A knight in the marching band vanished. One of the wain’s wheels blew apart into splinters. Another knight vanished. The only trace of him was his arm flipping through the air. The mist in the sky was suddenly riddled with streaks. Plumes of dirt kicked up along the road. Highcross’ dizziness worsened as he tried to understand what he was seeing. Something silent and black soared above his head. The ear-popping blasts of many distant cannyns finally reached his ears. He suddenly realized why knights were vanishing. Cannyn balls were knocking them into the layer of mist that hovered above the roadbed. He watched another one fall. The cannyn blasts were grating enough to make him cringe. One barrel in the wain shattered from a blurry impact and exploded. The barrel beside it exploded immediately afterward, then all the barrels exploded at once. Furious fire went skyward, sending planks of wood and bits of knight through the illumed mist in all directions. Hundreds of distant echoing pops were sounding alongside that fiery roar, altogether creating a sonance tantamount to an erupting volcano.
Highcross was blown onto his back. A wave of heat rushed over him, turning the sweat on his face into steam. His eyes were shut, but the tower of fire in the sky was so bright he swore his eyelids had been burned off. He felt splinters trickling across his face and other chunkier bits off wood skittering across his body. One long plank of wood landed hard on his kneecap. He barely noticed the pang from it as he brought up an arm to block the heat from his face. A woodchip rolled into his mouth when he cussed. He felt as light as a feather when the force wave suddenly passed. He sat up and opened his eyes to watch the explosion suck back into nothingness, leaving a burning wreck within a crater on the road. A bloody cannyn ball was slowly rolling over his singed, white cloak, leaving a trail of slime.
The distant cannyn blasts finally stopped echoing. A high-pitched ringing resounded in Highcross’ head, like the constant humming of some angel trying to tell him something. The ringing was loud enough to block out all other noise. As falling woodchips, flipping limbs and splatters of blood settled on the ground all around him, Highcross looked around slowly. As if time had stopped, everything stilled. Mist rolling in the blue glare of dawn was the only movement.
The ringing in his head seemed to worsen when he rose to his feet. He noticed his spangenhelm was gone. His sword gone, too. There was stickiness in his hair. Gnawing his teeth and rubbing his temples, he wobbled forward, unsure where he was going. “Milord!” A voice cut through the ringing in his head. He spun to see a figure running through the mist towards him. He unsheathed a dagger from his hip and waited for the man to get closer. “Milord!” it called again.
A man burst out of the mist and Highcross plunged his dagger forward. The man ducked just in time to avoid the thrust, whereupon Highcross realized who the man was. “Charles! I’m so sorry! I, I …”
“Milord, you need to see this!” Charles put a hand on his lord’s shoulder, to urge him to follow.
Highcross brushed the lad’s arm away. “What? What is it? Just tell me.”
“The camp, milord, it’s … it’s empty!” Charles' eyes were tearing, his hands shaking from terror. “Everyone is dead! Everyone!”
“What are you talking about?” Highcross couldn’t believe it. “Was it the cannyns?”
“The cannyns did their part, milord, but it was something else entirely.” Charles took a deep breath in an attempt to settle his shaking voice. “It, it, it’s hard to explain, milord. The mist grew so thick. Unable to see my own feet, I got lost. That’s when I started to see them. At first, I thought I was hallucinating, but then … then … then …”
Highcross grabbed Charles’ shoulders and shook them. “Spit it out, damn you! What did you see?”
“They moved so quickly, I, I …” Charles’ face was the perfect symbol for horror. His lips quivered as he stammered, “They were savages, primitives from a lost time. With armor of bone and hide, their faces were painted bright colors. They had feathers in their hair and spears with black, jagged tips. They swept over the camp and killed everyone without stopping. They would’ve killed me too, but I don’t think they saw me. When the mist began to thin again, they were gone. The only trace of them were the strange weapons they left behind. You must believe me.”
“I believe you.” Highcross remembered the strange weapon in the knight’s visor. “These savages, how many of them did you see?”
Blinking, Charles croaked out his answer. “Two, milord. There was only two of them, but they moved so quickly, and … and weapons conjured in their hands as if my magic. The two of them swept through the camp more efficiently than water. The mist seemed to carry them through. Every time I blinked they were in a different spot holding a different weapon in their hands.”
The black and white lord’s eyes widened from worry as he tried to imagine what Charles was describing. “Magic?” He shifted to face the castle, but it was still hidden in the mist. “How is this not a dream?”
“Should we retreat, milord?” Charles shivered as if from hypothermia. With his teeth rattling, he finished, “I say we get the fuck away from here, milord. This place is fucking haunted!”
It cost the very last vestige of sanity in Highcross’ mind to forgo punching Charles in the gut just then. “Don’t you remember what I told you after the lords Archester and Hickens died? We’ve gone too far to turn back, Charles. Foulmouth’s castellan may be pushing the front wain across the bailey as we speak. Can’t you see we still have a chance?”
It was clear Charles didn’t agree from the way he shook his head. “Call me a traitor and a craven, I don’t care anymore.” He spun and bustled off, limping like a boy who had lost a fight. “I’m fucking leaving his place.”
“Fine, go!” Highcross shrugged, pretending not to care. “When you hear songs sung about this day, you’ll remember this moment. You’ll hate yourself knowing who you are, knowing what you are!”
Charles looked back curtly before he disappeared into the mist. Highcross didn’t expect to see that fleeting smirk. Charles already knew exactly what he was, and he was proud of it.
Sores around Highcross’ body began to pulse as the ringing in is ears deadened. He realized all the screaming he had heard before was gone. There was no one left alive to scream. The faraway clang of steel against steel was the only thing that told Highcross he wasn’t alone in this wretched place. A pain in his knee made him limp slightly when he began forward towards the noise. He passed the large round crater in the road where the black powder had exploded. Stepping over fragments of knights, he raised an arm to guard his face from the heat of the burning wreck. The mist was still hiding the castle from his eyes. He wished he could see as it sounded like a tourney duel was taking place ahead. The clangs of parries made him quicken his pace in anticipation.
The veil of fog surrounding the castle began to thin as Highcross limped closer. The baleful crenellations upon the bulwark appeared black and gnarled. Faintly, other forms began to appear, edgeless in the blue haze. Hundreds of smoking holes pockmarked the bulwark. Under the arching gateway, the front wain was intact but unmoving. Dead knights were strewn hither and thither around the road and about the gateway. The clanging of swords came from inside the bailey. Highcross realized as much as he passed the stalled wain. He shook his head at all the cannyn balls scattered about the ground. There were hundreds of them. One headless knight on his back had a cannyn ball lodged deep into his breastplate.
Highcross stumbled into the bailey and saw billowing blue rising. Near the middle of the large, open space, Spywater’s cloak twirled as he rose and spun to face Highcross, pulling a bloody longsword out of the old knight. The old knight was dying quietly, staring up at his green lord with disbelief.
With a flourish of his blade, Spywater began striding towards Highcross, his cloak streaming behind his heels.
The black and white lord wiped sweat from his eyes. Grounding his feet, slightly bending his knees, he held his dagger menacingly.
Spywater flung off his he
lm to help even the odds before he stepped in to engage. Highcross evaded a cut and strafed left to run around the blue lord. Spywater spun to watch Highcross bolt for the old knight’s sword. It was given up gladly. “Do this, for us,” the old knight whispered, releasing his grip on the hilt.
Nodding to the knight’s dying wish, Highcross brandished the well-honed arming sword and turned to face his rival.
Spywater was staring back at him with an emotionless face. He removed the unicorn brooch at his chest and let the blue cloak fall from his shoulders. It settled on the ground behind him in a wrinkled heap.
Highcross did the same for his cloak, grimacing. Every little whit of pain on his body vanished as adrenaline pumped through him. His heart beat so fast that it hurt. With his sword in a high guard, the lord in black maille danced forward.
END NOTES BY THE AUTHOR
What’s the fate of Castle Spywater?
Has the blue lord really been alive for hundreds of years like the troll said? What’s the blue lord’s relationship with the ghost girl from Deadman’s Church?
How long is it before the sirs Jax and Medgard see Wellimgale besieged by The False King? Is the war still far from over?
Who is Black Blade and what will become of him?
Where do the survivors Bruice the bandit and Charles the footman end up?
Were Phillick and Prestings the warriors that Charles saw in the mist? Is that why the book’s called Knights of the Dawn?
Perhaps the most ominous question is one we haven’t asked yet …
Does Anaysia even exist?
I burn the midnight oil to bring you “Knights without Honor,” a book to answer all the above questions by early 2017.
“Arcanum of the Dolmen Troll” is a series of books belonging to the grander umbrella Sir Eveland’s Medieverse. “A Quarrel for a Quarrel” is a short story from Sir Eveland’s Medieverse. Read it for free by subscribing to my mailing list via my website www.timothyrjeveland.com
Other short stories from Sir Eveland’s Medieverse are “The Siege of Wellimgale” and “The Assassination of Lord Redmand,” both available on Kindle.
I hope I did my job well. Please tell me what you think by leaving a review on Amazon. Your feedback may help more than you know. Also, please feel free to share anything from Sir Eveland’s Medieverse with your friends!
Finally, if you have any questions or comments for the author, I’d love to answer. Email me at [email protected]
Knights of the Dawn (Arcanum of the Dolmen Troll Book 1) Page 23