Lost in the Dawn (Erythleh Chronicles Book 1)

by Catherine Johnson

  She had caught the mutters of dismay from some of the assembled guests, and the whispers of gossip. She had also caught the murmured affirmation of friendship and a reminder to hold firm from Consul Seddrill. He had not been alone in those sentiments, but they had been very much in the minority. Serwren had paid close attention to those that wished her well, and those that used her misery for their entertainment. She would remember.

  All too soon she was lying in her conjugal bed, wearing a gauzy gown of transparent silk that felt far too insubstantial. She would much rather have been wearing a suit of armour. She had no wish to titillate her husband, but when she had looked through the clothes that had supposedly been brought from her rooms and tidied away in the dressers and wardrobes of her husband’s home, there was no sign of the plain cotton gowns that she favoured.

  Her groom, who had stayed to drink with the wedding party for some time after Serwren had left to ready herself for bed, came into the room. He opened the door so heavily that it crashed against the wall behind it. He stumbled a step on his way to the side of the bed, and Serwren realised he was drunk. Unfortunately, it did not look like he was in danger of passing out before he could consummate their marriage.

  It was a struggle for Bornsig to rid himself of his clothes; the buttons and ties would not co-operate with this his alcohol-stymied fingers. It still seemed all too soon that he was hefting his naked bulk under the covers.

  “Take that off,” he grunted, motioning towards Serwren’s night gown.

  Serwren complied, because she couldn’t see any way not to, not without surely earning a blow for her disobedience. She was trapped. This was inevitable, sanctioned by her own father. She had no escape. She bit back a sob as her husband rolled over her. She gagged on his fetid breath, and forced her mind into a foggy, grey place, where reality had no bearing.

  She lay as still as a corpse as her husband heaved over her, in her. It wasn’t quite as painful as when Erkas had violated her, but it still hurt. Her husband had not been blessed with a large weapon, but she didn’t want him, and that made his progress agonising enough. She commanded herself to feel nothing. She was empty. Her future was bleak, it would be an endless repetition of pain, fear and disgust.

  Thankfully it was over quickly.

  As soon as Bornsig rolled off her, Serwren pulled her sore body from the bed and eased her way to the water room to clean the slime from between her legs. The sticky mess brought bile to rise in her throat, but mercifully, there was no blood.

  When she re-entered the bed chamber, before she blew out the remaining candles and gingerly climbed back into the bed, she wrapped herself in a robe of heavy brocade that would normally have been worn to breakfast in.

  Bornsig scoffed in the darkness. “As if that will stop me.”

  Serwren was empty. She had nothing to live for, nothing to care for anymore. “Does it not bother you, that I don’t enjoy it, that I don’t want it?”

  “What reason is there to be upset when I have your nubile young body at my disposal?” There was something like a sneer in his tone.

  Serwren was afraid at that comment, that he meant to take her again. Instead she heard the sounds of an expansive yawn and felt the mattress shudder as Bornsig rolled over. Almost before the bed had settled, he was snoring, loudly.

  Serwren did not sleep. She was too afraid of the nightmares that she knew she were waiting. Since Erkas had forced himself on her, her nights were filled with evil dreams of degradation. She stared into the dark and let her silent tears fall where they would.

  ~o0o~

  The morning of her first day as a married woman had dawned so bright and clear that Serwren, awake well before her husband, had immediately risen, dressed and headed for the palace stables. She had not asked, and had not received any advice on the matter, but her mare had not been sold. Therefore, she considered that the privilege of riding the animal still belonged to her.

  Wanting to be self-sufficient in most things, she had learned to fit a saddle and bridle herself. So now, with the sky still blushed with pink, she rode out into the countryside without needing to wake any of the stable hands.

  She rode far into the countryside and did not return to the city until the sky had begun to burn with shades of gold and crimson in the west. She had been lucky to stumble across a farmer’s cottage, where the wife had been washing linens in a tub of water in just outside the door. Serwren had paused to wish the lady good day and had been invited to share her lunch. The woman had informed Serwren that her sons and husband would remain in the fields for their meal, for there was much to be done. Serwren had enquired about the nature of their lives and work, and the woman had answered at length. Serwren had thus had learned of a way of life that she had hardly known existed.

  Serwren had considered running away, had entertained the daydream of simply not returning to the city, but she had recognised the futility of that whimsy, and the greater risk to herself that such a plan posed, as she was without money, clothes or weapons.

  When she returned to what was now her home, she felt invigorated. The air had been fresh and sharp with the promise of the season. The trees and bushes had been decked in their first flush of flowers, their branches and leaves were the silken and green, filled of sap before the coming heat would dry them out.

  Serwren felt stronger than she had in a very, very long time. Possibly ever. She was limited by her circumstances, but she was determined.

  She visited the kitchens before she went to wash and change. The single occupant of the room, a maid who was busily harassed with the task of preparing the evening meal, paid her no attention. On entering the bedroom and finding another house maid in the middle of changing the bed linens, Serwren instructed her to make up a bed in one of the smaller bedrooms before she finished her tasks for the day.

  She joined Bornsig for their evening meal, thankful that their seats were at opposite ends of the table, as far away from each other as possible. Her husband did not enquire about her whereabouts for the day, although he grumbled a little that she had not been in his bed when he had awoken. After their meal, Serwren pleaded exhaustion and voiced her plans to retire to bed early. Bornsig laughed cruelly and said that he would join her shortly.

  By the time he had ventured away from his never-emptying glass of wine, he had to search for Serwren, because she was not in the bed in the master bedroom. He found her, as she had intended, in one of the smaller rooms.

  “I like this,” he slurred as he stumbled towards the bed in the absolute dark, for Serwren had closed the shutters and the drapes at the windows and had extinguished all the candles. “There’s a sense of variety about it. Of course, you’ll come back to our room when we’re done.”

  His words cut off with a gargle, because when he sat heavily on the bed, Serwren pulled out the knife that she’d been hiding under the pillow and held it to his throat.

  She was careful to keep her body from touching his, so that he could not tell where she was in the dark. She kept the point of the large kitchen knife over a certain location in his neck, just under his ear, and pressed it forward. If she pressed it too hard, it would sever the artery there, and she would be a very young widow. The notion was entirely too tempting.

  “Our marriage is consummated,” she whispered. “I will never share your bed again.”

  In a move that she hadn’t been expecting, Bornsig simply launched himself backwards. Serwren shrieked. She was trapped under his weight. She tried to get from underneath him, but he rolled in the same direction that she did, which meant that he was on top of her, facing her. She could feel his cock stiffening against her leg. He rose up on straightened arms, but that still left his great belly squashing her into the mattress.

  “Ahhh, a little fight makes the dish all the more piquant.” Bornsig jerked his hips to add emphasis to his lecherous words.

  Serwren was disorientated for a moment, almost swallowed by her panic. Her hands clenched involuntarily, at least one did;
the other was still holding the knife. Feeling a powerful surge of something like hope, she brought the knife between their bodies, not caring at all if she cut herself in the process.

  “Touch me again, and I won’t slit your throat, I’ll take your cock. I don’t care how or where you sate your lust, but it will never again be on my body.”

  Serwren pressed the knife forward to emphasise her point. Bornsig gasped in pain and she felt a trickle of blood from his groin run down her thigh. He went to his knees, mostly, she thought, to keep his manhood safe. Serwren used the opportunity to scramble back, off the bed. She kept it as a barrier between her and the husband she despised.

  She couldn’t rely on anyone else to keep her safe. Her father had discarded her. Jorrell had been sent away. The consuls that had muttered friendship to her were powerless to help her in her marriage. She had only herself. That was the realisation that she had come to during the day as she had spoken to another woman who spent her life fighting a hard battle against elements that she could not control.

  At that moment, Serwren felt an emotion so strong it was almost a physical pain. Something hardened inside her, as if her heart had truly become a lump of stone. The sensation was so acute that she did not even savour the triumph of her success, as her husband rose on shaky legs and slunk out of the room.

  She listened for the sounds of him retreating to the master room, and only then did she venture over to make sure that the door to her new sanctuary was locked securely. She climbed into the bed, placed the knife carefully under her pillow and, pulling the covers tightly to her chin, prepared to endure her life alone.

  Chapter Ten

  It should have been somewhere around the middle of the season of Doohr; Jorrell supposed that it still was. Felthiss would be growing dry and hot with the coming of the season of the god of fire. In Naidac, however, the only notable change in the season was that the snow had given way to persistent drizzle. It was no longer bitterly cold, but it was not warm, and now everything and everyone was permanently in a state of damp.

  Tempers were running short. Almost everybody was impatient with the miserable weather. It was impossible to keep warm when no clothes or blankets could be kept dry. The tents were supposed to be waterproof, but although they withstood the misty drizzle well enough, they leaked during savage downpours, and they were defenceless against the ever-deepening mud.

  The tramp of thousands of boots had turned the camp into a quagmire, and the wet weather had continued for so long that the ground could absorb no more moisture. Small streams ran wherever the ground was rutted enough to form a channel. The mud was a sucking, insatiable monster. It threatened to steal a man’s boots with each step. Horses did not fare much better, and only made the problem worse. There were almost constant shouts for assistance as carts, heavy enough when not laden with supplies, got caught fast with their wheels bogged down.

  The excess water meant that the latrines were not functioning efficiently, and often overflowed. Dysentery and fevers were afflicting more than three quarters of the men at any time. It was difficult to keep the supplies of food dry, and much of the rations were mould-ridden and rotten. Morale was a dying thing.

  Jorrell’s days were filled with grime and blood. The Naidacans were a tenacious people, with a seemingly never-ending supply of new recruits. His life could not have been more different from the gentle, peaceful existence he had known in Felthiss. Although he had known how to fight, and been reasonably proficient at it, Jorrell had hardly ever had cause to use his fists before joining the army. He had hunted, but killing dumb animals from a distance with a bow and arrow was not the same a thrusting a sword into a man when you could see the pain and terror etched on his face. Now Jorrell's skills lay in slicing and cleaving, in wounding and killing.

  In the beginning, night terrors had plagued Jorrell’s sleep, as his mind relived the horrors that he’d seen and performed during the day. Those had quickly faded as horror piled upon horror until his psyche was overwhelmed. Some men lost their wits at that point. Those men were often hanged before they could hurt themselves or their fellow soldiers. Most, including Jorrell, adjusted to their new reality and accepted that maiming, gore and death were now their normality. Now that such things were no longer unusual to him, they no longer plagued his unconscious hours.

  The soldiers were lining up now in their serried ranks, preparing for the next battle. This battle was being fought in the midst of a great forest. They were out in the open, where trees had been cleared to make way for the fighting. The Felthissians had been under attack from the enemy as they wielded their axes. Men had died to create this battleground; hundreds more had died upon it.

  At least half as many men who died on the battleground died in the field hospital. The living conditions, treacherous enough for a healthy man, were fatal to a wounded one. It was not easy to pass the infirmary tents; the stench of gangrene, the stink of rotten flesh, clung to the back of men’s throats until it was almost impossible not to smell it, even when well clear of the whimpers and moans of the injured.

  Jorrell resettled his shield on his arm. He was used now to the weight of it. His lance felt like an extension of his arm. His armour, hammered scales of bronze that resembled the skin of a snake, clinked gently as he flexed his arms. He was comforted by the solid weight of his sword at his hip and by the steady presence of Cael by his side.

  They held their shields in front of them, forming an impenetrable wall. Vision was limited between their shields and their helmets. They heard Naidacans before they saw them. Their enemy streamed from the trees, screaming their war cries. Some men trembled, and their shields rattled. Jorrell and Cael were steady, waiting.

  As always, there was a jarring thud as Jorrell’s lance found its first target, embedded in a Naidacan warrior’ s gut. And as always, there was a sickening moment as he tugged the shaft free, when it felt as though the lance might be pulled from his grip. He stabbed again and again, but as the enemy bore down on them, the Felthissians were forced to abandon the long, unwieldy poles in favour of their swords.

  The shouted command came for their line to press forward. Feeling that the man to his left was about to lose his nerve and bolt, Jorrell began to yell out a rhyming, rhythmic war cry. It was soon taken up by the others. Their hoarse shouts bonded the lines and rivalled the shrieks of their enemy.

  The Felthissians had the advantage until they reached the tree line. They could not get around the trees without separating, and in doing so they lost the protection of their locked shields. The enemy began to infiltrate their ranks and began to push them back. Jorrell and Cael found themselves stranded in the trees as the previously steady ranks collapsed and dissipated. They were surrounded by the enemy. They fought back to back, protecting each other’s flanks with their cumbersome shields.

  The air was rent by an ear-splitting screech. Jorrell breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that the gryphons had joined the fray. He and Cael edged their way back to the main battleground as they fought. Once free of the dense canopy, they could see the gryphons swooping down, snatching men from the field in their lethal talons. The great beasts snapped the necks and spines of their quarry in their claws, or pecked the heads clean from the bodies. Jorrell had been impressed by the gryphons and their riders when he had trained with them, but in full battle, they were magnificently awe-inspiring. When they were saving your life, it was a still more impressive sight.

  The Naidacans began to retreat back to the safety of the trees. They ran past the Felthissians, forgetting in their panicked confusion that they had enemies to fight. Jorrell and Cael picked off a few easy targets, mindful that if they let them run past unchallenged, they would only have to fight them the next day.

  Satisfied that the battle was over, Jorrell and Cael picked their way over the battlefield, stepping over muddy divots and between bodies and body parts. The air was filled with the loamy tang of turned earth, the sweet taint of blood, and the musky odour of faeces. It was
another useless carnage that had gained them no ground and had not furthered the outcome of the war. Such pointless death was adding to the dissent in the ranks. There were whispers that the military leaders were stuck in their ways, that they didn’t know what they were doing, that they couldn’t adapt to the enemy or the terrain. There were dangerous murmurs.

  Now that they were no longer needed, the gryphons wheeled up into the air, heading for their camp on a far hill. It was necessary to keep them some distance from the site of the battles, so that the great animals did not become maddened by the constant scent of blood and flesh.

  One beast landed in the midst of the grime and gore. Jorrell tried to ignore it as he usually did, the gryphons brought forth painful memories, but this one stretched out its neck and nudged his shoulder as he passed. Surprised, he turned, and recognised Kai, the temperamental animal that had been party to his demise.