A Plague of Ruin: Book One: Son of Two Bloods Read online

  A PLAGUE OF RUIN:

  Book One

  Son of Two Bloods

  By

  Daniel T Hylton

  Copyright 2021 Daniel T Hylton

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN:9798453471454

  This book is dedicated in loving memory of my mother, Alverna Mae (Finn) Hylton, who passed away in February, 2020. She gave me life and raised me. Together with my father, she gave me a secure home and a happy childhood. But her greatest gift to me was that of faith in Jesus Christ – and for that I will be forever grateful.

  I will miss you, Mom.

  Cover Art by Bruce C Kavanaugh

  Please visit danielthylton.com for maps and a list of other works by this author

  Prologue

  With her very last breath, his mother named him Brenyn.

  She never kissed him, never suckled him, or even held him.

  She lived just long enough to name him, and then she died.

  When Brenyn grew older, his grandmother told him that on the day that he was a born, a massive storm gathered above the wooded hills and hollows. Great hailstones pounded down, many large enough to break through roofs, large enough to kill a man or even a horse, and endless thunder rolled between the high places.

  A powerful lightning bolt struck the great tree at the bottom of the field and split it from crown to root, killing it instantly. His grandmother thought it a powerful omen, though of what she could not say.

  His grandmother was there on the day of his birth, as was his father. His mother, who bore the exotic name of Argentia, was there, of course, but only until he drew his first breath and uttered his first cry.

  In that moment, Argentia named her son and died.

  Her pains had begun early on that morning, before the sun found the sky. Her husband, Fynn, woke his mother to help him attend to his wife during the birth of their first child. Argentia and Fynn had struggled to conceive, and many years had passed. Once, years before, she had conceived, but the child died and passed from her womb before it could reach viability.

  At last, though, a child formed in her womb and prospered. The pregnancy, however, had been difficult for her, her health had suffered, and she had weakened, distressing her husband greatly.

  But now, at last, the birthing day had come.

  Argentia did not cry out when pains wracked her slender frame, but the intense distress in her eyes could not be hidden.

  The hours wore away. Morning came; the sun blazed forth in the sky and began its inexorable climb.

  When that bright orb had passed through the apex and wheeled westward, Argentia was yet in labor, her body fairly quivering in agony.

  Fynn held her hand and looked down toward the bottom of the bed at his widowed mother, who was named Mirae. “What is wrong, Ma? – why hasn’t the child come?”

  Mirae shook her head. “I do not know, my son – but babies will ever come in their own time, never in ours.” She frowned. “It is not a large child, but she seems to be struggling with pushing the little thing out and into the world. Change the damp cloth on her forehead, my son; keep her cool. The child will come soon enough.”

  As the sun declined into the afternoon sky it disappeared behind a mountain of cloud that was building into the firmament over the forested hills and hollows. Soon, there came the muted rumble of thunder and the flare of occasional lightning.

  Another hour passed.

  And still Argentia struggled.

  The day grew darker.

  The lightning flashed more frequently now, and thunder rumbled loud and close, furious detonations of sound.

  Fynn, seated by his wife, looked at Mirae for encouragement but his mother had none to give, so she ignored him and kept her attention focused upon her task, though lines of concern wrinkled her brow.

  Then, Argentia looked into Fynn’s eyes and spoke in a voice that trembled with pain and weakness.

  “Only one of us, my husband,” she told him, softly, quietly, almost in a whisper. “Only one of us.”

  He frowned at her. “What do you mean, my love?”

  Her eyes seemed to dance with the fierceness of her pain.

  “Only one of us may live,” she answered. “Me, or my son; only one of us may live.”

  “What? Why? – how do you know this?”

  “I know.”

  Her words seemed to register with him then. “How do you know that it is a boy?”

  “I know,” she repeated.

  He stared at her for a long moment. Then; “You,” he stated in a voice rendered harsh with fear. “You must live, my love. I know not this child, but I cannot bear to live a minute without you.”

  For a moment, she grew quiet, and her pain seemed to fade as she met his worried gaze.

  “But you do not know what this child will be, or what he will do, my love,” she told him.

  He shook his head. “I care not. If we can but save one life; let it be yours.”

  “This child,” she said, “will be unlike any other, and capable of great things, incredible things.”

  His frown deepened. “How can you know what he will do?” He wondered.

  “I do not know what he will do, my love,” she replied, “only what he will be.”

  “I care not,” he said again. “You must live.”

  Outside, lightning flashed and flared, and thunder crashed all about the small house.

  “I love you, Fynn, my husband,” Argentia said then, “but this child must live.”

  Her eyes closed and her body was wracked with a mighty pain. The cry of a child came in that moment.

  “It is a boy!” Mirae cried from the foot of the bed.

  Argentia opened her eyes and looked into her husband’s. “His name is Brenyn,” she told him, and then she breathed out a long breath, as in a mournful sigh. Her eyes lost their focus, and her body went still.

  In that instant, a massive bolt of power struck the great tree at the bottom of the field, just above the road, and the illumination from that stroke rendered the inside of the house as bright as if the sun had burst forth inside its walls.

  Then, great stones of ice fell from that black sky, pounding down all around the farm, though, strangely, none struck the house itself. The wind howled and thunder rumbled unceasingly.

  Fynn noticed none of this, for, amidst the noise and tumult, he was terrified by the silence of his wife.

  He grasped her body and held her to him while he pleaded for her not to go. But it was futile.

  She had passed.

  Her life had been given to her son.

  At the foot of the bed, Mirae held her newborn grandson and gazed upon the sight of her desolated son and his dead wife with eyes of sorrow.

  For his part, Fynn never held his son, or even looked upon him. He buried his wife and then left the farm.

  Distraught at the passing of his beloved Argentia, Brenyn’s father abandoned his newborn son, gathered up his weapons, and went away, selling his skills as a mercenary to the highest bidder in the endless wars that had plagued the earth for time out of mind. When he was slain in a battle of one of those far off wars, one of his comrades, one who was possessed of sufficient integrity, honored his last request and returned his sword and shield, his dagger, his bow, and a quiver of arrows to the son that the father had deserted but a few days after the boy’s birth, when he had buried his wife beneath the lightning-stricken tree.

  The sword and dagger were superb blades of quality steel, and the bow was a lovely weapon, sleek, curved, and strong, made of an unusual, straight-grained wood, dark reddish-brown in color. There were strange symbols rendered in an unknown lan
guage carved upon the bow from end to end, all around the edges of the shield, and also upon the steel of the blades.

  His grandmother told Brenyn that those weapons had come from the land where Fynn had discovered the woman who would become his mother. His mother, she told him, had come from a far distant land, a strange land, one to which his father had travelled as a young man.

  Mirae shook her head. “Your father was a fierce one,” she said, “and ever so willful. Vicundium was too small to contain his spirit, so he traveled, far and wide, even in the world as it is, filled with war and violence. When he was yet young, he traveled into the lands of the distant east – lands that were unknown to most people.” She shook her head again. “I could not restrain him.”

  Brenyn’s father had returned from that mysterious, distant land with a woman of exquisite, ethereal beauty upon his arm. And it was she that had crafted the bow for her new husband.

  “She was a lovely girl, your mother, and, oh, so very clever,” Brenyn’s grandmother told him, “but strange, fairy-like, with long dark hair, skin as pale as the moon, and silvery eyes.”

  She contemplated her young grandson in silence for a long moment. “You are rather like her, you know, except that your eyes are gray and not silver,” she stated. “You are a good boy, Brenyn; but you are an unusual lad, a rather mysterious creature, like your mother. Nonetheless, I loved that strange girl, and I love you.”

  Part One:

  The Shattering of Dreams

  1.

  Brenyn was eleven years of age when his father’s weapons came to him.

  He was working in the garden with his grandmother one day when a horse whinnied at the gate down by the road.

  Mirae looked up from her work and frowned. “Who can that be?” She wondered.

  “It looks like a soldier, Gran,” Brenyn said.

  “Yes, well – what would he want with us?”

  Brenyn laid down his hoe. “I will go and see.”

  “Be careful, Brennie.”

  The man sitting upon the great black horse on the road by the gate was dressed in dark leather and black clothing, bearing a shield upon one arm. He bore a sword in a scabbard upon his back and there was a wicked-looking lance slung in a holster behind the saddle.

  The man’s head was crowned with mounds of thick, curly black hair, and his jawline sprouted a short beard of the same color. He was not young, but neither was he old, and he appeared strong and vital. His face was weathered and heavily lined, as if his years, however many they were, had been spent in rough and ragged living beneath the harsh eye of the sun.

  The man’s dark eyes studied Brenyn as he descended the slope toward the gate.

  “Be you Brenyn Vagus?” The man asked.

  Brenyn halted. “I am,” he answered. “Who are you that asks me this?”

  The man smiled, showing surprisingly white teeth.

  “I knew your father,” he said. “My name is Grizeo – Captain Armun Grizeo. I knew your father, Brenyn.”

  Brenyn frowned up at him. “Knew? He is no more, then?”

  “Well, you are one sharp lad, are you not?” Captain Grizeo said, and he nodded. “Your father was killed two months ago, in a battle with the prince of Thalia. I am sorry, Brenyn.”

  “Thalia?” Brenyn asked. “Is that land far off?”

  “It is,” Grizeo answered. “It is nigh onto a hundred leagues from this place. I have been journeying for more than two weeks to come here.”

  Brenyn considered for a moment and then replied. “I am grateful, sir. And I sorry for my father, too, but I knew him not. He left when I was a small child.”

  Grizeo swung down from the saddle and nodded again, in sadness. “Yes, I know,” he agreed. “Fynn told me often about you – and your mother.” His dark eyes grew somber. “I have to tell you, Brenyn, that your father regretted never returning here to know you better.”

  Brenyn frowned. “And yet he never came.”

  Grizeo, surprised by the solemn astuteness of the slender boy, studied him again for a long moment. “Even so,” he said, “Fynn told me often that he wished he had come.”

  “I wish he had come, too,” Brenyn replied.

  Grizeo turned then and loosened a canvass bundle from the pack behind the saddle on his horse, untying the bundle and pulling it free. Then he turned back toward Brenyn. “Your father made me tender a solemn promise,” he said, “that, should he die, I would return these things of his to you.” He held the bundle over the gate and let it drop upon the grass.

  The bundle was slim, perhaps five feet long, and wrapped in heavy canvass.

  “What is it?” Asked Brenyn.

  “It’s all that your father had in the world,” Grizeo answered. “His weapons and a bit of money.” He removed the shield from his arm and set it against the fence. “This was his as well.”

  Brenyn looked up and frowned at him. “You came all this way to bring these things?”

  Grizeo straightened up, stretching his back, and glanced around at the pleasant green hills. “I was going to come home to Vicundium one day, anyway. Your father’s death simply gave me a reason to come sooner more than later.”

  Brenyn studied the captain for a time, noticing the dust that clung to his clothing and his horse. Then he glanced over at the sun, sliding down toward the hills to the west.

  “You’d better come in and have a bit of supper, captain,” he told Grizeo. “Gran has got a pot of beans on the stove.”

  Captain Grizeo grinned with pleasure and surprise at this unexpected suggestion. Then he looked up toward the old woman standing in the garden, watching them.

  “Does your gran agree with this invitation?” He wondered.

  “My father was her son,” Brenyn told him. “Gran will want to hear what you have to say of him and how he died.”

  Grizeo’s grin went away and he nodded soberly. “Yes,” he agreed. “She will, of course.” He looked over at the small barn. “My horse could use some water and a bit of hay,” he suggested.

  Brenyn swung open the gate and reached out for the reins. “I’ll take him.” He looked down at the canvass bundle containing his father’s things and then at the shield leaning against the fence. “Will you carry those into the house, sir?”

  Grizeo grinned once more at the boy’s mature demeanor. “I will,” he agreed.

  Later, as they sat at supper, Captain Grizeo related the tale of the death of Brenyn’s father.

  “Your father seemed not to care whether he lived or died,” Grizeo stated, looking at Brenyn. He shook his head. “Fynn was a fierce soldier, one of the best, but he did take chances, did he not? Yes, he did now, he did indeed,” the captain continued, answering his own question.

  A slight smile tinged with sadness made its way onto his countenance. “I loved him like a brother, and he was the best of men about the camp or when upon the road, sharing his goods and helping others – especially the wounded. But, in the midst of battle, he was a madman, always driving into the heat of things, seeming to dare the enemy to try and cut him down.”

  He sighed. “And, at the last, they did; they cut him down,” he said, glancing down at Brenyn. “We were contesting a region of forest for the prince of Gruene against the prince of Thalia.”

  Here he paused and frowned, looking at Brenyn. “I did say that we were mercenary folk, your father and me, did I not?”

  Brenyn shook his head.

  Captain Grizeo nodded an apology. “Well, that’s what we were, paid soldiers, you know, and the captain had hired us out to Prince Helvard of Gruene against Prince Sigurd of Thalia to contest ownership of a stretch of woodland.”

  Brenyn interrupted him, frowning. “Did not you state that you were the captain?”

  Grizeo met his gaze with a frown; but then comprehension came. “I am a captain, Brenyn, not the captain. That would be Cap’n Danliff – and he’s a fierce one in his own right, the old badger.”

  His face contorted with a scowl of contempt as h
e returned to his tale. “The fight had taken us all down into this sort of hollow, next to a stream, and things got really close and tight, you know?” The expression of disgust strengthened upon his face. “Well, the prince’s men couldn’t stand all the blood and noise, and they began to cut and run, leaving our mercenary band on its own, backed up against a thicket of brush.”

  The expression of contempt faded as a look of sad nostalgia came upon his countenance. “Your father was a strong-willed man, Brenyn – indeed, I have never met a man whose will was stronger than that of Fynn Vagus.” He spread his hands. “He simply would not give in or give up. He took the lead, standing at the very center of our defensive line, holding the enemy at bay.”

  He shook his head. “It was a near thing, it was. Then your father rushed straight at the enemy, swinging his sword in a wide, deadly arc, and yelling at us to climb the bank and get back to the horses. Cap’n Danliff agreed and called for a retreat. Well, retreat, we did, thinking Fynn was right behind us.” He shook his head once more, and his eyes grew sad. He glanced again at Brenyn. “I guess your father decided that it was his time, for he stayed right there in the bottom of the hollow, surrounded by the Thalian soldiers – and I’ll tell you; he cut down many of them ere they struck him dead.”

  He sighed deeply. “I went back later, with Sergeant Hap, and recovered his body. We buried him in a pleasant place, in a little meadow in the forest, and carved his name on the trunk of a tree. Then I cashiered out and brought his things to you.”

  Brenyn spoke solemnly. “Thank you, Captain.”

  Grizeo shrugged. “Well, I promised him, and now it’s done.”

  Brenyn turned his head and looked at the bundle, lying on the floor next to the wall. “Those are his weapons?”

  Grizeo nodded. “And there’s a good bit of money in there, too – all except for Fynn’s portion from the last job.” His features darkened. “Helvard never paid out, last I heard, and we owe the bastard for that bit of treachery.” Then he sighed and shrugged. “But it’s Cap’n Danliff’s score to settle now, and I reckon he will sometime. I’m home to stay.”