Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 64

The green woman sees it, too, Averan realized. She sees, his power. Averan closed her eyes and watched Gaborn. He looked like an emerald flame that glided and bounced with every jostle of his mount.

One Indhopalese guard suggested, "If we go down to that hill, we can skirt north along the aqueduct to reach the Earth King,"

"I don't like it," Borenson groused. "The burrows at the end of the ca.n.a.l won't have gophers in them." He pointed north. "We should take the trail up around the Barren's Wall--come in from behind."

"That's too far!" the Indhopalese fellow argued.

Averan watched Gaborn fight his way to Bone Hill. He had so many endowments of metabolism, that to her the deed seemed swift, almost a race as he crouched and cast a spell that made the whole earth tremble. She saw the walls of Carris begin to tremble, and Gaborn stare off toward it with mouth agape. He raised his left hand and cast a second spell.

"There," Borenson said "He's Choosing. He's Choosing the whole city!"

If Gaborn spoke, Averan could not hear his words. They were lost in the hissing sound of thousands of reavers, in the trembling of aftershocks. But she marveled at the notion that Gaborn would Choose this whole city, even his enemies.

The men atop the walls of Carris cheered and fled the falling city, while reavers raced to attack the Earth King. Reavers thundered over a barricade at Bone Hill. They scurried up from burrows.

The Earth King urged his cavalry forward, doggedly trying to fight.

"What does he hope to accomplish?" one eunuch asked.

"He's trying to save Carris," Borenson said with some certainty. "He hopes to draw off it attackers."

But even from here, Averan could see that Gaborn could not make it. There were too many reavers, attacking too swiftly. Gaborn would be cut off, surrounded.

Across the valley, the Voice of Raj Ahten roared, magnified by his many endowments. "We are enemies still, son of Orden!"

Raj Ahten stood atop the city wall, waving his battle-axe in defiance, even as slabs of plaster cascaded around him, And atop Bone Hill, the fell mage raised a pale yellow staff to the sky and hissed. Thunder sounded and rolled down over the hill to Carris.

The beautiful Woman from Indhopal said softly, "So, it is true. My husband rejects the Earth King, his cousin by marriage, and will leave him to the reavers."

Her tone was one of solemn revulsion, as if she'd never imagined that Raj Ahten could be so heartless.

"I am afraid so, O Great Star, my Saffira," Borenson said gently, trying to ease the blow.

Another aftershock made the ground rumble, the horses dance to keep their feet.

Saffira shouted and spurred her mount downhill. It ran with speed and grace and purpose as only a force horse could, racing due west toward Carris as if to reach the city, though ten thousand reavers blocked her way.

Borenson shouted, and Averan clutched his back tightly as their mount shot forward.

Saffira rode east, and at first Averan thought she rode blindly. But she changed course, veered south, and Averan saw where she headed.

The reavers had broken into several fronts. One front directed its attack against Carris, while a second raced for the Earth King. A third chased after the cavalry that had struck south.

As the reavers split, they left an empty field in the midst of their forces. Into this field Saffira charged.

"Wait!" the eunuchs shouted. "Hold up!"

But it did no good. Saffira galloped for Carris, until she came within half a mile of its walls, and the reavers down the slope ahead were so thick that she could ride no farther.

Sensing her at their backs, blade-bearers nearby all began to wheel. The rasping at their thoraxes became louder.

For a moment Saffira charged alone to a small hillock, in the last light of day. She wore. a riding robe of fine red cotton, embroidered with exquisite gold threads to form curlicues like the tendrils of vines that wrapped about her arms and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. On her head, she wore a thin red veil beneath a silver crown.

Now she unbuckled a narrow golden belt, tossed it on the ground, and pulled off her robe. She withdrew her veil, so that for one moment she sat proud atop a gray Imperial charger, wearing only a sheer dress of lavender silk that accentuated the exquisite dark hues of her skin.

At the edge of the horizon, the sun was falling, and a few small rays slanted from the broken clouds.

Many other hillocks were scattered through the wasteland, but now Averan saw that Saffira had chosen this one because she'd seen the wan light upon it and knew it was the best place to display herself.

To Averan, Saffira seemed to be perfection given form. The graceful lines of her neck and shoulders would have kept a proper minstrel writing lines for a lifetime, yet even Behoran Goldentongue himself could not have composed a tune and words that would have captured her grace, or the light in her eyes, or the courage in her stance.

It seemed to Averan that even then Saffira knew she would die. She'd ridden too close to the reavers. The nearest of them wheeled not a hundred yards down the slope, taking a defensive stance. Reavers are easily surprised, and often hesitate when trying to determine the nature of a threat, but it would only take a moment for the monster to recognize that Saffira stood alone.

But one moment was all Saffira wanted. In that moment, she began to sing.

CHAPTER 60.

BONE HILL.

How do I save them all? Gaborn wondered. He'd connected to hundreds of thousands of people in Castle Carris, and he felt overwhelmed by the sense of danger around them. A third aftershock began to make the ground swell and buck.

At the castle gates, thousands of men were fighting for their lives. Gaborn concentrated on them, for their situation was gravest. Yet in Castle Carris, Raj Ahten refused Gaborn, smugly chose to hinder his troops from advancing. Surely, his Invincibles could hack a path over the causeway.

Fatigue wracked him as he doggedly advanced toward Bone Hill, a deep-seated lethargy that worried the bone. The closer he drew, the more paralyzing it became.

I have Chosen too indiscriminately, he realized. He led a ragtag band of warriors. Desperately, his men forged on. Unhorsed and without their long deadly lances, they were not as effective as mounted knights, yet they advanced manfully, as if moved by his will alone.

Gaborn climbed down from the saddle and tried to lead them a few paces closer, but the effect of the fell mage's spell was so powerful he could hardly hold the reins of his own mount.

To the south, High Marshal Skalbairn sought to make an ill-fated charge. Gaborn sent the message "Turn back! Save yourselves if you can!"

He focused on the job at hand, hoping that the warriors who guarded him now would be able to fend off the impending attack.

Two hundred yards ahead was the great coc.o.o.n, with the fell mage atop the hill. Reavers were racing round both sides of Bone Hill. They'd be here in seconds.

When he could go no farther from weariness, Gaborn numbly dropped in the dust and began to draw a second rune of Earth-breaking.

Desperately he searched the rune itself, looking for weaknesses, flaws in its binding.

A wave of reavers rushed toward his battle lines, fifty yards ahead on each side. Near his foot lay a strand of coc.o.o.n, a line that ran two hundred yards.

Gaborn glanced up at Bone Hill, trying to see the object of his spell. Reavers blocked the way, climbed the coc.o.o.n in droves. A reaver's head was larger than a wagon bed and its paws were longer than a man's body. As monsters surged closer, surrounding him, he could not see over them.

Yet his men held their line, prepared to fight with the strength of desperation.

A reaver charged the Earth King, not even slowing as it barreled over two men ahead, crus.h.i.+ng them with its bulk. Erin Connal cried out in dismay, lunged to meet it.

"You take it low, I'll take it high!" Celinor shouted at her back.

She ran at the beast. It raised its glory hammer overhead. Erin shouted and struck her own warhammer into the monster's elbow, biting deep into the joint just beneath its protective bone spur.

The jolt should have frozen the reaver in pain for a moment, or perhaps enraged it.

Instead the reaver struck with its glory hammer--eight hundred pounds of steel at the end of a twenty-foot pole. She heard no warning from the Earth. King.

The pole slammed into her shoulder, throwing her to the ground, pinning her for a moment. The reaver raised a ma.s.sive paw in a fist, ready to pound her into the dust.

Celinor leapt over Erin, lunged in, and struck the beast between its thoracic plates. His blow was not powerful enough. No guts gushed from the monster.

The reaver hissed in fear and lurched back a pace, trying to escape.

Celinor leapt in and delivered a second blow. The reaver's guts spilled down in a gruesome rain, and the monster leapt away, slamming into another of its kind.

The Prince of South Crowthen spun, dodged out of battle, and grabbed Erin's hand, helping her up. "Two!" he warned.

Erin felt her face redden with chagrin.

Gaborn finished drawing his rune of Earth-breaking, raised his fist, and looked up.

All around him, reavers thundered forward in a terrifying wall of flesh, pounding into the ranks of his men, overwhelming them.

To his left a reaver smashed a fellow with a glory hammer. The body somersaulted in the air twice, arced toward him.

Celinor raised his s.h.i.+eld, threw himself before Gaborn, but the force of both bodies slammed into Gaborn, smacking him to the ground.

Everything went black.

CHAPTER 61.

IN THE FADING LIGHT.

Saffira sang in the voice of her homeland, in Tuulistanese, and because she had thousands of endowments of Voice, her aria rang louder than any sung by a commoner.

So beautiful was her song that Raj Ahten looked up from a wall of Castle Carris where he had been watching Gaborn's debacle of a charge.

Time seemed to freeze.

So loud was her song that even on the causeway, many reavers drew back, philia waving in the air, as if trying to decipher whether her Voice presented some new threat that they must confront.

For a moment, the tumult of battle dimmed, as men listened to Saffira's golden Voice.

Certainly, most of the men of Rofehavan could not have understood Saffira's words. Tuulistan was a small nation in Indhopal, insignificant. One could walk across its borders in a fortnight. Yet the pleading tone of the young woman's voice struck Raj Ahten to the soul, made him yearn to...do anything, anything to placate his bride.

She sat in the saddle on some ruined mound, and all beneath her the land was black with reavers. In the last light of day, her lavender dress seemed but a veil that lightly covered her perfect beauty.

She shone like the first and brightest star in the nighttime sky, and all around him, Raj Ahten heard the rush of indrawn breath as thousands men gasped in astonishment.

Immediately Raj Ahten saw what Gaborn had done. He saw the glamour of all his concubines, of the loveliest women from every nation he conquered, all bound into one.

He heard the sweetness of every melodious voice in his harem.

Saffira sang a common lullaby.

She'd sung it to her firstborn son, Shandi, when she'd first held him, five years ago--before a Knight Equitable slaughtered the child in an effort to rid the world of Raj Ahten's progeny.

The tune was not profound, neither was its message. Yet it moved Raj Ahten to the core of his soul.

"There is no you. There is no me.

Love makes us one. There is only we."

Of all the men who heard that song, only Raj Ahten understood its message. "I understand your hatred and anger," she said. "I understand, and I feel it too. I have not forgotten our son. But now you must lay your anger aside."

Saffira then called in her imperfect Rofehavanish. "My Lord Raj Ahten, I beg you to put aside this war. The Earth King asks me to bear this message: The enemy of my cousin Is my enemy. Men of Mystarria, men of Indhopal unite!"

She beckoned to Raj Ahten, and in the silence, the reavers near her suddenly responded, surging uphill, as if at her summoning.

Saffira's eunuch guards--the finest of Raj Ahten's Invincibles--rushed to her side and followed her downhill as she raced now to the north, toward Gaborn's forces half a mile distant.

She had far too many reavers ahead of her. The great monsters stood back to back around the Earth King's pitiable army, forming a solid wall. Even with all the speed of her mount, Raj Ahten knew that she would not be able to break those lines.

Certainly she understood that. Yet she rode into danger, into the heart of the maelstrom.

She would force his hand. If you will not come to save him, then at least come to save me, her actions said.

With a shout of horror and dismay, the men of Carris responded to Saffira's plea.

For several moments now, Paladane's men and the frowth giants had been shoving the reavers back, had managed to scrabble over the pile of dead reavers to the causeway in Lake Donnestgree, then shove them back a hundred yards toward the mainland. The causeway itself was littered with dead reavers.

Now the people of Carris all heaved forward as one. With a great roar they charged for the mainland. The fell mage's spells of fatigue seemed to be forgotten temporarily.

All along the walls and all through the city streets, men picked up whatever arms they could carry and hastened to join Saffira and the Earth King.

Raj Ahten watched in amazement.

This was a mistake, he knew. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children in Carris would race to attack; the vast majority of them were only commoners.