Haggart's Dawn

by Martyn J. Pass

  Haggart waved him away with a dismissive flick of his wrist and nudged his chair closer to the fire. The Captain shook his empty tankard at Harry.

  “What a waste. Such a healthy body under such a dull mind,” said the Captain. “If only I had that body with the mind I have now.”

  “Then there would be a healthy man sat beside the fire, as far from war as he could get. I don't care for the youthfulness he still has – after what we've seen I'd take this pub any day. Let ignorant youth fight for glory - we've done our bit, we should be left to enjoy what we have left.”

  The Captain nodded emphatically and finished his drink with a final long draught that dribbled through the corners of his beard. Harry had been with them since opening and knew their odd habits well enough to be standing by with a full jug of mead to refill their cups.

  “Don't you miss it?” asked the Captain. “Even just a bit?”

  “I'm not sure I do. Do I miss our mates, the disciplines, the routines? Yes, I most certainly do. Civilian life doesn't suit me and especially one that has been forced upon me by,” he lowered his voice, “those bloody Council bastards sat in their pretty castle.”

  “Bastards,” agreed the Captain.

  “The only bright side to this little affair is that I can drink as much as I want from my own barrels without the bloody camp cook pouring my cups for me.”

  “Camp bloody cook, the bastard.”

  He sat back feeling the dizzy fuzz in his skull that too much mead puts there and closed his eyes.

  “Do I miss it?” he mumbled. “Of course I do.”

  *

  When Harry had closed the bar and blown out all the lamps, Haggart bid him goodnight and barred the door behind him as he left for his own home. With a tallow candle in his hand he returned to the fire which was slowly dying down to dull glowing embers the colour of a midsummer's sunset. The Captain was snoring gently in his chair and Haggart took the empty mug from his hands and set it on the table next to him. Then he threw a sheep skin over his legs, poured himself another mug of mead, and sat back down in his own chair to doze a little too.

  “You really should try sleeping in a bed,” whispered Lorrie from behind him. She was wrapped in a blanket with her bare feet poking out from the bottom. He gestured to the chair nearest the fire and she sat down gently, offering a faint smile to the Captain and his rattling snores.

  “I did the day we bought the place. Too many nights on battlements. Too many voices in the dark. The dying moaning for their mothers. The scared muttering prayers to nothing.” He could still see them, still smell them and he knew that no matter how old he got those memories would only get more vivid, empowered by the nearing of his own death.

  “I know,” she said so softly it hurt him to hear it. They watched the fire spit and hiss for a while, neither one wanting to broach the obvious subject that was as much a guest in the room as the drunk cook. In the end in was Haggart who spoke first.

  “I thought you had this under control,” he said to her. A tear escaped from the corner of her eye and ran down some of the old familiar tracks.

  “I thought so too,” she said.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I... I think I just needed to feel something other than the emptiness that's there, that hollow spot in my chest I just can't seem to shake. I wanted to fill it... he was nice at first. He told me he loved me. He... called me a different name... I got angry...”

  “Did it happen again?” She nodded and wiped her eyes with the corner of the blanket. “What colour was the flame?”

  “I can't remember. Blue I think.” Haggart nodded and held out his hand, palm upwards. A flicker of light appeared and began to hover above his finger tips, turning from red to green to red again, finally settling on becoming a soft orb of blue the colour of a clear spring morning sky. She looked sideways at it, avoiding it but with her face bathed in the light. It struck the helmet above the mantle but suddenly seemed to be absorbed by it and reflected none of the light back.

  “This blue?” She smiled. “That's a good sign. It means you're starting to master it.”

  “He was scared,” she continued regardless. “He got angry and called me a Witch. The light burned his...”

  “They were passing through, Lorrie. They won't be back,” he said sharply.

  “Will they tell some one?” she whispered, her voice higher this time.

  “I don't think so. He'd have to explain what he was doing at the time and I think his wife would have been a bit unhappy. Just promise me something?”

  “What?”

  “You'll try to stop it, okay?” She looked at him, her face beautifully caught by the amber glow of the fire. “No more men.”

  “I'll try.”

  “If the fire turns red again...” She nodded. He smiled. “Okay then. Back to bed with you.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I mean it. No one has ever been so patient with me as you.” She got up, threw her arms around him and squeezed him hard. He bid her goodnight and she returned up the staircase.

  With his eyes still closed, the Captain muttered, “You're too soft on her.”

  “How can I not be? I've never seen someone so much like her mother,” he replied.

  “She's dead, Haggart. Nothing you can do for that girl will bring her back.”

  “I preferred you when you were pretending to be asleep.”

  *

  The following morning Haggart opened the door to Harry who'd brought the sharp golden sunlight of a summer's day on his back. It was crisp and beautifully clear and there was the fragrance of mown grass in the air that sent memories dashing across his mind, memories of summers in the fields, of first loves and sleeping under the shade of the enormous oak tree on their land. Such a start to the day put Haggart in a walking mood and once he'd helped Harry begin cleaning the bar and moving barrels around, he excused himself to take a walk down the lane that led past the few small houses that made up the village of Sander's End. It was named after the famous battle of Sander's Hill and was rumoured to have been the final resting place of the once revered General Alfred Sanderson who'd suffered a mortal wound defending the hills above the dizzying war pits of Saran'nor - at least that's what he'd learned from the cracked, leather-bound volume of 'A History Of War', given to him at the end of the campaign that eerily matched that of Sanderson's own wars a 100 years earlier.

  Haggart left the village under the steadily rising heat of the sunrise and took a left turn up the track that led to the Overlook - a jutting piece of cliff face that offered staggering views of the wild, verdant countryside that spanned the northern horizon. From here the Copper Mountain could be seen, its peak most often times hidden behind dense white clouds and east of it, the hills of Farnen and the valleys of the dead - so named because of the treacherous marshes that covered the valley floors. Just beyond vision lay the ocean that boiled and foamed on all sides of the country, then beyond further into Haggart's own home - the frozen wastes of the north, specifically Sturgenvad, the place of his birth. He'd only been a child when his parents had come across the sea and settled on the island country of Ulfwen yet he still felt that somewhere over the sea his true home still called to him.

  He stretched his legs, taking long strides and deep breaths, still thinking about Lorrie and the Captain and Talbert and sometimes even Shanks came into his mind's eye, staring at him from the bow of the sunken Abergwen, shaking his head.

  As he reached the top of the cliff, he saw the lake shimmering under the rising sun and the trees swaying gently with the breeze as if goading him to walk amongst them like he'd done last summer. He could do it, he thought. Go. Leave. Set off alone and go north to where the forests took over the land and where you would never see another person again. Would they follow him or think him mad? He sat on a flat slab of rock near a lone beach tree and stared northward thinking all these things through as the day wore slowly on around him. His eyes grew heavy and it wasn't long before he was dozi
ng where he sat.

  Then he saw them - faces coming out of the mist, walking slowly across a scorched battlefield, stepping on the half-sunken corpses sliding deeper into the mud. He saw faces on the ground. People he knew. Friends. Family. Lorrie. The Captain. Pushed down by the marching army, thrust deeper below the suckling, slapping mud. He looked at their faces - shifting shadows that flittered with ever changing visages. Armour rusty. Swords blunt and chipped. On and on they marched, a vast uncountable horde.

  “What are they?” he asked aloud. He was suddenly aware that he was standing on a rock that thrust out of a boulder pile at the foot of a cliff face. A robed figure appeared next to him at once, his grey hair falling onto his shoulders like spider's webs crowning a stern, chiselled face with eyes as black as coal.

  “They are coming,” the man answered him. “They are sending forth their dead first. They will come under a sign for all to see.”

  “When?” said Haggart.

  The man pointed to the sky which he saw was as black as the ground beneath his feet. A single star shone brightly until a shadow, somehow darker than the night, could be seen to swallow it whole.

  “See and understand,” the man said and was gone.

  Haggart watched them march around him, passing him on all sides, their feet thundering and their armour clattering like a demonic orchestra playing a grim dirge. Ahead, as far as the horizon, the army could be seen ever marching.

  He raised his hand, palm upwards, and conjured the red orb that hovered above his fingertips. It glowed brightly, pulsing with energy, before turning suddenly black, absorbing the light around it. The flesh began to fall away from his hand, blackened and rotten, until the bones glistened with puss.

  Haggart jerked awake and stood, the midday sun now high above his head. He looked at his hand and saw a rune had been burned into the palm. He took a last look at the lake, then turned and made his way back to the pub.

  *

  It was late in the afternoon when he walked through the front doors and the Captain was having lunch when he entered. He waved him over and wiped the sweat from his brow with a cloth, sweat he'd worked up felling trees in the field at the bottom of their land. It'd long been his routine to keep his muscles working ever since they'd left the army and in the past Haggart had often joined him, if only to stave off the ever increasing pressure of old age and perhaps remain a little bit supple.

  Gesturing to Harry he sat with the Captain and had his much-late breakfast placed in front of him along with his usual mug of coffee. He began to tell the Captain what had happened at the overlook and when he'd finished his plate was empty, yet the Captain had stopped eating much earlier on.

  “You're sure it was a vision?” he asked. Haggart showed him his hand. The colour drained from his face and he pushed his dinner aside. “The last one was...”

  “Twenty years ago,” Haggart finished. “The rune back then was very similar. We can be sure it's genuine.”

  “And this army,” he asked. “It was dead? Corpses on the march, but where were they going? Were there any clues, any features in the landscape? Anything to tell us what's going to happen and where?”

  “I didn't recognise the landscape or the stars or anything at all for that matter. The sky was black, but not like night, like a great shadow had been stretched across it like you might spread a table cloth. I'd never seen an army like it, the style of their helms, the working of the plates, nothing in my memory matched it. The landscape looked burned, scorched by a tremendous flame. Nothing at all was familiar to me. Yet the Oracle spoke of a sign to come, but the star being swallowed doesn't make sense to me, I'd have to consult the Library and perhaps see if there's a more specific reference there.”

  “Are you going to?” said the Captain. Haggart shook his head.

  “Not yet. We were always warned not to act rashly if this happened. There's been no other evidence, no rumours, no news of any army nor anything to back up the vision. I'll write it all down for the time being and keep it in the study. It might not have been meant for us, personally, it might be for someone else, someone I must pass it onto.”

  “Perhaps. Still, it's bloody unnerving though. The last one turned out to be very true - at a great cost to a great many people, though thankfully many more were saved.”

  “Visions. Runes. It's the part of this bizarre gift that leaves me with more questions than answers. I could spend a lifetime reading all the books in the City and still know only a fraction of what happens in our kind.”

  “The world seems hell-bent on being as cryptic as possible,” said the Captain. “I for one am happy in my ignorance. I swing the axe, I command the men, I eat, drink and sleep. It's very simple and I like it that way. You can keep your Summoning, Haggart. I wouldn't trade my humble ways for yours any day. Visions? No thanks. Runes burned into my hand, never.”

  “Is this your idea of support because I'm feeling like a man who won a bet only to realise he lost.”

  The Captain grinned.

  “Exactly,” he said. “You lost the day you were born, you just haven't realised it yet.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Not a problem, friend.”

  People began to fill up the Inn. Most of them were fisherman from the lake looking for something to eat before going back out on their boats, their faces wind-burned and their hair in wild tangles on their heads. They congregated at the far end of the bar and ordered fish that, more than likely, they'd caught themselves and sold to Haggart.

  Lorrie appeared as the Captain got up to fill his mug and pulled a chair up to their table. She was bare foot again, her hair as much a tangled mess as the sailors, and she sat down with a thump and groaned.

  “Good afternoon,” said the Captain. “Coffee?”

  Lorried nodded, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles trying desperately to force life into them. At the bar a head turned and Haggart turned with it. A man in a dark mud stained cloak and high boots was staring at her and his cold eyes greedily ate up her figure in one pass. When he saw Haggart glaring at him he turned back to his cup.

  “Sleep well?” he asked her, turning away from the stranger. She shook her head. “Nightmare?” Nod. “Same one?” Another nod. The Captain returned with three steaming mugs and shared them out.

  “Are you coming out to the block, Lorrie?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Lorrie here chops those logs up pretty well considering there's hardly any meat on her bones.”

  “It's better than sitting in here,” said Haggart. “I'm going to ride out to the Valley and get a cart load of mead. Anything else we're running short of, Captain?”

  “Wine - and not that cheap drain water Fiddick sold us last year. I didn't feel well off that last batch and I heard a few complaints from the locals the other week.”

  “I'm sure he'll be pleased to heart that piece of news, I must say I never tried any of it myself. Was it really that bad?”

  “When the locals here start complaining it must be bad. While you're heading in that direction, see if Shanks is out there, and remind him who his friends are.”

  “Will do.”

  Haggart got up and went over to the bar but Harry was talking with the stranger who, after taking one look at him, snorted something under his breath before taking a long draught from his mug. Harry looked flushed and said,

  “This man here is asking if Lorrie...”

  “No,” snapped Haggart.

  “She's very pretty,” said the stranger. “I'll pay well.” He moved his hand from the bar top and revealed two small golden coins that glittered in the afternoon sun pouring in through the window like honey. It went hand in hand with his sickly-sweet expression.

  “I hate saying things twice,” said Haggart. “We don't whore our women out here. If you want crotch rot, go to the Old Nag four miles down the way.”

  “I want this one,” he said.

  “Get out,” said Haggart. The Captain was on his feet and came towards
them, thrusting his face into the stranger's, their noses nearly touching. He didn't move and Haggart felt his stomach tighten as the old smell of battle stung his senses.

  “You heard him,” the Captain hissed. “Out.”

  The stranger got up and the pub was eerily quiet. Those who'd been having their lunch had stopped talking and all eyes were on them. It was then that Haggart began to feel his skin prickling and the palm of his right hand started to ache as he realised what this man was.

  The world suddenly stopped dead and all movement ceased. Sounds were snatched from his hearing. The sunlight dimmed and gave way to oppressive darkness. Only the stranger, lit with blood-red fire, moved and writhed before him, grinning and laughing silently as Haggart reeled from his attack, summoning his own defences learned in the training halls so many years ago. Every nerve sang to the terrible tune of pain as the stranger attempted to shatter his mind, but Haggart would not be subdued so easily. He retaliated immediately and the connection broke.

  “You're a...” the stranger began to say but was unable to finish his sentence because the Captain had driven his fist into his throat. He crumpled onto the floor in a gasping heap, writhing and clutching his neck as he tried to suck air into his lungs. Haggart turned to see Lorrie breathing hard, clutching her head in both hands and sweating profusely.

  “A Hunter,” said Haggart between breaths. “In our pub.”

  “I'm sorry...” stammered Harry. His face had turned pale and the glass he was holding was on the verge of shattering in his hands. “I didn't realise.”

  “Neither did I, though I should have,” said the Captain, reaching down and searching him. He took a heavy coin purse and a brass pin in the shape of a letter 'Q' from inside his coat and set them on the bar, kicking him as he tried to stop him. “He won't be needing either of these,” he said. “I'll get rid of him.”