Wizardborn (33 page)

Myrrima was nowhere to be seen. Five reavers lay clumped on the battlefield where he had killed his reaver, including a huge scarlet sorceress emblazoned with runes.

His piebald mare galloped toward him, dragging its reins.

He leapt onto its back.

The reaver that he'd targeted lay dead. Usually when a man lanced a reaver, the monster would flail at the lance, trying to draw it out, thereby snapping it. But by a stroke of good fortune, Borenson's lance was still intact. He rode to it, his mare whinnying and throwing her head in fear. He drew out the shaft.

Armed now, he charged into the furrow of the reavers' trail. A dozen reavers lay dead or dying.

He reached the far side of the trail, spotted Myrrima nearly half a mile away.

Reavers were fleeing west by the thousands, trying to escape the Runelords. Borenson could see a scarlet sorceress trundling over the plains with Myrrima in pursuit, Hoswell trying to keep up. She spurred her horse faster, charged it from behind, and buried an arrow in the joint under its right leg. The leg spasmed, and the sorceress faltered, skidding on her belly. She whirled and came up roaring, bringing a staff of purest crystal to bear.

Vile energies seemed to pulse through the staff, and it
blazed. A cloud of green smoke burst from it.

Myrrima reined in her mount just as Hoswell let an arrow fly into the monster's sweet triangle. The mage flipped to her side, pawing at her wound.

Myrrima and Hoswell wheeled away from the green fog, clinging to their saddles. They hastened back toward Borenson. The mage dropped her staff and rolled, as if trying to dislodge an attacker. Then she just flailed her huge arms as she died.

Borenson reined his mount.

A barbarian from Internook rode up beside him, watched Myrrima with unabashed admiration. The man had a sealskin coat, and yellow corn-braids hanging from his sideburns. He'd painted the left half of his face orange. He bore a huge, wide-bladed battle-ax in a style that his folk called a “reaper.” It was purpled in inky reaver gore.

The barbarian offered Borenson a silver flask, nodded at Myrrima. “If I had a hound with half her heart, I'd never hunt again. I'd say the word, and it would drag bears home for dinner.”

Borenson took a swig from the flask, found that it was mead. It tasted like warm piss, but at least it rinsed the vomit from his mouth.

“Aye,” he said. He felt an unnameable something, an unreasonable pride. He felt proud of Myrrima.

Warriors began to cheer. The charge had been an overwhelming success. The remainder of the horde fled south, redoubling speed.

Myrrima rode back, dark eyes flashing. She looked euphoric. “I ran out of arrows!”

He'd seen her quiver when she rode into battle. She'd had at least three dozen. Suddenly he looked at the dozens of dead reavers lying around all in a knot. While he'd managed only a single kill, Myrrima and Sir Hoswell had carved a swath.

Myrrima doesn't understand me at all, he thought. Myrrima wanted his love, and like nearly all women, she
thought him incapable of ever loving more than one woman at a time.

It was strange. She talked about how warriors were not really in touch with their feelings, and how she wanted that from a man. But it was a lie.

She really wanted him to have strong feelings for her, yet cut off any desires for other women.

But it seemed to Borenson that women were like food laid out in a feast. One woman might be a satisfying loaf of bread, another an intoxicating wine, a third as sustaining as a boar's ham, a fourth as sweet as a tart.

Who would want to eat only one single course at a feast? No one. And if a man would not devote himself to eating one thing for a single feast, how could a person ask him to devote a lifetime to eating that one food alone?

That was the rub. Every woman wants to think of herself as a whole feast. Would a loaf of bread say to its master, don't eat that mince pie? Or would the wine demand, don't eat the buttered parsnips?

The notion was absurd.

His feelings for Saffira weren't gone. They'd never go. She was an intoxicating wine. He'd never desired a woman as acutely as he had Saffira, and suspected that he never would again. The feelings he'd had for her weren't mere lust. Her endowments of glamour aroused a sense of devotion, a need to serve her that was so powerfully compelling that it caused physical pain.

That was the secret and the power of glamour.

While Saffira was alive, he'd been in torment, entangled by the need to serve her. He'd felt… that he approached a unique singleness of purpose, a form of purity.

He'd always wanted to feel that way about someone.

Yet while he was charmed by Saffira's beauty and enthralled by her glamour, he hadn't really respected her. Thus, he hadn't been able to give his heart to her fully.

His feelings for Myrrima on the other hand were growing in odd directions. His lust for her paled to insignificance when compared to his feelings for Saffira.

But his respect for her was taking on immense proportions. He sensed that while Saffira might have been wine, Myrrima was the meat of the meal. She was the one that could sustain him.

Thus as she rode back from killing the reaver mage, and the big barbarian at his side offered his highest words of praise, Borenson felt more than proud of Myrrima, he felt a kind of respect that he'd never felt for a woman, mingled with a sense of foreboding.

To the south, a battle horn blew, calling men to regroup. He looked toward the sound. Men shouted in warning, ran toward the south. Frowth giants roared.

Gaborn's charge had been aimed at the reavers' rearmost troops. To the south, the huge line still snaked ahead for miles.

Many of those reavers had begun to turn. Thousands of the monsters charged back now toward their dead. They spread out, began forming a battle line half a mile wide with ranks twenty or thirty deep. It was a formidable front.

Gaborn's heralds furiously blew their horns. A few hundred Runelords began forming a new front of their own.

The barbarian at Borenson's side shouted gleefully, “Looks as if they'll make a fight of it!”

Runelords spurred their mounts toward the new battle line. Borenson shouted and wheeled his charger.

He was among the first to reach Gaborn's new front. But the king seemed uncertain. The Runelords who stood with him were ill-armed. Not one in twenty had a lance.

From the west, Binnesman raced to the battle lines, with Averan astride his horse. Gaborn's Days followed on his own mare.

Averan warned Gaborn, “It's the sorceresses, come back to feed. There was a fell mage here. They'll want to harvest her and the rest of their kin.”

Borenson had never seen reavers harvest, but he'd heard tales. They'd rip out the brains of the dead or the glands beneath their arms. Sometimes they'd devour their brothers whole.

Averan said forcefully, “We can't let them harvest the dead. The Waymaker may be among them.”

Gaborn's brows furrowed. Blindsiding sluggish reavers was one thing. But now the child begged him to stand against a frontal assault—thousands of reavers confronting his ill-armed troops.

Gaborn's eyes flashed, and he looked at the reavers. “Hold the lines!” he shouted to the massing troops. “We'll allow no harvesting!”

The reavers gathered, creating a wall of flesh about five hundred yards north. Reavers that had fled Gaborn's charge now circled into the rear of the massing horde. Huge blade-bearers began to jostle through the ranks, gaining better position. Here and there, reaver scouts began to creep near, heads held high, philia waving as they scented the air.

The reavers were far enough away that they could not see Gaborn's army, yet they could smell the human host.

The air filled with energy, as if from a rising storm. Borenson's blood thrummed through his veins. This battle wasn't over. It had barely begun.

   26   

You need not fear a man who bears arms and armor
—
unless he also bears a deadly resolve.

—
Erden Geboren

Averan studied the battle lines forming, sensed from the reavers' body language that things were quickly getting out of hand. The reaver scouts approached cautiously. They'd take three strides, then halt, rise to their back legs and wave their philia in the air, turning eyeless heads this way and that.

The reavers were worried but determined. They'd not hold back for long. As soon as the scouts spotted Gaborn's troops, learned their number and position, they would tell their masters how few men stood against them.

Gaborn seemed unsure how to withstand the horde.

“They're going to charge you,” Averan warned. “If you want to stop them, kill the horde's new leader.”

Gaborn looked at the mass of reavers, brow furrowed. “Which one is it?”

The question left Averan astonished. The answer seemed obvious. But she was looking at the horde now through reaver's eyes. “The mage at the center of the front lines, hiding behind the two blade-bearers.”

Gaborn spotted the reaver slowly. She was a big brute, glittering from fiery runes tattooed on her thick outer skin. She held a gleaming red staff. Averan thought her size and the configuration of her runes should have warned anyone
that she was Battle Weaver's successor. Her name was a scent, the scent of Blood on Stone.

Yet Averan saw that Gaborn had been searching to her right, where a knot of mages in the front rank acted as decoys. Blood on Stone was well concealed.

Gaborn swore. It would be hard to get her.

It was an eerie moment. Nearly all of the Runelords had ridden forward and were bracing for a charge. Eight frowth giants, spattered with reaver gore, lined up at their backs. Two had fallen in the battle.

Averan glanced over her shoulder at the wylde. Spring strolled through the midst of the dead reavers, some of which she'd killed herself, mindlessly feeding.

“Milord,” Borenson shouted, urging his mount through the ranks. “May I suggest archers? We've a few men with steel bows.”

“Archers?” Gaborn asked. “Erden Geboren never used archers.”

“But he didn't have bows made of Sylvarresta s spring steel!”

Gaborn licked his lips. “I'd not thought of that. Can it work?”

“Myrrima and Hoswell killed three or four dozen of them in the charge.”

Averan found it hard to imagine Myrrima killing dozens of reavers.

“Archers,” Gaborn shouted, “to me!”

Over a hundred Runelords rode forward. Some had their bows still wrapped in canvas. These were powerful lords. Many moved so swiftly that it baffled Averan's eyes. By the time she realized that the lords were drawing bows from their cases, many bows were strung.

“The big sorceress with the red staff,” Gaborn ordered the archers. “Take her swiftly.”

“Kill the scouts, too,” Averan offered. “Before they get close enough to see us.”

“Lancers!” Gaborn shouted, waving toward the scouts. Two hundred lancers rode out of the crowd.