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

by P. D. Ceanneir

  He used the earth element to scan the floor for anything out of place, moving his hand an inch over the surface. He was about to stop when he detected other materials other than wood in the front left corner of the carriage; he forced the wood there to age and warp until they split apart and curled up.

  Under the floor lay a bundle wrapped up in thick wax gauze. He unwound the wrapping and found a small trinket box with a coat of arms emblazoned on its curved lid; it showed a dragon and a bear on their hind legs on either side of a blue, enamelled chequered shield with a hammer and chisel crossed in the middle of a cave mouth.

  Havoc recognised the coat of arms as belonging to the Count of Haplann.

  “Did I just bury the Count of Haplann and his family? What were they doing out here?”

  He opened the trinket box and found a fortune in gems, from diamonds to rubies and gold to silver necklaces and rings. He picked up a silver hairpin with the same coat of arms on it. He closed the lid and wrapped it back up in the gauze, then stuffed it into one of the leather pouches on Dirkem’s saddle; he was about to mount the stallion when he stopped and looked at the dresses on the ground; he noticed that some were far too small for the countess and her daughter.

  Find the girl, brother, save her from evil.

  He realised there must be another girl. He looked around, but could not find her; the bandits must still have her, and he now knew he had to find her before it was too late.

  The sun was lower when he left that sorry place, the light under the trees now somewhat dimmer. However, the sunlight left the clearing last and lingered longest on the graves of the count and his family.

  The three riders had waited until nightfall before they made their move. They had watched the cloaked rider leave the woods and stop by a stream at the end of the valley, where he had made his camp for the night.

  They sneaked into his camp in the early hours of the morning. They had planned to kill him and take his horse and any valuables. They saw him sleeping by a large boulder; his black stallion stood next to him quietly dozing. The oldest of the three, short, bald and a face scarred with pockmarks, walked quietly towards the sleeping stranger. His colleague, a younger man with a black beard and sword, hung back a few paces; the third was a young man with a bow, arrow already notched. He stood away from the others so he could cover them if anything should go wrong.

  The old man smiled; this was so easy, and the stallion was now awake, but had made no noise to warn his owner; he pulled back the blanket and he let out an involuntary gasp of breath as he saw the small boulders underneath.

  Havoc walked out from the trees quietly; he rammed the pommel of Tragenn into the young boy’s neck, crushing two vertebrae, and continued walking on to black beard as the boy crumpled to the wet ground.

  Black beard turned and yelled to the older man; he lunged at Havoc, but his opponent moved so quickly he did not see the sword that entered his side and pierced his heart before it was too late.

  The old man only carried a dagger; he ran at Havoc holding the knife high, but Havoc swapped hands and slashed open the old man’s stomach, sending steaming guts out into the dank night. The old man’s dying groans followed the prince as he walked back to the boy, now lying face down in a puddle; bubbles of air escaped at each side of his head as he tried to breath, but he could not move due to Havoc’s paralysing blow.

  Havoc flicked him over with his foot; the boy’s dirty muddy face breathed in gulps of air. His frightened eyes looked at the hooded figure above him and Havoc remembered the vision he had seen in the Orrinn, and it convinced him that it had been showing him glimpses of the future.

  “Please, don’t hurt me…” said the boy, with some difficulty; his breathing became ragged as he was losing the use of his lungs.

  “It’s too late for that now,” said Havoc; he had deliberately intended on keeping one of them alive so he could probe his mind and find out where they held the girl.

  He knelt beside the boy, who was only a couple of years younger than himself, and placed his hands on his forehead. He summoned the water element and performed the thought link. He had done this before with Magnus, but only under supervision from Lord Ness. It was simple enough to do, however crude and invasive it was for the victim, and Havoc used all the force he could. The boy yelled, and, despite his paralysis, froze rigid and arched his back. His eyes rolled in their sockets, showing the whites of the eyeballs.

  A plump, blonde, buxom girl was at the surface of the boy’s mind, a constant thought for the girl he loved from his home town of Sloe on the northeast side of the Tattoium. The boy’s name was Ched, the old man whose guts now adorned the floor of the valley was his father, and the other was a hired thug who worked for a red-haired, bushy bearded man called Garth, the governor of Sloe, and, from the picture in Ched’s head, easily recognisable as the axe-wielding man in the Muse Orrinn.

  Havoc sifted through the debris of memories; he found out many useful pieces of information. The boy had vast knowledge of hidden mountain passes that even Havoc had missed. He found out that Garth was a Vallkyte soldier, believed by the people of the town to be an ex-member of King Kasan’s Royal Guard, hence his advancement to governor. He saw the boy’s conversation with his father about the newly arrived Count of Haplann and his family. The count’s lands now fell to lords loyal to the Vallkyte king; the count went into self-imposed exile. Havoc witnessed his flight to the mountains with his family and paying the governor handsomely to hire guides over the Tattoium. The governor had suspected the count only wished to go to King Vanduke with hidden treasure and support the Rogun cause, so he instructed the bandits to kill the family and bring back the treasure and the youngest daughter alive for further transportation to Dulan-Tiss. There, she would become brainwashed to become a useful ally to King Kasan as she grew up being the only true heir to the Haplann lands, which Kasan could not control by the laws laid down in the Royal Tables.

  Havoc felt pity for the tragic count and his family, and hate for Garth and the bandits. He caught glimpses of the youngest daughter bound and gagged, full of fear in her eyes as she looked away from the rape of her mother and sister. He saw through the eyes of the boy as he fired arrows into the count; even while drunk on the barrels of rum, his aim was good. Nevertheless, he also found what he was looking for. Two of the bandits now remained to guard the girl, about three miles north of his position.

  He linked the Pyromantic energy from his hate of the boy to the water element and sent a small surge in his mind. The result was instant death for the boy as the contents of his head turned to mush; blood and brain matter streamed out of his nose and ears, and the whites of his eyes became a dark red.

  He searched the dead, but they had very little on them. However, he did take a gold earring off Ched’s left lobe; it showed a rearing horse, and he knew from the boy’s memories that it was a gift from his lover.

  He and Dirkem rode swiftly to the girl’s location and arrived as the early morning light was about to creep over the hills. Havoc quietly walked into camp. The two thugs were up and eating breakfast, languishing by the campfire. He could see the girl half asleep in the same wicker cage that he had seen in the Orrinn, her blonde hair messy and matted; leaves and dirt clung to her short linen britches and tunic. Her hair was short, and her clothing style gave her a tomboyish look. He guessed her age to be about twelve or thirteen. The men had not seen him, but the girl had and was looking at Havoc with wide eyes.

  Havoc walked straight up to the bandits, but deliberately behind one of them. He was like a long shadow as he exited the trees and shrubs and deftly gripped the first guard’s head and snapped his neck.

  The second was shocked into action and unsheathed his sword. Havoc gripped the man’s sword arm with his right hand just below the wrist, put the palm of his left hand hard against the guard’s elbow and pulled sharply towards him with his right; there was a loud crack as the arm dislocated at the elbow and the guard dropped his sword.

 
; Havoc punched the man in the throat and he staggered away choking for breath and clutching his arm; he turned and ran. Havoc flicked the guard’s sword upwards with his foot and grabbed it out of the air. He then gripped the hilt with both hands and threw the sword. It took the fleeing bandit off his feet as it went into his back, and he landed on the ground, sending up a wake of leaves as he skidded to a halt.

  The girl was frightened as the hooded man made the wicker bars turn to dust; she did not move, even as he pulled the hood down and smiled. She saw that the smile was warm and friendly as he reached out his hand.

  “Come now, my dear, I will not harm you. No one is going to harm you again,” said Havoc.

  The girl hesitated at first and looked at the dead guard by the fire; she could not see his face because it was looking over his own back. She would always remember him as the man who had killed her mother, and, in a small way, she felt a savage glee and was grateful to this stranger.

  Havoc was startled as the girl fell into his arms; she smelt terrible. In her fear, she have urinated and defecated in her own clothes rather than have the men watching her. He quickly searched the guards and found a fortune in gold. He put it into his saddlebag.

  He took the girl away, sitting her on his lap as he galloped away on Dirkem. She slept with her head against his chest and, soon, the pungent smell dispersed with the wind.

  She slept through most of the morning and only woke once; she woke screaming and thrashing wildly. It took Havoc a few moments to calm and shush her into a deep sleep.

  They headed north. The warm air had a hint of a cool breeze and a promise of an early autumn; sunlight dappled through the oaks and maples as they followed a small stream, crossing at shallows where the tight rocks formed rapids, and currents clashed inside whirlpools.

  Once across, Havoc followed one of the late Ched’s hidden paths up the side of a mountain to a shallow pool among short trees and shrubs. The pool filled from a mountain spring bubbling out of the cliff face to form a small waterfall.

  The midday sun had warmed the water on the surface only, so Havoc once again tried to condense the warm air around him. He was only partly successful in that he managed to make the water bubble with heat in a two-foot arc.

  The girl would not speak. Havoc was not sure if it was shock or if she was mute, but she never uttered a word to him.

  “Now, sweetheart, I will go over there behind that large rock and make us something to eat. Now I want you to take a bath and give yourself a good scrub; can you do that for me?”

  She nodded, but grabbed his hand as he got up to go, and pulled him to the pool.

  “No, little one, you have to go in alone; I won’t be far away.” He was forceful and she eventually relented.

  Havoc made the meal, a sort of rabbit and vegetable stew, while the girl washed herself and her clothes. Havoc had provided soap in the form of petals from a mountain herb in a small Hessian sack. The idea was to soak it and rub it on skin, so the lather would then eventually appear, but the girl had most of the lather on the surface of the pool, because she had used too much and the tiny waterfall had made more white foam.

  Havoc provided her with blankets and she dried herself, wrapped up from the cool wind. Havoc put her clothes on a boulder to dry in the sun. They ate well and the girl wolfed down the lot; after the meal, she gazed off into space, rocking herself back and forward.

  Havoc asked her name again and received no answer. He shrugged and spoke about himself, his life and family, the treachery of his uncle and their subsequent exile. He also told her about his year alone in the mountains and is struggle to govern his powers. For her part, she listened intently, but never spoke. Havoc was pleased to have someone to speak to, even if it was only a one-way conversation. She watched him meditate as the sun went down, and she lay in her blankets next to him as he told her the story of Mirryn, who had declined to join them that night. She listened, rapt, to his every word, and fell asleep before the end.

  She awoke screaming in the early hours of the morning, and Havoc clutched her to him and rocked her to sleep again.

  He woke early, washed himself in the pool just before first light and fixed a frugal breakfast before the girl woke.

  “Your clothes are dry; you can take them behind that rock to change.”

  She did so, and when she returned she seemed more content; at least her blue eyes did not have the glazed look and her fine, short, blonde hair gave her a boyish pixie look. He sat her on a flat rock and used his bone comb to take out any unkempt tugs in her hair.

  “I don’t know your name, so I think I will call you Mulvend, which means mountain spring; would you like that?”

  She gave him a slight nod and it pleased him that he was making some progress.

  Later that day, Mirryn arrived; she was so easily recognisable with the pale patches under her wings and her brown-red colouring that Havoc pointed her out to Mulvend long before she landed. When she did, she had a dead finch in her talons, and Mulvend watched the kite’s pale head bobbing up and down as she plucked her prey.

  After a while, she noticed that Havoc was gone, and she started to fret and panic, but he appeared out from the rocks with a bundle in one arm and flat stone in the other.

  “This now belongs to you,” he said to her as he un-wrapped the wax cover from the bundle and showed her the trinket box.

  She stared at it without recognition and ran her fingers over the Haplann coat of arms on the lid; she nodded slightly and opened it. She took out the hairpin and twirled it in her fingers; she put it back with the other gems and closed the lid, and Havoc noticed there were tears in her eyes.

  “You are now the Countess of Haplann. Your family are a distant relation to the first Cromme King, Hagan the First, which means we are related. Therefore, you are never alone. I’m going to bury this box under this stone that I have marked for you.” He showed her the flat stone, and on it he had crudely scratched her new name. “We can’t carry this about with us, so we will have to stash it somewhere where you can find it.”

  He took her to a spot next to the waterfall, where he had already dug a hole. He lined the hole with more flat stones so it looked like a tiny cist and tightly wrapped the bundle up again in the wax gauze; he placed the bundle in the hole and covered it up with stones, then he put the flat stone with her name on it face down.

  “Mark this spot well; in time, I think you will come back here; your future and your past are in this box.”

  She looked at him with her soulful light blue eyes and meekly nodded.

  They headed north from the mountain spring and its pool, Mulvend clutching onto Havoc’s back tightly as they rode Dirkem. She turned her head to see the spring disappear from her sight.

  She felt as if part of her past was gone forever.

  Chapter 15

  The Little Dell

  They travelled onwards for three more days. At some point on the journey, Mulvend realised that Havoc had changed course and now headed east. She never asked him where they were going, because she would still not speak, and she never let Havoc out of her sight. She followed him everywhere, but was obedient in response to his orders, and she would make no sound when he hunted.

  On the fourth day, they stopped by the head of a small valley that Havoc knew from Ched’s memories was called the Little Dell. He and Mulvend watched from the tree line. They could see a quaint little white thatched house, its slightly smaller hut and a barn with a hayloft; these were the only buildings in the valley. Two occupants of the house were tending to the sheep and goats in the nearby fenced field. They were middle aged, the man with short grey hair and a limp and the woman was slim and wearing a shawl over her head.

  Havoc knew from the stolen boy’s memories that the couple living in the Dell had the respect of other farmers in villages around the nearby community of Sloe. He had business in that town with its governor and it was not a place for Mulvend, but the girl would not leave his side for a minute.

&n
bsp; He had decided to tell her that he wanted others to look after her, because where he was going there would only be violence; he would try to broach the subject later, but had no idea what to say.

  Fate, however, has a way of working things out.

  Havoc had made a small fire with dry tinder so no smoke would be observed from the Little Dell. He had cooked a vegetable stew, and Mulvend screwed her face up when she smelt it. He asked her to stir the pot while he went to cool off, and she did so diligently.

  It was a hot day, probably one of the last that year, and he stripped off his shirt and placed it and Tragenn down by a rock so he could dip his head into the small river that ran into the valley. He had only just wet his hair when his Rawn talents alerted him to a presence close by.

  Mulvend stirred the thick stew and wrinkled her nose at the smell; she was about to taste some when a dark shadow loomed over her, and she looked up and scrambled back screaming.

  Havoc acted quickly; he turned around; water from his hair sprayed in an arc around him; he used the wind element and summoned his sword to his hand, and started to run. Mulvend was screaming and trying to get away from a large creature that towered over her. It issued a loud roar that deafened Havoc and he knew he would not reach Mulvend in time, so he used the third element to blast a strong gust into the fire and throw her out of harm’s way.

  The nine-foot tall shaggy brown bear roared as the pot, kindling and flame hit it full in the face. Mulvend lifted off her feet with the force of the gust and cracked her head on the tree behind her. The bear wiped the hot black ash from its face and Havoc noticed that its left paw hung limp. There was a piece of wire wrapped around it and it had bit into the flesh; the wound stank from infection.