Until Dawn

by Laura Taylor

  Suddenly, it seemed Faith had had enough. With a cry, she charged her horse across the road and into the forest. Half a dozen women followed her without any prompting, and a volley of shouts rang out from the trees. A handful of men rushed after them, blades drawn.

  Gradually, the sounds of battle in the bush faded out. Then, as an eerie silence settled over the forest, a sudden burst of swearing was let loose. Whisper came limping out of the scrub a moment later, clutching a bloody wound on his leg. “Mother-fucking son of a bitch!” he swore, an expression of anger, rather than pain. Mei-Lien rushed over to him, Torrent close behind, helping him limp across to one of the utes. “Bastard was hiding in a trench. I walked right over the fucking top of him,” Whisper griped, no doubt pissed off that he’d missed that detail.

  The rest of the warriors emerged from the trees, some of them stained with fresh blood. “Ten of them,” Rochelle reported. “Dead now, like the maggots they are.”

  “Is everyone all right?” Faith asked, taking charge. “Celeste, I want a headcount.”

  Dusk had already seen that Mei-Lien and Torrent were fine, so she checked Willow next. “We’re okay,” she told her, hugging the children. “Shaken, but not hurt.” She stood up, picking up Julia and tugging Mikey along as she went to see how badly Whisper was injured.

  “Flame? How are you holding up?” Dusk asked next.

  Flame was lying in the tray of the ute, the metal sides doing a serviceable job of keeping everyone inside safe. “No worse than we were before,” she reported.

  Mist was on horseback, and a quick glance showed that one of Faith’s women was already checking her over, so Dusk looked around for Aidan.

  “Aidan?”

  Had he gone to check the drivers in the utes? Nope… Or maybe help Faith with the horses?

  Where was he?

  “Aidan?” she called, louder this time.

  Nearby, Whisper put a hand on Mei-Lien’s, making her pause in her fussing over his wound. “Aidan?” Whisper called, louder again. Around them, people left off what they were doing, realising that one of their own was missing.

  “Did he go into the bushes?” Dusk asked, heading across the road without waiting for an answer. Perhaps he’d been hurt and was lying under a bush somewhere. “AIDAN?” she yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth to make the sound travel further.

  She was going to have to go and search for him. Faith was already clambering off her horse, no doubt ready to lend a hand, and Dusk turned to Whisper to tell him where she was going…

  A rough shape lying in a ditch at the edge of the road caught her attention. She took two steps closer, so that the weeds weren’t obstructing her view, and saw that it was a body.

  Her heart all but stopped in her chest, then started again, twice as fast. “Aidan?” Time seemed to bend in on itself, a surreal haze descending on her that seemed like she was in a dream.

  She wasn’t dreaming. She was certain of it…

  On leaden legs, she forced herself to march over to the body lying in the ditch. Maybe it was one of the slavers. Maybe it was one of the other men…

  She fell to her knees, her mind racing far quicker than her body was moving. Why wouldn’t her arms move faster? She rolled the body onto its back.

  An arrow had struck him cleanly through the chest, a parting gift from a most hated enemy. Aidan the Ferocious, proud warrior, faithful leader of the Tribe of the Clear River Valley, loving husband and modern-day hero, was dead.

  Someone was screaming, and it wasn’t until Faith grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into a fierce hug that Dusk realised it was her.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The sun was setting over the western hills, the forest turning golden for a few brief minutes before it faded to a dim grey. In a clearing at the eastern end of the village, the funeral pyres had been set up in neat rows. It had taken hours to collect enough wood to burn all the bodies, but no one had complained. They’d then had to make sure they had enough space, that the fires were far enough away from the trees that they didn’t accidentally start a bushfire. Thankfully, the winter had been wet enough that the undergrowth wouldn’t burn too easily, though a couple of scouts had been posted at the edges of the clearing to watch for any embers that looked like they could cause trouble.

  Throughout the afternoon, everyone had taken the time to bathe, washing away more than just blood and dirt after the horrors of the last few days. Nicholas and Mei-Lien had done a more thorough job of treating the wounded, while others had prepared food for the malnourished women from the Gully. It had been cooperation at its finest, everyone working for the benefit of the whole, those physically able lending their strength, while those less able sat down and chopped carrots or diced potatoes.

  Now, they were all gathered in front of the pyres, waiting for Nicholas to begin the funeral ceremony. They were just shy of ninety people, and it was an odd thing to realise that the women now outnumbered the men, almost two to one.

  A couple of logs had been laid at the front of the crowd, for those whose wounds prevented them from standing throughout the ceremony. Whisper was among those sitting in the front row. The wound to his leg had been deep, and Mei-Lien had spent the bulk of the afternoon telling him to bloody well sit down and stop damaging it even more. Beside him was Willow, Julia cradled on her lap, Mikey sitting on her other side. Julia still hadn’t spoken – Dusk had found out after the battle that she’d stopped speaking from the point of the fight with the slavers on the road north, and so far, being back home hadn’t made a difference. It was going to be a long, hard journey forward for all of them, and Dusk felt a wave of sorrow for the horrors these two youngest and most vulnerable members of their tribe had suffered.

  Dusk was standing near the front of the group, on the left-hand side, with Flame beside her. The men of the village had already burned Hawk’s body while they’d been away – an unfortunate necessity when they had no means of preserving the bodies for a delayed funeral – but it was widely acknowledged that this ceremony was as much for those who had been killed in the initial attack, as it was for those killed in the raid on the Gully. Upon arriving back at the village, the caretakers had sadly informed the tribe that Raven, the missing scout from before the raid, had also been found dead in the forest, his throat slit by the slavers.

  Despite the death of her husband, Flame had already declared her intention to stay with the Tribe of the Clear River Valley. Family, she’d insisted, was about more than just a husband. For her own part, Dusk was deeply grateful she was staying. The two of them had become close friends, and Dusk wasn’t sure how she would have coped with Aidan being gone if Flame had left as well.

  Nicholas was standing out the front of the group, perched on top of a milk crate so that everyone could see and hear him. He was visibly choked up, and had to take frequent pauses as he began speaking. “From dust we were created,” he said, his face pale, looking like he’d aged ten years in a couple of days, “and to dust we will return. Words cannot express the loss we’ve all suffered over the last few days. The men and women now lying here have made our lives richer in a multitude of ways. They’ve been our friends, our teachers, our brothers and sisters, and our lovers. They’ve brought laughter and joy into our lives. They’ve helped us endure the bad times and to celebrate the good ones. They have shared our unique history, and helped us create a future that is yet to be realised, but which will be far brighter as a result of their contributions. Here lie the faithful warriors of the Tribe of the Clear River Valley, and of the Tribe of the South Wind. We will remember them.”

  “We will remember them,” everyone repeated.

  Nicholas stepped down from the crate and took a moment to collect himself. Then he reached for the customary torch, propped up nearby, and lit the end from a small fire burning in a brazier.

  Waving Dusk forward, Nicholas handed the torch to her. Her hand shook as she took it. Tears blurring her vision, she stepped up to Aidan’s pyre. His body lay in
the centre of the front row, and for the first time, it occurred to Dusk to wonder who the tribe’s leader would be now. To say that he would be hard to replace was a significant understatement.

  She reached out with the torch, ready to light the wood at the bottom of the stack, but then hesitated, pulling back slightly. Aidan’s body was covered in straw, oil sprinkled over the wood to help it catch, and in a moment of vivid, searing sorrow, Dusk reflected that she would never, ever get to see his face again. In the old world, people had at least had photos and videos of their loved ones, plenty of reminders of the life they had once lived and the person they had been.

  But Dusk would have only her memories.

  Steeling herself, she leaned forward and touched the torch to the wood. As the flames began licking up the side of the pyre, she passed the torch back to Nicholas, who handed it to Faith, for her to light the next pyre, and on it travelled, down the row, each pyre lit by the deceased’s friends or family. Dusk stood there for a long time, until the flames had consumed the straw and the wood at the bottom of the pyre had begun to settle, a slow, peaceful collapse as the dead were returned to the earth.

  At length, she became aware of Flame standing beside her. Needing to feel a connection to something, to someone, Dusk reached out and took her hand, weaving her fingers through Flame’s.

  With her free hand, Flame reached up and rubbed Dusk’s shoulder, then tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, out of her face. “This was his dream,” she said, and Dusk looked at her in confusion. Aidan’s dream? To have his tribe wounded and broken, his people traumatised? “This is exactly what he wanted in the end,” Flame went on, staring into the fire. “A new tribe, men and women working together, helping each other, supporting each other. It’s been a bloody hard road to get here, but this is the embodiment of everything he was fighting for.”

  Dusk said nothing, her throat choked up again, a fresh wave of tears falling. Flame was right. All the way along, he’d been trying to find a brand of equality that everyone could live with, despite pressures from every imaginable direction that he should not succeed.

  “Dusk?” Flame asked, worried at Dusk’s silence.

  Dusk shook her head. She took a deep breath, fighting back the tears, and then finally managed to find her voice.

  “I became Dusk at the end of the old world, at the breaking of everything we had known.” Until now, she’d never spoken of the reason behind her name, not even to Aidan. He knew about the ‘two swords’ part, but somehow he’d never asked why she was called Dusk. It wasn’t a common name, back in western society, after all. Each name had a story, as she well knew, but some of them were not for the public to know. “It was the end of humanity,” she explained, and Flame listened intently, paying the story the respect it deserved. “I honestly didn’t think we were going to make it – not me personally, but the whole of humanity. It was the twilight of not just our civilisation, but our entire species. Dusk seemed the most appropriate thing I could be.” She looked around at the gathered men and women. In quiet groups, some people were talking or comforting their friends. Others were just staring at the flames, crying or hugging each other. She wasn’t entirely surprised to find that just as often, women were hugging men, tribe comforting tribe, everyone openly and equally invited to share their grief. “We have a new beginning now,” she told Flame, a dim and tentative hope flickering to life, deep within her mind. “My name is Dawn.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Laura Taylor has been writing since she was a teenager, spending long hours lost in imaginary adventures as new worlds and characters spring to life. Her books are a careful blend of escapism and reality, indulging in the joys of fantasy, while staying grounded in real world emotions and challenges.

  Laura lives on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia and has a passion for nature, animals, hiking, and of course, reading.

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