Wizardborn (67 page)

In ancient texts it is said that Fallion's men scouted the Underworld, searching for Toth. It was only in the deepest recesses, many miles below the surface, that they began to find “much foretoken” of reavers. Most of Fallion's men died not in battle with reavers or Toth, but from the “arduous heat which grieved us unto death.”

—
Hearthmaster Valen, of the Room of Beasts

An unending thunder rumbled through the hills beneath Shrewsvale. With it came a sound as if a million dry leaves hissed to the forest floor at once.

The horde forged onward.

Crows flapped up from the old forest, black pinions groping the sky as they sought to escape the onslaught. They winged about in a dirty haze amid the gree. A cold sun glared down through a thickening yellow brume. Huge oak trees, browned by autumn, shivered and cracked, leaving holes to gape in the canopy.

The reavers advanced in a formation that men had never seen, the strange new Form of War. Gaborn stopped his mount on a hilltop and peered at the forest. He saw the reavers scurrying forward, glimpsed gray carapaces beneath the trees. They loped with a newfound fury. A hundred times he considered sending men to ambush the reavers, but his Earth Powers warned against it. No lancers dared attack. To even send men within archery range was futile. Something had happened to the horde.

The hope of water lent the reavers new heart. They were learning, surely. Averan said that they knew his name, and feared him.

Gaborn had beaten them easily enough at Carris, when the lightning threw them into a panic. But he'd lost so many of his powers. Now, he dared not attack.

Perhaps they sensed his weakness.

The very fact that they were learning how to defend themselves alarmed him. What if they taught other reavers their secrets?

With each minute, Gaborn more strongly suspected that he could neither stop the horde nor turn them from their destination.

He worried about whether his men could reach the ponds at Stinkwater in time to poison the pools. A cold terror seized him.

He'd passed through his ranks on the way up, and had expected to find Binnesman near the lead, riding his fine gray warhorse. But the wizard was nowhere in sight.

He reached the green fields and meadows of Shrewsvale barely half an hour in advance of the reavers. When he arrived, he found Baron Waggit ringing the town bell.

“Have you seen Binnesman?” Gaborn asked Waggit.

“He's gone to warn Feldonshire,” Waggit offered.

Gaborn breathed a sigh of relief.

In the village, peasants and merchants had already harnessed horses to wagons. They were pulling goods from their homes and barns—pillows, food, blankets, piglets, and lambs. One woman outside the inn stood beating a pan, shouting frantically for her son. Another man was not fleeing at all. Instead he had opened the door to a root cellar, and Gaborn watched him usher his wife and eight children down into it; then he came back up and started carrying a lamb down in one hand, and a rooster in another.

Gaborn shouted to Waggit, “Go and get that man and his children out of there!”

He could not hide his despair. He was not just a king, he was the Earth King. Yet his subjects would not always
follow his counsel, even to save their own lives.

Gaborn sized up the terrain, decided where to set his battle lines. No one had ever built a siege wall here at Shrewsvale. A sheep stockage bordered the woods, and would have to serve as the only barricade. The low wall would not hold back reavers, wouldn't even slow them down. The carefully piled slabs of gray stone were no more significant than a line drawn in the sand.

He went down into a field where an old haycock sat, the straw in it having grayed with mold over the past year. He fumbled with flint and steel to get a fire going. In five minutes the haycock was ablaze.

The wind worked against him. Down on the plains the wind had gusted to the east. But here in the vale at mid-morning, the air grew still. He'd not have a driving fire.

He'd hardly got the haycock to blaze when the main force of his army began to ride in, just over a thousand men, with lances held high. Lords hurried down to the vale and formed up in ranks behind the sheep stockage, as if they would hold fast if the reavers charged.

Skalbairn reported, “Milord, the reavers are less than six miles off, and they're running faster now. They know that they're close to water. We got word not half an hour ago that Langley's men are making a good accounting. Many reavers can't keep up the pace.”

Gaborn nodded, numb. He looked uphill. “Where are those men with the philia?”

Skalbairn just shook his head in consternation. “They'll be here soon.”

Gaborn couldn't wait. “Put a torch to the trees,” he ordered. Fifty lords came forward in a rush. They tied cords of twisted straw to their lances, then set them afire. The mounts leapt the low stone wall and charged into the trees.

The autumn leaves had begun piling in the woods, and the ground here had been dry for a couple of days. Yet the fire did not rage as Gaborn had hoped. It fumed and sputtered, filling the sky with a dim gray.

Still the reaver horde marched. The mass of bodies running
and heaving themselves over the rocks and trails became a dull roar.

Baron Waggit rode down the hill, pick in hand. Gaborn looked at the young man, felt deeply troubled. Waggit was in danger, might not survive the battle.

“So,” Gaborn said. “You've decided to join the fight?”

“If I may. I'll give it a go. But… I'm really not sure what to do.”

“You rang the bell in town, and already saved a man and his family,” Gaborn said. “You don't have to give yourself in battle. Certainly not in this battle.”

“I… I want to stay.”

“I'll see that you begin training for knighthood soon.”

“Thank you,” Waggit said softly.

“Stick close to me,” Gaborn said. “Move when you see me move.”

Waggit nodded.

Skalbairn caught sight of the baron, rode up and shouted, “Good man! Good man!” He looked out over the Knights Equitable gathered in the ranks, and shouted, “Did I tell you that he's going to marry my daughter?”

Waggit shook his head at Skalbairn's jest. “I said no such thing!”

But the knights all cheered as if it were a made match.

Gaborn's senses screamed in warning. A few miles west, the wounded refugees were still puttering around in Feldonshire. He struggled to send the message, “Flee!”

But if his people heard, none obeyed.

The thousand knights had all joined ranks across the field. Gaborn shouted, “Gentlemen, we'll hold here as long as we can. We've got to make the reavers believe that we'll fight, in hopes that they'll retreat. But be ready to fall back on my command.”

Even as he spoke, gree flapped overhead, squeaking with a sound like aging joints. The ground began to tremble, and he looked down the valley to the south. Two miles off, trees creaked and toppled.

On the slopes of the vale, a couple of fires had begun to rage.
Pillars of red and yellow twisted up, enveloping oaks whole. The heat smote Gaborn's face, and the smell of it came drier than before. Limbs crackled and branches hissed. Yet the center of the valley floor merely smoldered.

We should have been here an hour ago, with barrels of oil and pitch, Gaborn realized.

For a moment he dared wish that he had a flameweaver in his retinue.

The reavers were two miles away, and then one. The front of their formation filled the valley from north to south. Distantly to the northwest, beyond the thunder of the reavers' pounding feet, a single warhorn blared, signaling that troops had been cut off behind enemy lines.

Gaborn realized what had happened.

The men who bore the philia were cut off, surprised at the reavers' pace, no doubt. Gaborn sniffed at his own hands. He could still smell the garlicky mildew scent that Averan told him was a reaver's death cry. He hoped that there was enough residue on his men's hands so that the reavers would feel some trepidation.

“Hold your positions, men,” Gaborn shouted. “Hold your positions.” The warriors were ranged on horseback about fifty feet behind the stone wall. If Gaborn ordered a charge, the force horses would merely leap the wall.

Among his troops, lords began to lower their lances. Others had already strung bows. Now they nocked arrows.

The faintest breath of a breeze swept down from the hills, teasing the flames, raising Gaborn's hopes. A flickering wall of incandescence licked the forest floor in some places, making a low curtain of fire beneath the trees.

Just as quickly, the wind dropped off.

In the distance he glimpsed reavers between the boles of oaks now. They had been traveling in a loose pack, but they smelled trouble ahead. The reavers closed ranks, making a wall half a mile wide. Blade-bearer walked shoulder to shoulder with blade-bearer.

Charging into those lines would be suicide. Reavers with
stones behind that wall would provide artillery cover, while mages cast their noxious spells.

The reavers came slowly, philia waving. When they reached a tree, the blade-bearers merely lowered their massive heads and rammed. Thus they cut a huge swath through the forest.

The reavers were a quarter of a mile away now. Gaborn sought to put on a bold face, yet his Earth senses warned, “Flee! Flee!”

Every man under his charge was at risk.

“Not yet,” Gaborn whispered to his master. In Feldonshire, his Chosen still lay abed, while others puttered over the bridge of the river Donnestgree. He hoped to buy them time. Every minute that he slowed the reaver horde might win him another hundred souls. “Not yet.”

Then the reavers were two hundred yards ahead, almost to the smoldering woods.

The reavers did not slow. In fact, they seemed to lope faster as they neared the flames, as if in welcome.

When they reached the fire, they lowered their heads into the dirt, bowling over and burying the burning leaves. Even trees that crackled with flame fell back under the onslaught.

The horde marched forward, irrepressible, trampling the flames. Reavers hissed in warning to their neighbors.

“Retreat!” Gaborn shouted.

The reavers began to hurl a hail of stones. Boulders that weighed as much as a man came soaring overhead, falling into his front ranks.

“Dodge,” the Earth warned, and Gaborn spurred his charger to the left. A great boulder slammed into the stone sheep wall, toppled it. Flaming debris and flakes of stone hurtled past Gaborn and into the ranks of his men behind. Horses and riders burst into a spray of bloody gobbets. Gaborn felt sickened to the core as half a dozen men were ripped from him.

He glanced over his shoulder, Baron Waggit rode on his tail. The young man had followed his instructions precisely, and it saved his life. The pasty color of Waggit's face
showed that he knew how close it had been.

To the left of the battlefield, another boulder hurtled from the reavers' ranks and slashed through Gaborn's lines.

His men wheeled their mounts and raced for safety.

   56