Havoc's Daughters

Chapter 3 - Day 1: Blade (part I) taken to the hospice

      Something jarred him, shoving and tossing without actually allowing him to move. Pain flared with every jolt, and he fought his way into consciousness struggling against his bonds. Something with teeth was trapped between his arm and side and was tearing into him, but he couldn’t move his right arm to sling it away. His head felt as if Nighthawk had tromped on it.

      “Be still, Son.”

      He stilled. It wasn’t obedience, but shock. It was easy to imagine that tone being one of concern. While he wasn’t certain who the voice belonged to, he was certain that ‘concern’ was not an emotion to be associated with it. 

      Aware by now he lay on what felt like a blanket slung between two poles, and that he was being transported, he opened his eyes. Bright sunlight stabbed deep into his head, and he hastily scrunched his eyelids shut again. Waited for a shadow to cross his face.

      Severan loomed above, tall and broad-shouldered despite an apparent six decades of age. His eyes and hair both were the cold grey of his mail shirt. Blade blinked, and realized it wasn’t the god of the Dead, after all. 

      Worse. It was Father. 

      Dirk Alzarin rode beside the litter on his nameless black gelding, managing to make the massive beast look average. To be helpless before this man was almost the worst thing Blade could think of.

      Almost.

      Havoc’s dead.

      Blade closed his eyes against nausea. It didn’t help with the sense of vertigo but at least he could ignore his father’s cold, assessing gaze. 

      A lump of something had been stuffed under his right arm, and strips of cloth bound the arm tight to his chest. It probably had served to stop the bleeding, but felt like some special punishment dreamed up in M’Thumbra. Every step the horses took jostled the litter slung between, exacerbating his torment. Blade tried to sit up, but discovered again he was tied to the makeshift conveyance. He rolled his head to get a look. The litter appeared to be made of cloaks and spears. He added this to the handful of facts in his spinning head, trying to rebuild his life. Where to start? Not with Father.

      Again his world spun, and he choked down nausea.

      Think. Havoc is dead. How did it happen?

      Putting the shards of his memory together, Blade recalled a legend, alone on a dappled-grey gelding aged almost white, holding off a score of raiders with nothing more than a crossbow and his presence. 

      No, Blade thought. That’s not quite right. Other men, townsfolk and farmers perhaps, had ranged across the road at the man’s back. But in truth, the figure might well have been alone and unarmed. If that damned archer hadn’t acted, the last train from the doomed border town at Rose Hill would have gotten away unmolested. Eventually, Havoc and his men would have followed it.

      And we’d have sat there, watching him go.

      The bounty offered for Havoc had once been high enough for temptation, but that had been twenty years ago. Father’d cut it by four-fifths shortly after taking the throne. And what fool would risk attempting to capture Havoc for only fifty crowns? 

      The horses started over a rutted section of road and his litter shifted with a painful lurch. Blade clenched his teeth to keep from crying out, and swallowed bile.

      It would be better if he were sitting his horse. At least he’d have some feeling of control. If not for the fact Father was riding beside him now, he’d have insisted. It had to be mere bad luck their two parties had met up. Mist take Father and his eternal, infernal, ‘unscheduled inspections’! But no one was going to defy the king, and Blade knew in his bones the old bastard would countermand any order he gave, just to be contrary.