The Coming Dawn: Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 3

by R. G. Triplett

  “We could run you through right now, and say that the beasts got you,” Pyrrhus spat as he seethed in anger.

  “But then, who would help you see, when you haven’t the sight to see on your own?” Yasen retorted as he bent down to finger the prints in the ground. “They are not here, because they have gone North. Their trail leads that way.” He pointed off into the wilderness.

  “To your mounts,” Pyrrhus growled again. “The dog has found the scent of the other mongrels.”

  The small scouting party left in pursuit of the fleeing woodcutters, though they were not alone in their mission. Perched high in the trees above them sat a murder of Ravens, whose glowing, green eyes beheld the progress of the men who did their Queen’s bidding.

  “Caw!” came the cry of a black bird as it flew back towards the stronghold on the shore. It flew past the tree line and traversed the plains till its wings carried it over the palisade walls and it landed upon the shoulder of Nogcwren herself.

  “Well there you are, my pet,” the Sorceress cooed as she sat in the court of the colony, at the head of a nearly empty table. “As loyal a servant as any queen could hope for.”

  The mood of the colony was dark, and though fires still burned in the braziers for the men who had not been given the gift of her un-light, it was plain for all to see who it was that ruled this stronghold. The dragons lay curled in the center of the square, their massive, inky bodies guarding the entrance and the exit of the gate. All who dared to pass must do so under the watch of their hateful, glowing eyes.

  “My dear Governor,” she said with great delight in her voice. “It would seem that this North Wolf has found the trail of these woodcutters of yours.”

  “Your Raveness,” he said with an exaggerated flourish of his hands. “All of my men, the enlightened and those still stumbling in the darkness, aim to serve you well.”

  “My men,” she replied.

  “My Queen?” he asked, confused at the notion.

  “You meant to say, my men, did you not?” she said, her yellowed eyes a tumult of rage.

  “Of course, my Queen,” Seig said humbly.

  “Captain Durai,” she said, her eyes not moving from Seig’s as she spoke. “Make ready the whole of my strength … the might of Aerebus must be ready to march! For when Governor Seig’s men find the misplaced woodcutters … I am quite confident that they will have led us to the last stronghold of our enemy.”

  “Yes, my queen,” the hulking captain said with rueful obedience as he turned and walked past the sleeping dragons and out into the encampment of his Nocturnal army.

  “I suppose it would do you well to muster the rest of your own command, Governor,” she ordered him as she drank deeply from a chalice of steaming wine. “I do expect these men of Haven to fight quite bravely for my cause … that is, if they hope to receive the gift that I have so graciously given you.”

  “Yes, my Queen,” Seig said. “We shall indeed fight more bravely than you have ever seen before, and I’ll be there, sword in hand, leading the charge.” He rose from the table and left her to her own thoughts and pleasures as she brooded over the battle that was soon to come.

  ***

  Yasen and Pyrrhus followed the trail through the Greywood for days, finally coming into the rocky highlands. “They might be days ahead of us, but your woodcutters did not travel as stealthily as they may wish they had once we find them,” Pyrrhus said with determination in his eyes.

  The fens of the river Argiñe began to reach cold, wet fingers into the hard ground about them as the riders continued to move northward.

  “Captain!” came the whispered voice of a sentry who held his hand high.

  “Do you see them?” Pyrrhus asked.

  The guardsman shook his head and pointed at a group of trees a hundred or so paces to the east.

  As they looked into the distance, the smell of fire and stew carried upon the thick fog. Whether these were aromas from the woodcutters or not, Pyrrhus still had an intuition that whoever was here would know where to find the ones he sought.

  The fire knight dismounted, and Yasen and the rest of the riders followed suit. “What do you see, North Wolf?” Pyrrhus asked.

  “It is too hard to tell for sure,” Yasen answered as he peered into the darkness before them. “One stacked chimney, maybe more—"

  “You have the gift and can’t even use it properly,” Pyrrhus cursed and spat.

  “I can see in the dark, but I still haven’t the eyes of an eagle,” Yasen argued as he made his way closer and closer, his hand at the handle of his axe.

  “Stop, right there!” came a shout from somewhere in the clearing.

  Yasen signaled to Pyrrhus. The guardsmen fanned out to surround the clearing.

  “We mean no harm,” Pyrrhus said as his hand gripped the hilt of his blade.

  “How do I know that?” a man shouted back. “Five riders near the Argiñe? I don’t trust it, not at all.”

  “We are looking for some lost friends of ours is all, good sir,” Pyrrhus continued as he and the rest of the company closed in their circle with measured steps.

  “What friends would five riders have all the way out here?” he continued.

  “Puppa!” came a shout just off to the right, followed by the unmistakable sound of a drawn bowstring.

  “We do not mean you harm,” Yasen said, his voice even. “We are looking for our friends and would like your help in finding them.”

  “How do you know they came this way?” the man shouted nervously. “Be off my land now, before I fill you full of these arrows!”

  “We know because I tracked them here,” Pyrrhus said, his eyes alert. “Put your bow down, old man, before you do something you won’t live to regret.”

  Just then, guardsmen came crashing out from behind the trees and charged the small cluster of thatch-roofed homes. Arrows went zipping through the air, most flying wild against the onslaught.

  “Delilah! Mother!” the man shouted out. “Get back inside!”

  The guardsmen came in closer, surrounding the lone man who stood at the center of the clearing with a great huntsman’s bow drawn taught.

  “There are no friends of yours here,” he growled at the intruders. “It’s just me and my family, and you are not welcome. Off now … begone with you!”

  One of the guardsmen took another step forward, his boot crunching against the twigs and rocks of the ground. Without warning, an arrow discharged from across the clearing and buried itself into the shoulder of the now-bleeding guardsman. In an instant the scene boiled over, and the rest of the guardsmen rushed the man with the bow, swords brandished and voices shouting. Another arrow was loosed, barely missing Yasen’s face. Screams and the sounds of struggle could be heard off in the shadows.

  “Do not kill them!” Yasen shouted at the two guardsmen who had just tackled the man with the bow. “We need them alive!”

  Pyrrhus and another of his guardsmen held a boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen years of age. The bow that had loosed the first arrow lay broken at his struggling feet.

  “Now, are there any other sons of yours out here in the trees?” Pyrrhus said as they dragged the boy to the center of the clearing.

  The father just shook his head. His face, pressed into the dirt, was a mash of fear and hatred as the guardsman held him pinned to the ground. “Please,” he said through gritted teeth, “he is just a boy. He didn’t know any better.”

  “Tell that to my man over there who is bleeding from his wounded shoulder,” Pyrrhus said as he spat.

  “My wife,” the man in the dirt said. “She has the touch of the healer about her. She can mend him up, good as new. Only… don’t hurt the boy.”

  Pyrrhus glared, then nodded his agreement. “Go on then, call for her.”

  “Dani!” the man called out. “Mahlah shot one of the men in the shoulder. Come quick, and see to the wound.”

  A skinny woman, whose once-dark hair had been run through with shocks of grey and white
, peeked her head out of the humble doorway. She held the shoulders of her daughter and looked on with fright in her eyes at the sight of her husband and son bound by the strangers in armor.

  “Are you alright, father?” the young girl asked worriedly.

  “I won’t be if you don’t help these men,” he scolded.

  The guardsman pulled him up to his knees as the woman nodded her agreement and went to fetch her tools.

  “Are you alright?” Pyrrhus shouted over to his wounded man.

  Before he could begin to answer, he was interrupted by the frantic bustling of the woman. She removed the arrow and packed the wound with a poultice of herbs and oils, and within moments had the man’s shoulder wrapped and cleaned. When she was done, she let out an exhausted, frustrated sigh and turned to address these strangers.

  “There … he will mend, though he will need to change his bandages when you return to wherever you came from.”

  “We thank you for that, however … we won’t be heading back to anywhere, not until you tell me where we can find our friends,” Pyrrhus told her.

  “Like I told you before,” the man said, his eyes pleading now. “We haven’t seen anyone out here for quite some time. It’s just us.”

  “And how is it you and your family live out here on your own?” Pyrrhus pressed. “This is the Queen’s land, isn’t it? And it doesn’t appear to me that you have taken her gift, either.”

  The woman’s face went white as she looked to her husband and then again back to her children for sign of what to do.

  “It is simple, really,” Yasen chimed in. “We know that our friends came this way. If you spotted the five of us before we spotted you, I'm sure that you spotted nearly forty large men.”

  “He said we didn’t see 'em!” the boy shouted.

  “Out of this, boy!” the man growled back. “You’ve made enough mess for now.”

  “We know you have seen them, because that axe right there, buried in the flesh of that pine stump, came all the way from across the Dark Sea.” Yasen spoke dully as he walked over to the pile of freshly chopped timber. “Now is the time when you tell us what it is that we need to know.”

  “Who are you?” the man said, the fire of his resolve diminished. “I’ve never seen your colors, nor your sigil. And you don’t have the eyes of the Sorceress?”

  “Never you mind,” Yasen said sternly as he picked up the axe and in a single fluid motion launched it at the old man.

  “Father, no!” came the cry of the woman, but the blade of the axe buried itself not a hand’s breadth from the crotch of the kneeling man.

  “They went that way, along the Argiñe River towards the falls!” Delilah blurted out, not caring to protect the strangers who got her into this mess in the first place.

  “Girl, shut your mouth,” the father said half-heartedly.

  “Why?” Yasen pressed. “What were they seeking, did they say?”

  “They were looking for the man and the woman, Cal was his name I think,” she told them willingly. “And they had a fairy, too.”

  “Have they come back this way?” Pyrrhus asked.

  “No,” she said with a scowl on her brow. “Fools probably got swept up in the river and went over the falls.”

  “We’ve told all we know,” the old man argued. “Now let us be … please.”

  “She has told us what we asked you to tell us,” Pyrrhus corrected the man, and with a flip of his head he signaled one of the guardsmen to bring his torch over to him. “Now you will get your reward for treachery against the queen.”

  With that he tossed the torch onto the roof of the main house, and a roar of fire erupted as the flames greedily licked the dry thatch. Screams and shouts of protest could be heard from the whole family.

  The guardsmen shoved the boy into the dirt and then turned to mount their horses. “Be warned,” Yasen said coldly. “The Queen and her army will be soon upon these lands. Take her gift, or hide somewhere else.”

  With the house of Delilah ablaze, and the light of the fire stretching out before them, Pyrrhus, Yasen, and the guardsmen rode out in the direction of the river.

  “Can you manage?” Yasen asked the wounded and bandaged guardsman.

  “I will be alright,” he replied through grunts of wounded exhaustion.

  “Sir,” came the voice of another guardsman. “You should send him back to the stronghold to tell the governor what we have found.”

  “I am not sending a wounded servant to report such news, and I am certainly not reporting it to the governor.” The fire knight’s contempt seethed on each word. “My report will be for the Queen and the Queen alone. You three ride to the falls and track the bastards down. When I return, it will be with the Queen’s army!”

  Pyrrhus kicked his horse and with a loud, “Yah!”

  He and the wounded guardsman rode south, back towards the stronghold. Yasen and the others continued on their way along the southern back of the Argiñe, tracking the trail of the woodcutters.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “He has been like this for far too long now,” Astyræ told the queen. “He hasn’t left that place except to sleep and to eat, and just barely at that.”

  “He is grieving a terrible loss,” Johanna reassured her with a soft hand upon her shoulder.

  “I’m worried for him,” she said, her violet eyes misting over in grief for the groomsman who held her affections. “He can’t just waste away like this. Farran’s death will be in vain if he just gives up like this.”

  “I wouldn’t say that he has given up, my lady,” Deryn kindly disagreed. “I have seen grief befall the bravest of warriors, and I think—”

  “He is lost,” Deryn’s words were interrupted by the Queen. “Finding this city but losing a friend in the process would make even the stoutest of heart unsure of the next step.”

  “Will you talk to him, Queen Johanna?” Astyræ begged.” I feel as if I am just making it worse.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I will speak with him.” With that Johanna strode eastward, on past the outskirts of the city’s clearing to the Weeping Woods in the shadow of the mountains. She saw Cal there, just inside the tree line, his back against a great elm. His golden-haired head was staring straight ahead at the carved, white, stone marker atop the mound of a gravesite.

  “I should have been there,” he said flatly as she approached. “I should have been with him, he was my horse, my responsibility.”

  “There was nothing else you could have done for him, Cal,” Johanna reasoned.

  “I should have been with him, instead of answering a bunch of questions just to appease your laws,” he continued.

  “The mightiest of our healers employed her greatest craft, and still your Farran succumbed to the Sorceress’ poison,” she argued. “What would you have done, son of Haven, that would have been greater than what Aysa could do?”

  “I would have told him, thank you,” he said, his tear-streaked face turning to meet her gaze. “I would have made sure that he knew how deeply I cared for him. I would have at least kissed his head and told him goodbye before he passed.”

  Cal rose to his feet, his swelling grief beginning to boil over into anger.

  “I did not kill your friend,” Johanna said as she stepped closer to him.

  “But you did not allow me the chance to honor him as he died!” Cal nearly shouted. “Did you?”

  Johanna was not afraid of the tumult of emotions behind the eyes of the young man, and she held his gaze. The mercy and grace of this true queen was unrelenting, even in the face of accusation.

  “Do you know why he is buried here?” she asked.

  Cal didn’t answer, but he refused to hide his indignant eyes from hers.

  “Walk with me,” she ordered kindly as she began to walk deeper into the forest before them. “Of all the peoples who have found their way to this refuge city of ours, the most mysterious to our kind were the sons of Haven. The Tree Men, as the young lady friend of y
ours calls them. They dwelt with us for a time, though they themselves were never wholly Amaian as we are; they sought after the very same legend that you, Cal, seek even now.”

  Cal followed her footsteps, past the carved image of the white stone horse, and into another small clearing surrounded by a forest of trees. He saw grave markers all about them through the mist that clung to the forest floor, adorned with swords, ships, and even an image of the great tree of Haven.

  “So, when these sons of Haven passed out of this darkening world and into the realm of the Giver of Light, we saw it only fitting to lay them to rest among their own.” She continued to speak as she stopped before a marker of the great tree. “I was but a young girl at the beginnings of womanhood when your King Illium was laid to rest here in the Zuhaitz Dolu, the mourning trees. All of the sons of Haven are buried here, at the easternmost part of our hidden kingdom, closest to their homeland.”

  Cal’s eyes went wide at the story she was telling him. “Are you saying that Illium the light seeker, the lost king of Haven, is buried here?” he asked, hardly believing that this could be true.

  “Yes. Yes, I am, Cal,” she said with a gracious smile. “Though I would not say that he was lost in the slightest.”

  He turned his head back towards the grave marker and let his trembling fingers trace the long-ago etched runes.

  The seeker of light, Illium. King of Haven, Lord beyond the waters of the mighty Itsaso.

  “Is it really you?” he said to the old grave marker, his grief momentarily overwhelmed by wonder.

  Cal spun round in a whirlwind of excitement as the boyishly hopeful thoughts crashed into the forefront of his mind. “What about his men? Were there others? Did they make it here with him?”

  “Have you not been listening?” she said kindly. “All of these markers are the sons of Haven… and some are the wives and children of the sons of Haven.”

  Cal looked back at the markers and then again at Johanna, confusion wrinkling his brow. “They were the daughters of Shaimira, whose hearts and fates became interwoven with your kind,” she told him.