Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 61

THE HUNTSMAN STRIKES.

Raj Ahten had endowments from thousands of men, could recall in detail nearly every moment of his life. It had been six months since he had glanced at a diagram of Carris, but he knew precisely where to find Paladane's boats.

The courtyard around him was glutted with reavers and Invincibles, locked in a grim struggle. The city burned, and his men were drenched in sweat even as the fell mage uttered another curse. The news of boats that could take them to safety had spread among Raj Ahten's men. Here and there, Raj Ahten saw teams of men dive out of battle, giving ground before the reavers, while the men of Mystarria were left to fill the breaches as best they could.

But he doubted that many of his men would be able to find the boathouse, hidden as it was down in the business district.

Raj Ahten gutted his last blade-bearer, and wheeled back out of the fray.

"Follow me!" he shouted to his men, leading the way to the boats.

As he fled south, toward a narrow street clogged with oxcarts and barrels of tar and nails that commoners had set up as pitiful barricades against the reavers, cries of dismay arose from the people of Carris.

He glanced up to see the cause. Commoners up there--men of Rofehavan that he would leave to their fates watched him retreat, and their faces were ashen, twisted in grimaces of fear. The mage's spells had so wrung me sweat from them that many had fallen to the wall-walks.

Throwing away the lives of himself and his few remaining Invincibles would not save them.

He hurried away.

Land in Carris had always been at a premium, and that was apparent in the city streets, which were as narrow as the alleys in most northern castles. The buildings canted nearly together.

The fell mage's black wind struck once more, and Raj Ahten stopped a moment and knelt, holding his breath, squinting his eyes, trying his best not to absorb the scent of her curse.

When he breathed again, the mage's command wrung sweat from him more fiercely. He hurried to escape this benighted place.

He had not retreated half the distance to the boats when he turned a corner down a steep hill toward the merchants' quarter and met Duke Paladane the Huntsman, ambling toward him through the narrow alley, with half a dozen of old King Orden's Wits marching at his back.

Paladane raised a hand, signaling Raj Ahten to stop, then wiped the copious sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

The triumphant grin on Paladane's lips gave Raj Ahten pause. Raj Ahten halted warily.

"Good news!" Paladane greeted him. "You'll be happy to hear that the first flotilla is off! The first load of women and children are being rowed to safety."

"What?" Raj Ahten asked. He imagined that it must be a ruse. Paladane could never have loaded the boats so quickly.

"Indeed," Paladane said. "I took the liberty of a.s.sembling the refugees this morning. The boats have been laden since noon. When my far-seer brought word that he saw a boat returning on the horizon, our first load of women and children shoved off."

To emphasize his victory, Paladane said, "Every boat is gone. Every one."

Raj Ahten thought to run to the north wall to verify Paladane's word, but Paladane's tone of triumph was pure and honest. Clearly, Paladane had launched the boats. From be wall, Raj Ahten would only see a thousand skiffs bobbing on the whitecaps of Lake Donnestgree.

Paladane knew precisely what he had done. He had stranded Raj Ahten's men here in the castle. Raj Ahten decided to wipe that superior grin from his face.

With a mailed fist, Raj Ahten swung swiftly for the bridge of Paladane's nose. The blow landed with a crunching sound, and the bone in Paladane's skull shattered with a satisfying schunk. Flecks of blood spattered all over Raj Ahten's face, even as the Huntsman of Mystarria dropped like so much meat.

How due me little man? Raj Ahten thought, as he wiped the flecks of blood from his face.

The King's Wits who had been following Paladane all drew back in a little knot, terrified. They awaited his punishment; and he held it back, knowing that a feast always tastes better on an empty belly.

Raj Ahten considered his options. His Invincibles did not need boats. As a last resort, they could abandon their weapons and armor and swim across the lake.

In that moment, there was an odd, unexpected sound. The wails of pain and despair on the castle walls erupted into cheers and the wild blowing of warhorns.

Raj Ahten glanced up to see the cause of the excitement. People on the walls were waving and pointing to the north, leaping in celebration. "The Earth King is coming! The Earth King!" men began to shout.

Raj Ahten smiled grimly at Paladane's corpse. With a sudden certainty, he realized, he might yet pull off a strategic victory here.

"So," Raj Ahten said, addressing King Orden's Wits, doddering old men who trembled before him. "Your King comes at last--comes to throw himself against the reavers and die. He should offer quite a spectacle. I would not miss this."

CHAPTER 56.

THE ONE RUNE.

Sweat glazed Gaborn's forehead, drenched the leather jerkin beneath his chain mail. As he drew near Carris, the sensation of illness that had a.s.sailed him ever since he'd begun to cross the blasted lands grew more potent. He clung to the reins of his mount, and without his endowments of stamina, he knew that he would have succ.u.mbed in his saddle.

He stared ahead, almost blinded by perspiration, as his mount raced the warriors beside him. Only dimly did he hear the Knights Equitable raise their war songs.

In a daze, Gaborn rode to battle, crossing under the stone gate in the Barren's Wall. He felt only vaguely aware of his situation as he drew within a mile and a half of Carris and watched the towers burn. Gree flew about his army, wriggling darkly.

Ten thousand threads bound him to the men and women under his charge. He felt death stalking them all. The weight of the invisible shroud overwhelmed him.

He gazed downhill at the castle, across the blasted earth. He'd never imagined such a scene of ruin, the land so dead and torn, with hordes of reavers scuttling about.

"Where to, milord?" Sir Langley shouted near Gaborn's side. "Where to strike?"

Dazed and ill, Gaborn peered about, tried to collect his thoughts. His father had been a master strategist, and in his youth Gaborn had learned much from him. He needed to quickly develop a plan.

A few reavers a quarter of a mile away sensed the presence of his knights and cautiously began to scuttle forward At this distance, as they ran by lunging forward in short bursts, they reminded him of kelp crabs creeping along the sh.o.r.e of some desolate beach.

Gaborn surveyed the reavers' defenses. Directly to the south, the enormous menacing tower leaned like a black flame toward the castle. At the castle gates the reavers had opened a huge rent in the western wall, and now clambered into the city over hills formed by the carca.s.ses of men and reavers. Aided by the light of burning towers, he could clearly see Paladane's men fighting valiantly to defend the walls, but reavers had breached into the city so far that there was no hope of repelling them.

To the north of Carris squatted a strange little hill on an easy slope, entirely encircled by a coc.o.o.n of whitish threads. Bone Hill. He knew the place from his studies of ancient battles.

At its crown a fell mage labored, while lesser mages slaved beneath her. Around her, roiling dirty clouds emanated in spirals from the hill. Ghost lights flickered beneath the rust-colored haze.

Gaborn's breath quickened. Bone Hill immediately repulsed him and drew him.

It repulsed him because the hill was engraved with a rune that itself was loathsome to his sight, was the source of illness and pain. To look at its warty k.n.o.bs and sinuous lines burned his eyes and made the muscles in them twitch and try to turn away. The rune atop the hill was like a vast heart, pumping poisoned blood to every finger and toe in a human body.

Yet the hill drew him, it was his target. "Strike!" the Earth silently begged. "Strike before it is too late!"

Gaborn appraised the rune using his Earth Sight, as if he stared into the heart of a man. What he saw filled him with terror.

Ancient lore said that all runes were but parts broken from one great master rune, the rune that controlled the universe. Gaborn save now a vast portion of the master rune.

The Earth held sway over growth and life and healing and protection. But in that rune he saw laid bare the end of all earth powers: Where there is growth, let there be stagnation.

Where there is life, let there be desolation.

Where there is healing, let there be corruption.

Where men hide, let them be revealed.

Gaborn knew the name of that rune, knew it in his bones: the Seal of Desolation.

The rune was incomplete, like a sword newly forged and not yet tempered, but it tortured the land for miles in every direction.

In wonder Gaborn studied his target. The hair rose on the nape of his neck. He'd ridden hundreds of miles hoping to fight Raj Ahten. He'd promised his warriors that he would lead them to battle.

Now he knew that he had been called not to fight reavers or men or any living thing. He needed to destroy this construct, this weapon. And it was a task that no army could hope to accomplish.

Only a wizard with vast earth powers might destroy that hill. Only Gaborn could do it.

He had to draw a rune of Earth-breaking.

A sense of doom a.s.sailed him. Gaborn's powers were limited. He had to get close, so that he could focus his spell.

Yet the stench that exuded from Bone Hill became more overwhelming the nearer he approached.

Gaborn addressed High Marshal Skalbairn. "I'm going to attack Bone Hill, and I need diversions. Take a thousand men and head down into the valley, then ride hard toward the Black Tower, skirting the reavers' army at a hundred yards. Make sure that you're close enough for them to sense you. If they do not take up the chase immediately, kill a few of them. But don't engage their main force! Don't waste men. I want you only to draw them off! And if I should be killed, you'll need men to bring down the fell mage. Is that clear? She cannot leave this battlefield alive!"

"As it pleases milord," Skalbairn said, clearly affronted to be used as a mere diversion for someone else's attack. He immediately whirled his mount and shouted orders, drawing the dregs of his cavalry into service.

"And me?" Langley asked. Gaborn needed to send Langley into far greater danger than he had Skalbairn. Langley's great strength would be needed if he were called upon to fight.

"Take another five hundred knights along the sh.o.r.e toward Carris proper. Charge their flanks by the causeway, then retreat. As with Skalbairn, your task is not to slay reavers, but to open their ranks. And if I die..."

"I understand, milord," Sir Langley said, no happier to be a diversion than Skalbairn. Yet it would be a difficult task. The reavers were thick near the causeway, with little room for retreat.

Langley raised his hand, summoned his men.

"What of us?" Queen Herin asked.

"You'll ride with me," Gaborn answered, "to face the fell mage." He was not overly gratified by the cruel smile of approval that she offered.

"I will give it the death blow myself, if it please you," she said.

Gaborn only shook his head. "We'll need to fight our way close to the hill, so that I can destroy it. Nothing more. The rune that she's drawing must be destroyed. Afterward, we can regroup and consider how to deal with the mage." The High Queen nodded. "So be it" She turned to the knights behind her, called out orders calmly.

"What of the spearmen and foot soldiers?" Erin Connal asked. "Could we use them to some advantage?"

Gaborn shook his head. Sending foot soldiers against reavers would accomplish almost nothing. "Order them to stay behind the Barren's Wall. They can hold it against any reaver that climbs over."

With that, Skalbairn rode off, charging to the right. A ragged line of a thousand knights raced downhill toward the plains, charged the western slope of Bone Hill.

As they rode, they began to sing. The pounding of hooves and the ring of metal kept time with their deep voices.

Against Gaborn's orders, Skalbairn drove his troops right against half a dozen reavers. With a crash of lances against carapaces his knights left the monsters impaled, then veered away at slow speed, forcing the horses to lope.

The effect of his diversion was astonis.h.i.+ng. The plains were pocked with odd burrows--lopsided craters with dark maws. To Gaborn it had seemed that the plain was almost black with reavers, but now hundreds more boiled up from underground, giving pursuit. In moments, perhaps two thousand reavers were chasing Skalbairn's men south.

At Gaborn's back, men began to cheer and raise their weapons. "Well done!" Queen Herin and others whispered, obviously pleased.

Gaborn sensed little danger to Skalbairn's men. Indeed, they were not in great peril, yet they accomplished much.

Gaborn nodded toward Sir Langley, sent his lancers charging left.

Langley, too, advanced on Bone Hill at slow speed, this time from the north. But Gaborn felt a pall over the man. Langley was in far greater danger than Skalbairn.

As Langley neared Bone Hill the reaver mage raised her staff to the sky and hissed. Her voice echoed from low-lying clouds like thunder.

A dark wind roiled from her, and Langley's men shouted in fear, turned their mounts and galloped east toward the lake, fleeing the dark wind of her spell, the burnished metal of their helms and armor limned red from the burning citadels of Carris. Hundreds and hundreds of reavers gave pursuit.

The black wind caught the men near the lakesh.o.r.e, and suddenly the air filled with cries. Knights began to topple from saddles, stricken. Gaborn could not tell why.

Whatever effect the fell mage's spell had upon them, Gaborn was too far away to feel it himself. Langley's men fought to stay ahorse as reavers closed in.

"Get up," Gaborn sent to the men. "Fight now or die!"

After a heart-stopping moment, Langley himself roused in his saddle, shouted, and spurred a charge south. Dozens of men followed, though most of his force remained inactive. Their horses milled about or fled from advancing reavers.

Thirty of his men lanced through the charging reavers, losing less than a dozen knights in the clash. The survivors wheeled their mounts and fled north along the lakesh.o.r.e, with seven or eight hundred reavers giving chase.

The repercussions of Gaborn's feints shuddered through the reaver horde. Reavers near the causeway backed off, fearing an attack on their flank, giving the defenders of Carris some relief. Others continued to race south after Skalbairn.

To Gaborn's relief, the north slope of Bone Hill was momentarily left with few defenders. He saw only some hundred reavers above their burrows, but a hundred reavers were not to be trifled with--especially not when a fell mage stood at their backs.

He had only seconds to strike.

CHAPTER 57.

IN THE SHADOWED VALE.

"Prepare the charge!" Gaborn cried. "Staggered pinwheel formation! Single line! Ho!" He raised his hand in the air, whirled it; letting the men know that they should pinwheel from left to right.

The staggered pinwheel, or the knight's circus, as it was sometimes called, had proven an effective formation against reavers in ancient times.