no dawn, no day



This story takes place weeks before Dragon Slayers, while Alweard was missing from the ranks of the Oathsworn.


Just as Alweard was beginning to drift off to sleep, a child’s wail—once a stranger’s cry, now all too familiar—pulled him from the haze of his dreams. He groaned, clutching at his stomach; his eyes fluttered open to see that he was still in the cages. The metallic tang of iron filled his nose, intermingling with the sweaty reek of more bodies than the Dragon-clan knew what to do with. They were all living, but a grim voice in the back of his mind reminded him that they would be better off dead. 

“Gwyn!” 

Gwyn, he remembered, that’s my name now.

“Gwyn!” Iwerith said again, resting her hand on his shoulder. Alweard recalled that, though she couldn’t have been older than Wrecca, she was a clan elder. Of all the elders who were captured, she was the only one with the fortitude to last more than three days in captivity. How long had it been? Without any sunlight, the mornings and nights deep in the Draig-lûth compound had run together into something dim and smoky, without a beginning or any certain end. 

Pinching him through the thin sleeve of his tunic, Iwerith hissed, “Listen to me, boy!” Her fingers hurt more than they should’ve. “Bledhin’s crying again.”

“He’s not my nephew,” Alweard sighed; his Dunlendish came easily, colored with an accent like a Deanlander’s—not his own, but perfect for Gwyn of Gapholt. A dull ache throbbed in his thigh as he rose to his feet, standing as tall as the cage would allow. “You’re his aunt; why don’t you try to soothe him?”

“I have tried before,” she said, “but he’s as inconsolable as ever.” 

Any child would be, Alweard thought, though he didn’t dare say it aloud. When the Dragon-clan had last attacked the Stag-clan, Bledhin had lost his parents and his freedom. He was eleven years old, not a baby; at his age, he knew all too well that he would never see them again. Peering between the bodies of his fellow prisoners, Alweard searched for the boy’s face. “Come here, Bledhin,” he said weakly. “I’ve got a song for you.” 

A pair of watery eyes stared back at him before Bledhin began to howl once more.

Alweard wrapped his arms around the boy. “Hush, child,” he said, “Don’t let your courage leave you.” When Bledhin’s tears kept flowing unbidden, he summoned his voice and began to sing:

Little warrior, heed well my words
and hush your crying. Hungry creatures
wander the dark: wolves and adders,
wriggling worms and ravenous trolls.
The swift-footed fawn, with silent celerity,
outruns his foes through field and forest. 
Cry not in fear, go quickly and quietly,
remember your boldness; bound like the deer
and escape their jaws. Gentler creatures,
timid and tearful, are torn apart;
stay not your steps. The stones will soften
beneath your feet; the fiercest beasts,
grim and terrible, will tire in time.
Under the willows, your weary heart
can finally rest on flowering hills
beneath the blue blanket of night. 

When the last wavering notes faded into silence, Bledhin was quiet, his head resting against Alweard’s chest. His eyes were wide and dark as a fawn’s; he said nothing as he clung to Alweard’s tunic.

“He misses his mother,” Iwerith murmured. “And his father, too.”

“I know.” Looking down towards the boy, Alweard stroked his dark hair with trembling fingers. “Can you be brave for me, Bledhin? Just for a short while?” 

A raucous laugh rang in the air; Alweard quickly realized that the boy had not been the only one listening intently. The guards who had once bent over dice to pass the long hours had found newer and better entertainment. A man broad as an aurochs with a graying beard smiled as his gaze drifted towards Alweard. His grin was all teeth. “I don’t know your name, lad,” he said, “but the others were right; you sing prettily.”

“It’s Gwyn,” he choked, peering out from between the bars. “That’s my name.”

“Did I ask?” That earned a laugh from his companions. 

"That's a curious name."

“It suits him, though; he's a pale thing."

Another guard, a woman with an iron helmet tucked under her arm, leered at him boldly. “You’re a comely one,” she said, and the others burst into another chorus of laughter. To Alweard, they sounded like crows cawing over the carcass of his dignity. He knew he had withered to a shade of his former self. Languishing in captivity, he had grown brittle and thin; his hair—still dyed black—fell lank over his bony shoulders. Now he felt the weight of a dozen eyes on the bruises that swelled purple on his pale knees.

One of the men piped up: “He’s a pretty one indeed.”

The broad, gray-bearded man—the guard-captain, Alweard guessed—elbowed his companion in the ribs. “You just haven’t seen a woman for too long, Gwilum.” When the woman with the iron helmet glared at him, he quickly added, “A woman out of armor, that is. You need a maiden’s touch.” Now it was Gwilum’s turn to be laughed at, but Alweard couldn’t laugh; his stomach was too twisted. 

The guard-captain spoke up again: “Come here, boy.”

“I cannot,” Alweard said uselessly. “I’m locked in a cage.”

“Look,” the woman guard said, “he’s funny, too.” That earned yet another round of chuckles from the guards, their laughter settling like another stone on the cairn that piled in Alweard’s belly. 

“Get him out,” the guard-captain said, turning to his companions. Two of the men picked up their spears, pointing them towards the prisoners as the captain advanced on the cage. If any of them tried to run, they could easily skewer themselves on a Dragon clansman's spear. As he lifted his keys, unlocking the door with the blind ease that came only from practice, the captain didn’t let his eyes stray from Alweard’s face. “There you go.” Reaching into the open cage, he yanked Alweard out as if he were light as a child’s ragdoll. “Don’t try your tricks on me, lad. I heard a rumor that you can write letters, like a sorcerer. Is that true?”

Alweard parted his lips to speak, but no words escaped. Then he pressed his lips together, shook his head, and tried to look away. With a single rough hand, the guard-captain forced him to stand straight, lifting Alweard’s head so their eyes would meet once more. They were of a height, but the captain was easily twice as broad as he. 

“So you’ve lost your voice, Gwyn?” In the guard-captain’s mouth, Alweard’s alias was laced with more venom than any insult. “That’s a pity. After all, you sang so sweetly, even if it was wasted on a captive audience.” He smirked at his own joke; after a couple heartbeats of chilly silence, the guards behind him began to laugh. “I’d recommend that you find your voice soon. You are to entertain us, after all, whether you sing or no.” 

The guard-captain tugged him closer, so close that Alweard could hear him breathing. His heaving was loud in Alweard’s ears, but so was the pounding of the Rohir’s own blood. Then, when Alweard smelled wine on the captain’s breath, he felt himself sliding into dizziness. 

“Are you dumb, boy?” To Alweard, the guard-captain’s voice could have been ten yards away. His breath was still close, though; the redolent sweetness of the wine he had surely drank mixed with the scent of his skin into something all too familiar. Alweard knew he had never been here before, never known the gray-bearded captain before now, but the weight of his hand and the smell together—or perhaps it was a different hand, a different man with the same droplets of wine gleaming in his graying beard—made his stomach turn. Icy numbness prickled through his hands and feet as his legs betrayed him; he saw his body slumping to his knees. Yet he saw himself from a distance, as if his body were a puppet tumbling from strings which he—the erstwhile puppeteer—was too weak to pick up.

“Rhi Helvarch!” the guard-captain roared, recoiling. Beneath the paint streaked across his features, his face contorted in horror. “What’s wrong with you, boy?”

Still far from himself, Alweard saw his face—his body’s face—in the dark surface of a puddle on the floor. His cheeks were too pale and his lips were too red; his traitorous eyes were searching for something that simply wasn’t there.