Dawnbreaker
~The Other Side of Fear~
Oh, what the hell! Figured I should join in on all the creative fun.
This is a Christmas-y-ish story I wrote as a final project for my Creative Writing course. It's not my best work, but it's also far from my worst. Have a look-see if you have time and tell me what you think.
edit: Additionally, I should probably mention that this is also a story-excerpt from my novel The Good Soldier, from my original series Godslayers.
He wasn’t in his room.
Cursing in all the tongues she knew, Adriana blew into her hands as she trudged through the park. Snow fell and obscured her vision almost more than the night’s shadows did. It chilled her to marrow of her bones. She hauled the hood of her patch-work cloak, as grey as her eyes, down.
Most of the knights celebrated Wintertide in the colossal audience hall and its antechambers, hitting their coffers dry as their goblets of ale. But he wasn’t there, either. Nor was he at the training grounds, in the mess hall, or anywhere in the Commander’s Tower. Finally, one of the knights of his company mentioned seeing Sydney approaching the park.
What could possibly drive him here, Adriana had irritably wondered this past half hour of searching. She supposed wealth predisposed some to fits of fancy. Such mortal, mundane concerns as money didn’t occupy their thoughts. This Adriana had concluded upon peeking into Sydney’s room at the barracks, surprised to find the door ajar.
Her hands had itched at the sight of the overflowing chest at the foot of his bed. The silver ornaments, steel daggers, and bejeweled chalices could fetch a pretty penny; enough to feed a family for a month or more.
The knight had more belongings in his one chest than Adriana owned in her lifetime. Although the glance in his room confirmed that he was indeed well off, she’d already suspected that back when he’d come to the knighthood six months ago. Because of his family connections, Sydney procured a high position in the knighthood, while she was forced to work as a maid and messenger even though she’d been here two years longer than he.
As she’d stared at the chest, Adriana had realized she could solve many of her problems by simply nicking a few of the items. Approaching Sydney would then no longer be necessary because she’d have what she needed…and it was unlikely that, amid the trove of martial and familial treasures, he’d miss it.
She didn’t touch them, however.
Adriana almost wished she had, as she caught sight of Sydney. Geared in his full plate mail armor, minus the helm, he strolled along the river’s banks, approaching a bridge. As red as a cardinal’s feathers, his cloak trailed through the snow, the edges of ermine as white as to make it difficult to tell where the snow ended and the fur began.
Her eyes blazed. She resisted the urge to grab his arm, spin him around, and demand he listen to her. Instead, Adriana lifted a flask from her belt, drank a bit, then put it back. “Sydney,” she called out in as friendly as a voice she could manage. “What are you doing out here?”
Halting as if he’d struck a wall, Sydney then turned to face her. The hood of his cloak slid down, revealing his hair, as silver as a kingfisher, and red-rimmed eyes and red-splotched cheeks. Adriana figured the cheeks could be attributed to the cold (she imagined her face was little better), but the eyes confused her.
Had he been…crying?
Again, Adriana’s temper flared. Again, she restrained herself. Whatever silly courtier’s problems prompted his grief, she knew that mocking him would ill aid her. If she’d hoped to procure his help, she’d need to manipulate him carefully. She would have to at least pretend to care. Perhaps, this unexpected turn of events was even a good thing…
The muscles of his cheeks twitched. A hand ruffled his hair, the movement prompting a clink of metal. “My lady, I thank you but I am quite well. Please return to the warmth of the hall. I will…be along shortly.” Something in the way his small brown eyes repeatedly flickered over to the river gave her pause.
Adriana laughed, for effect. “Oh, come now. I would speak with you. Let’s enjoy a tankard of mead together.” He didn’t move, face frozen as if surrendering to the cold of the winter night. She uttered a sound of annoyance in her throat, and then clutched the crook of his elbow.
His reaction was quick and fierce. Sydney dislodged her hand and stepped back. His body tensed, voice as icy as the wind, “No, madam, I will not. Leave me now. This is not your affair.” The words sounded forced and rehearsed, as if he’d anticipated the need to send someone on their way.
Again, Sydney’s gaze trailed back to the river with an almost palpable longing. Something deep and dark floated in the depths of those eyes, like the terrible creatures that swam in the waters. The sight made Adriana’s stomach curl within itself. She knew that look…
Realizing his intentions, Adriana supposed scorn should not have been her initial feeling. But waves of derision radiated from her body. How dare he imagine his petty problems justified this? What right had he to feel so sunk in despair as to consider this behavior acceptable?
Adriana scowled, pushing her chin-length hair back behind her ears and out of her face. “If you’re really going to do it, I suggest you leap up and away, lest you fall back and smack into the bridge.”
While she’d stared at him, face dark with disgust, Sydney had resumed his march to said bridge. Her words, however, stopped him again. Stunned, he stood silent, his back to her. Snow dusted his cloak, like little swans descending into lava, and evaporating almost instantly. “Why are you…helping me?”
“Because you might end up seriously hurt otherwise.” Considering the absurdity of what he was prepared to do, she let out a mirthless laughter. “Of course, the moment you hit the river you’d probably break every bone in your body.”
His head twisted to glance her way, and then his gaze flickered over to the river. As black as the starless night above them, the ice gleamed as a flat, merciless surface. Here and there holes penetrated the ice, either from rocks thrown at it, or ice-fishing holes pierced with a spear.
Sydney stammered, “I hadn’t thought of that.” A hot flush crept up his cheeks.
They fell silent. Adriana bit her lip, resisting the urge to take another swig of her wine. His ill-advised aim still boiled her blood but she contained it more easily now, though she’d be hard-pressed to explain why. He certainly didn’t deserve her empathy, as far as she was concerned.
Finally, Sydney murmured, “Just like how my mother made them.”
Only half-listening, Adriana grunted for him to continue. Her mind started to sort through other ways to acquire the coin she had wanted to get out of this wretched, spoiled man-child.
“Don’t you smell it? Ice cakes.”
Started, she noticed the smell wafting past her nose. “I’m sure your mother could make fine ice cakes,” Adriana said. In her mind, she thought he should just go to his mother, cling to her apron, and beg some baked goods out of her. Abandon this fool’s errand.
Something changed in Sydney’s countenance. He appeared absolutely stricken. “My mother’s dead.”
Adriana’s mouth unhinged and a few snowflakes found their way down her throat. She coughed, and then stared hard at his tall, rigid profile. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she heard herself say, unsure if she even meant it or not. “When did it happen?”
“Last week.” His eyes shut, pained. His shoulders slumped.
“Oh.” Adriana had thought whatever ‘malady’ had ‘befallen’ him could be cured with a coin. But this, this was beyond even a king’s ransom to resolve. She took a long draw from her flask, wiping her mouth and nose on her shirt.
Opening his eyes, Sydney fixed his gaze on her. His hand rummaged through his hair. She’d thought the gesture pure vanity at first, but found herself considering anxiety instead.
The silence grew uncomfortable so Adriana said, “I lost my mother a few months ago.”
Memories of the sweltering summer night they’d buried her mother came swiftly to her mind. The death had come as no surprise; her mother had been sick for many years, dying of a heredity illness. A woman with a heredity illness bearing children…this, Adriana could never reconcile.
She revealed this to him so that she might still get the money out of him…or so she told herself. Deep down, Adriana wondered if she spoke to offer him comfort, or even be comforted herself.
“I know it must be difficult.”
Now it was her turn to blush, embarrassed. “Of course, we weren’t close and I didn’t care…”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” came his soft words, startling her.
She waved her hand weakly. “It’s nothing. I don’t miss her. We didn’t get along.”
“Still, it must be difficult for you.”
At first, Adriana’s flush deepened to a deep crimson. But then it died. The relentlessness of his sympathy smoldered the ashes of her anger. “Well…thank you. I’m sorry for your loss, too.”
Sydney smiled a ghost of a smile.
A song drifted in the air, the lyrics of which Adriana found familiar. A sappy love song, something about knights and maidens and dragons, all the kind of things that had courtiers and ladies in an uproar of dancing and singing.
Adriana thrilled at the song, though she’d told no one. She’d claim to others that she didn’t deem it as anything but silly, even as she now craned her head to hear more.
“My father use to play this song on a lute for my mother,” she heard Sydney whisper.
“Oh.”
“I can’t play the lute half as well as he.” Was there a hint of amusement in this voice?
“Hmmm,” Adriana murmured, thinking of her own father. Shaking her head, she said, “I guess your father must miss your mother very much.”
His hand ran through his hair again, and she feared she’d said the wrong thing. His body shivered and not from the cold. He waged a war within the prison of his body, a battle she could not see. Then, again, Sydney's shoulders slumped. “No, my father cannot miss my mother for he is dead, too.”
“Oh.” Adriana berated herself her stupid response, the kind she was accustomed to fall back on. She knew she should say something, anything, but for some reason, all thoughts fled her head. All thoughts except how this had started as her scheme to spirit away some coin, and now she felt sympathy for a young man in pain. A pain that no silver ornaments, steel daggers, or bejeweled chalices would ever be able to fix.
“After he’d died, I came to the knighthood as his successor, leaving my mother at the estates. My mother did not approve of my leaving…” Here the torrent of words suddenly stopped and Sydney looked away.
“Your mother? She didn’t want you to leave her?” Adriana ventured.
Again, something dark danced at the edges of his eyes. Desperate love and desperate pain. His lips formed a hard line, a warning for her not to probe further. He is not ready to face this, she realized. Maybe he never will be.
Feeling she should fill the empty air with words, any words, she uttered, “I see my father so rarely he might as well be gone…” Again, Adriana felt she’d said something stupid and glanced hastily at his face. But the lines smoothed, and his expression grew thoughtful. Rubbing her hands together, she added, “I meant he’s alive and all, but I haven’t seen him in years. He’s out west, at a port city.”
A fortnight after their mother, his wife, died, he’d left.
Sydney nodded slowly. “Have you any other family?”
“Yes,” she said as she wrapped her body tighter with the tattered cloak. Her mind immediately alit on her sister. Her sister lying under ratty blankets, coughing something wet into a rag. She’d inherited not only their mother’s poverty, but her illness as well, and while the former didn’t necessarily cause the latter, it made the latter all the more difficult to deal with.
“I have a sister…She’s…not well.” Adriana cringed at the ache in her voice, peering at him to see if he’d noticed.
If Sydney did, he gave no indication. He stood there, mantled in metal, cloak, and snow, like a statue carved in the annuals of time. Finally, he stirred, studied her for a moment, and then undid the star-shaped pin that suspended his cloak about him. Like a nobleman to a maiden, he presented it to her. “You appear cold, my lady. Here, pray you, take this.”
Adriana’s face flushed an ugly red. “No, I need no charity from you…” She choked silent, considering that her whole reason for being here, at least initially, was for his coin.
Before he had walked around in her mind’s eye as a golden statue; now, Adriana could picture the lines in his face and the shine to his eyes, something she’d never seen before.
“A Wintertide gift,” he said, smiling.
Grumbling, Adriana accepted it, though she refused his offer to place it on her shoulders. With a shrugging motion, she hurled it about herself over her own cloak. The ermine brushed against her cheek, warming her.
At first, Adriana wondered if perhaps she should have refused it completely, but, upon glancing at the blue padding beneath his armor, dismissed the worry.
“I…I can make you some ice cakes,” she said as he stepped back to examine her. She wasn’t sure what his intent gaze meant, but decided to ignore it. “As a Wintertide gift.”
“I would like that very much.” Sydney extended his arm as a gentleman might do for a lady.
A spark of irritation resurfaced, but Adriana tempered annoyance to a coolly-spoken, “No, thanks.” She waved him on to precede her.
Akin a knight of old, Sydney bent low at the waist. Coming up, a twinkle took up residence in his eyes, one that partially diminished the glaze of torment. He spared the river just a glance before shrugging. Then he walked in the direction of the audience hall.
Pulling the red cloak as tight about her as she could, Adriana followed.
~fin~
This is a Christmas-y-ish story I wrote as a final project for my Creative Writing course. It's not my best work, but it's also far from my worst. Have a look-see if you have time and tell me what you think.
edit: Additionally, I should probably mention that this is also a story-excerpt from my novel The Good Soldier, from my original series Godslayers.
Solstice
He wasn’t in his room.
Cursing in all the tongues she knew, Adriana blew into her hands as she trudged through the park. Snow fell and obscured her vision almost more than the night’s shadows did. It chilled her to marrow of her bones. She hauled the hood of her patch-work cloak, as grey as her eyes, down.
Most of the knights celebrated Wintertide in the colossal audience hall and its antechambers, hitting their coffers dry as their goblets of ale. But he wasn’t there, either. Nor was he at the training grounds, in the mess hall, or anywhere in the Commander’s Tower. Finally, one of the knights of his company mentioned seeing Sydney approaching the park.
What could possibly drive him here, Adriana had irritably wondered this past half hour of searching. She supposed wealth predisposed some to fits of fancy. Such mortal, mundane concerns as money didn’t occupy their thoughts. This Adriana had concluded upon peeking into Sydney’s room at the barracks, surprised to find the door ajar.
Her hands had itched at the sight of the overflowing chest at the foot of his bed. The silver ornaments, steel daggers, and bejeweled chalices could fetch a pretty penny; enough to feed a family for a month or more.
The knight had more belongings in his one chest than Adriana owned in her lifetime. Although the glance in his room confirmed that he was indeed well off, she’d already suspected that back when he’d come to the knighthood six months ago. Because of his family connections, Sydney procured a high position in the knighthood, while she was forced to work as a maid and messenger even though she’d been here two years longer than he.
As she’d stared at the chest, Adriana had realized she could solve many of her problems by simply nicking a few of the items. Approaching Sydney would then no longer be necessary because she’d have what she needed…and it was unlikely that, amid the trove of martial and familial treasures, he’d miss it.
She didn’t touch them, however.
Adriana almost wished she had, as she caught sight of Sydney. Geared in his full plate mail armor, minus the helm, he strolled along the river’s banks, approaching a bridge. As red as a cardinal’s feathers, his cloak trailed through the snow, the edges of ermine as white as to make it difficult to tell where the snow ended and the fur began.
Her eyes blazed. She resisted the urge to grab his arm, spin him around, and demand he listen to her. Instead, Adriana lifted a flask from her belt, drank a bit, then put it back. “Sydney,” she called out in as friendly as a voice she could manage. “What are you doing out here?”
Halting as if he’d struck a wall, Sydney then turned to face her. The hood of his cloak slid down, revealing his hair, as silver as a kingfisher, and red-rimmed eyes and red-splotched cheeks. Adriana figured the cheeks could be attributed to the cold (she imagined her face was little better), but the eyes confused her.
Had he been…crying?
Again, Adriana’s temper flared. Again, she restrained herself. Whatever silly courtier’s problems prompted his grief, she knew that mocking him would ill aid her. If she’d hoped to procure his help, she’d need to manipulate him carefully. She would have to at least pretend to care. Perhaps, this unexpected turn of events was even a good thing…
The muscles of his cheeks twitched. A hand ruffled his hair, the movement prompting a clink of metal. “My lady, I thank you but I am quite well. Please return to the warmth of the hall. I will…be along shortly.” Something in the way his small brown eyes repeatedly flickered over to the river gave her pause.
Adriana laughed, for effect. “Oh, come now. I would speak with you. Let’s enjoy a tankard of mead together.” He didn’t move, face frozen as if surrendering to the cold of the winter night. She uttered a sound of annoyance in her throat, and then clutched the crook of his elbow.
His reaction was quick and fierce. Sydney dislodged her hand and stepped back. His body tensed, voice as icy as the wind, “No, madam, I will not. Leave me now. This is not your affair.” The words sounded forced and rehearsed, as if he’d anticipated the need to send someone on their way.
Again, Sydney’s gaze trailed back to the river with an almost palpable longing. Something deep and dark floated in the depths of those eyes, like the terrible creatures that swam in the waters. The sight made Adriana’s stomach curl within itself. She knew that look…
Realizing his intentions, Adriana supposed scorn should not have been her initial feeling. But waves of derision radiated from her body. How dare he imagine his petty problems justified this? What right had he to feel so sunk in despair as to consider this behavior acceptable?
Adriana scowled, pushing her chin-length hair back behind her ears and out of her face. “If you’re really going to do it, I suggest you leap up and away, lest you fall back and smack into the bridge.”
While she’d stared at him, face dark with disgust, Sydney had resumed his march to said bridge. Her words, however, stopped him again. Stunned, he stood silent, his back to her. Snow dusted his cloak, like little swans descending into lava, and evaporating almost instantly. “Why are you…helping me?”
“Because you might end up seriously hurt otherwise.” Considering the absurdity of what he was prepared to do, she let out a mirthless laughter. “Of course, the moment you hit the river you’d probably break every bone in your body.”
His head twisted to glance her way, and then his gaze flickered over to the river. As black as the starless night above them, the ice gleamed as a flat, merciless surface. Here and there holes penetrated the ice, either from rocks thrown at it, or ice-fishing holes pierced with a spear.
Sydney stammered, “I hadn’t thought of that.” A hot flush crept up his cheeks.
They fell silent. Adriana bit her lip, resisting the urge to take another swig of her wine. His ill-advised aim still boiled her blood but she contained it more easily now, though she’d be hard-pressed to explain why. He certainly didn’t deserve her empathy, as far as she was concerned.
Finally, Sydney murmured, “Just like how my mother made them.”
Only half-listening, Adriana grunted for him to continue. Her mind started to sort through other ways to acquire the coin she had wanted to get out of this wretched, spoiled man-child.
“Don’t you smell it? Ice cakes.”
Started, she noticed the smell wafting past her nose. “I’m sure your mother could make fine ice cakes,” Adriana said. In her mind, she thought he should just go to his mother, cling to her apron, and beg some baked goods out of her. Abandon this fool’s errand.
Something changed in Sydney’s countenance. He appeared absolutely stricken. “My mother’s dead.”
Adriana’s mouth unhinged and a few snowflakes found their way down her throat. She coughed, and then stared hard at his tall, rigid profile. “I’m sorry to hear that,” she heard herself say, unsure if she even meant it or not. “When did it happen?”
“Last week.” His eyes shut, pained. His shoulders slumped.
“Oh.” Adriana had thought whatever ‘malady’ had ‘befallen’ him could be cured with a coin. But this, this was beyond even a king’s ransom to resolve. She took a long draw from her flask, wiping her mouth and nose on her shirt.
Opening his eyes, Sydney fixed his gaze on her. His hand rummaged through his hair. She’d thought the gesture pure vanity at first, but found herself considering anxiety instead.
The silence grew uncomfortable so Adriana said, “I lost my mother a few months ago.”
Memories of the sweltering summer night they’d buried her mother came swiftly to her mind. The death had come as no surprise; her mother had been sick for many years, dying of a heredity illness. A woman with a heredity illness bearing children…this, Adriana could never reconcile.
She revealed this to him so that she might still get the money out of him…or so she told herself. Deep down, Adriana wondered if she spoke to offer him comfort, or even be comforted herself.
“I know it must be difficult.”
Now it was her turn to blush, embarrassed. “Of course, we weren’t close and I didn’t care…”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” came his soft words, startling her.
She waved her hand weakly. “It’s nothing. I don’t miss her. We didn’t get along.”
“Still, it must be difficult for you.”
At first, Adriana’s flush deepened to a deep crimson. But then it died. The relentlessness of his sympathy smoldered the ashes of her anger. “Well…thank you. I’m sorry for your loss, too.”
Sydney smiled a ghost of a smile.
A song drifted in the air, the lyrics of which Adriana found familiar. A sappy love song, something about knights and maidens and dragons, all the kind of things that had courtiers and ladies in an uproar of dancing and singing.
Adriana thrilled at the song, though she’d told no one. She’d claim to others that she didn’t deem it as anything but silly, even as she now craned her head to hear more.
“My father use to play this song on a lute for my mother,” she heard Sydney whisper.
“Oh.”
“I can’t play the lute half as well as he.” Was there a hint of amusement in this voice?
“Hmmm,” Adriana murmured, thinking of her own father. Shaking her head, she said, “I guess your father must miss your mother very much.”
His hand ran through his hair again, and she feared she’d said the wrong thing. His body shivered and not from the cold. He waged a war within the prison of his body, a battle she could not see. Then, again, Sydney's shoulders slumped. “No, my father cannot miss my mother for he is dead, too.”
“Oh.” Adriana berated herself her stupid response, the kind she was accustomed to fall back on. She knew she should say something, anything, but for some reason, all thoughts fled her head. All thoughts except how this had started as her scheme to spirit away some coin, and now she felt sympathy for a young man in pain. A pain that no silver ornaments, steel daggers, or bejeweled chalices would ever be able to fix.
“After he’d died, I came to the knighthood as his successor, leaving my mother at the estates. My mother did not approve of my leaving…” Here the torrent of words suddenly stopped and Sydney looked away.
“Your mother? She didn’t want you to leave her?” Adriana ventured.
Again, something dark danced at the edges of his eyes. Desperate love and desperate pain. His lips formed a hard line, a warning for her not to probe further. He is not ready to face this, she realized. Maybe he never will be.
Feeling she should fill the empty air with words, any words, she uttered, “I see my father so rarely he might as well be gone…” Again, Adriana felt she’d said something stupid and glanced hastily at his face. But the lines smoothed, and his expression grew thoughtful. Rubbing her hands together, she added, “I meant he’s alive and all, but I haven’t seen him in years. He’s out west, at a port city.”
A fortnight after their mother, his wife, died, he’d left.
Sydney nodded slowly. “Have you any other family?”
“Yes,” she said as she wrapped her body tighter with the tattered cloak. Her mind immediately alit on her sister. Her sister lying under ratty blankets, coughing something wet into a rag. She’d inherited not only their mother’s poverty, but her illness as well, and while the former didn’t necessarily cause the latter, it made the latter all the more difficult to deal with.
“I have a sister…She’s…not well.” Adriana cringed at the ache in her voice, peering at him to see if he’d noticed.
If Sydney did, he gave no indication. He stood there, mantled in metal, cloak, and snow, like a statue carved in the annuals of time. Finally, he stirred, studied her for a moment, and then undid the star-shaped pin that suspended his cloak about him. Like a nobleman to a maiden, he presented it to her. “You appear cold, my lady. Here, pray you, take this.”
Adriana’s face flushed an ugly red. “No, I need no charity from you…” She choked silent, considering that her whole reason for being here, at least initially, was for his coin.
Before he had walked around in her mind’s eye as a golden statue; now, Adriana could picture the lines in his face and the shine to his eyes, something she’d never seen before.
“A Wintertide gift,” he said, smiling.
Grumbling, Adriana accepted it, though she refused his offer to place it on her shoulders. With a shrugging motion, she hurled it about herself over her own cloak. The ermine brushed against her cheek, warming her.
At first, Adriana wondered if perhaps she should have refused it completely, but, upon glancing at the blue padding beneath his armor, dismissed the worry.
“I…I can make you some ice cakes,” she said as he stepped back to examine her. She wasn’t sure what his intent gaze meant, but decided to ignore it. “As a Wintertide gift.”
“I would like that very much.” Sydney extended his arm as a gentleman might do for a lady.
A spark of irritation resurfaced, but Adriana tempered annoyance to a coolly-spoken, “No, thanks.” She waved him on to precede her.
Akin a knight of old, Sydney bent low at the waist. Coming up, a twinkle took up residence in his eyes, one that partially diminished the glaze of torment. He spared the river just a glance before shrugging. Then he walked in the direction of the audience hall.
Pulling the red cloak as tight about her as she could, Adriana followed.
~fin~
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