Brotherhood of the Wolf (76 page)

High in the Hest Mountains, Borenson's mount clambered down a narrow trail through a flurry of snow. He was leading Saffira and her guards down from the precipitous high passes.

He gazed over a small valley and saw a herd of elephants floundering in the drifts. Most of them had died already, and they lay like elephant-shaped boulders covered in ice. But a couple of big old bulls looked up toward Saffira's entourage and feebly raised their trunks, trumpeting.

These were domestic elephants, with tusks sawed off and capped with copper. But they looked so starved that they would probably never succeed in climbing out of this valley. Their mahouts had abandoned them.

Apparently, the Wolf Lord had tried to bring war elephants over the Hests late in the season—and he had failed. Three times in the night, Borenson's party had passed Raj Ahten's armies of commoners as they tried to make it over
the mountains. These were archers and footmen, washwomen and carters by the hundreds of thousands. Not in his wildest dreams had Borenson imagined that Raj Ahten would try to bring such troops over the mountains so late in the autumn. Up so high in the Hests, the narrow trails offered little forage: a few rough grasses and low bushes to eat, snow to quench one's thirst. There was no fuel to burn, and so men burned ox dung in their small fires.

A journey that Borenson made in an hour on a force horse might take these men and women a day. The journey he made in a single night would take weeks of hard work for a commoner. Many of the horses Borenson saw in the last army were in terrible shape. They were beasts whose hides hung limp over skeletal frames. The commoners riding them would likely get stranded in the snow and die up here before midwinter, just as these elephants would die.

Raj Ahten had taken a deadly gamble, with both the lives of his people and his animals.

But he doesn't care, Borenson told himself. The lives he gambles with are not his own.

The mountain air was thin. A biting chill blew through it, piercing his cloak. Borenson wrapped it around himself and waited for Saffira to catch up. He hoped that when she saw the beautiful elephants, she might see her lord's folly. Evidence of it was everywhere. Rumor said that Raj Ahten had taken more than a thousand endowments of wit. With so much wit, he would recall in vivid detail every waking moment of his life. Yet endowments of wit only let a man store memories, not reason more clearly.

So he has a thousand endowments of wit, Borenson thought, and he's still dumber than my ass.

Last night, when Saffira had said that Raj Ahten was the greatest man in the world, and would surely save mankind from the reavers, Borenson had believed her. But now he was not looking at her, and the seductive power of her Voice did not sound as reasonable when he replayed it in memory.

No, Raj Ahten was not all-wise. Only a fool would have
sent so many commoners into these mountains.

A fool or a reckless and desperate man, a voice whispered in the back of Borenson's mind.

Perhaps Raj Ahten had been a Runelord too long. Maybe he'd forgotten what a frail thing a commoner could be. A man with a couple of endowments of brawn and metabolism could rush through a battle line and cut down commoners as if they were scarecrows.

They died so damned easily. Last night had brought a thin snow, and it had kept falling all morning. If it held, Raj Ahten's troops would get bogged down. Their animals would die in a fortnight, and without fuel for fires, the people would freeze in a matter of days.

What had made Raj Ahten hope that the fair weather would hold? Certainly he'd studied Rofehavan, knew what a risk he took.

Raj Ahten is a fool, Borenson thought, and Saffira does not see it.

He knew that Indhopal was an enormous realm, comprised of many kingdoms. And though Borenson had ridden through parts of Deyazz and Muttaya, he'd not been farther south, had not numbered the teeming hordes of Kartish or old Indhopal. It was said that before Raj Ahten conquered all of his neighbors, the old kingdom of Indhopal, with its lush jungles and vast fields, had fed more than a hundred and eighty million people. Certainly Raj Ahten commanded two or three times that number now. Yet even Raj Ahten could not afford to throw away half a million of his best-trained footmen and archers.

No, Raj Ahten was a fool. Or he might be a madman, deluded by his own fair face, the power of his Voice.

The horror of it now was that Saffira in her naivete could not see Raj Ahten's excesses, his vices.

Saffira was a tool in Raj Ahten's hand, and if she could not twist him to her will, then he most certainly would twist her to his.

Borenson waited several long minutes for Saffira. When she arrived, Borenson moved to her windward side, so that
his body might shield her better from the stinging wind.

“Ah, look at my lord's elephants,” Saffira said as she stopped, giving her horse a breather. The poor beast put its head down and bit into the snow, began chewing it for refreshment. “We must do something to save them.”

Borenson looked helplessly at the starving elephants. In the morning light, Saffira's beauty had become a terrible and breathtaking thing to behold. All through the night, the facilitators at Obran must have been working to transfer the concubines' glamour and Voice into Saffira's vectors. Saffira had garnered thousands of endowments. When Borenson glanced at her face for only a moment, her beauty smote him like a furnace, and he felt unworthy to be so near her.

A couple of vultures flapped up from an elephant's carcass.

“What would you suggest, O Star of Indhopal?” Borenson begged. When she did not answer, he looked to Pashtuk and the guards. He could see no way to save the elephants, short of spending the day hauling in hay and food for them from Mystarria.

If Saffira asked him to cart feed for the elephants, he knew that he would obey, but he feared the consequences if he delayed his quest. He needed to deliver Saffira to Raj Ahten, to convince him to turn aside from pursuing this self-destructive war.

“I… I don't know what we can do for them,” Saffira said.

“They have grazed this valley to stubble, O Greatest of Stars,” Pashtuk said. “Perhaps if we drove them down to a lower valley where there is more grass, the elephants would regain enough strength so that they might live.”

“That's a fine plan!” Saffira said in delight.

Borenson glanced at Pashtuk, hoping to convey in his scowl how displeased he was with the idea. But he saw Pashtuk's face, and knew that the big man felt as much in thrall to Saffira as did Borenson himself. Pashtuk only hoped to please her.

“O Bright Lady,” Borenson said, “your lord tried to bring the elephants across the mountains too late in the season. We cannot save them.”

“It is not my lord's fault if the weather does not cooperate,” Saffira said. “The weather should be warmer this time of year. It often stays warm, does it not?”

“It does,” Borenson admitted, and Saffira's Voice was so seductive, he could not help but wonder. Surely she was right. The weather often remained warm this late in the year.

“Still,” Borenson said, “he brought them too late.”

“Do not seek fault with my lord,” Saffira said. “Blame is easy to give, and hard to take. My lord does only what is necessary to stop the depredations of the Knights Equitable. If anyone is to blame, it is your kind.”

Her words were a hot whip that slashed his back. Borenson cringed, unable to frame an argument, unable to say anything. He tried to recall his thoughts a moment earlier, but Saffira had ordered him not to seek fault with Raj Ahten, and so persuasive was her command that his mind slid away from any ill thoughts.

So Borenson and Pashtuk left Saffira with her guards and made their way down to the starving elephants. The herd had contained fifty beasts, but only five remained alive. The narrow valley had no water flowing through it, and Borenson suspected that the other elephants had died of thirst as much as from hunger.

Borenson and Pashtuk slowed their pace through the morning and spent most of a long day herding the elephants eight or ten miles down the mountains to safety. Two miles of travel took them down to the tree line.

After that, Pashtuk drove the elephants down a side trail to a narrow valley. Here the light snow turned to a cold drizzle. The valley had good water and enough grass so that the elephants might forage for a couple of days before they moved down to the lowlands, but Borenson had no real hope for them.

The grass here was merely straw that would not give the
elephants energy. Without men to push them on, the elephants most likely would be too weak to leave this place.

Still, he'd done all that he could.

Saffira's entourage rode down out of the mountains. Borenson now took the lead. Duke Paldane's soldiers would be guarding this road; though a large party might pass unmolested, Saffira and her entourage would be easy targets.

Borenson didn't know where the ambush might come, but he didn't doubt that he would be challenged.

So he rode at the van of the group, a hundred yards ahead of the others. All the while, he watched for sign of an ambush. But with the loss of endowments, his eyes were not as sharp as before; his ears seemed dull of hearing. Without his stamina, he seemed to tire more easily than ever before.

Still, having endowments wasn't everything. Knowing what to look for was as important as having sharp eyes. So he watched the dark folds of valleys where the pines were thick, and he studied outcroppings of rock that might hide a horse, and he worried each time he came to a new fold in the ground and had to look over a rise.

He hoped only that Gaborn would use his powers to warn him if any danger should present itself.

By midafternoon, the rain poured. Borenson was desperate to pick up his pace, but Saffira commanded otherwise.

As they rode down a forested slope, they came upon an old wayfarer's cottage at the edge of a glade. Its thatch roof was sagging and full of holes, but by now Borenson was thoroughly soaked, and any roof looked as inviting to him as it did to Saffira. Besides, overhanging limbs from pine trees offered some added shelter for the cottage.

“Sir Borenson, help Mahket build a fire while Pashtuk and Ha'Pim prepare dinner,” Saffira said. “All of this travel has left me famished.”

“O Great Star,” Borenson said. “We are—We must hurry.”

Saffira fixed a reproachful gaze on him, and Borenson raised a hand to shield his eyes.

He went to work building the fire and did not object, for he told himself that a short rest would give their mounts time to forage, chewing viciously at the grass outside as force horses will. Besides, the cold rain had left them all thoroughly chilled. They needed rest.

For the moment, he felt too weary to argue further.

Borenson entered the cottage, found a dry corner where the roof still kept out the rain. Fortunately, the corner was near the fireplace. Dry pine needles and cones littered the cottage floor, and Borenson and Mahket set these in the fireplace. Soon they had managed to get a small blaze going.

As he worked, Borenson remained constantly aware of Saffira so near him. Since he knew there would be no dry wood outside, he went to the far end of the cottage and pulled some dry thatch out of the roof. He used the thatch for fuel while Pashtuk and Ha'Pim fetched water to boil rice and warm the lamb cooked in coconut milk that they'd brought from the Palace of the Concubines.

After dinner, Saffira ordered the men to stand guard while she took an afternoon nap, for she said that it would not do for her to “appear before the Great Light with baggy eyes from lack of rest.”

So Borenson let Saffira lie in the warm dry corner while he took a guard post nearby.

He could not rest. The day was wasting, and as he turned away from Saffira he soon found that he merely seethed.

He dared not voice his frustrations to Saffira. He feared her rebuke, but he was dismayed by the delays she caused. It was almost as if she did not want to see Raj Ahten, he decided.

Saffira slept, breathing deeply and softly under a brightly embroidered quilt on the floor, the picture of perfect repose.

Borenson wondered if he would have to kill her. With so many endowments of glamour and Voice, she would be dangerous—as dangerous in her own way as Raj Ahten.

He stared into her glorious face, saw the beauty and innocence there, and knew that to kill her, to take her life, would be as impossible as cutting out the heart of his own child.

Borenson left Saffira to Ha'Pim and Mahket. He went outside to Pashtuk, who stood atop a nearby rock beneath the shelter of a low-hanging pine limb.

They'd come out of the higher mountains. Dark pines stood straight along the road below, forming an impenetrable barrier to his gaze. In an hour, they would reach the warmer lowlands, where oak and elm thrived.

Borenson looked down the trail.

“How are your pearls feeling?” Borenson asked Pashtuk. He'd noted how the warrior sat uneasily in his horse, using his thighs to hold himself off the saddle.

Borenson could not stop worrying about what it would cost him to have looked upon Saffira's face.

“I fail to understand,” Pashtuk said, “how body parts that I no longer have can cause me so much pain.”

“That bad, eh?” Borenson said.

“When we near Carris,” Pashtuk said, “Raj Ahten will certainly demand his ounce of flesh from you.”

“Ounce
of flesh?” Borenson jested. “I'm more of a man than that.”

Pashtuk did not smile. “I suggest that you turn your horse and escape,” he said. “Neither Ha'Pim's nor Mahket's horse can catch yours. I might be able to give a good chase … but I will not catch you.”

“Why not?” Borenson asked.

Pashtuk shook his head. “My lord's decree was made to keep men from idly seeking out Obran, and to make sure that palace servants did not dally with the concubines. I do not believe it was meant for men like you, men of honor who would not betray a trust.”