green teeth approaching. With susurrant gasps of fascination, the entire camp beheld the erect knight as he emerged from the haze, leading Foulmouth’s reinforcements out of the foggy village.

  Mist like silver filigree webbed around the warhorses’ legs, skirting hocks and jessing pasterns. The steam rising from all those bellicose snouts only augmented the mist. A knight behind the standard-bearer was puffing back from a long-stemmed pipe. He blew a generous nimbus out over his head. That charcoaly cloud of sour smoke mingled with the bluish haze, fusing a melange of black, blue and gray. That multihued sight dancing above the riders was merely drapery sweeping aside to herald the parade’s grand wheeled displays. Charles nearly wept when his eyes descried the brimming wains. Emerging in and out of the addling heaps of fog was a train of death. The menacing mangonels looming high at the end of it all were impressive final displays, but they weren’t the main event. Highcross began to estimate how many barrels of black powder those wains were carrying. He gave up his counting when the number he reached said there was more than enough.

  A gap in the mist encircled the knight with the sallet as he reached earshot. Highcross stepped into the ring of clear air to observe his first arrival in full detail. The gap in the mist encircled them both like the eye of a tornado. Highcross couldn’t stop himself from blinking at the knight’s more impressive details. Burnished steel lames with gilded trim work covered the warhorse’s mane, sparkling from snout to withers.

  The knight raised the visor of his sallet. Grizzly eyebrows bushed outward to greet the breeze. A face wrinkled by many years gave Highcross a rictus. “As you obviously already know, we’ve arrived to help Lord Foulmouth conclude your siege. Where is he? I want to get this over with.” A booger swung from his nose as he observed all the campers staring at him. Then he quickly observed the castle in the near distance. “I’m surprised you lot haven’t taken this pitiful castle already. Are you all lame or something? For the almighty’s sake, what kind of castle doesn’t have a drawbridge or a gatehouse? This design is ancient!”

  Highcross answered, “It’s a deceiving castle. Without siege equipment, our every attempt has …”

  The old knight interrupted with a scoff. “You’re pathetic! Now where’s Lord Foulmouth? I can’t believe he made me come all the way here for this shit. I brought the whole fucking garrison!”

  Highcross must’ve hesitated for too long because Lafender stepped into the eye of clarity to get the truth out of the way. “Your lord is dead, old knight,” Lafender told it plain and clear. “Spywater kidnapped him and hung him from a flagpole. There was nothing we could do but save our own lives.”

  “What!” The knight’s booger flew through the air. “After so many decades of war, this is the siege that sees Foulmouth in?”

  “Understand,” Highcross clenched a fist as he fumed, “none of us came here thinking this was a siege but you. We were unprepared.”

  “It makes no matter,” the knight bellowed as if he was the lord of this place. “If Foulmouth’s dead, I’ll be the one to end this!” He tugged a rein to turn his horse around. He faced his backplate to the lords and cuffed his mouth to holler at all of Foulmouth’s knights. “Listen, you all! I’m saddened to say our lord is no longer with us.” He allowed a moment for everyone to curse. “I know … it’s sad.” He shook his head glumly to think of it again. “As subjects of our lord’s lifelong generosity, it’s our duty to see that his last wish is rendered true in this world. And his last wish WAS TO BLOW THIS FUCKING CASTLE TO SHIT!” His face turned red as he screamed, “SO THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WE’RE GOING TO FUCKING DO!”

  With a hundred huzzahs, a hundred weapons thrust through the mist. The old knight trotted down the ranks of riders, bellowing his orders. “Dismount and hobble up. I want three wains of black powder surrounded by shields.” He pointed over his shoulder at the mist-shrouded castle. The stone structure’s finer details were hidden by the grayness, but it was clearly one of the least embattled castles the old knight had ever seen, or at least he believed it was. “Look at that thing,” he complained, trotting down the line as his lord’s men went to work preparing the wains and shields. “We live in an age where inventions like the cannyn are rapidly altering the ways of war, and this castle doesn’t even have a moat? It’s right beside a lake for crying out loud! A child could siege this shithole. All we have to do is roll the wains through the gateway and place them around the keep. Getting here was half the bloody chore. Call it fucking Castle Die Hard. We’ll be on our way home in no time at all.”

  The knight commanded with enough fervor to rile one of Lafender’s ill-armoured men. The lad squealed, “A ghost will never walk Spywater’s halls again!” And to that one of Highcross’ men hollered, “Death to Lord Spywater!”

  “Death to Lord Spywater! Death to Lord Spywater! Death to Lord Spywater!” The menacing words of that cheer echoed towards the sky. The blue lord sitting in the window of the castle donjon managed to hear them. From way up there, the train of death emerging from the foggy village looked like a monstrous, calico cobra slithering down the road to feast on the camp. It was a long, patient slither. The mangonels and wains were parked alongside the tents one by one. Spywater raised a brow as he watched men separate things from the wains. It seemed they were dedicating three of them to hold nothing but black barrels. The three dedicated wains were brought back out onto the road, trundling and creaking under all that deadly weight, each one pulled by two overworked horses. Knights were hobbling horses in the furrows, tethering them to an old fence that stretched alongside the road in fragments. Others were unstrapping shields from their saddles and handing out better weapons to the campers. It wasn’t long before over a hundred shields were gathered on the road around the three wains of death.

  Spywater finally replied to the echoing cheer he had heard. “Death? How about eternal suffering? That’s what I’ll give you. Eternal suffering to you all for coming here! You’ll never have my castle.” It was a chilly whisper only he could here. Leaving the window open, he turned to face his desk. There on his desktop, before a standing portrait, sat an open book of poetry. He seated himself to ponder over his writ words. They were more than sullen. “At least I spent my last days doing what I love.” He wasn’t talking about the poetry. He thought about how much he hated his enemies, and it felt so good.

  The portrait behind his poetry was of a young girl playing with a doll in a bell chamber. “Sorry, sweetie,” Spywater whispered as he studied it one last time. “I’m coming home soon.” He allowed a moment to watch a tear land on the carpet. After taking a deep, shaky breath, he clasped his poetry book closed and opened the small, rectangular window of a lantern.

  He brought out the fat candle and stared into its guttering flame. His eyes narrowed in thought until he scoffed and used the dying flame to light the wick of a fresh taper on his desk. It was a long, slender beeswax
taper in a brass holder. About midway down its tapering length stretched the taut line of a whole other wick. That additional wick was a fuse that spanned six hundred and sixty-six paces in total. After blowing out the fat candle in his hand, the blue lord sneered at the fresh flame before him. His face glowed and his eyes went down to follow the fuse that stretched across the room. It disappeared into a hole in the floor. His mind was a confusing mess of unfinished thoughts. To reassure himself, he whispered, “When the taper melts enough for the flame to light the fuse, a new flame will sizzle through my castle, and it will unleash hellfire.”

  Knowing he had little time, he snatched his sugarloaf helm from a tack on the wall. After glancing one last time at his stacks of books, the chair by his favorite window, the trapdoor by his sabatons squeaked open. The blue lord descended down the steep, narrow stairs. This time, he didn’t bother locking the trapdoor behind him.

  Outside the castle, a white rabbit scurried across the misty road. It darted into a bush and pronked around to glare back at the road with glistening eyes. Its teensy pink nose wiggled a whit. Then it froze in fear. Rolling right before its eyes were monstrous white and green wheels. Those long spinning spokes were daunting enough to hypnotize the poor creature. It was, however, the thunder of all those glimmering sabatons that made it feign its death.

  With their shields raised high towards the castle, a hundred menacing knights and several dozen ill-armoured footmen were escorting the three dedicated wains down the road. Foulmouth’s minstrels watched from the camp, one of them plucking a depressing tune on a zither. Every now and then, he would look up from his instrument to see that the old knight’s cortege of shields and barrels was a little further away, a little closer to its target.

  Halfway down the stretch to the castle, the old knight with the sallet was leading the first wain. He looked back over his shoulder disappointedly, and shouted, “No, no, this is all wrong. We shouldn’t be in one long line like this. I want more space betwixt each wain!” After giving the command to stop, he stood on the hub of a wheel to tower over all the knights. “Everyone, split up into three groups! Each wain should have its own box of shields around it!” An undercurrent in his voice said he was starting to think this whole thing was a bad idea. “I don’t want all of us entering that bailey at the same time. We need at least twenty paces betwixt each wain! So back up a little, come on!” His strong voice could faintly be heard in the village.

  The lords Highcross and Lafender were at the back of the line, behind the third and last wain closest to the camp. They had heard the old knight’s command loud and clear and shouted at their own men to help organize the rearrangement. Horses whinnied as the third and second wains began to slowly back up, to give the separation the old knight wanted.

  Highcross walked to the roadside to watch the progress. A heap of mist rolled over the line of knights like an avalanche. For a moment, the front wain was hidden from Highcross’ eyes. He looked up to the sky. The morning gloam that had made the country look red was now a brightening dawn that let the grasses show dull versions of their own colors. The blanket of mist above his head glowed with a brilliant blue. If there were any clouds beyond the mist, his eyes couldn’t see them. It dawned on him that he had never seen a sky like this before. That’s when he spotted the raven. Its great white wings beat the mist away.

  Highcross pointed and hollered, “Take down that bird! It’s Spywater’s minion!”

  The few archers and crossbowmen around him stopped what they were doing to quickly focus their sights. Up high, the raven flattened its wings and glided down towards them. A crossbow nut rattled and sent a bolt knifing through the mist. The raven adjusted its trajectory and watched the bolt whizz by. Three bowstrings twanged at once. The raven made a spiral as it descended to avoid the soaring arrows, but one went straight through its wing and left a small hole.

  “You hit it!” Highcross licked his lips as the raven spiraled closer. “Hit it again!”

  Another bolt barely missed the raven’s body. More bowstrings twanged. The raven suddenly killed its spiral. With its wings harnessing a gale, it swooped down with incredible speed towards the box of knights. The arrows missed by a longshot. The raven was soaring towards them so viciously, spears were shifting around in hopes to stab it. Even Highcross withdrew his sword in case the raven was aiming for him. The hitched horses began to bray. Distress halted all progress. No one could see what was happening with the other two wains; the mist had grown too thick. A few bloodcurdling screams went up, but no one seemed to care. All focus was on that ghastly bird.

  A few spearheads thrust as the raven neared. Those glimmering steel points missed by mere inches. Spit flew up in hatred as the raven dodged various weapons, swooping over their heads with a mocking chortle. Without slowing its speed, the bird’s outstretched talons biffed an old, rotting portion of the fence on the roadside. The soggy wood exploded under the impact and collapsed to the ground. As the bird carried on upwards towards the sky, the ground beneath the knights began to rumble. Garbles of confusion rocketed.

  Highcross knew exactly why the raven was chortling. “The fence!” he hollered, skipping away. “It was a lever! Get away, men!”

  The ground beneath the wain was suddenly gone. With their limbs moving in running motions, men fell through the air, unable to feel the ground beneath their feet. They kicked and kicked, trying to feel some kind of surface, but all they felt was air—falling air. When the wain crashed into the wooden spikes at the bottom of the pit, the whole thing fell apart and barrels went rolling out in every direction. Like a miniature sandstorm, black powder wafted up to make a nimbus. Men with wooden shafts sticking out of them were squirming around in the bottom of the pit like maggots.

  Highcross got to his feet and saw the large square hole in the road where the box of knights had once been. All the screams erupting from it made him queasy. Knights who had managed to avoid the trap were leaning over the pit, crying down to their brothers. Highcross walked over to peer down at the bilious sight. He shook his head when he noticed Lafender had a new conical tongue made of red wood.

  Knights were walking away from the pit, confused, wandering through the mist. A white pall covered the spike pit, allowing its victims to rest in peace. Highcross cursed when he realized he couldn’t see his own gauntlets. The fog had suddenly grown so thick. He heard screams all around him. They were coming from down the road. Wondering what the fuck was going on, the black and white lord began making his way towards the others. He discovered a knight lying on the roadside with wood jutting from his visor. Highcross stopped, bewildered by the sight. The knight was dead. The wood in his visor was the haft of some enigmatic, tribal weapon. Highcross deemed it as such because of the odd decorative bands of oxtails and feathers that covered it.

  With curses of disarray, Highcross rose, narrowing his eyes towards the castle. It sounded like men were dying all around him, but he couldn’t see a thing. He kept on forward towards where he had last seen the old knight. Faintly in the thick mist, he saw one of Lafender’s men dashing across the road. “What the fuck is going on?” Highcross yelled desperately for an answer, but the man was quickly gone from sight, sucked away by the fog. Feeling all alone, Highcross yelled to the sky. “Where is everyone? What the fuck is happening? Someone answer me!” More screams were his only answer. For some reason, he also heard the ominous plucks of some distant zither, but it only came and left very briefly. Stumbling forward, lightheaded and befuddled, Highcross’ hobnails continued on crunching the dirt and gravel. “Has someone drugged me?”

  The second wain was not where he had last seen it. It should’ve been right where he was walking. It made him wonder if the old knight had ordered the carts of death to continue. Maybe he was just dreaming and he would wake up soon. He hoped that was true. Those screams sounded so real, though, and they were closer than before. Not knowing for certain added to the heat growing in his flushed cheeks. All this mist was starting to piss him off. H
e felt like he was going to pass out from dizziness. His hands were the hands of ghosts, faintly visible only when he moved them. It made him wonder if he was dead. Then like a breeze of luck washing over him, a pocket of clarity in the mist grew around him. Up ahead, he could see something. Shifting at the edge of the pocket were the armored backs of many knights. They were holding their shields high, marching alongside the second wain in box formation.

  Highcross called out to them as he started to run. “Thank goodness you’re all alive! I thought I was going mad!”

  The knights kept up their march, clinging to the wain like children holding their mothers’ hands. They stepped nervously, moving their shields side to side as if that would lessen the odds of death. The cluster of shields was a metallic turtle without eyes progressing into the unknown. Highcross called to the knights again as he got closer. He couldn’t tell if they could hear him. None of them looked back. As they marched on, mist weaved betwixt their steel-clad legs. A shroud of blurriness lurked under the wain, feeding off the shadows.

  Highcross got close enough to touch a knight’s pauldron. “Hey, buddy.” He shrugged him to see his face. “Where’s all that screaming coming from?”

  The knight turned around and raised his visor. Gnarled gray skin sloughed off his cheeks as he muttered something with a mouth full of worms. Highcross shrieked and pushed the knight away. The knight spat worms out all over the road before he closed his visor. Shaking his head, the knight turned back to follow his fellowmen. Soon he was back in formation with his shield high. Highcross gaped, one eye twitching. His feet were frozen. He watched the metallic turtle move onward towards the blueness that hid everything.