The RuneLords (38 page)

But no, he now remembered, it had not been the boy. Merely a statue that looked like him. The young man led the horse from the stable, began buckling and cinching the saddle, tying on saddlebags, just out of earshot.

Alone with his Days in the shadowed stable, Raj Ahten whirled and caught the Days by the throat. The man had been following two paces farther back than normal. Perhaps a sign of guilt, perhaps in fear.

"What do you know of this attack at Longmont?" Raj Ahten asked, lifting the Days from the ground. "Who betrayed me?"

"Not, aagh, me!" the Days responded. The man grabbed Raj Ahten's wrist with both hands, clung for dear life, trying to keep from strangling. Fear lined his face. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

"I don't believe you," Raj Ahten hissed. "Only you could have betrayed me--you or your kind."

"No!" the Days gasped. "We, ugh, we take no sides in the affairs of state. This is...your affair."

Raj Ahten looked in his face. The Days seemed terrified.

Raj Ahten held him, muscles strong as Northern steel, and considered breaking the man's neck. Perhaps the Days was telling the truth, but he was still dangerous. Raj Ahten longed to crush the fellow, to rid himself of this pest. But if he did, every Days across the world would unite, would reveal Raj Ahten's secrets to his enemies--the numbers of his armies, the locations of his hidden Dedicates.

Setting the Days down, Raj Ahten growled, "I am watching you."

"Just as I watch you," the Days said, rubbing his sore neck.

Raj Ahten turned, left the stable. The captain of his guard had said that Gaborn Val Orden had slain one of the Wolf Lord's scouts near here. The Prince would have left his scent behind.

Raj Ahten had endowments of scent from over a thousand men. Most of his scouts had taken endowments of scent from dogs, and hence feared the dogbane that the Prince carried.

"My lord, where are you going?" Jureem asked.

"To hunt Prince Orden," Raj Ahten decided on impulse. His men would be long at work preparing for the march. With Raj Ahten's endowments of metabolism, he could spend time doing something of value, while others worked. "He may still be in the city. Some jobs you should not leave to lesser men."

"Och, orders is orders! His Lor'ship tol' me to put the King and his girl on proper 'orses--even if I had to tie 'em in the saddle! The wagon's too slow on such a long march, thru them woods," Gaborn said, affecting a Fleeds accent.

The finest horsemen came from Fleeds, and he wanted to play the part of a trusted stableboy.

Gaborn sat atop his stallion, gazing down at the captain in the Dedicates' Keep. The guards had raised the portcullis, and busily filled a great covered wain with Dedicates gained here at Castle Sylvarresta--those who acted as vectors for Raj Ahten, including King Sylvarresta.

"He say to me none of thees!" the captain said in his thick Taifan accent, glancing about nervously. His men had abandoned their posts to raid the kitchens for provisions. Some officers looted Sylvarresta's treasury, and others down on Market Street were breaking shopwindows. Every moment the captain spent talking to Gaborn meant the captain would have less time to stuff his own pockets.

"Aye, what do I know?" Gaborn asked.

Gaborn turned to leave, nudging his mount with his heels, pulling around the four horses he had on his lines. It was a delicate moment. Gaborn's mount grew skittish, laid its ears back, rolled its eyes. Several soldiers hurried into the Dedicates' Keep, to help loot the treasury. Gaborn's stallion flinched at each soldier who crowded past, ventured a small kick at one man. One of the tethered stallions responded to the sudden move by bucking. Gaborn whispered soothing words to keep the whole bunch from bolting.

In the last few minutes, the streets had suddenly come alive with people--a mob of Raj Ahten's men sprinted to the armory to grab supplies, weapons, horses; merchants rushed hither and thither to protect what they had from looters.

"Halt!" the captain of the guard said before Gaborn got the horses turned. "I put King on horse. Which one ees for him?"

Gaborn rolled his eyes, as if the answer were obvious. If he'd truly been a stablehand, he'd have known which mount would remain calmest, which horse would try to keep the idiot king from falling. As it was, he feared that all five horses might bolt at any second. His own horse, the stallion he'd ridden into town the day before, had been trained to recognize the Wolf Lord's soldiers by their coat of arms, and to lash out against them with hoof and tooth. Surrounded by the Wolf Lord's troops, his stallion tossed its head from side to side, shifting its weight uneasily. Unsure. His mood unnerved the other horses.

"Och, today, who knows?" Gaborn said. "I smell a likely storm. They're all a wee skittish."

He looked at the horses. In truth, two mounts seemed less concerned by the commotion.

"Prop the King on Uprising, and here's to hopin' he don't fall!" Gaborn patted a roan mount, inventing the horse's name on the spur of the moment. "The Princess, she sits on his sister 'ere, Retribution. Their Days can ride the skittish horses and plummet to their asses for all I care. Oh, and watch that girth strap on the King's saddle. It wiggles loose. Oh, and Death Knell there, put her last in your line. She kicks."

Gaborn handed the lines to the captain, giving him the reins to all four mounts, and turned to leave.

"Wait!" the captain said, as Gaborn suspected he would.

Gaborn craned his neck, sat with a bored expression.

"You geet King on horse! Everyone on horse. I want you personal to geet them down through gates."

"I'm busy!" Gaborn objected. Sometimes the best way to secure a job was to pretend you did not want it. "I'm wanting to watch the soldiers leave."

"Now!" the captain shouted.

Gaborn shrugged, urged the horses through the portcullis, into the bailey of the Dedicates' Keep, near the huge wain.

No one had yet managed to bring the draft horses to pull the wain, so the wagon merely sat, its axletree lying on the ground.

Gaborn looked into the wagon, tried not to stare too hard at Iome. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a sleeve, then got off his horse, helped Iome mount. He had no idea whether she could ride, felt relieved when she sat lightly atop her mare, took the reins confidently.

The drooling King was another matter. His eyes grew frightened and he hooted and grasped the horse's neck with both hands as soon as Gaborn got him saddled, then tried to slide off. Though the King had once been a fine horseman, he gave no evidence of it now. Gaborn realized he would, quite literally, have to tie the man to the pommel.

So Gaborn used one of his lead ropes and did just that, wrapping the rope around the King's waist twice, then tying him to the pommel in front, and to the hitches for the saddlebags in the rear.

Gaborn's heart pounded. He was taking an insane risk: Iome could ride, but the King would pose a definite problem.

Gaborn planned to take the King and Iome through the city gates, then gallop for the woods, where Orden's forces could protect him. Gaborn hoped that none of the enemy archers would dare shoot the King. As a vector, he was too valuable to Raj Ahten.

Gaborn most feared that Raj Ahten's forces might lead a mounted pursuit.

Fortunately, the King's horse seemed more intrigued by the King's whooping and grasping antics than frightened. After Gaborn tied the King securely into his saddle, Sylvarresta became more interested in petting the mount and kissing its neck than in trying to unhorse himself.

Raj Ahten bent over the bloodstained ground, sniffing Gaborn's scent in the birch grove. On the ridge above stood his counselors and two guards, illuminated by the noon sun.

But here in the shaded forest, Raj Ahten searched alone, as only he could.

"That's the spot," one of his captains called.

But the ground held only the odor of mold and humus, desiccated leaves. Ash had rained down from the fires that incinerated the wizard's garden, fouling the scent. Of course the tang of a soldier's blood filled the air.

The Prince had passed through the herbalist's garden, so that his natural scent lay masked under layers of rosemary, jasmine, grasses, and other rich fragrances. Raj Ahten's own men had tramped here by the dozens last night, further fouling the trail.

The more he tasted the air, the more elusive the scent seemed.

But none of his hunting dogs could track as well as Raj Ahten did. So the Wolf Lord knelt in the loam, sniffing tenderly, dismissing some scents, seeking for that which was Gaborn. He crawled forward, searching for a vestige of Gaborn among the trees. Perhaps the young man had brushed a vine maple, or touched the bole of an alder. If he had, his scent would cling to the spot.

Raj Ahten found no scent near the blood, but found something nearly as interesting: the earthy musk of a young woman, a maid who worked the kitchens. Odd that none of his hunters had mentioned the scent. It might be nothing, or it might be a woman who accompanied the Prince.

Raj Ahten suddenly stood upright, startled. A half-dozen finches in a nearby tree took flight at the movement. Raj Ahten listened to a soft wind blow through the trees. He recognized the girl's scent, had smelled it--

This morning.

He'd passed her on Market Street, just outside the King's Keep.

Raj Ahten had endowments of wit from over a thousand men. He recalled every beat of his heart, remembered every word ever uttered to him. He visualized the woman now, at least the back of her head. A shapely young thing, in a hooded robe. Her long hair a deep brunette. She'd been next to a statue of gray stone. Once again, he felt an odd sensation--a peculiar muzziness of thought.

But--no, he suddenly realized. It could not have been a statue. The thing had moved. Yet when he'd passed it, he'd had the impression of stone.

He tried to recall the statue's face, to imagine the thing he'd passed as living flesh. But he could not see it, could not visualize it. A statue of a boy--a faceless, plain-looking lad in a dirty robe.

They'd stood in the streets near where his pyromancer had been murdered.

But wait, Raj Ahten had it now--the scent. He recalled their smell. Held it in his mind. Yes, it was here in the woods. And he'd smelled it at the stable. The young man Raj Ahten had seen at the stable, minutes ago.

Raj Ahten could remember everything he'd seen in years. Now he tried to dredge up the lad's face, to see him there in the stables.

Instead, he saw the image of a tree: a great tree in the heart of the wood at dusk, so vast that its swaying branches seemed to reach up and capture the stars.

It was so peaceful under that tree, watching it, that Raj Ahten raised his hands, felt the warmth of the starlight touching his own hands, penetrating them.

He longed to be that tree, swaying in the wind. Unmoved, unmovable. Nothing more than trunk and roots, reaching deep into the soil, tendrils of root tickled by the passing of countless worms. Breathing deep. The birds soaring through his limbs, nesting in the crooks of branches, pecking at grubs and mites that hid in the folds of his bark.

Raj Ahten stood, breath suspended, among the trees of the forest, looking down on his smaller brothers, tasting the wind that meandered slowly above him and through him. All cares ceasing. All hopes and aspirations fading. A tree, so peaceful and still.

Ah, to stand thus forever!

Fire blossomed in his trunk.

Raj Ahten opened his eyes. One of his flameweavers stood glaring at him, had prodded him with a hot finger.

"Milord, what are you doing? You've been standing here for five minutes!"

Raj Ahten drew a deep breath of surprise, looked at the trees around him, suddenly uneasy. "I...Gaborn is still here in the city," Raj Ahten said. Yet he could not describe the boy, could not see his face. He concentrated, and saw in rapid succession a stone, a lonely mountain, a gorge.

Why can I not see his face? Raj Ahten wondered.

Then he looked up at the trees around him, and knew. A small band of trees, narrow along the river. A finger of the Dunnwood. But powerful, nonetheless. "Set fire to this wood," he told the flameweaver.

Raj Ahten raced for the city gates, hoping he was not too late.

Sweat poured from Gaborn's face as he urged the horses through the lower bailey. Thousands of troops clogged the gates.

Five hundred knights milled outside the city wall. Their warhorses wore the finest armor Sylvarresta's smiths could forge, blackened and polished. Another thousand archers stood ready near the walls with bows strung, should an army race out from the woods.

Yet the fact that so many men had already left the castle did not ease the congestion. Thousands of soldiers did not travel completely alone--squires, cooks, armorers, tailors, bearers, fletchers, prostitutes, washwomen all thronged the streets. Raj Ahten had seven thousand soldiers in his legion, but his camp contained another thousand followers. Armorers dressed the horses in the bailey. Children darted about underfoot. Two cows had run down the Butterwalk and now tramped through the crowd.

In the turmoil, Gaborn rode from the castle, trailing Iome's mount, her father's, and those of two Days, trying to keep his horse from kicking and biting every soldier who wore the red wolves of Raj Ahten on his shield or surcoat.

One dark-faced sergeant grabbed the reins of Gaborn's horse, shouting, "Give me horse, boy. I take that one!"

"Raj Ahten told me to keep the reins myself," Gaborn said. "It's for Jureem."

The sergeant drew back his hand as if the words burned him, eyed the horse longingly.

Gaborn rode through the press of bodies, toward the throng of soldiers gathering on the blackened grass outside Castle Sylvarresta. He held the line to the King's horse tightly, glanced back.

The idiot king smiled at everyone, waving, his mouth wide with joy. Gaborn's own mount, with its surly nature, waded through the masses, breaking a path for the horses that followed. Iome's and King Sylvarresta's Days trailed last.