The Lair of Bones (54 page)

“It whispers comfort to me,” Myrrima said. “Don't resist the reavers too much. Don't stand against them like a wall. They'll break you if you do. You have to yield like waves of water. Rush forward to meet their fury, and rise when you must. Flow back when you have to. Learn to dance away like perch before the pike, and then leap in again for the strike.” She had a peculiar light in her eye.

“I'll do the best I can,” Borenson said, somewhat bemused by her advice.

He kissed her then for a long moment. A far-seer on the wall shouted, “Reavers are charging in advance of the army! Hundreds of them!”

“Come,” Borenson said. “Let's have a look.”

He quickly ducked beneath the sally port on Garlands Street and climbed a wooden ladder to the castle wall. Archers and footmen guarded the wall-walk, one every three feet or so. But there were no commoners up here, no gawkers to get in the way of the fighting men, as Borenson would have expected. Chondler had wisely forbidden them.

The air up here smelled of fresh rye bread and roast beef. The guards on the wall were eating one last hasty meal. They'd need the nourishment for the battle ahead.

Borenson squinted to the south, but could see little in the failing light. The reavers marched down the mountainsides in a black tide, their main front hidden among the hills. Nor did he see much in the way of advance forces, only a few shadowy reavers out in the fields—black monolithic bodies racing among the corpses of dead cohorts.

“Any sign of Lowicker's troops?” Borenson asked a stout warrior.

“Nothing to the north yet,” he said, gripping his war hammer nervously.

Just then a flight of fire arrows arced from the castle wall and struck piles of bracken along the road at the end of the causeway. The oil-soaked piles quickly took fire.

By their light, Borenson could see a bit better. Reavers were indeed coming, racing across the fields like madness. They zigzagged this way and that, weaving like ants or bees, trying to catch a scent.

Some of them raced up to the lip of the vast pit where the world worm had breached, and crawled precariously about the rim.

They're trying to learn what they can of the previous battle, Borenson realized. They smell the words written on the ground.

A couple of reavers raced toward the castle, to the end of the peninsula. One stepped on a caltrop hidden under the straw. It hissed in pain and raised its tail high, spraying a warning, as it pulled the caltrop from its foot.

Its companion suddenly darted about on the straw-covered fields, plucking up the hidden caltrops and hurling them into the lake.

“They're smarter than we give them credit for,” someone grumbled at Borenson's back.

Neither of the scouts dared step onto the causeway. Instead, they approached the head of the fell mage, whose mouth was stuffed with garlicky philia.

They drew near, quivering in fear at the scent, and then both scouts darted south, toward their front lines.

Borenson doubted that they would have to go far. The castle trembled beneath his feet and the earth grumbled loudly, like approaching thunder. To his surprise, he could make out a mass, a greater darkness blurring above-ground not ten miles south. The reavers were closer than he'd imagined.

“It won't be long now,” Myrrima said.

Several dozen reavers had gathered just a few hundred yards south of the castle, over on the shore. During the previous battle, reavers had begun to build some sort of a strange tower there, with blue spires made of mucilage that twisted up like narwhale horns. These had all come down when the world worm surfaced.

Now the reavers began lifting the spires, tilting them upward, so that they rose hundreds of feet in the air.

In moments they somehow secured the base of these towers, and reavers began to climb up.

A far-seer nearby shouted, “There's something new here, up on them towers, a kind of reaver we ain't seen before.”

Borenson squinted, but could barely make out the dark shapes. Only three towers were up, and each of them leaned precariously, like broken narwhale horns. Half a dozen reavers clung to the tops of these towers. Borenson could discern that the reavers were somehow misshapen.

“Describe them,” Borenson called to the far-seer.

“They look like blade-bearers,” the fellow answered, “but thinner and longer of body. And their capes are at least twice as long as a common reaver's, with more philia.”

A reaver's “cape” referred to the bony head plates that extended from the sweet triangle to the crown of the head.

“They're looking at us,” the far-seer called, “studying our defenses.”

“Impossible,” Borenson grunted. The reavers had to be six or seven hundred yards away, and Averan had said that they couldn't see more than two hundred. Yet as he squinted south, he could clearly see that these odd scouts had topped their towers, and hung like mantises clinging to twigs. Furthermore, they seemed to peer toward the castle, all of their philia waving madly.

He spotted movement not far away, perhaps five miles, and realized that a huge contingent of reavers was racing toward them in a dark tide.

He had imagined that the main front of the horde was an hour away. But reaver scouts charged ahead of the common ranks. He didn't have an hour. He didn't even have fifteen minutes.

“You'd better take your post,” he told Myrrima, as dozens of powerful Runelords issued to the castle gate, making their stand beneath the rampart.

Borenson squeezed Myrrima's hand, and she reached into a pocket of her tunic, pulled out a red silk scarf. It was the same one that Borenson had tied to his lance when he'd fought High Marshal Skalbairn in the tournament a week ago, at Castle Sylvarresta.

“Here,” she said, tying it about his neck. “Keep this safe for me.”

Then she turned and raced into the tower, disappearing beneath a dark arch.

Borenson slid down the ladder and went to his own post. He watched the castle tower, until he saw movement in the window on the third story. Myrrima reached out a pale hand and waved, but he couldn't see her face.

Borenson had been so preoccupied with watching the reaver scouts, he had failed to notice that several men had taken their posts beneath the rampart on Garlands Street. A pair of torches were stuck in the dirt by the sally port, and by their light he spotted someone he knew, Captain Tempest of Longmot. Like Borenson, he was a stout warrior but did not have a wealth of endowments. A third man was a Knight Equitable, Sir Greenswar
of Toom, who had taken enough endowments of metabolism to ensure an early grave. Two more champions beside him wore the golden surcoats of Indhopal. They introduced themselves with thick accents. One was a swarthy fellow named Hamil Owatt, ninth son of the Emir to Tuulistan. The second was a tall black man from Deyazz, a warrior from the fierce Tintu tribe named Nguya Kinsagga.

Nguya looked Borenson over, and blinked once in a sign of respect, but took the lead of the small band. “I fought reavers at this gate a week ago,” Nguya said. “They do not fear a man who backs away from them or one who stands his ground. But when you advance against them, it stops their hearts.” He studied each man, as if by staring he could bore the information into him. He raised his spear and shook it mightily.

“Don't wear yourselves out,” Borenson suggested to those who had great endowments. “There are five of us here. If any of you start to tire, fall back and let someone else strike the killing blow.”

Nguya nodded appreciatively, and the men took their posts.

From the barbican, Borenson could see nothing. The ground began to rumble in earnest as the reaver horde approached. The rumble grew steadily louder, and soon gree began to whip above the courtyard, a sign that reavers were here.

Borenson found his heart pounding, and he measured the seconds by its beat. He wished that he could go back up on the wall and take a look.

Excited shouts rose from far-seers, and he listened to their reports. “They're almost to the city gates, but they're hanging back.”

The
thwonk, thwonk, thwonk
of artillery fire rose from the rafts out on the lake as the marksmen shot at reavers near the shore. “Milord,” one far-seer cried after a few minutes. “I see Lowicker's troops cresting the hills beyond the Barren's Wall,” and seconds later, “Milord, a spy balloon is taking off to the east!”

Only Raj Ahten's flameweavers used spy balloons, he knew. He could feel no wind down here in the town square. The castle walls rose up all about him. He peered up, and saw stars twinkling in the heavens, but smoke from the south was covering them like a gauze, and little light reached the streets below. But outside the wind had been blowing lightly to the east. The balloon would soar above the city, above the battle, and from there Raj Ahten's flameweavers would be able to watch in comfort. In an hour's time,
perhaps, the balloon would drop to the east, among his troops.

Borenson glanced south and thought he spotted a man on the castle wall, beneath the dark arch of a tower.

The man had red hair and a familiar stance, and for a moment Borenson's heart leapt in his chest, for he thought it was his father.

But he looked again and no one was there.

He gulped. It was his father's wraith, he felt sure. He had been smiling, as if in welcome.

Am I to die here? Borenson wondered.

He looked about, and began to feel panicked for the first time in his life. Always before, he had met battle with grim determination, laughing in the face of death.

Now he wondered where his father lay. He had found the man's body a week ago, up on the green beneath Duke Paldane's palace. Carris was built on some low hills that rose out of the water. To the east, the hills were riddled with ancient caves and tunnels—tombs for the dead, warehouses meant to store food and troops in time of siege. Most likely, Dorenson's father was down in the tombs by now.

“The reavers are massing,” a watchman shouted. “I see their fell mage! By the Seven Stones, she's big! Get ready!”

But for long minutes there was no movement from the reavers. Someone in the streets begged, “What's going on?”

“They came near the causeway, but after one sniff, they backed off. Now they're out near the worm hill,” the far-seer shouted. “There's a bunch of sorceresses. It looks as if they want to rebuild that rune they had out there, the Seal of Desolation.”

Borenson peered about. Fires were springing up all along the castle walls. Young men, torchbearers, were racing along the wall-walk, bringing light to anyone who wanted it. He could hear people shouting messages all up and down the length of Carris, but the hiss of reavers, the pounding of reaver feet, drowned out their cries. Where he stood everyone waited in anticipation of the battle, but he had a sense of the city as a hive, a vast hive filled with men and women who bustled about in preparation for war.

The Wizard Binnesman came down into the courtyard, then went rushing up Garlands Street toward the marinas.

Moments later, Marshal Chondler came running into the town square, a
torch in one hand, a reaver dart in the other. “All Runelords,” he called, “hold your positions. All lords to the east and south of me,” he called, “on my command will begin an orderly retreat to the tombs. All commoners, head for the marina immediately.”

“What?” one lord shouted down from the wall-walk. “You would have us retreat before the battle begins?”

In answer, Chondler ordered, “Any man who wants to live will do as I say—now!”

Hundreds of commoners, archers and healers alike, began to race down from the towers and hurry up Garlands Street, following Binnesman.

Borenson saw immediately what Chondler intended. Sarka Kaul had warned that Rialla Lowicker and Raj Ahten would not send their troops into battle until Carris was defeated. So Chondler hoped to feign defeat in order to lure them into coming to his aid. By sending lords to guard the tombs, and commoners to the hidden halls that led to the marinas, Chondler would be hiding most of his men underground.

Gree whipped overhead, squeaking as if in pain, and reavers hissed like a sea.

Chondler climbed atop the wall, looked down for several long minutes.

In that time, Borenson saw the spy balloon hovering in the air like a giant graak. The wind was blowing it right over the city. It peeked over the castle walls. Flameweavers glowed within its gondola, as if the fire would burst from them at any moment.

Chondler shouted to his men, “Don't let the reavers build that rune. Loose the catapults.”

His marksman shouted, “Sir, at this range we can't hit it with anything larger than grape shot!”

“Then use grape shot!” Chondler insisted.

Moments later the artillerymen atop the tower cut loose, sending a hail of iron balls from the walls.

The reavers hissed in outrage.

The far-seers began to cry, “They're coming!”

The
thwonk
of ballistas filled the air and the
twang
of a thousand bows arose as missiles rained down, clattering on the causeway.

“By the Powers, they're fast!” someone swore.

It won't be long, Borenson thought, even as screams of terror rose along the walls. He grabbed a torch and threw it onto the rampart overhead. The torch landed among the spikes and oil-soaked rags. The rampart blazed, filling the courtyard with light.

Suddenly a reaver landed in the town square, snarling, a huge mage with a crystalline staff. A pair of ballista bolts protruded from her flank.

Borenson froze in astonishment.

She whirled and letflya spell as arrows rained down on her. A red cloud boiled from her staff, and poisonous vapors filled the courtyard, even as arrows pierced her sweet triangle and she shuddered to the ground.

“Where did she come from?” Borenson wondered, and realized that she had leapt from above. He glanced up and saw three more reavers scurry over the castle wall, sending stones flying as they crashed into merlons.