The Rawn Chronicles Book One: The Orrinn and the Blacksword: Unabridged (The Rawn Chronicles Series 1) (43 page)

Powyss caught a brief glimpse of the Wind Orrinn as it hurtled overhead; as soon as Havoc started intoning Skrol, he knew the prince’s intention.

“
Get
down
!” he shouted to his men.

The Orrinn’s trajectory took it to the front of the advancing line. A soldier saw it falling towards him and he instinctively put up his shield; the Orrinn bounced off it and it landed on the ground in the centre of the infantrymen.

It started to spin on its thick base as Havoc chanted the Skrol of Activation. The sound of the ancient subconscious language of the old gods, spoken at this level, usually bypassed the ears and lanced into the front of the brain. Powyss felt pinpricks jabbing into the back of his eyeballs. The other men groaned; even the Vallkytes slowed their advance and clutched their heads in pain.

Wind from the spinning orb burst out from the Orrinn. A fast-spinning tornado, twenty-foot-wide at its base, formed around the Vallkytes. It picked men and debris up, and hurtled the soldiers hundreds of feet into the air. Most spun around the vortex’s walls; the gravity force that was created pushed their internal organs out through the nearest orifice.

Havoc had dived into the trench just in time. He pulled Little Kith down as he stared in wonder at the tornado. The wind gusted over them from the west, pulled into the dark spinning column to feed the screaming beast. Dismembered bodies and their mangled limbs rained down, along with weapons and shields. One such shield impaled the ground a foot from Verkin’s head; it wobbled with the force of the impact and it was drenched in blood.

The ground around the spinning column sprayed with eviscerated flesh. The fugitives were on the outskirts of the this spiral of red ruin, but Velnour and a few others still managed to be drenched in the warm gunk.

Powyss crawled to Havoc. “For the love of the gods, switch the bloody thing off!” he bellowed.

Havoc deactivated the Orrinn by incanting a shorter version of the activation cantrip. The tornado of spinning grass, dirt and cadavers slowed down and dispersed. Everything picked up by the vortex fell to the ground with a loud thump.

“Where did you learn that little trick?” asked Powyss.

Havoc shrugged, “no idea, it just seemed like the obvious thing to do.”

The surviving fugitives tentatively popped their heads up over the rim of the embankment.

A red circle of mashed bodies spread everywhere, but the surprising thing was that only one soldier remained. He was standing next to the Orrinn, clutching his spear for dear life. He had been the only one fortunate enough to be standing in the eye of the storm.

“There’s the luckiest man in the world,” said Furran.

Everyone laughed. The soldier snapped out of his shock and ran in the opposite direction.

They all clapped Havoc’s back and Little Kith hugged him tightly, which almost crushed his chest. Powyss noticed that the Vallkyte cavalry were watching from afar. After a few minutes, they then turned and left. The way to the Oldwoods was clear.

They wasted no time. While Havoc collected an unscathed Dirkem and a tired Sarema, the others buried their dead. However, Powyss and the remains of the Sonoran Royal Guard built a cairn for Othell’s body.

“Jynn?” Powyss asked Havoc as he helped pile stones onto the cairn.

“Dead. I will tell you about it later.”

“How did you get the horses here?”

“Used Mirryn to go fetch them; I love my horse.” Havoc smiled.

“Mirryn fetched them?” asked Powyss, looking at the red kite sitting on top of the cairn. The other men thought that this was Havoc’s trained pet. “Or was it the swords Orrinn?” Powyss frowned.

“Both, I think,” said Havoc. “It’s a very special Orrinn.”

They all stood around the finished cairn as the evening light was fading.

“What happens now?” asked Furran.

Seventeen pairs of eyes looked directly at Havoc. The prince had explained to the men that he had found the Wind Orrinn among the wreckage of a downed sky ship, attacked by person or persons unknown.

They did not ask him how he knew Skrol. Even Powyss was amazed at that ability, claiming Ri scholars would find it difficult to incant Skrol at such a high level of knowledge.

They all looked at their saviour with heightened respect. They saw him as someone special, their lucky charm.

“They will follow you now,” informed Powyss. “Won’t be long before the soldiers from the pass arrive back from the lake, so where do we go from here?”

Havoc looked at Whyteman and smiled. “I hear we will have a warm welcome in the Eternal Forest.” He saw the archer smile, and nodded. “Let’s make a move.”

Chapter 30

Revelations

His legend spread.

The stories over the previous year of a black-cloaked phantom haunting the mountains intermingled with the tales of the dark cloaked headhunter of Sloe and the Oldwoods.

The final confirmation of the figure’s identity came after the incidents at the Little Dorit Tavern and the Haplann Mines. That was when the Blacksword was born in people’s minds.

Most of the older generation knew of the prophecy, and a vacuum of mythological complacency suddenly filled with fear and death at the revelation of the Blacksword’s existence.

His legend spread.

Rumours of his deeds, old and invented, spread to Toll-marr, Dulan-Tiss, the high canopies of the Eternal Forest and the Sky Mountains.

Children learnt to behave or the Blacksword would get them.

Priests wandered citadels and explained to sinners that they must repent or the Sword that Rules would send their souls to the Pits of the Dammed.

Portents and augers told of dark days to come.

The superstitious unveiled Blacksword as the personification of death.

His legend spread.

Ness Ri sat on the Pyromancer’s Rage, the boulder of glass, and meditated. He had travelled far from the exiles to be alone.

Why he had come here, of all places, was a mystery to him, but what he did know was that the rumour of the Blacksword had spread to these high mountains and he needed confirmation.

He reached a meditative state and cast his mind to a distant land, reaching with his very fibre to an equally ancient mind.

“Ciriana,” he whispered.

As if from a distant world, or the other side of an abysmal plain, there was an answer.

Ness.
The voice was tinny and distant in his head, but clearly female.

“Stories of the Blacksword are rife. Has the prophecy begun?”

The answer was long in coming, Ness Ri waited in anticipation.

Yes.

“Who has the Sword that Rules? Who is the Blacksword?”

You know who he is; only the Rage could have made such a sword and a being powerful enough to wield it,
returned the reply.

“Rage, what...?”

Think, Ness, think. It is the ancient name for a vast power.

The Ri flinched. “Pyromancer?” he said. His eyes flickered open and the link with the prophet was lost.

His breath came shallow and uneven, he suddenly understood.

“Havoc.” He smiled.

Mulvend hated Havoc.

At first, she had wrongly built up a dislike for her adoptive parents, but the love they had bestowed on her won her respect and she enjoyed her life in the mountains.

When the stories reached them about the black-cloaked figure from Sloe, she knew that it was Havoc. After the stories reached them in the Little Dell about the mythological and surreal aspect of the persona of the Blacksword, she knew in her heart he was the man who saved her from bandits all those months ago.

Hoban and Neiva suspected it was the stranger who had brought her to them that fateful night, but only Mulvend knew his identity. In her dreams, she would see Havoc smiling at her, usually standing over the body of the dead bear.

A girl with brown hair and a blue dress would stand by his side. She had a sweet, smiling face and a doll with tattered clothing. Her green eyes resembled Havoc’s...sometimes. Sometimes they burned.

He had told her about this girl, his sister. Why was she in her dreams?

After a while, she realised their paths would cross again. Their fate was inevitable. Mulvend hated him for that.

She also loved him even more.

Molna was sure of her place in the world now, in mind, if not in body. She was a prisoner within the citadel. She accepted this fact and made a world within its walls. She would often leave the confines of the castle and go to the poorer parts of the city, where she then administered to the sick and needy. At first, she did this to cloud her mind from the black melancholy that enshrouded her waking days. Then she realised that she enjoyed it.

The street urchins would queue outside the kitchen doors of the castle for scraps from the king’s table. Molna would be there to ensure that these scraps were of a fresh and nutritious nature.

The burgh lords and their political opponents were not averse to asking the queen for patronage; her shrewd grasp of trade rights and political expertise very much sought after. She would often receive them warmly to give them council.

The Vallkytes knew her as the Gentle Queen.

If the king was displeased at her popularity, he never showed it; besides, it worked in his favour.

Molna took to ameliorate the castle dungeons, which formed a massive complex of manmade tunnels that stretched under the citadel. The living conditions were terrible; most prisoners died of disease. She improved this with sanitation and better food.

She would talk to the inmates, feed them, wash their feet and dress their festering sores. Many would wake from fever to see her beauty smiling down upon them. They felt blessed.

Even the murderers and rapists showed this woman respect.

However, one prisoner fascinated her the most. He was in cell forty-two. When she first saw him there, sitting on his bed humming to himself and staring at the wall, she knew he was mad. This happened to most of the inmates when they realised they would never see daylight again.

The prisoner in forty-two caught her attention on their first meeting, not by who he was, because Chirl, the old warden, did not know, but by what he did. Most prisoners would mark the days of their incarceration on the walls of their cells. Prisoner forty-two wrote Skrol.

He was tall, with long, lanky grey hair, and dark eyebrows over blue eyes. He had wrinkles on his face, but for all that, he still had a handsome, youthful quality about him. It was hard to place his age.

Those glazed eyes, however, held a vast intelligence.

“Who is he, Chirl?” she asked the warden on the first day.

“I don’t know, ma’am,” said the bow-legged, white-haired warden. “Old Shanks has been here longer than I have, and I’ve been here twenty years or so. Some say he is a Rawn, but there is nothing there now.”

“Shanks?” asked Molna.

“We call him that on the account of his height, ma’am.”

“Did the previous warden not tell you?”

“He died before I took the job.”

Over the months, Shanks did not respond to her very much; he mumbled or hummed, but never acknowledged her existence. She was not daunted by this and did most of the talking, so time passed. She told him of her life in the citadel, of the simple pleasures she got from helping the needy. She unburdened her pain and misery upon him about her life as Queen of the Vallkytes, and the fact that she may never see her husband and son again. She told him all of this as if confiding in a friend, safe in the knowledge that he would never repeat it.

However, when the stories of the Blacksword reached her, she deemed this as worthy news to tell Shanks. She told him day after day about the cloaked figure of death.

Then a day came unlike any other that changed both of their lives.

She visited Shanks on her own, as usual, and told him the new story about the Blacksword destroying the Sonoran sky ships.

“The Vallkyte soldier who first saw the provoked attack witnessed a white fireball strike one of the ships,” she said to him excitedly.

Shanks stopped humming and looked from the Skrol-decorated wall at Molna with bright, concerned eyes. ‘Py...ro..m..anc..er,” he said in a dry voice.

It was the first word he had ever spoken to her.

“Pyromancer, who is...? You mean the Blacksword is a Pyromancer?” she asked, but he had turned back to the wall and continued humming.

The days wore on and Shanks came out of his shell more and more. She realised he had no memory of his past life, only fragments, but the fragments were being pieced together as the cells in his mind slowly unlocked.

One day she arrived to find out that he had made an effort to wash himself and tied his hair into a ponytail; the glazed look had gone from his eyes. It was a month after he had first spoke.

“You are looking better, Shanks,” she said to him as she broke bread for his soup.

“My name is not Shanks,” he croaked.

“True, but you don’t remember your name, do you?” She watched him carefully.

“A girl with a doll, in a dream last night, told me who I am.”

Molna shivered in the damp cell. His face was very sad, but his eyes burnt brightly.

“I was a noble, because she told me I rose to be a king once.”

“How could that be?” Molna frowned.

“I was bad, though, I deserve my pain.” He bowed his head and cried.

“Shush now. Who did she say you were?” she asked, reaching for his shoulder.

“She said my name is Telmar... Yes, that’s it, I’m Baron Telmar.”

The story continues in...

The Rawn Chronicles Book Two

The Warlord and the Raiders