Wizardborn (72 page)

There would be no second chance, not in this charge.

Skalbairn burst past the second rank, neared the mage's escorts—a dozen large blade-bearers. Their ranks drew tight around her. Several of the monsters shifted to meet him.

But the mage was larger than her escorts, towered over them. He could see her well, marching away from him, ass high in the air.

In the distance ahead, he heard warhorns blowing. The foothills that hid Feldonshire rose in brown humps, and suddenly two thousand Knights Equitable topped the nearest rise, not half a mile ahead.

They had heard Gaborn sound the charge, and thought that he called to them!

A blade-bearer swung his knight gig and Skalbairn knew he would never evade it.

Yet the great mage was tantalizingly close. He wouldn't get a quick-killing blow, not one to the sweet triangle.

“Farion!” he cried, as he hurled his lance over the escort's head.

It lofted up twenty feet, and began to descend in a graceful curve toward the mage's back. He never got to see it land.

His horse whinnied in terror, tried to turn. The emerald staff hit its breastplate, and searing flames erupted from it, cutting the horse in two. Skalbairn's weight bore him over as the charger stumbled, and he knew no more.

Waggit raced through the reavers' ranks. The monsters hissed in seeming astonishment as two thousand knights charged the far side of the field. Sorceress's spells welled up in dark clouds, sweeping the front ranks. Dozens of lords died under the onslaught.

Suddenly, the reavers' attention was diverted.

Waggit rode through the horde with no weapon drawn. He dodged past a huge blade-bearer that swiveled its head as if looking for other prey. He rode past a second, using its bulk to shield him from the spell of a nearby sorceress.

He'd had little time to reason it through, but suspected that without a lance, the reavers would not consider him much of a threat. And of all the men in Gaborn's retinue, he was the least able to bear a weapon here.

Desperately Gaborn sounded his warhorn, blowing retreat.

Waggit had lost track of Skalbairn, but saw the fell mage rear up and whirl about. Skalbairn's lance had skewered her through the abdomen, and now she tried to pull it out. It was a deadly blow. She'd not last an hour under normal circumstances. But among her faithless companions, she would not last fifteen seconds.

Around her, a few young sorceresses saw her grim wound and rushed in for the harvest. Blade-bearers followed in a grotesque knot.

They tore the mage from limb to limb.

“Skalbairn!” Waggit called.

There was no answering cry. But Waggit spotted Skalbairn's remains on the field, beneath the legs of a reaver. The reavers had made doubly sure of him. There was nothing left to save, nothing he could do.

Waggit spurred his charger away from the bloodbath, and
the poor mount wheezed as it set off through the horde.

He guided it swiftly through a knot of smallish reavers that all fled as if a Glory had appeared among them, and in moments he was racing away from the horde altogether, his horse's hooves blurring as it sped over the sandy soil.

He charged toward the Stinkwater for a hundred yards, then wheeled back toward Gaborn. Langley and his men raced before him in full retreat.

Waggit looked up, saw a flock of geese in a above the hills. The sun shone on the sparse fields and the woods beyond, making them shine in shades of wheat and vermilion.

From the dim recesses of memory, he recalled a time long ago, when he watched the geese fly over his father's barn during the bleak midwinter, and his mother called out warning him to put on his cloak. The memory rose like a clear bubble, and it burst within him.

In the memory, his mother called him by a truer name.

   60   

Every road will lead you to a thousand byways. The easiest path is often not the best.

—
From a placard at the Partridge and Peacock Inn, a training stop in the Room of the Feet

Dust rose in the vale below Averan—the dust of reavers marching to war, the dust of men charging into battle. From her vantage, the dust obscured the details of the fight. Gaborn's men swept into the horde on their force-horses, their actions a blur.

The lords pounded into the reavers on four fronts, providing the much-needed diversion. Skalbairn rode in and died as he skewered Three Kills.

When it was done, fewer men rode back.

Averan thought that she should mourn, but no tears would come. Too many friends had died already.

The reavers hissed, sending their undetectable words across the field, and at once the nine Forms of War began to merge into one. Under new leadership, the reavers marched back west toward Feldonshire.

When Gaborn's army fled to the south, the reavers did not give pursuit.

The horde was leaving, thundering across the earth in dwindling numbers, hissing like the waves of a retreating tide. The reavers were heading back for their lair, though few had the stamina to survive the arduous journey.

In the distance Gaborn's men began to cheer. They rode
to the hilltops south of Feldonshire and gave a rising shout as the reavers passed. She saw men leaping, hugging each other.

In the hills and in the woods across the river Donnestgree, cheers also arose from villagers.

At Averan's back, Gaborn's Days had been studying the battle in silence. Now he whispered, “A great victory.” But Gaborn merely sat on his charger, his lance balanced across the pommel of his saddle, head hanging. He had lost dozens of troops in the fray.

“I've warned him,” Binnesman said. “Erden Geboren did not die of a mortal wound, but of a broken heart. Gaborn will do the same.”

“How can we help him?” Averan asked.

But she already knew what Gaborn would want. He'd dog the reavers for the day, and have her search for the Waymaker. He'd want her to feed again.

“Listen …” Binnesman said. He looked off to the north and then south. Beside him, the green woman cocked an ear, as if Binnesman had given her the command to listen.

Averan could hear nothing unusual. “What?”

“The silence is profound. It spreads for miles.”

Averan wasn't quite sure what he meant. People were still cheering. The reavers rasped and the earth seemed to groan beneath their weight.

“No birds sing, no crickets,” Binnesman whispered. “No cattle bawl—not a sound other than man and reavers for miles and miles. What is the Earth telling you?”

Averan didn't know what he meant. To her, it felt as if … suffering. The earth could be suffering.

She felt tired. She wanted to end this war.

On the hills across the valley, Gaborn's knights gathered in a great circle. Now they held up their shields in unison and began to flash them, sending news of their victory in every direction as far as the eye could see.

The sunlight was too bright. Averan raised her hands to protect her eyes.

Downhill a hundred yards she noticed a black tree that
thrust from the ground—a small, gnarled thing. It wasn't really a tree. It was hardly taller than a man—more of a bush, with a dozen twisted branches. Stunted, vile-looking.

Yet she sensed life within it. It had managed to survive beside the Stinkwater where no other tree could. It was noble and hardy.

She didn't think about what she was doing.

She merely leapt from the back of the wagon and walked down to the tree.

It looked at first as if it had never had leaves, but as she neared she saw that they had already fallen for the winter. They lay upon the ground, broad and brown.

Up close, the bark was shiny, a deep gray that almost seemed charcoal. A few wrinkled seedpods still clung to the limbs.

She had never seen a tree like it, could not have named it. Yet it held her spellbound, enthralled.

She reached out experimentally, grabbed the central branch, and gave it a tug.

The limb pulled away so easily she almost thought that the tree must have died long ago, and the wood had all gone to rot. But she could feel power beneath the bark, could feel its vital essence.

No, the tree had given itself to her.

It was a good staff, strong and powerful and dangerous. It was her staff. She began breathing hard with excitement, shaking.

At her back, Binnesman broke her reverie. “Hmmm… black laburnum—a strange choice.”

“What is its nature?” Averan asked. “What does it tell you about me?”

“I don't know,” Binnesman said. His tone was thick with suspicion, and he peered at her closely from beneath his bushy brow. “No one has ever chosen it before. I have never heard of an Earth Warden who chose his staff from a poisonous tree.”

“Poisonous?”

“Every part of a laburnum is deadly—root, bark, leaf,
berry, nut. The black laburnum is the most poisonous of all. In the hills of Lysle, where most of them grow, the locals call it poisonwood.”

“Poisonwood,” Averan repeated. The name had an ominous ring. Yet it seemed fitting that she should choose her staff from such wood, here, where so many of the reavers lay poisoned.

She looked into his eyes. Averan had never been good at reading people, at knowing when they lied. But she wondered about Binnesman now. He was studying her narrowly, suspiciously. He knew something about her, or guessed something from her choice of staff.

Gaborn had turned his mount, now he raced back up to the hillside. He looked distraught. He bore sad news. He called up to his Days, “Queen Herin the Red died a few moments ago in the charge.” He shook his head wearily.

“Averan,” he begged, “I saw a reaver with thirty-six philia, down by the pools. It has big forepaws. Will you look at it?”

Averan swallowed hard. She could not bear to feed again, not from a reaver that had knowingly drunk its own death.

She raised her staff, held it defensively as if she were Spring, ready to parry a blow. Then she realized that she really was trying to parry a blow.

She raised the staff, holding each end overhead, as Binnesman had done when blessing Carris. She did not know why she held it thus. It merely felt as if the staff needed to be held that way.

As she did, an image came to mind: the Waymaker, with his thirty-six philia and his huge paws. She could see him in her mind's eye—still running among the horde, racing toward the Underworld. He had a scar on his flank, a lance wound by the look of it. His philia drooped from fatigue. Around him, reavers marched by the weary thousands, and he could smell the scent trails of those who marched before, the whispered mutterings of pain and despair that reverberated through the horde. There were thousands of them
speaking, thousands of voices that humans had never heard. The scents overwhelmed Averan.

“He's alive!” she told Gaborn. “The Waymaker is still alive.”

Gaborn gazed at her, mouth open.

She glanced back at the wylde, eager to try something. “Spring, come help me!” she said. The green woman came and Averan said, “Grab my staff. Help me summon.”