The Forgetting Moon (Volume 1) (The Five Warrior Angels) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Brian Lee Durfee was raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Monroe, Utah. He has been a grocery clerk, carpet cleaner, fantasy and wildlife artist, prison guard, prison librarian, prison educator, prison gang-unit sergeant (he's spent a lot of time in prisons), and a professional writer. He is currently a well-known YouTuber and host of the #1 television program in the history of the universe. Brian lives in Salt Lake City.

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The Forgetting Moon
Be we slave, peasant, knight, or lord, within all of us dwells a craving, a longing deep in our soul to know our own heritage and to identify the birthright of our fellow man. For regardless the number of good works and heroic deeds we achieve in life, the fatherless are by nature deemed unholy, susceptible to betrayal, and useless in the eyes of the great One and Only.

—THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON

CHAPTER ONE

NAIL

7TH DAY OF THE SHROUDED MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON

GALLOWS HAVEN, GUL KANA

We become what we think. Leastways, that was what Shawcroft was fond of saying. Nail fancied himself a good artist. It was what made him the happiest anyway, charcoal and parchment in hand—that, and dreaming of Ava Shay. He thought about both to an alarming degree. He also thought he was good with a sword.

In fact, despite the pounding rain, things were going well. Nail ducked and raised his blade to parry. Steel cracked against steel. His hand stung with the impact. It felt good. He swung again, his momentum pushing him forward. He slipped, drawing Dokie Liddle’s sword harmlessly over his head. With a clatter, Nail fell to his knees, wooden shield plowing into the mud, sword skittering off with a twang.

“Bloody Mother,” he cursed, helmet cocked sideways, obscuring his vision. Fool! Concentrate! His sword had landed just close enough in the grass that he considered lunging for it, but the tip of Dokie’s blade was already poised over him.

“Yield,” Dokie ordered, brandishing his sword menacingly. Nail was the strongest seventeen-year-old in Gallows Haven. He wasn’t easily beaten. He imagined the grin now spreading over Dokie’s face under the helm. Stefan Wayland, Zane Neville, even Zane’s brute of a shepherd dog, Beer Mug, watched, all waiting to see him stand and thrash Dokie good. Jenko Bruk was nearest, a look of pure amusement on his face. The Gallows Haven banner hung lifeless, sopping with rain, from the pole cradled in Jenko’s arm. The other forty young men gathered on the practice field held similar looks. A grin spread over the gruff, bearded countenance of their trainer, Baron Jubal Bruk.

Frustrated, Nail sat back on his heels. Too much daydreaming about Ava Shay. Tossing his gauntlets aside, he dug grime from under his armor with determined fingers and said, “A lucky twist of fate for you, Dokie. ’Tis only this mud that’s bested me.” He shoved his gauntlets back on and tried to stand, feet slipping out from under him again. “Rotted angels,” he cursed.

The air stirred as a chill wind stung Nail’s face. The breath was sucked from his lungs. Lightning! His mind screamed in warning as a blinding flash flamed off Dokie’s armor. The boy was flung away with a crack of thunder, sliding on his back.

Nail hugged the ground. The air was caustic, his lungs raw, mouth parched. White mist clung about his vision. A shower of sparks spiraled down around him, dissolving in the rain-splattered grass. The back of his sword hand sang with pain.

There were muffled voices, as if he was hearing them from under water. Jenko Bruk and Stefan Wayland were standing over him. “Lucky bastard,” Jenko muttered, dark amber eyes shifting between Nail and the others. Zane’s shepherd dog was barking up a riot. Stefan held forth a hand. Nail took it, stood on wobbly legs. He spotted Dokie sprawled in the mud, arms and legs splayed out, blank eyes staring up at the rain. Dokie’s body had left a path where it had slid through the muck. His helmet was gone and smoke drifted from the soles of his leather boots. Hoarse breaths swelled from his chest.

“He’s still alive!” Baron Jubal Bruk bellowed as he made the three-fingered sign of the Laijon Cross over his breast and looked toward the sky. “Let’s get him into town.” Baron Bruk and his son, Jenko, along with a few others, snatched up Dokie’s limp form into their arms and headed for town.

The rest of the sodden troop, clacking and clattering in their armor, quickly gathered their belongings and followed the baron south toward Gallows Haven.

Nail struggled behind the rest, slogging through the muck, still in a daze. He looked skyward, eyes trying to focus as rain peppered his face. The back side of his sword hand still burned under his gauntlet.

“Your satchel.” Stefan came up behind him, draping the bag’s leather strap over Nail’s shoulder. “You almost forgot it.”

“Right, thanks.” The words felt strange on Nail’s dry tongue. He swallowed hard, still trying to regain his bearings. His satchel held his most prized possessions: prayer book, art supplies, collection of charcoal drawings.

Claps of thunder boomed behind Nail and Stefan as they hustled their pace to keep up with the others. Patches of trees added some shelter from the rain, but the road mainly bore them through fields and farmland. Hedges, wattle-and-daub fences, and rows of stone lined their path. The hollow clanking of goat bells sounded in the distance.

On occasion, Zane’s dog would bark into the gathering darkness of early evening, as if something were out there following them. Through the fog that still covered his brain, Nail’s imagination began spinning with unholy images, images that had plagued his dreams since childhood. The fiery forms of the nameless beasts of the underworld. Red-eyed beasts that seemed to haunt the minds of lonely children, those children born fatherless, motherless, and alone. Nail knew he was different. He was a bastard and unnatural.

When they tottered by a candlelit cottage, a whiff of woodsmoke swirled past Nail’s nose, the aroma clearing his mind of churning thoughts.

Soon the small company of trainees broke through a stand of evergreens and Gallows Haven was a sprinkling of lights before them. To the right of their path, on a low, sloping hill overlooking Gallows Bay, was the empty husk of Gallows Keep. It had not seen use in centuries. Now its leaning crenellated battlements rose over the village, nothing more than the ancient, broken-down remnants of a castle that was once whole.

To their left was the village chapel. Nail felt sudden reassurance in its bulky gray presence. Despite what negative things Shawcroft said about the Church of Laijon and its teachings, Nail felt there was safety held within the chapel’s great arches, in the thickness of its walls and its stoic grandeur. Above the door, three large stained-glass windows inlaid with intricate designs threw colorful shadows across their path. As those bearing Dokie’s lightning-struck form passed through the front doors of the chapel, Nail looked up at those splendorous windows. On brighter days, with tattered sketchbook in hand, he would sit outside under them and sketch. In the center window was an image of Laijon, five colorful angel stones hanging above him like halos: white, red, black, green, and blue. Laijon wore a coat of shimmering chain mail and hefted a silver battle-ax named Forgetting Moon. In the left window floated two white-robed angels, one wielding a broadsword, Afflicted Fire, the other a black-wood crossbow, Blackest Heart. In the right window were two more heavenly apparitions, one with a horned war helm, Lonesome Crown, and the other carrying a mythical shield, Ethic Shroud. These were the five ancient weapons of lore.

Once Jubal and Jenko Bruk and the others were inside the chapel, those five angelic images cast...