Brotherhood of the Wolf (92 page)

He pinched hard with fingers as strong as a blacksmith's tongs, and he pulled.

The incredible burning pain that assaulted Borenson caused him to black out for a moment, to drop his dagger.

When Raj Ahten brought his hand away, Sir Borenson was much less of a man.

Raj Ahten shoved Borenson hard into the ground, wrenching his back and scraping his face.

Sir Borenson writhed in pain and horror, barely able to retain consciousness. Raj Ahten climbed to his feet.

“Thus,” Raj Ahten said, flicking a gobbet of flesh on the ground beside Borenson's ear, “I dismiss you.”

Averan cried for help and tried to pry open the dead reaver's mouth. Lightning pounded, and now a gree whipped past her head, wriggling in the air, having also decided that the dead reaver's mouth was a fine dark place to hide. The cloying scent of decay filled the air, and it was so powerful that her hands and face were blistering wherever the air touched them.

“Help me, please,” she cried, trying to be heard above the thunder. Only the dimmest rays of evening light filtered through the dust clouds.

But her heart leapt. Through the flickering lightning she saw Raj Ahten suddenly enter a clearing between the dead reavers, not twenty feet away. He'd gone back there a minute before, to where Saffira and Borenson were, and he had exchanged some harsh words with Borenson.

Borenson's cries filled her with fear.

Raj Ahten shouted now in some language of Indhopal.
Averan did not know what he said, but obviously he was calling orders to his men. He held his face up, so that dirty rain streamed over his helm, down his cheeks. Lightning flickered, and Averan could see him clearly. With so many endowments of glamour, he was the most handsome man that Averan had ever seen. He carried himself so proudly, with such grace, that it made her heart flutter.

“Please!” she cried, trying to pry open the reaver's mouth.

Raj Ahten glanced at her distractedly, as if he wanted nothing to do with a child.

But to her relief, he strode to her.

Averan had imagined that it would take several common men with pry bars to open the reaver's jaw, but Raj Ahten sheathed his warhammer on his back, then pulled the reaver's mouth wide with his fists. He gave Averan his hand, let her step out daintily, as if she were a lady of the court.

He had blood all over his gauntlets.

In seconds, half a dozen Invincibles leapt into the clearing between the dead reavers. Raj Ahten jabbered at them, talking so fast she was hard-pressed to follow.

Averan understood only one word: “Orden.”

Then Raj Ahten and his men all raced north. They ran so swiftly that it seemed almost as if they merely vanished. For one moment they stood still in the shadows, then she heard the
ching
of ring mail and the Invincibles fled in a blur.

In the sudden silence, Averan stood. Dust and mud fell from the sky. Thunder boomed. Lightning split the sky.

Reavers fear lightning, Averan recalled. It blinds them and fills them with pain. They're all going to run away. At least that's what I'd do, if I were a reaver.

Nearby, she heard gagging; someone was in pain.

The sound came from where she had last seen Sir Borenson.

Averan crept toward the sound, huddling close to the body of a reaver, until she could see past its head. There
in the shadows lay Saffira and Sir Borenson.

But only Borenson was still alive. He was curled on his side like a baby. He'd vomited, and tears were streaming from his eyes. Saffira's glamour was gone from her, so that now she seemed to be only a pretty girl.

Averan feared that Borenson would die from his wounds, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. “What's wrong?” Averan asked timidly. “Are you hurt?”

Borenson gritted his teeth, wiped tears from his face. He didn't speak for a long minute, until finally in a strange voice, all filled with pain and fierceness, he said, “You're going to grow up to be a beautiful woman—and there's no way that someone like me would ever be able to do anything about it.”

65
THE EARTH BETRAYED

“Flee!” the Earth warned Gaborn.

He was sitting on the ground, looking skyward in astonishment. He'd never imagined that he had the power to summon animals to his aid.

The world worm had hardly risen from the ground. Dust and stones and pebbles gushed skyward above it. The vast beast towered there, twisting and writhing half a mile in the air.

The force of the blast had propelled Gaborn backward. The green woman sprawled beside him.

Lightning flashed amid the dust, creating a crown around the great cloud, a crown of light that for a moment seemed to Gaborn to be his own. All around him, the reavers were turning, fleeing from the battle in terror.

“Go!” the Earth insisted.

Death was coming—Gaborn's own death. He'd never
felt the overwhelming presence of the shroud so completely.

Darkness hovered above him, an immense black cloud of dust and falling debris that hid any remnant of daylight.

In that unnatural darkness, split time and again by lightning, Gaborn lurched to his feet and raced for his horse, calling for his troops to retreat.

Of course, he realized. He'd felt it all along. Strike and flee, strike and flee. That is what the Earth had wanted of him at Carris.

“Come!” he shouted to the green woman, offering his hand. She leapt twenty feet to land at his side, and Gaborn reached down, pulled her onto his horse.

“This way!” Gaborn shouted to his men. He began racing for his life.

He felt inside him.

In seconds, the entire course of the battle had shifted. Tens of thousands of people had fled Carris, and hundreds of thousands more had not yet even exited the city gates, but were still rushing out as fast as possible.

Much had changed for the better.

The reavers fled. Lightning strobed the sky, and reavers abandoned the field. Everywhere the threat to his people suddenly diminished.

Galloping past two living reavers, Gaborn careened north filled with a sense of dull wonder and terror—wonder at his victory here, terror at the rising sense of personal danger that assailed him.

The Earth no longer bade him to strike. Now the Earth bade him flee with all haste. He raced past reaver and man alike. He was no longer needed at Carris.

Thus he rode through the dust cloud thrown by the world worm, half-blinded, until he found his way north to the gates of the Barren's Wall.

The wall was a twisted ruin. Though Gaborn had focused all his attention to the south during the battle, the quakes had struck here, too. Much of the wall had fallen. The parts left standing leaned at precarious angles.

Miraculously, the arch above the Barren's Wall held, and as he rode toward it, Gaborn glanced back toward Carris.

Several castle towers had collapsed, and others were still burning. Clouds of dust filled the valley. Dead men and reavers littered the plain. Every bit of soil was churned and ruined. Every plant had been blasted and destroyed. The great Black Tower had collapsed in the distance, and a fire raged there. The world worm was slithering back down into the hole where the Seal of Desolation had been. Lightning bolts played overhead, striking through clouds of dust. A sickly brown mist still wreathed the field, carrying a marvelous stench of rot and illness.

No scene of destruction that Gaborn had ever imagined could begin to rival what he now beheld.

A few hundred yards across the battlefield, the wizard Binnesman spotted him. The old man had apparently retreated from the front line; now he galloped toward Gaborn, shouting.

Gaborn felt such a desperate need to escape that he dared not wait for Binnesman.

With only Jureem, Erin, and Celinor still at his back, he wheeled and raced on beneath the Barren's Wall.

“Milord,” Pashtuk called. “There he is!” Raj Ahten had swiftly gathered a dozen Invincibles and ordered them to help find the Earth King.

Raj Ahten peered through clouds of dust, while thunder pounded overhead. The rising dirt had mingled with the clouds; now a muddy sleet fell. Raj Ahten stood atop a hill formed by two dead reavers and peered through the grit to where Pashtuk pointed.

Now he studied the horse that Pashtuk pointed toward. As for the Earth King, Raj Ahten spotted his mount—an unassuming roan—but he could discern nothing of Gaborn himself, only a green-skinned woman sitting oddly atop it, and a piece of oak brush that appeared to be caught before
her on the saddle. He rode north with several knights at his side. The wizard Binnesman raced to catch up with him.

“Where do you think he is going?” Mahket asked.

It seemed odd for the Earth King to retreat so swiftly when the victory here seemed secured. Lightning flashed overhead, and everywhere the reavers scattered, leaderless and without purpose.

“I don't care where he is going,” Raj Ahten answered simply. “I'm going to kill him.”

“But …O Great Light,” Pashtuk said. “He is your kinsman…. He seeks a truce.”

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 assassins 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
above the sounds of battle and thunder: “I did not Choose you!”