The Rawn Chronicles Book Four: The Dragon and the Daemon (The Rawn Chronicles Series 4)

by P D Ceanneir

  The survivors of the downed Sky Ships wandered onto the battlefield as the evening wore on. The king warmly welcomed Carbaum, even though there was a sadness surrounding him at the loss of his friends. Bleudwed and Tia, along with Danyil, all said their goodbyes to Felcon and Velnour. Tia cried the most. She was close to Velnour. She helped Jericho and Mactan strip them of their armour and washed their wounds as the night descended.

  Foxe and Hexor stopped their attack on the fleeing army when they reached the Rings of Dulan. Not because this was the end of the rout, but because they spotted someone staggering out of the stone circle and went to investigate. What they heard from the visitor shocked them.

  The smell of the dead was starting to seep through the canvas walls of the tent. Bleudwed was helping a quiet and emotionally numb Havoc out of his armour when a newly arrived Hexor shouted from outside to attract the king. He and Foxe both helped a dishevelled and half-conscious man through the door and Bleudwed ordered the twins to lay him down on the cot. Several seconds ticked by until Havoc recognised the man through the dried scabs of blood covering his face.

  ‘Soneros Ri!’ he gasped.

  ‘He was carrying this, boss,’ said Foxe and handed over a Sword-staff. It was instantly recognisable as Belthoin and Havoc knew as soon as he saw it that Lord Ness was dead.

  Soneros Ri mumbled and thrashed in his sleep. When he woke in the small hours of the morning, he found Havoc and Bleudwed were watching over him.

  ‘Tell me everything, master,’ said Havoc as he gently pushed the startled Ri back down onto his cot.

  Lord Soneros told him all he could remember up until someone activated an Earth Orrinn that disintegrated part of the staircase causing him to fall down several floors to unconsciousness.

  ‘I was woken by mad laughter from Saltyn Ri and Cinnibar as they killed... Oh dear gods... killed Ness,’ tears welled in his eyes.

  ‘Go on,’ urged Havoc quietly.

  ‘I was too slow to help him... he was dead... when I got there, they, and the Gredligg Orrinn were gone. Though Ness managed to kill Varix and Nestor in the fight, he could not stand against them all. I have failed him; I have failed my oldest friend.’

  ‘Do not blame yourself, Master Ri. You could have died too,’ said Bleudwed, hand on his shoulder. Lord Soneros patted her hand affectionately.

  ‘Bless you child, but me and Ness had been through worse odds before I assure you. No, I have failed him and you, my king. The Great Orrinn is gone and Cinnibar has it. There is only one place she can take it.’

  ‘Then we shall have to take it back,’ said Havoc.

  The battered and tired Rogun army marched.

  They marched to Sonora.

  Carbaum and Baron Langstroum, recovering from an arrow wound, stayed with the wounded and garrisoned the ruined citadel while the Ternquin Sernac waited for the rest of his people to arrive by sea. It was a thankless task, the smell of the rotting dead saturated the air, and his first job was to burn them in huge pyres at the furthest edges of the city territory and fight their way through the thousands of ravens that had swarmed over the dead like a black sea. The job would take weeks to accomplish, the blood of the dead seeped into the ground, and stained the earth. In later years, people learnt of tall tales that the seashore, some three miles east of the battlefield, was tinged red as the blood from the battle seeped from the land.

  Future historians and scholars would refer to the carnage before the gates of Dulan-Tiss as the Battle of Blood.

  Luckily, for the Roguns, they found many horses scattered around the Dulan Plain. Now most of the army rode over the wide expanse of prairie. Everyone was glad to be away from the stench.

  No one stopped them. There was not a soul for miles. If any surviving noble from the Brethac Army formed a host from the survivors of the battle then they did not fancy their chances against the Rogun King. Villagers fled their homes as the army neared. Some supplied food and accommodation and Havoc would compliment them for their kindness, after all, with the last king of Cromme Tricondor dead, he was now officially their liege lord.

  After several days on the march through the villages of the plain, hundreds of soldiers in hand-me-down armour asked to join the army. They had come from the poorer villages that did not join the Brethac Army and decided to join the winning side. They spoke of Brethac soldiers fleeing before them to the gates of Sonora.

  Twenty miles from the citadel, Havoc held a council of war in one of the Vallkyte battle tents that they took from the cherry grove.

  ‘Sonora is impregnable,’ explained Lord Rett, ‘in the four years you were gone, sire, the queen has surrounded the entire citadel with an outer wall of grey granite, fifty feet high and twelve feet thick. It has crenelated archery towers spaced every one hundred feet and has bastilles on either side of the main gate, which by the way, is made of steel, their curved walls protruded outwards from the main wall so their archers have a clear arc to loose arrows at anyone storming the gate.

  ‘It also has an inner wall,’ he continued in his deadpan drone. ‘Sixty feet high and well defended. If by some miracle we get through the main gates in the outer wall then we will enter a death-trap from their archers on the second.’

  ‘Whoa, you’re cheery today,’ said Furran who scratched at his Boul, a curved metal cup that covered his stump. His partially severed hand was finally now fully amputated and the arteries cauterised; it still itched were the flaps of skin had been stretched to cover the bone and sewn together. Under the Boul his stump was well bandaged and packed with healing herbs. His face was still ashen after the past week and a half of riding over the plain, but his eyes still held their usual fire. At some point before the departure of the Rogun Army from the ruins of Dulan-Tiss, Gunach had returned to the wreck of the Cybeleion and retrieved the mechanical arm that had once belonged to the Felwraith, Cornelius Pagan. With some alterations to the design, Furran could have a new hand when his stump healed.

  There was general laughter at Furran’s remark until the king held up his hand for quiet.

  ‘Lord Rett is right, it will be a futile attempt to siege Sonora,’ he said. His face looked grim. His worry was for Gredligg Orrin in Cinnibar’s hands. If she were to tease out the Earth Daemon then destruction on a vast scale would follow and time was running out. He needed to get into the citadel by a quicker means. ‘But we are going to build siege engines anyway. It will give the men something to do meantime.’

  ‘As soon as they get close to those walls they will lose heart,’ remarked Powyss.

  ‘If I asked them to build a ladder to the moon, would they do it?’ asked Havoc.

  Powyss looked at his king for a few seconds.

  ‘They would do anything for you, sire,’ he finally said and meant it.

  ‘And coming from you, brother, it won’t seem a strange request,’ put in Magnus which received another murmur of chuckles.

  ‘Good. I have instructed Admiral Uriah to blockade the Sonoran port,’ went on Havoc. ‘His grace will control the cavalry and secure any route in and out the citadel. Foxe and Hexor will organise a search throughout the land for food.’ The problem of food and water was becoming dire for the king’s men. His soldiers were looking thinner since they left Dulan-Tiss and sickness was spreading throughout the ranks.

  ‘The rest of the men will prepare for a siege,’ continued the king. ‘I want everyone clean and their armour in pristine condition before we reach Sonora. We have a queen to impress after all.’

  It was becoming obvious to everyone that Lord Rett’s description of the new defences seemed a little understated. The outer wall of huge black granite blocks was taller than expected. The tops of the crenelated battlements had evenly spaced spouts for pouring boiling oil or tar onto any army mad enough to try to scale the high walls.

  The imposing bastilles that flanked the main gates of thick iron were teaming with soldiers whose helmeted heads bobbed over the top of the parapets. The raised drawbridge overshadowed the
wide moat, which was filled with foul, stagnant water. The steel links that connected the bridge at each side were thicker than a man’s body and could easily lift the heavy wooden bridge quickly.

  ‘We’ll batter through those walls in a month, no problem,’ said Foxe with an edge of sarcasm as the king’s party stood before the walls.

  ‘Foxe the optimist,’ groaned Mactan.

  The Rogun Army settled several hundred feet from the walls by a forested area called Seville Kluge. Woodsmen and engineers quickly demolished the forest to make the siege engines. The air, this late in the spring, was muggy and the sky was filled with the sounds of birds twittering all around the shrub land that flanked the main road out of the citadel.

  It was while riding up and down his line of busy troops in this area that the king ran into Bleudwed, who was astride a grey gelding and still wearing her old worn mail shirt and a long linen surcoat with the livery of the Haplann Crest emblazoned on the front.

  ‘You do realise what the implications of King Kasan’s death mean for the island, don’t you?’ she asked him as he reined Dirkem in a few feet from her mount.

  Havoc shook his head. He was half listening to her and glancing back at his soldiers as they dug defensive ditches and erected wooden barricades in case the Sonoran Army sallied out of the citadel to destroy the partly built siege engines.

  Bleudwed sighed at him and clicked her tongue to move her horse closer to Dirkem who nudged the gelding’s neck with his nose as a warning to stay back. The countess put her hand on the king’s arm to grab his attention.

  ‘According to the Royal Tables of the Land, with the Vallkyte king and his heirs dead, then all his titles, property and land now belongs to the leader of the primary House of Cromme. That’s you Havoc. You now rule the entire continent.’

  Havoc shrugged, ‘I realised that some time ago, but if I don’t get my army beyond those walls,’ he pointed to the citadel, ‘and stop Cinnibar from unleashing the Dark Force of the Earth from the Great Orrinn, then land and titles will mean nothing. The sacrifice of friends and loved ones will have been deemed pointless.’

  Bleudwed felt put out at the king’s tone, but understood his mood.

  ‘Oh, well, I just thought that the facts of your hereditary rights were earth shattering,’ she said feebly.

  ‘Earth shattering...earth shattering,’ mumbled Havoc, lost in thought. He suddenly smiled brightly for the first time in three weeks. ‘That’s it!’ he reached for Bleudwed’s shoulders and gave her a quick kiss, which flustered her.

  ‘Mulvend you are a genius!’ he said.

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You still keep in contact with Morden through your Lobe Stone,’ it was not a question but a statement.

  ‘Yes, I ...how did you know that?’ she frowned and it made her pixie face even cuter.

  ‘And you still have that Earth Orrinn in your study, the one on the stand under the glass dome?’ asked Havoc.

  ‘Uh…Yes, but why...?’ she was curious now. The green eyes of the king were brighter. They were filled with hope.

  ‘Give me your Lobe Stone. I need to speak to Morden,’ said Havoc reaching out his hand. ‘If my plan works then we may be sacking Sonora sooner than you think.’

  Chirn, rudely awakened in the early hours of the morning by one of the king’s Carras Knights, rushed to meet the monarch at the moat with the Royal Standard. Aching all over from digging ditches and with pain from two broken fingers he received from being knocked of his horse at the last battle, Chirn dressed as quickly as he could. He put on his hauberk, chest plate, bracers, hooked his cavalry sabre onto his side and, carrying his helmet and standard pole, mounted his horse.

  Daylight was edging its way over the rim of the world. Thin clouds streamed along the horizon and the day was going to be another hot one, the weather had gone from warm days to frosty nights in the space of a week. Chirn had heard from the Paladins about this Shadowfall effect and wondered if it was changing the weather.

  He found the king, mounted upon Dirkem alone near the moat. He was in his father’s full armour, repaired by Gunach or one of his dwarves, and he sat silently staring at the imposing walls of the citadel.

  ‘Good morning Chirn,’ said Havoc as Chirn stopped his horse next to his black stallion.

  ‘Morning Boss,’ he said. Only the Paladins used the title “Boss” for the Rogun king. Chirn, however, was with the Raiders before the core group of officers received their knighthoods and it became a habit for them all to refer to the king as such.

  They chatted for a while as the sun cast away the shadow of the wall on the ground in front of them. Chirn unravelled the Royal Standard from it’s wax case and let it flap in the breeze as he slotted the base of the ash pole into its metal cup near his left stirrup. He had cleaned the flag the other day, but it still looked battle worn with stains and holes. As they sat together, they talked about the state of the barricades and the progress of the ditches and siege engines. Yet, Chirn was burning to know why the king summoned him here.

  He was soon to find out. The large drawbridge that cast a dark shadow over the moat sat at an angle from the walls as it hung on the thick chain links above the water. A loud crashing noise echoed out from the walls as the chains loosened from their braking cogs and the whole structure thumped onto a large brick bracket at the moats opposite end. A smaller door, set inside the larger main gates, opened to allow a horse and rider through, then shut quickly again.

  The rider was a Herald. He was a small man, young, dressed in a white tabard with rich gold threaded fleur-de-lis embroidered all over it. Havoc recognised the livery of the Baron of Esker and this was his messenger. The rider halted his small mare halfway onto the moat bridge and waited.

  Chirn was about to nudge his horse to go and meet the Herald, but noticed that the king did not move, so he to stayed his hand. It would not be seemly for a king to go to a Herald.

  The Herald waited for a few heartbeats then trotted forward to meet the Rogun King.

  ‘Hail King Havoc of the Roguns,’ said the messenger in a reedy voice. ‘I am Tonkin, Herald to the Baron Unran Esker, and I bid you a fond welcome.’ It was a standard greeting and one said with a loud voice, but the voice trembled as the Herald’s eyes flicked between the two men.

  ‘Well met, thank you Herald,’ said Havoc.

  The Herald waited for the king to say more and looked perplexed when the Havoc said nothing.

  ‘Ah, sire, is there a message you want me to deliver?’ he asked.

  ‘Deliver? No, not deliver. I wish an audience with the queen and her court. I will come alone into the citadel to deliver my own message,’ said Havoc. ‘I expect a speedy response, and my man here will stay and wait for the answer when you return.’ Havoc winked at Chirn as he pulled Dirkem’s head around and galloped off towards the Rogun camp.

  Chirn was surprised at the king’s comments, but revealed nothing of his thoughts to the Herald; he just stared at him. The unfortunate Herald was obviously flustered, his jaw worked up and down trying to find something to say.

  ‘I suggest you hurry Herald! The king is a fair man, but impatient when his orders are not met,’ said Chirn calmly. He suppressed a smile as the Herald turned his horse around and went back to the citadel.

  He waited for an hour on his own when a young serf boy from Sir Foxe’s company came with breakfast ordered by the king. Bread, scrambled goose eggs, and large wild mushrooms fried in bacon lard with a skin of water. It was the best meal he had tasted in weeks and scoffed down the lot. The serf waited until he had finished and took back the plate.

  Later, two riders approached from the Rogun camp. Chirn recognised his father and Sir Mactan.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Mad-gellan abruptly. He still had problems with his left arm where a bodkin had cut through flesh and chipped bone but he was persevering without his sling.

  ‘I’m waiting for the Herald to return. It seems the king wishes to speak to Queen Cinnibar.’


  ‘He’s what?’ said Mactan with a surprised look on his face. ‘He doesn’t intend on going in there alone, does he?’

  Chirn shrugged, ‘I think so. He must have a plan, and you know how his plans usually work.’

  Mad-gellan was about to speak when the iron gates opened again and the Herald trotted out.

  ‘Her majesty, Queen Cinnibar, will see King Havoc forthwith. He will accompany me into the citadel,’ he said as he stopped in front of the group. Chirn nodded and without a word rode off to find the king, leaving Mad-gellan and Mactan perplexed.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  The King Walks Alone

  M

  orden was flushed with excitement.

  At last, he had a mission that did not mean being cooped up in Caphun overlooking battlement repairs and resetting the iron bandings in the new gate. Now he had a part in this war and was grateful that King Havoc needed him.

  He called for his master-at-arms, Captain Lenoch, to gather his men together and be ready and mounted on horseback within the hour. He then put on his chain mail, padded breeches, boots, jerkin, and strapped his sword onto his back. He grabbed his large bunch of keys from the steel key press and rushed up the stairs to the countess’s private apartments at the top of the White Castle’s central tower. He was the only one, apart from the countess, to have passkeys to any room in the castle grounds.

  Once in the cluttered study, he took the brown onyx globe, which was one of two Earth Orrinns discovered in the Haplann Mines years ago, from its glass cover and rushed back down the stairs to the courtyard.

  Lenoch had gathered twenty-five men-at-arms and twenty-five Falesti Archers. They stood in formation waiting for the Regent. Morden’s wife, half in tears, stood with his two boys, the sandy haired boy, Triel, smiled and waved at his father and the youngest was his namesake, Morden, who had the dark looks of his mother and the same dark frown to match.