Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 68

Raj Ahten glanced at Pashtuk and recognized the face of an enemy.

Raj Ahten had no words that could adequately express his rage. Gaborn had evaded his a.s.sa.s.sins since youth, had repelled him from Longmot with a humiliating ruse, had stolen his forcibles. Gaborn had brought Saffira to her death, turned her against him. Now Gaborn turned Raj Ahten's most loyal followers against him.

He wanted revenge.

"The reavers are fleeing," Raj Ahten said as if speaking to a slow-witted child. "The danger is past, and the truce may now safely be put aside."

"A battle may be won, but not the war," Pashtuk replied.

"What makes you think the reavers will return?" Raj Ahten offered in a reasonable tone. "We can't know that they will return."

"O Great One," Pashtuk said, "forgive me. I do not mean to offend, but he is the Earth King. He has Chosen you."

"I, too, came north to save mankind," Raj Ahten reminded Pashtuk. "I, too, can destroy reavers."

Raj Ahten heard Gaborn's warning in his mind: "Beware!"

Pashtuk raised his warhammer and lunged forward to swing, but the man could not have had more than three or four endowments of metabolism.

Raj Ahten dodged Pashtuk's blow and struck him in the temple with his mailed fist. The blow shattered Pashtuk's skull and drove bone into his brain.

"Beware!" Gaborn's Voice warned again.

Raj Ahten spun. Two Invincibles at his back had drawn weapons, intent on murder. He briefly engaged them, and two others who joined the fray.

But Raj Ahten was no fool. Though his Invincibles might seem awesome to the common man, he had always known that some would turn against him.

He dispatched the four men swiftly, taking only a few light wounds. With his thousands of endowments of stamina, the wounds healed over before the last man fell.

He stood a moment, panting, watching eight other Invincibles who surrounded him. Lightning flickered, thunder pounded. None of the eight dared try to withstand him, yet he wondered dully if he should kill them anyway.

Gaborn's Voice rang in Raj Ahten's. mind. "Men lie dead at your feet, men whom I have Chosen. Your own death hovers nearby. One last time I offer you protection and hope...."

"I did not Choose you!" Raj Ahten screamed. The force of his Voice was so great that the words rose up louder than the thunder.

As Gaborn galloped from Carris, rivulets of sweat poured down his face. A thousand tiny battles raged around him at once. Sir Langley and Skalbairn slaughtered the reavers mercilessly, attacking to good effect. Though many reavers fled Carris, not all were discouraged.

Yet Gaborn was aware that one intense battle raged nearby. Raj Ahten stood among his Invincibles. Gaborn had thought them all in danger, perhaps from some reaver mage.

But in warning Raj Ahten of danger, Gaborn had unwittingly aided in the slaughter of other men.

Appalled and hurt, Gaborn made one final attempt to make peace with the man. But Raj Ahten's rebuff rose.

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!"

CHAPTER 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 circ.u.mstances 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s and trees had been dead, smelling of rot and decay.

But now he detected the cool scent of lush gra.s.ses, 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 gra.s.s 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 ward. "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.

"No, I did not come to make threats. I hoped to warn you that you are in grave danger. I felt such danger myself, yesterday, just before you destroyed the Blue Tower. It was a cloying, indefinable rot. I tell you that Mystarria is not the only land where reavers are ma.s.sing. I fear that your Dedicates will be next."

He sounded sincere, though the lad had no cause to wish Raj Ahten well. "So, you want me to flee home?" Raj Ahten said. "To chase phantoms while you strengthen your borders?"

"No," Gaborn answered "I want you to go home and save yourself. If you do, I will use all the powers at my command to aid you."

"Not half an hour ago, you tried to kill me," Raj Ahten pointed out. "What has brought about so great a change of heart?"

"I Chose you," Gaborn said. "I did not want to use my powers against you, but you forced me to it. I ask you one more time, join with me."

So the boy seeks an ally, Raj Ahten realized. He fears that he cannot stop the reavers on his own.

Raj Ahten wondered if Gaborn still might be persuaded to return the forcibles.

"Look around you, Raj Ahten," the wizard Binnesman cut in. "Look at the land behind you, the death and ruin! You faced the fell mage. Is that the world you want? Or would you come with us, to this land, to a land that is fair and green, hail and living?"

"You offer me land?" Raj Ahten said, genuinely disappointed. "That is gracious: to offer land that I could so easily take, land that you are incompetent to hold."

"The Earth bids me warn you," Gaborn said. "A pall lies over you. I cannot protect a man who does not want my protection. If you stay in any of the kingdoms of Rofehavan, I cannot save you."

"You cannot put me out," Raj Ahten said. He glanced back toward Carris, toward his own troops.

In that moment, something changed in Gaborn. He began to laugh. Not a mere nervous chuckle, but a laugh of such deep and profound relief, a laugh from so deep in the gut that Raj Ahten wondered at the source. He wished he could see the boy.

"You know," Gaborn said in a cordial tone. "Once, I might have feared you and your Invincibles. But I have just realized how I could defeat you, Raj Ahten. All I need do is Choose your people--man by man, woman by woman, child by child--and make them my own!"

Beside Gaborn, the wizard Binnesman smiled and also burst into laughter as he realized Raj Ahten's predicament Raj Ahten cringed inwardly as he saw the truth. He himself no longer had an army at Carris. He doubted that he could bring any men against Gaborn at all.

"Go back to Carris if you dare," Gaborn suggested coldly. "You defeated twelve Invincibles, but I have hundreds of thousands of followers there: your men. Will you fight them all?"

"Give me my forcibles;" Raj Ahten demanded calmly, hoping that through the persuasive power of his Voice, he still might reach some settlement. But Gaborn Val Orden shouted, "No bargaining, you foul cur! I offer you your breath, nothing more! Begone, I order you one last time--or I'll take even that!"

Raj Ahten's face flushed with rage, and his heart began to pound in his chest.

He shouted and charged.

A dozen knights loosed arrows. He whipped his hands around, tried to knock them aside, but one lodged in his injured knee. He fought the bone-chilling numbness that sapped energy from his heart.

And then the green woman rushed to meet him. She took him by his coat of mail and lifted him, her nails digging so powerfully that bits of scale mail scattered from his coat like scales from a trout.

He tried to grapple with her, aiming a punch at her throat with his mailed gauntlet.

The force of his blow shattered his right arm, though it also knocked the green woman backward a pace. She seemed surprised to be affected at all--surprised, but not injured.

She screamed and drew a small rune in the air, her right hand twisting in an intricate little dance that baffled the eye.