Brotherhood of the Wolf (93 page)

Gaborn could not bear his guilt. He couldn't allow Raj Ahten, one of his Chosen, to continue killing men and women around him. Desperate, Gaborn could see no alternative but to strike back.

Even as he sought to fight, Gaborn feared that he committed sacrilege. The Earth had given him the power to Choose and protect mankind. To use his powers for any other purpose might well incur the Earth's punishment.

But in destroying Raj Ahten, Gaborn reasoned, I protect thousands of others.

Gaborn could almost see the setting: Raj Ahten was ringed in by his Invincibles. They'd seen him murder their brethren, and even now steeled themselves for a fight.

Doubtless, these were powerful men. Otherwise the Earth would not be sending Gaborn such intense intimations of Raj Ahten's peril.

This time, Gaborn did not warn Raj Ahten of the rising danger that began to crest all around him. Gaborn fought the urge to warn Raj Ahten, fought it with all his will. It pained him to do so.

Gaborn called on the warriors near Raj Ahten. “Strike now!”

Raj Ahten heard no warning. The Invincibles around him lunged as one, moved by some inaudible command.

His old friend Chesuit, one of his greatest and most trusted servants, whirled and sought to put the spike of a warhammer through Raj Ahten's helm.

Raj Ahten dodged, narrowly escaping death. He buried his own warhammer in Chesuit's shoulder, and then drew a long dagger for fighting at close quarters.

Gaborn felt danger flash around the Invincibles he'd commanded to slay Raj Ahten.

But he felt it only dimly, as if the earth power within him were a candle that had just been snuffed out, and now
all that lit the room was a single ember glowing at the candle's wick.

He was granted light still—enough light to know that it still burned, but nothing more.

In abject horror Gaborn raced to a hilltop, and looked back. He knew where Raj Ahten stood. Even now Gaborn fought the urge to warn him that he was in danger.

The struggle that took place happened too fast for Gaborn to see much at this distance, through the rusty haze and dirty rain. Lightning flickered overhead, and in its glare, Gaborn witnessed a swirling mass of bodies.

He felt the Invincibles' danger, perceived each blow as it fell. Bones were broken, muscles savagely torn. Blood flowed and men cried out in agony and horror as they met their own deaths.

He knew intimately when each Invincible fell and died.

With their deaths, something within Gaborn tore. He had said it plainly to Molly Drinkham: When his Chosen died, he felt as if somehow he had been uprooted, as if part of him died with them.

Now he felt it ardently, seemed more profoundly torn than ever before, For as each Invincible succumbed, he sensed keenly the loss of his own earth powers.

So swiftly their deaths came—each like the tolling of a death bell atop a city tower.

But that tolling did not proclaim the death of a few Invincibles. It heralded the death of the hope of mankind.

“Once there were toth upon the land,” the Earth had warned Gaborn in Binnesman's garden. “Once there were duskins … At the end of this dark time, mankind, too, may become only a memory.”

Is this how my people are to die? Gaborn wondered. Betrayed by me?

He'd tested his powers imprudently, like a well-endowed archer who pulls the strings of a bow long enough to see if the bow or the string will break first.

The Earth had given him dominion, granted him a circle of power.

Save whom you will, it had declared, and now Gaborn found himself trying to kill one that he had Chosen. He'd violated the Earth's will.

Now his powers were stripped away, and Gaborn gaped in wide-eyed horror, awaiting the moment when they would extinguish completely.

Lightning flashed above Carris, and by its light Gaborn saw when the Invincibles' struggles ceased: A single man rolled from that gruesome fray.

Gaborn spurred his mount, galloping north as fast as he could. He shouted to those nearby, “Raj Ahten is coming! Run!”

66
APOLOGIES DUE

Invincibles lunged at Raj Ahten from eight directions. Some struck low, some high. Some swung at his face while others tried to slip in from behind. They came with warhammers, daggers, fists, and feet.

Even his superior speed and decades of training would not allow him to leave such a row unscathed.

A warhammer caught Raj Ahten cleanly in the right knee, ripping ligaments and shattering bone. A dagger slipped through his scale mail and pierced a lung, while a half-sword sliced his neck, severing his carotid artery. A mailed fist dented his helm and probably fractured his skull. Other wounds were not so dire.

Raj Ahten managed to survive. Thousands of Dedicates in Kartish channeled stamina to him. Raj Ahten clung tenaciously to life as he fought.

In moments, he cut the eight down, and Raj Ahten slid from the back of a dead reaver, struggling to heal.

The wound to his neck closed quickly, the flesh knitting,
though blood had sprayed everywhere. His head ached, and when he pulled his helm away, the dent in it drew flesh off with it.

The knee wound caused him the most agony. The hammer had chipped deep into bone, breaking the patella and twisting it sideways, so that the wound healed quickly but improperly.

When he tried to stand on the leg, it ached so much he wondered if the head of the warhammer had broken off inside.

So Raj Ahten found himself in great pain as he ran north.

With so many endowments of metabolism, grace, and brawn, he should have been able to run fifty or sixty miles per hour. Under normal circumstances he could keep up that pace all day. Perhaps in the short term, Gaborn's mount could outrace him. But Raj Ahten could run forever. In time he could catch the lad.

So he ran through gloom over the blasted lands. He sprinted hard past the Barren's Wall, north along the highway through the villages of Casteer and Wegnt and Breakheart, until he left the sounds of battle far behind.

Sweat poured from him. He had fought for a long while. Though the melee had lasted for only the last two and a half hours in common time, with six endowments of metabolism it seemed to him that he had fought for fifteen. Since noon, he'd had little to drink, nothing to eat. The fell mage's ghastly spells had left him weak and dazed, and now he'd been sorely wounded.

It was folly to chase Gaborn under such conditions. He was no force horse fed on rich miln and fattened by a week of idleness.

He'd been on short rations now for weeks, marching first north to Heredon, fighting his campaign there, only to have to flee south.

In the past month, he'd grown lean. Then he'd been forced to battle all day long. Though his wounds healed quickly, even that took energy.

So as he ran, a tremendous thirst plagued him. He'd
sweated out far too much of his life's water.

It had rained on and off all day. Ten miles north of Carris he dropped beside the road and slurped from a puddle.

The grass around lay wilted, as if it had baked in the hot sun. He marveled at how the fell mage had so cursed this land, and he wondered if it was safe to drink from such a pool. The water tasted odd… of copper, he decided. Or maybe blood.

He rested for a few minutes. Got up and raced on. After five more miles, he still had not seen Gaborn. But amid the acrid haze he could taste the scent of horses, and of those who rode with Gaborn.

He kept running. He had made a mistake in wearing his mail, he decided. It was too heavy; it wore him down. Or maybe it was the painful wound to his knee.

He wondered if he'd lost stamina, somehow, if maybe some of his Dedicates had died.

Or perhaps the Earth King or his wizard has cast a spell on me, Raj Ahten thought. He found it oddly difficult to keep running.

Or maybe it is this land. The land itself was cursed, why not the people in it?

He raced until he smelled a change ahead. All along the route from Carris, the grass and trees had been dead, smelling of rot and decay.

But now he detected the cool scent of lush grasses, ripened in summer fields, and of mint; the taste of autumn leaves and of mushrooms growing wild in the woods; the honeyed aroma of vetch and other wild flowers that one did not notice until they were gone.

Twenty-eight miles north of Carris, he reached a barrier. In a single pace it seemed as if a line of demarcation had been drawn. To the south, every blade of grass was blasted and dead.

But on the far side of the line, the hills were rich and vibrant. Trees thrived. Bats fluttered in the night. A burrow owl called out.

On the other side of the line, Gaborn sat on his mount,
though Raj Ahten still could not see his face. Instead, it looked very much as if a gourd balanced precariously on his saddle. Two lords rode at his side: a princeling wearing the livery of South Crowthen, and a young woman of Fleeds. And behind them were gathered perhaps sixty other knights of Heredon and Orwynne. It looked as if Gaborn had happened on a party of his own knights, a party that had seen the devastation and feared to cross over the boundary into the blasted lands. Men and women in that group brandished bows and axes. He recognized his cousin Iome among the lords.

Binnesman the wizard sat atop Raj Ahten's own great gray Imperial warhorse. He held his staff high in his right hand. Fireflies swarmed round it in a cloud, lighting his face. In his left hand, he brandished a few leaves.

At his side stood his wylde, a woman in a bearskin robe with skin as green as the flesh of an avocado.

Raj Ahten halted. He'd seen her from behind earlier, had seen Gaborn flee with her. He had not recognized what she was then. Had he known that the wylde was here, he might not have dared follow.

Raj Ahten tried to feign unconcern as he drew close.

A strange and disconcerting numbness began to steal over him, over his face and hands, anywhere that his flesh was exposed. It became difficult to draw a breath. Everything felt cold.

He did not know what spell so dismayed him, what herb the wizard used, until Binnesman warned, “Stay back. You cannot resist the monkshood. Your heart will stop if you advance much farther.”

Raj Ahten knew the herb now. He had brushed against it as a child and felt it numb his skin, but it had not been in the hands of an Earth Warden then, had not been magnified by his powers.

“Far enough,” Binnesman said. “So, Raj Ahten, why do you follow the Earth King? Have you come to do obeisance at last?”

Raj Ahten halted, gasping for breath, his whole body
numb and tingling. Even with all his endowments, he could not fight an Earth Warden—especially one guarded by a wylde and sixty lords. The wylde now raised her nose in the air, sniffed. “Blood—yes!” she cried in delight. She smiled, fangs gleaming.

Raj Ahten had never before looked into the face of someone who intended to eat him, yet he did not doubt the meaning behind her beatific expression.

“Not yet,” Binnesman whispered to the wylde, “but if he advances, then he is yours to play with.”

Raj Ahten swallowed hard.

“You have my forcibles,” Raj Ahten said to Gaborn, as if to dismiss the wizard. “I want them back—nothing more.”

“I want my people back,” Gaborn said. “I want the Dedicates you killed at the Blue Tower. I want my father and mother, my little sisters and my brother.” To Raj Ahten, it seemed a singularly odd moment, to hear that gourd speak. Raj Ahten studied the Earth King's Voice warily.

“It's too late for them,” Raj Ahten said. “Just as it is too late for my wife Saffira.”

“If it's vengeance you're after,” Gaborn said, “take it from the reavers. If any man here has been injured, I have the greater claim, and if it was vengeance I wanted, I could take it even now.”

Raj Ahten smiled. “Is this why you stopped, Gaborn Val Orden—to make petty threats?” he asked. “Do you need the comfort of wizards and knights at your back just to snivel at me?” Raj Ahten stood panting, determined to hide how much the monkshood affected him. He wished he could see a face, to learn what the lad might be thinking.