He stood there for some time, regaining his strength, glad to be alive, when something rolled to his feet. He looked down and saw the egg-shaped quartz Wind Orrinn from one of the sky ships. He picked it up; it was large and heavy in his hands. It must have broken loose from its cradle during the crash down the mountainside. Once free from the Skrol that decorated the tower, it automatically deactivated.
A wide gash stretched back as far as he could see up the mountain. Rolling detritus from the destroyed sky ships still slid down the slope along with lumps of snow. He was amazed at the destruction he had caused.
He used his sword’s Earth Orrinn and changed back into his threadbare clothes. It was as if a mental weight lifted from him when the Blacksword persona faded away. He was dimly aware of a mental struggle raging inside him; it drained him mentally as well as physically, and he wondered, not for the first time, if the Pyromantic madness had finally found him.
The call of Mirryn issued from the silver Muse Orrinn. He looked inside and saw a grassy plain appear through its misty surface. There, cavorting among the tall green stems on the other side of the sinkhole landscape, were Dirkem and Sarema.
A bright grin spread across his face, all fatigue left him, and he sheathed SinDex as he ran to the Peril Bridge.
Furran stared grim and resolute at the distant woods. A small flap of skin hung down from his cheek, exposing the bone, and blood streamed down the side of his face, but he ignored the pain.
Verkin stood hunched on the riverbed’s embankment. He had strapped his arm to his side; any movement caused the surface scab to open. His normally pale face was flushed with adrenalin.
Velnour scowled through his one remaining eye; he adjusted the strap on his shield, gripping the leather handle in his left hand. A short, lethal-looking sabre hung at his side.
The twins, Foxe and Hexor stood together with sword and dented shields, the swarthy Mactan at their side with the broad shouldered Felcon beside him.
Whyteman and his archers stood with bows and arrows notched their quivers nearly empty; they had a number of arrows imbedded in the ground in front of them like a feather-topped fence.
Little Kith hefted his axe in his hands from left to right. His Golas was loaded and sitting at his feet.
Powyss stood in the centre of his men, who stretched out in front of the embankment. Twenty-five bedraggled but determined warriors, some he knew, although most he did not, but he looked at them all with pride. Most of them wounded, with minor cuts and scrapes. All wore chain mail, now rusted and battle worn. They held up their shields, and gripped their spears and swords tightly. If he had the choice of his death, he would choose this moment, with these men.
The enemy had regrouped and moved out into a tight formation of shield interlinked with archers. Their original attack had reduced the Vallkytes’ numbers by half, but the enemy still outnumbered the fugitives almost two to one.
The few horses that remained had left to ride around their flanks and attack the rear. Powyss had ordered Whyteman to keep them back if they showed up. The steep embankment would prove to be an adequate deterrent to the attacking horse. His only concern was the archers; they were more in number and had better defence within their own shield men. The enemy moved closer, their officer shouting out orders to keep in line.
“Whyteman, bag me that officer and I will give you a hundred gold pieces when I sell his sword,” said Powyss.
“No problem, Captain, but the sword is worth three hundred at least.” Whyteman smiled.
“Well, considering you underestimated the enemy’s numbers, I thought I could con you out of the share.”
That got a laugh from everyone, including Whyteman.
The Vallkytes were close now. Powyss could see the mixed look of hate and fear on their faces. The knowledge of a Rawn among this ragged group was a great deterrent. Everyone knew that a Rawn master was worth ten men in a battle.
A thought struck Powyss and he looked at the prone body of Othell lying in the riverbed. He would be the first to throw insults across at the enemy, so, in honour of his friend, he carried on the tradition.
“Come and meet death, you goat-humping bastards,” he shouted.
The rest of the men took up the insults; some were so funny that Powyss, Velnour and Furran started to laugh so much that they could not join in. Most of the crude expletives came from Little Kith, who kept a straight face throughout his abusive monologue.
When the enemy moved into range, their archers opened fire with a hail of steel-tipped death. Whyteman and his archers ducked behind their own shield men. The sound of arrow hitting shield made a dull bonging sound all along the line; three arrows found their targets, and their victims screamed as they fell down the embankment.
Another shower rained down. Brynd’s shield was hit so many times that one managed to burrow through and pin his arm to the back of his shield. Four more men collapsed under the hail. Little Kith was hit in the head, but fortunately the arrow struck the edge of his wooden shield first and scraped a nasty gash in his scalp.
“Thick head.” Velnour laughed after seeing it happen.
Little Kith roared as blood trickled over his left eye; he stood up and cut the ends of the arrows off his shield with one sweep of his sword, he then picked up the Golas. It was almost point blank range; the Golas’s thick, iron-tipped arrow struck one of the archers, passed through his body and two other soldiers behind him.
“Whyteman, do you have an answer for those archers?” asked Powyss.
Whyteman and his men ran out from the riverbeds embankment and fired with the arrows that they had placed into the ground. The officer went down first, with two arrows in his neck, both fired by Whyteman and Linth respectively. The fast-flowing arrows hit six more, and Powyss was amazed at the speed these Eternal Forest folk could notch and loosen their arrows; there were only seven archers and dozens of arrows in the air. The Vallkyte shield men took a pounding. The Eternals aimed for any gap they could see and, nine times out of ten, they would find their target.
The Vallkytes broke under the strain. One of their sergeants shouted for the group to attack, and a screaming horde of red and gold uniformed warriors raced each other to finish the battle.
The fugitives jumped into the riverbed and picked up spears; the embankment sat at just the right height to defend from and would hinder the attacking Vallkytes as they climbed.
“Hold the line!” shouted Powyss. “Stick together.”
Whyteman and Linth continued to fire at the advancing men to try to reduce their numbers.
Powyss psyched himself for the clash; their odds were not good. He had had a good life, and there would be honour in death. He was suddenly aware of racing horses from behind and thought at first that it was the Vallkyte cavalry, but it only sounded like one horse. He turned and saw a sweat-lashed Dirkem, carrying the prince, he halted on the other side of the river; foam sprayed from his bit.
Havoc threw something in the air. “Get down!” he shouted. “Get down!”
The round object flew towards the advancing Vallkytes. Havoc used the wind element to send it further. He jumped off Dirkem in an instant and slapped his rear to send him in the direction he had come.
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 he
ads 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.”
The Rawn Chronicles Book One: The Orrinn and the Blacksword: Unabridged (The Rawn Chronicles Series 1) Page 34