Haggart's Dawn

  HAGGART'S

  DAWN

  BY

  MARTYN J. PASS

  Copyright © 2015 By Martyn J. Pass

  The right of Martyn J. Pass to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover: Nordic Jewellery - lilipilyspirit.deviantart.com

  ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR

  AT THE DAWN OF THE RUINED SUN

  WAITING FOR RED (With Dani Pass)

  SOUL AT WAR

  THE WOLF AND THE BEAR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As always, acknowledgement must be made to my two 'first readers' for their continued hard work and diligence in taking my first draft and pointing out its many faults! They are Dani Pass (author of 'Saturated Fat' and co-author of 'Waiting for Red') and Tim Mason - long time friend and fellow fan of all-day console gaming sessions. It isn't easy to find people who have the guts to say the hard things that need to be said and these two have guts aplenty. Thanks guys.

  I also want to thank those who took the time to read and review my work on Amazon, Authonomy and Smashwords. I don't think many people realise how important it is to the author when his readers make the effort to feed back to him. Thanks guys!

  For the heroes - past, present and future...

  PROLOGUE

  The war was lost.

  “Sir, the City has fallen. The King has fled. It's over.” The Knight, his plate armour catching the waning light of the evening sun, leaned over the dying form of his beloved horse and stroked its mottled flank. Flecks of bloody foam burst from its nostrils as it fought to live, but even this small battle was lost too.

  “My daughter? Did you do as I asked?”

  “Yes sir,” replied the Knight, rising. “She is safe.”

  “Good. It will make the next few hours bearable.”

  “You mean to surrender?”

  Lord Harrankil turned his head to glare at his subordinate through the vision slit of his ornate helm. It glistened with the emerald enamel that had almost cost him his birth-right and only the artisans of Soran had been willing to bend to his wishes.

  “Surrender? To these Council dogs? Were it not for my desire to avenge myself on this rabble I would sooner end my own life than let a single one of them dare take it from me.”

  “You mean to fight?”

  Lord Harrankil looked back towards the 500 armoured brothers who gathered in perfect formation behind him and smiled.

  “No,” he said. “I intend to slaughter them like swine. That is no fight.”

  The 500 at his back chanted their unwavering devotion to their leader and raised their weapons in salute. Before them and around them stood the trembling men of the Council. They'd fought their way to the gates of the City and found a wall of steel and plate waiting for them. They outnumbered the last of the King's Knights 10 to 1 yet this did nothing to affect the courage of any one of them. To the men under Lord Harrankil, the Council scum looked hideously outnumbered.

  “Death will have us today,” cried Harrankil. “But he will have his hands full.”

  The soldiers came and the 500 stood ready to welcome them. With a roar they carved apart their battle lines like pig flesh, smashing bone and sinew, cleaving arms from shoulders and hacking legs into stumps. The first wave fell upon them like the first drops of rain and were soon no more.

  “Lord Harrankil,” cried the Knight. “The City burns!”

  “Let it,” he replied, standing atop his dead. “A fire waits for us no man can kindle. Let it crumble beneath them - it will rise again soon.”

  The Council soldiers rallied and struck once more with bow and pike. The first of the Knights began to fall around Harrankil as their armour was pierced and their heads caved in with mace and hammer. With a single sweep of his long, heavy sword he slew three and speared a fourth on its point. With a mailed fist he crushed the skull of another. His men were falling under the sheer numbers of their enemy and soon Harrankil and the Knight were left alone, fighting on the bodies of their dead.

  “An honour, my noble Lord,” cried the Knight as he parried the point of a spear only to be struck by several bolts that penetrated his chest plate. He crumpled and fell, rolling off the bodies and into the swarming horde of Council men below.

  “The honour was mine, my dearest brother,” muttered Harrankil. “May my daughter forgive me.”

  The war was lost. The City burned behind the glowing form of Lord Harrankil and as a spear found its way between the plates of his armour, his thoughts turned to the daughter he had never seen and to her dead mother.

  1.

  “Luck and ignorance can carry a man to battle. Courage and the love of home will bring him back from it.”

  - The Cavalryman's Primer

  12 years later...

  Tuesday was never a good night for the Sundered Helm. Haggart had come to this conclusion when he heard the first thunderous shouts coming from the room above his head. The place was busy that night and most people didn't even hear it over the din of conversation and the stupefying fog of tobacco smoke that hung in the air like the restless spirits of patrons long since dead. He put down the mug he was drinking from, signalled to Harry, the barman, to keep an eye on things, then made his way to the foot of the stairs that led to the lodgings above.

  “That filthy whore is a witch!” roared the man who came charging down to meet him at the bottom step. Though the man was as furious as a wounded dog, Haggart stood his ground and halted his desperate advance with upraised hands. Yet it wasn't Lorrie's dissatisfied 'friend' that bothered him too much. It had more to do with his three friends that still sat at the table behind him, burning holes into his back with their straining eagerness to see it all kick off. They'd been trouble since they'd arrived not long after the evening meal had been served, groping the staff and smashing several mugs on each other's heads just for a joke. Deep down Haggart found himself wishing the man would swing for him if only to grant him excuse enough to put them all out on the street.

  “Is there a problem?” he said with a painful amount of restraint. Haggart had to look down upon the man when he spoke and he watched as he struggled to look around his frame for friendly support. Meeting his gaze, the man rallied his fury and began to say something as Lorrie came tiptoeing down the stairs behind him, her eyes ringed with red and her cheeks stained with tears.

  “That... whore of yours is a bloody witch. She...”

  “Sir, there are no witches in this fine establishment...”

  “FINE ESTABLISHEMENT?” the man spat.

  “As I was saying, this fine establishment doesn't appreciate brawling or violence of any kind.”

  “My mate died here last week!” protested the man.

  “Granted, that was an unfortunate accident,” said Haggart and he heard the chairs scraping across the tiles, the sounds of people sucking in breath before a fight, readying themselves, firing up the furnace of combat - feelings all too familiar to him, to Haggart of what was once the King's Light Cavalry. He felt the air move around his ears and he spun on his heels just in time to avoid a fist aimed directly at his head, then barrelled into the younger man that was standing to his left. They hit a table, rolling sideways and slammed into the planked floor with Haggart on top landing blow after blow into his ri
bs until they cracked.

  “Haggart, behind you!” yelled Lorrie, but the towering bulk of the Captain was on him in an instant, grabbing his neck with an enormous hand and slamming him down onto the bar. The wood splintered beneath his weight and the man cried out as the air was ejected from his lungs along with a hot jet of blood that decorated the ceiling in crimson.

  The man beneath Haggart had pulled a knife in the struggle and he saw it just in time to slap the flat of the blade away from his chest and launch his head down as hard as he could. Bone crunched as his forehead made contact with his nose and the man went limp, gurgling frothy red bubbles.

  Talbert was in fast, ducking a punch from the third man who was heading for Lorrie and broke a chair across his back, following him down to the floor . The Captain stormed over, grabbed his shirt and launched him out of the door and onto the road, quickly followed by the man lying sprawled across the bar with blood pouring from the corners of his mouth. Haggart, with his vision swimming, took the arm of his opponent and led him towards the Captain without a struggle.

  “If you would be so kind,” he said. The man shook his head frantically at the open embrace of the Captain and ran, rather than be thrown out. The Captain closed the door behind him.

  “It's Tuesday,” he said to the rest of the bar who all stared at him. Of course, they seemed to say back to him through their tankards and glasses. “What do you expect?”

  Harry and some of the bar maids came over and began clearing away the broken glasses and furniture while Haggart cleaned some of the blood from his face. He sat down in one of the softer armchairs, taking a long draught from his tankard to numb the pain in his skull and he thought about why he still got involved in these things.

  “It wasn't the best idea you've had, letting her live here,” the Captain said to him. “She's been nothing but trouble since we brought her back.”

  “I was hoping she'd calm down,” he replied. “I guess there's more damage there than I'd first thought.”

  “What did you expect? She's seen far too much for a girl of her age and add that to her sudden abilities and you have a problem in the making. Does she still refuse to get control over that... power?”

  “Refuse? I don't think she's refusing to. It's more to do with the fact that I think she's scared of what might happen if she does.”

  “You've managed to do it and you don't seem to have faired too badly.”

  “True, but I had a better teacher than myself,” he said, leaning forward. “No, I think that despite all my efforts there is something lacking, something I can't provide with all the books I have, all the scrolls and ideas and...” His words drifted into silence and the Captain nodded the way a good friend must when faced with someone as stubborn as he.

  “I think you doubt your own ability too much. I think you can help her, though I doubt the wisdom of it, and I just hope...”

  “Hope what?” asked Haggart. The Captain looked down at his mug.

  “I just hope you don't see this as some sort of debt, something you owe her mother. It wasn't your fault.”

  Haggart shook his head but it wasn't at him - it was at the fact that the Captain was right. Years together in the army, serving their King until he was dethroned, had meshed them together into the kind of friends that knew exactly what the other was thinking, many times before he'd had chance to think it. The Captain was just this sort of friend to Haggart and it was this friendship that had led them to retire to an Inn far from the City, far from the seat of the Council who had pardoned them and let them leave there alive.

  “He doesn't waste time,” said the Captain, gesturing with his mug towards the bar. Haggart turned to see that Talbert was at the bar, chatting to one of the barmaids who listened with the concentration of a devoted acolyte before their most revered priest. He said something, no doubt highly amusing to no one but her, then came over with a large cup of wine in his hands. “Nothing like a bit of a rumble to get the heart racing,” he said, grinning.

  “Where's Shanks these days?” asked the Captain.

  “Who knows? He's never been the same since he met that woman from the Mermack. You'd think there'd be only so much of the sea that you could talk about.”

  “It's Shanks. If this woman is a sailor then he's doomed. Marriage. Kids. House by the sea. It's over for that boy, I’ve seen it before,” laughed the Captain. “Mark my words.”

  Talbert felt around his face looking for any damage from the fight that couldn't be passed off in the most macho manner.

  “Have I been injured?” he asked, looking at his fingertips, expecting to find his own precious blood upon them. “Is it bad?”

  “Were you even in that scuffle?” said the Captain. “I hadn't noticed.”

  “I was in the thick of it, didn't you see?” he protested. “That guy nearly killed you two and he would have done if I hadn't have been there!”

  “That's the first I’ve heard of it,” said Haggart. “You had to use a chair, if I recall. I'll be charging you for that.”

  Talbert just laughed and dismissed them with a wave of his hand. It was a gesture that implied that they were mere children and that he was the adult with a truer grasp on the facts than they. Talbert had only been a lad when Haggart and the Captain had made their journey north and he'd been quick to tag along behind them expecting action and adventure on the way. For his trouble he got blistered feet and the offer of lodgings on their land. That had been a long time ago, or so it felt to Haggart and he was none the worse for it. They'd shown him how to use a crossbow and ride a horse in the fashion of the Royal Cavalry if only to keep him away from the wives of the local farmers.

  “How long since the Abergwen sank?” asked Haggart, returning to the topic of their absent friend, Shanks.

  “Twenty years at least, yet he still calls himself a Mariner,” said the Captain. “Poor lad.”

  “Speaking of which.” Haggart stood. “Here's another one with women on his mind.”

  Haggart gestured to his son, John, who came over just as Lorrie came down the stairs. When she saw him she smiled and headed straight for him. Haggart got between them and waved her in the other direction.

  “Back up stairs, Lorrie,” he said. Reluctantly, she sloped back the way she'd come giving his son a wry grin. “How's things, John?” he said, addressing him after a warm embrace.

  “Good, Dad. What happened here? Was it a rowdy crowd tonight?”

  “Aye, lad. The usual. How's your cousin Maria?”

  “Okay, though she said to remind you that her Father still wants you to come over and sort out the rats in his cellar.”

  “Tell him he's taking the piss. He can get a cat from the farm – they've just had kittens. I'm sure Nathaniel would love to pass them on. I was thinking of one for the bar.”

  “You're getting old, Dad,” John replied and took a mug of mead from Harry. “A cat in the bar. Hard to think you and the Captain once went to war.”

  “Even the best of us have to put our feet up and let the next breed have a go. We can't keep wiping your noses for you,” said the Captain as loudly as he could. “It would be nice, in fact, if somebody did something for us for a change.”

  There was a drunken cheer from the other side of the bar and the Captain toasted him. “And to you, sir. A veteran yourself?”

  “Aye, my Captain,” he slurred. “King's own cook. Made the best stew this side of the City.”

  “Gods bless ye,” cried Haggart and finished his drink. Then he turned to Harry who was still cleaning up the mess with a broom. “Do we know that man?”

  “That's Fred from the mill. If he's a cook then I'm a horse breeder, sir.”

  “Thank you, Harry,” said Haggart, shooing his son away. “Get out of my sight, lad. And stay away from Lorrie, too.”

  “Aye Dad, whatever you say.”

  “Go!”

  John walked away, laughing to himself, and waved to the Captain before disappearing to the other side of the bar where some
of his friends were already toasting his arrival. Talbert was shaking his head.

  “He's right you know,” he said. “You're getting old. Time was you'd be out looking for a bit of a scuffle, not deciding whether to get a cat or not.”

  Haggart eased himself back into his chair, looking up at the enormous piece of helmet fixed above the mantle piece. It'd once been whole, but the Captain's axe had split it cleanly down the middle, this half now a trophy, the other long since lost somewhere on a distant battlefield in the middle of nowhere. Haggart sipped his mead and gestured to the relic.

  “The moment I realised it was time to go home was when the owner of that helmet faced us down with a mace the size of your head and a shield made from the hide of a Baskil. Even the Captain here looked like a little boy stood next to him. When that mace came crashing down on my mate's head, I had a sudden epiphany. War wasn't what it cracked up to be.” He silently toasted the helmet, lost in the painful reverie.

  “When the joints ache and the sword gets heavy, it's time to think about cats and fire and mead,” said the Captain.

  “Aye to that,” replied Haggart and they toasted the helmet together with a drunken chuckle.

  “Speak for yourselves, gentlemen. I plan on a great many battles and scuffles before I start feeling the need to settle down. War still has some appeal to me, even if it no longer appeals to you two,” said Talbert, rising from his seat.

  “I always believed youth was a cruel joke, a punch line delivered in old age,” the Captain muttered.

  “Goodnight, boys. I hear my bed calling me.” Talbert made for the door. “Give me a shout if you fancy taking the axe down off the wall, Captain. I'm sure we can find some willing helmets for you to cleave.”