The RuneLords (31 page)

Do I give to the man who robs me? Praise the man who belittles me?

If Gaborn sought to be good, he could do little else. But if he sought to be a protector for his people, was that not also good? And if he sought to protect his people, he could not afford to be virtuous.

The Days' teachings seemed muddling. Perhaps, he thought, the Days hide these teachings from the Runelords out of compassion. By. the Days' standards, it is a hard thing for a man to be virtuous. Raj Ahten seeks my realm. By their standards, if I were good, perhaps I would give it to him.

Yet that seemed wrong. Perhaps it is a greater virtue for a Runelord to be just and equitable?

He began to wonder if even the Days understood the implications of their diagram. Perhaps it was not three circles of Domains, but more. Perhaps if he rearranged the individual types within the Domains, forming nine circles, he could better gauge how to react to an attempt at invasion for each.

He considered Raj Ahten. The Wolf Lord violated men's Domains at every level. He took their wealth and their homes, destroyed families, murdered, raped, and enslaved.

Gaborn needed to protect himself, his people, from this beast who would ravage the world. But he could not simply frighten Raj Ahten away, could not bully the man or reason with him or cow him by denouncing him to the people.

The only thing Gaborn could do to save his people would be to find a way to kill Raj Ahten.

Gaborn listened closely, asking Earth if that was its will, but felt no response--no shaking of the earth, no burning in his heart.

At the moment, Gaborn could not touch the Wolf Lord. Raj Ahten was too powerful. Still, Gaborn thought he might spy on Raj Ahten, maybe discover how best to wound him. Perhaps Raj Ahten had prized Dedicates he carried with him, or perhaps a certain counselor drove the Wolf Lord relentlessly in pursuit of conquest. Slaying a counselor could accomplish much.

Gaborn might discover such things. But he'd have to get close, first. He'd need to find a way into the inner circles of the castle.

Gaborn wondered if Earth would approve. Should I fight Raj Ahten? By doing this, would I violate my oath?

It seemed a good plan, daring, to spy on the Wolf Lord and learn his weakness. Gaborn had already established some cover in the Dedicates' Keep, as Aleson the Devotee.

Gaborn judged that if he and Rowan went to the gate of the Dedicates' Keep just after dawn, after Raj Ahten's night guard changed, and took some odd items of spice with them, perhaps they could gain entry. All that night, he lay awake, considering...

The sun rose pink in the east, stirring a dawn chill as Gaborn and Rowan left the spice house, carrying small bales of parsley and peppermint. A low mist was creeping up from the river, over the walls, making a blanket on the fields. The rising sun dyed the blanket gold.

Gaborn stopped outside the door, tasted the mist. It had an odd scent, the tang of sea salt where there should be none. Almost he could imagine the cries of gulls in that mist, and ships sailing from harbor. It made him long for home, but Gaborn thought he just imagined the odd scent.

The sounds of morning were like any other morning. The cattle and sheep were still wandering about the city, and their bawling and baaing filled the air. Jackdaws chatted noisily from their nests among the chimneys of houses. The blacksmith's hammer rang, and from the cooking chamber in the Soldiers' Keep one could smell fresh loaves baking. But overwhelming the sumptuous scent of food, even the sea mist, was the acrid stench of burned grasses.

Gaborn did not fear being spotted. He and Rowan were dressed like commoners, anonymous inhabitants of the castle.

Rowan led Gaborn up a fog-shrouded street, until they reached an old shack, a sort of hermitage on the steep side of the hill, near where the wizard's garden had stood. Grapevines climbed the back wall of the shack. It would take only a minor freeze to bring out the sweetness in the grapes.

Gaborn and Rowan filled their stomachs, unsure what other food they might get that day. At the sound of coughing within the hermitage, Gaborn got up, prepared to leave. Someone began thumping inside the cottage, hobbling on a cane. It was but a matter of time before the occupant came outside and discovered them.

Gaborn pulled Rowan to her feet just as hunting horns sounded over the fields south of the castle.

This blare of horns was followed immediately by grunts and shrieks. Gaborn climbed a little higher up the hill to look over the Outer Wall, to the mist-shrouded fields. The river lay to the east, with fields beyond it. The trees of the Dunnwood sat on a hill across the valley to the south.

At the edge of the wood on the south hill, Gaborn suddenly spotted movement in the fog: the glint of steel armor, peaked helms--lances raised in the air. Horsemen rode at the edge of the woods, cantering through the fog.

Before them raced a thousand nomen, black shadows who lumbered over the ground on all fours, shrieking and howling in terror. The nomen fled toward the castle, half-blinded by daylight.

There, Gaborn saw a rider wearing the midnight-blue livery of House Orden, with the emblem of the green knight.

He could not fathom it--his father attacking the castle.

No! he wanted to shout.

It was a suicide charge. His father had brought a few men as a retinue. They had come as a light escort--mere decoration--not prepared for war! They had no siege engines, no wizards or ballistas.

As Gaborn realized all this, he knew it hardly mattered. His father believed that Gaborn was in Castle Sylvarresta and that the castle had fallen. His father would do whatever he thought necessary to win back his son.

That recognition filled Gaborn with guilt and horror, the thought that his stubbornness, his stupidity, had suddenly put so many people's lives in jeopardy.

Though his father's soldiers had come as "mere decoration," they did not fight like decorations. The horses plunged downhill, churning the fog; their horsemen's axes were raised high overhead. Gaborn saw nomen running, naked, fleeing the knights' axes. They shrieked in horror, their yellow fangs gaping wide. Some nomen turned, set their spear butts in the mud.

His father's knights surged forward on armored horses, lances shattering, axes falling, blood and mud and fur filling the air, along with the howls of nomen, the screams of the dying.

Hoofbeats thundered from the south. Hundreds of voices rose in a shout, the battle cry of "Orden! Brave Orden!"

In answer, a tremendous roar came from the east. A contingent of Frowth giants rushed over the fields on the far side of the river, making toward the Dunnwood from the eastern fields--eighty giants lumbering like moving hills in the fog.

Shouts arose from guards on the castle walls, the blare of horns as Raj Ahten's soldiers were called to battle, roused from their beds. Gaborn feared Raj Ahten would send his own knights riding onto the battlefield. House Orden had at most a contingent of two thousand men, unless his father had managed to summon reinforcements from one of Sylvarresta's minor keeps.

Almost as quickly as that fear of Raj Ahten's counterattack arose, it was assuaged. Gaborn heard shouts at the southern gates, the clanking of gears as Raj Ahten's troops hurried to raise the drawbridge. The fog in the valley was so thick, Gaborn could not see if any nomen made it over the bridge.

Raj Ahten could not counterattack now. He could not be certain what size force House Orden had brought. If he attacked, he might find himself ambushed by a force so large he could never withstand it. It was, after all, a common tactic to try to lure a castle's defenders out by feigning an inadequate force.

A contrary wind blew from the east, and the fog suddenly thickened. Gaborn could see nothing more of the battle. Even the giants disappeared in the mist.

Yet he heard horses neigh in terror, the battle cries of House Orden. On the hill across the valley, horns sounded--two short blasts, one long. An order to regroup.

"Come on!" Gaborn told Rowan, and he took her hand. Together they raced up the streets, uphill toward the King's Keep.

The city was in chaos. Raj Ahten's troops were throwing on armor, rushing to man the city walls.

As Gaborn and Rowan ran to the King's Gate, the soldiers were lowering the portcullis leading into the business district. They ordered Gaborn back.

Five hundred of Raj Ahten's troops rushed down from the King's Keep, trying to reach the Outer Walls. A small herd of startled cattle dashed this way and that before them, seeking escape.

In the confusion, Gaborn and Rowan shouldered their bales of spices, raced through the portcullis into the market.

The market district was undefended. Raj Ahten's men had not yet formed a plan for resisting attack. None of his soldiers had been posted to specific turrets. Watching the walls, Gaborn saw dozens of soldiers rush to the catapults, others manning the towers at each corner of the castle--but Raj Ahten's troops spread themselves thin. Some rushed for the Outer Wall; others tried to nail down defenses in the Dedicates' Keep.

Practically no one manned the second wall of the city's defenses, the King's Wall.

From the plain below--mingled with the screams of nomen, the neighing of horses as they died, the roars of giants--the knights of House Orden broke into song, their deep voices celebrating the glory of war.

Gaborn's father had always insisted that each of his personal guard have three endowments of Voice, so that orders could be easily shouted across the battlefields. Their death song erupted from the fog, shook the very stones of Castle Sylvarresta, reverberated from hill to hill. It was a song to strike terror in the hearts of foe:

"Bring your honor, swing your sword,
You mighty men of Orden.
Reap your foes in fields of gore,
You bloody men of Orden!"

There were the sounds of horses neighing and dying--so many horses. Gaborn did not understand why the horses screamed until he realized that Raj Ahten's horses were still tethered on the far hill. His father's troops were slaughtering the Wolf Lord's mounts.

Gaborn and Rowan stopped on the cobbled street, a hundred yards beneath the King's Keep, and stood gazing over the fog-covered greens, trying to see the battle. Gaborn was suddenly aware of several men rushing past.

He turned just as a burly soldier pushed him aside, shouting, "Out of the way!"

And there, racing past in black scale mail, the white owl's wings sweeping wide from his black helm, came Raj Ahten with his personal guard, counselors, and Days. Three weary flameweavers ran at his side.

Gaborn almost reached to draw his sword, to strike at the Wolf Lord, but knew it would be foolish. He turned away, the blood in his face rising in anger.

Raj Ahten ran past Gaborn at arm's length, issuing orders to his guard in Indhopalese: "Ready your men and horses! You flameweavers--to the walls. Send lines of fire from here to the woods, so that we can see into that fog. I'll lead the counterattack! Damn that insolent Orden!"

"It is an unnatural fog," his flameweaver worried. "A water wizard's fog."

"Rahjim, don't tell me you fear some young water wizard who hasn't even grown his gills yet?" Raj Ahten scoffed. "I expect more from you. This fog will work against Orden as much as work for him."

The wizard shook his head woefully. "Some Power fights us! I feel it!"

Gaborn could have reached out and touched the Wolf Lord, could have lopped off his head, yet had done nothing.

The enormity of the lost opportunity weighed on Gaborn. As Raj Ahten and his troops hurried down Market Street, Gaborn fumbled to draw his sword.

"No!" Rowan hissed, grabbing his wrist, pressing the blade back into its sheath.

She was right. Yet as he surveyed the street, he saw that it was a perfect spot for an ambush. The shops would not normally open for another two hours--and this day was far from normal. Perhaps they would not open at all.

Market Street twisted southwest, so that even though one was not far from the King's Keep and the inner tier of defenses for the city, one could not be seen from the Keep's walls above, nor from the outer walls below. The three-story stone buildings along Market Street blocked such a view.

Gaborn halted. The morning shadows were still deep, the street deserted. Gaborn wondered if he should wait for Raj Ahten to return up the cobbled road.

He glanced up toward the King's Keep.

A woman ran toward him, a woman dressed in a midnight-blue silk robe that was tied indecently, half revealing her pert breasts. She bore in her right hand a silver chain that held a small metal ball in which to burn incense, but the incense in the ball was aflame. Lights danced madly in her dark eyes, and her head was bald. She carried herself with such authority, Gaborn knew she must be someone important.

It was not until she was nearly upon him that he felt the heat of her--the dry burning under her skin--and knew she was a flameweaver.

The woman lurched to a stop, gazed at him as if in recognition. "You!" the flameweaver cried.

He did not think. He knew with every fiber of his being that she was his enemy. In one smooth stroke he drew his blade, swung it up, and lopped off the woman's head.

Rowan gasped, put her hand to her mouth and stepped backward.

For a split second the flameweaver stood, her head flying back, the incense burner still in hand.

Then her entire body turned into a green pillar of flame that spouted high into the air. The heat of it made the rocks at her feet scream in protest, cremated her own body in a portion of a second, and Gaborn felt his own eyebrows curl and singe. The blade of his sword burst into flames as if stricken with a curse, and the fire raced down the bloodstained metal toward the hilt so that Gaborn had to thrust the thing to the ground.

For good measure, he somehow felt compelled to pull off his scabbard, throw it down too--as if it might burst into flame from its long association with the blade.

Too late he realized his mistake in killing the flameweaver.

A powerful flameweaver cannot be killed. She can be disembodied, and in time she will dissipate, become one with her element. But there is a space of time, a moment of consciousness between death and dissipation, where the full power of the flameweaver is unleashed, where the flame-weaver combines with the element she served.