by P D Ceanneir
Far to Bleudwed’s right, Havoc and Soneros arrived via a flight of ornate wrought iron stairs. They both found Bleudwed cradling Tia in her arms and staring off into the corner of the garden, cheeks damp with tears that cut through the dirt of her face.
Havoc fell to his knees beside them. He brushed Tia’s hair away from the blood on her forehead and held her hand. He sobbed and hunched his torso forward so his head touched hers.
‘Farewell my beautiful Tia,’ he whispered.
The sounds of shifting metal startled Bleudwed and she saw the king stand up and look at her through the Blacksword’s black eyes. He looked towards the archway to the crypt rooms with a deep frown, his cape flapped and formed into the iconic cloak as he stomped off towards the arch and disappeared through it.
‘I think we had better follow him, my lady,’ said Lord Soneros.
Ciriana was light headed; she knew her life force was fading fast. The wounds on her body that Havoc had helped her to heal were beginning to weep fresh liquid every time she moved. She knew she could heal quickly if she rested, even wounds inflicted by other dragons sealed over time. Yet, this was her destiny; her doom was only moments away. The gift of prophecy was something she clung to and hated in equal measure, its curse was that she knew when her end would come.
Nevertheless, she had something to do first.
Like a vulture drifting lazily on thermals she spiralled over the citadel, sniffing the air as she dropped lower and lower with every passing turn. The scent she had found as she approached Sonora quickened her heart and reminded her of her youth. In addition, the memories in her ancient mind were vast. Now it directed her to the Havant Temple and she laughed at the obvious choice of location.
The Earth Orrinn that Havoc used to create the earthquake must have unmasked the scent of her target, hidden from her for over two thousand years.
Down by the blocked main entrance she saw Raiders looking for a way in, she ignored them and alighted on the roof, which crumpled slightly under her weight. She used her huge claws to tear a section of it away and punch through the attic space to the lower rooms. Unknown to her, she had entered Cinnibar’s private apartments through the ceiling. Her head bobbed as the neck snaked this way and that as she sniffed the air. Her search brought her attention to the far wall of the bedroom where a set of double oak doors barred the way, but not for long as Ciriana punched her way through and gasped as she entered the antechamber containing the Cloud Orrinn sitting in its huge brass cup.
‘Hello little one,’ she said, ‘it has been a long time, but you must awaken. Now share my memories.’ She breathed in deeply and then drenched the Orrinn in a thick blanket of Wyrmfire.
Powyss thought that the invasion of Sonora was going smoothly. He commanded the central division of the Rogun Army and only found a few hundred Sonoran Militia and Marine Regulars putting up a token effort at defence; at this point, he was oblivious to the collapse of the left wing against the Havant Guards. The enemy retreated before him and Powyss followed them all the way to the perimeter gardens of the palace. While there, he sent Mad-gellan and Chirn with their Nithi Warbands forward to secure the palace grounds and lower courtyards, while Jericho’s militia stormed the neighbouring harbour at the foot of the palace crag. As the divisions left to carry out his orders, a runner approached the commander with news that the left flank under Lord Rett had found strong Havant resistance. Powyss dispatched Hexor along with Furran’s newly arrived reserve, to go to the duke’s aid, and then he sent the runner to the far right flank to inform Prince Magnus to send aid also.
At that moment, Magnus and the legion were fighting off a small group of brave Havant soldiers. Weakening their shield wall formation with Rogun archers on the roof tops of the intact homes of the eastern district. His orders from his brother were to secure the citadel in that area but the outer defensive walls on that side were still in one piece after the earthquake died down and the battlement guards were fighting back. By the time the runner arrived with the news from Powyss, the last of the enemy resistance receded into the denser population centre of the city as their number dwindled.
Magnus listened to the messenger with worry on his face. He sent half of the legion to make safe the citadel and then he and Sir Colby took the rest to the west at a sprint.
Lord Rett and Sir Foxe had an unspoken agreement to stop the cavalry charge from getting through. Foxe ordered his two hundred and fifty surviving Raiders to form a line to hold off the large mass of charging horseflesh. Lord Rett ordered Whyteman to bring down any that got through them, but he was painfully aware that the Eternals were low on arrows.
On Foxe’s order the Raiders fired their Spit Guns at the leading horses. The Havant Cavalry had obviously rushed to start the attack and most of the horse had no plate armour or even saddles. They relied on the momentum of the charge across the common grassland to disperse the small band of Raiders.
The bolts of the Spit Guns took down the front row and this hampered the second. Horses and men piled onto the ground, yet many pushed through. Their speed slowed however, but the weight of the charging animals against a thin line of static soldiers was no contest. Sir Foxe’s Raiders fell under the hooves, to their credit the lethal Foygions spears took out an equal number of opposing cavalry.
Whyteman had moved his men forward and they took down a hundred riders with one volley of arrows, but the cavalry were amongst them and Whyteman threw his bow away and unsheathed his short sword with the rest of his men doing the same.
Foxe found himself crushed between two passing horses after his spear broke in half on one of them. He felt his armour buckle and ribs crack, his breathing became laboured and pain flared in his chest. Behind the cavalry, the first group of infantry guardsmen that had retreated from Sir Foxe’s men now ran back into attack, but from out of nowhere Mactan and his remaining Dark Company hit their flank and slaughtered them in a mad frenzy.
In the centre of a melee of bunched horses and running green-armoured soldiers was Lord Rett, clearly recognisable in his light blue-grey armour and the scarlet coat-of-arms of his dukedom emblazoned on his chest piece. He was becoming a target for the younger horsed Havant Knights.
He hacked at a charging horse’s legs with Selnour and the mare flipped end over end, crushing the rider as it landed. Another knight hacked down with his sword, the duke deflected it and gutted him with one swipe of his own blade. A lance glanced off his steel shoulder guard, he grabbed it and pulled, the rider yelled in fright as he toppled from the bareback horse. Lord Rett spun Selnour around so the blade pointed down and he speared it through the fallen rider’s throat. Blood spurted like a fountain from the cut artery, drenching the blade and the armoured guards on his shins.
Suddenly, a sword thrust from behind him entered dukes left shoulder. He grunted and yelled in rage and twisted on his feet, in so doing locking the blade in his body. The movement caused the wielder to release the hilt and the horsed knight was too slow to dodge the sword lunge from the duke, Selnour hit the knight’s chest armour knocking him backwards and so unhorsing him. The knight crashed to the ground then screamed when he saw the duke standing over him, Selnour’s blade ripped through armour and chest to cleave his heart in two.
Lord Rett staggered. He fell to his knees with the weight of the sword heavy in his body. Then he collapsed with a grunt.
The crypt was the oldest part of the temple buildings and mainly comprised of a long wide corridor with four large family tombs on each side. The main temple itself sat at the other end of the corridor, behind a huge set of walnut-clad double doors with large round brass handles.
Two Havant Priestesses sensed the presence of the Blacksword and noticed the shadows of the corridor lengthen. They had been guarding the temple entrance for the High Priestess and now rushed forward to stop the intruder even if they could not see him in the dimming light. A strong gust of Wind sent them both off-balance and pinned them each against opposite sides of the corridor, the air h
ardened around their bodies and picked them up only to hurl them against the wall again and again with bone crushing force. A shape oozed out of the shadows to break the neck of the closest stunned Havant. The second rose to her hands and knees, shaken by the attack, and was quickly decapitated with a slight upward flick of the black blade as the Demigod passed on his way to the temple entrance.
The doors stood no chance against the fury of the Pyromancer; they exploded into the temple, killing two more of the priestesses by eviscerating their bodies in large chunks of wooden splinters and splashing their ragged remains onto the flagstone floor. The Blacksword walked among the wreckage and down wide stairs into the inner sanctum of the Havant Order.
He was in a huge circular room, above him there sat a dome-vaulted ceiling with thick crisscross beams laced together in a skilful pattern decorated with colourful bosses. Sunlight shone through latticed glass windows high up on the walls. The round walls housed many niches where stone crypts of long dead high priests and priestesses of various orders now rested, their full sized sculptures beautifully carved onto the lids of the sarcophagi.
The floor comprised of old cracked marble slabs, several feet square. Golden flecks glistened brightly from their surface due to the light from a multitude of torches that sat in iron brackets around the walls and from shallow cauldrons flanking the stairs by the entrance. At the far end of the room, taking up the back wall, was the largest of the niches with a high cloth-covered altar and the egg-shaped Gredligg Orrinn sitting in its brass cup. Standing on a podium, directly behind the Orrinn, was Cinnibar.
She eyed him warily, her dark eyes glinted in the torchlight, and her grey straggly hair framed her face. She was hunched and in some pain, probably due to her ageing so rapidly after her exposure to the Pyromantic Curse. The Blacksword never took his eyes off her as he walked down the stairs. His exceptional eyesight picked up residual bursts of energy, sparks of volatile discharges coming from the Orrinn; they crackled along the walls to either side of the Sonoran queen. The effects of Shadowfall were strong here, there was a definite building of pressure in the air, like a rumbling volcano about to spew up its contents.
Let me out! Said Havoc angrily, Cinnibar is mine to deal with. The Blacksword hesitated slightly as he enforced his will on the king to keep him at bay.
‘I must be allowed to continue, brother, it is imperative that you trust me. I don’t want the future changed by your meddling,’ whispered the Blacksword and the king sulked in silence.
‘Welcome Blacksword,’ crooned Cinnibar, ‘as you can see the Great Orrinn is losing its grip on the Earth Daemon.’ Sure enough, the whispering of the My’thos souls inside had stopped and the multitude of colours had sunk to the bottom of the stone to be replaced by a black inky form that slopped and splashed against the insides of the Orrinn as it reached for the broken section at the top.
‘You will fail Cinnibar, I have foreseen it,’ hissed the Blacksword.
She cackled, her shoulders lurching up and down with her laughter. She continued her mad chuckle even when Soneros Ri and Bleudwed walked in, both armed and ready, the countess had reloaded her Spit Gun. She went to the Blacksword’s left, still clutching her wounded arm. Blood trickled over her fingers and down her arm. The Blacksword reached out for her and touched her wound lightly. She blinked in surprise as the pain eased.
‘I did not even have to run through the extraction ritual,’ said Cinnibar to herself as he stared in wonder at the orb before her, ‘the violence of the earthquake was all that was needed the give him the energy to escape.’ The Blacksword and Soneros Ri edged closer to her. All around them the Blacksword could see the flux and flow of the yellow hues that made up the volatile energies within the Dragon Lanes; it saturated the room, seeping from the floor. It was obvious that this strong crossing point of Dragon Lane energy was the reason for the temple’s construction. The hues mixed and merged with the Shadowfall energy. Both sets of released energy grew stronger by the minute and the Blacksword watched it all with growing concern.
Lord Soneros turned to the Blacksword. ‘She may break the Orrinn if we get too close,’ he whispered, ‘we can’t risk it, but I have a plan. Do you trust me, my friend?’
The Blacksword stopped watching the energy flux and regarded the Ri for a few seconds. A sudden fragment of memory flashed into his mind, something dim and distant, a city in ruins infested by Korzac and a strange female being, as tall as himself. He also saw Verna, speaking of a moment in time when he would reach a turning point and a sacrifice given.
Then he understood, inside his head Havoc flinched as he saw the same memories that he also shared. Vlaren? he said. Why does that name sound familiar?
The Blacksword sighed, he lowered his sword and turned to Soneros Ri. Havoc felt his emotions and realised what he was doing. The Blacksword calmed himself to such an extent that all emotions vanished.
Havoc gasped. What are you doing?
‘Of course I trust you,’ said the Blacksword.
The Ri smiled, it was a grin of sheer triumph. ‘Good. That’s all I needed to know.’
The Ever Living One pulled back his sword arm and thrust forward, striking through the armour of the Blacksword, piercing the heart, the blade protruding through the back of the cloak.
NOOOOOO! Screamed Havoc. Bleudwed just looked on, utterly stunned.
The Blacksword gasped in pain as Cinnibar laughed, her voice echoed around the huge room. Bleudwed could barely move in shock. The Blacksword fell to his knees, tried to pull the blade from his chest, but he was too weak. SinDex felt heavy in his other hand and its blade tip scraped over the floor as he juddered in agony.
‘First year in the academy, Havoc, we learnt the three ways to kill a Rawn or a Ri,’ said Lord Soneros as he jerked his sword from side to side in the Blacksword’s body to open up the hole in his heart. ‘First is decapitation, quick and painless. The second is blood loss bringing on energy depletion, and the third is the heart, my friend, the heart. Pierce it for long enough and it will stop and so kill the Rawn Master.’
Havoc was screaming in the Blacksword’s head to fight back or let him out but the force of will his twin was exerting was immense, he sensed that the Blacksword was protecting him, but from what? Why was Soneros trying to kill him?
Then the truth hit him like a ton of bricks as he saw the same understanding flash through the mind of the Demigod.
Bleudwed finally screamed.
Soneros Ri gritted his teeth and sawed his sword back and forth, the Blacksword jerked on the blade as it cut the heart from his lungs.
‘This is the flaw in the prophecy,’ he said. ‘The Blacksword may be invincible to his enemies, but to a friend he is powerless.’ The Ri’s face was a mask of malevolence, subtly changed somehow. His mask had fallen.
‘Allow me to introduce myself, Havoc and the Blacksword. I am Lord Sernac,’ said Lord Soneros.
At the battle on the far left, the Paladin-knights, Furran and Hexor, rushed with the small reserve of enemy in a horseshoe formation to engulf the Havant Cavalry’s unprotected rear resulting in chaos as the defenders became utterly outnumbered. Carnage spread on the common field where the sun had baked the grassland brown and the blood of the fallen stained it red. The companies of the two Paladins made short work of the guards and moved forward to aid Lord Rett and his men. However, Prince Magnus had reached the south end of the park first and his archers decimated the surviving cavalry and infantry when they reformed to charge the smaller Rogun host. The survivors of the Havant Guards either surrendered or fled within minutes Magnus’s arrival, leaving the field to the marshal.
One of Hexor’s men found Foxe amongst the dead. The Paladin’s twin had died of internal bleeding from the crush of horseflesh. Furran stood with him as he watched Hexor close his brother’s sightless eyes.
‘He died bravely, Hexor. He and his men held the enemy until we arrived, you should be proud of him,’ said Furran softly, putting his good hand on his friend
’s shoulder.
‘I am proud of him, Furran, but it doesn’t make the pain of losing him any easier,’ croaked Hexor.
Magnus frantically searched the fallen for his uncle. Together, he and Sir Colby found him on his side inside a ring of the fallen enemy. It was Selnour, standing upright in the chest of a Havant Knight, which drew their attention. Lord Rett was still alive, the sword in his back made it impossible for him to lie flat, his eyes flicked open when he sensed Magnus was near.
‘Ah, my boy,’ he said and coughed thick blood that trickled down his cheek. ‘It is all yours now… the dukedom. Look after it and your family.’
‘I will uncle,’ said Magnus trying to hold back the tears and failing. He was amazed the Red Duke was still alive, arrows peppered his torso and the other wounds were many.
‘Selnour is now yours, she will give you honour in battle as she has given me…I will give your love… to your mother… and father.’ Lord Rett flinched as pain ripped through him. Magnus put his hand on his uncle’s chest and the floodgates opened, behind him Sir Colby was sobbing also.
The duke opened his eyes for the last time. ‘Oh, stop crying,’ he growled. ‘I didn’t train… a couple of weeping old wives… I trained warriors…now act like one!’
Then Lord Rett, the last of the House of Rouge, left this world to join others in the Halls of the Heroes.
The pain in his chest ebbed to a dullness. His heart slowed and his vision dimmed.
You are Death and Death is you, a whisper, not in his mind, but coming from the other side of the room. Behind the form of Soneros Ri stood Verna clutching her doll tightly as she walked out of the ribbons of golden discharges. She smiled. Even as her eyes burned an angry red, her smile was comforting.
The energy from the ground washed over him. He could heal himself, but he chose not to. The nod from Verna told him it was the right choice to make.
The Blacksword gave himself to death. His head lolled backwards and his eyes lost any sheen of life that was in them. Lord Sernac waited a few seconds until he sensed the being was truly gone then he pulled out his sword with a mighty grunt. The Blacksword’s body fell to the floor. Bleudwed, sobbing in despair, dropped her sword and went to the body; she cradled his head in her arms and cried for him.