Wizardborn (37 page)

A yew bow usually had an uneven draw. Often a warp
in the wood or perhaps a wing that was shaved too thin gave yew a catch here, a loose spot there. Thus it took time to learn the range an arrow might fly based upon how far the shaft was drawn. Even metal bows suffered this defect, if the smith hammered the metal roughly.

But Hoswell's steel bow felt perfectly balanced.

She let her shaft fly. The arrow blurred, hit the corner of the reaver's sweet triangle and was gone.

Her yew bow would not have penetrated nearly so far. She'd used three dozen arrows in the charge, and had only managed to bring down fourteen reavers. Hoswell had bested her by more than a dozen kills.

“So,” she said, “I've been thinking about it. And I agree that it wouldn't be wise.”

Borenson gave a snort of amusement. “You
agree?”

“Aye,” she said. “I'd be a fool to follow you to Inkarra. It's much safer here with the Darkling Glories and reaver hordes and the invading armies.”

Borenson laughed a deep resounding belly laugh. She knew that she had him.

“All right,” he said. “You've got the mettle. Come with me.”

She gave him a sidelong look.

“But—” he said, “I don't suggest this lightly. What do you know of Inkarra?”

“The people in the Night Kingdoms live in houses as big as a village,” Myrrima answered. “They sleep by day and work by night. Dragons guard their doors.”

“The rune mages of Inkarra protect the land,” he added. “Those foolish enough to enter do not come out. Their borders have been closed to men of Rofehavan for three centuries, and the Storm King has not answered a missive from Mystarria in twenty years.”

She drew an arrow from her quiver, swiftly pulled it full, and planted it in the reaver's sweet triangle.

“Shall we go now?” Myrrima asked.

“You'd go without leave of the king?”

“I'm sworn to the Brotherhood of the Wolf,” Myrrima
said. “I'll serve mankind as I see fit—the same as a Knight Equitable.”

Borenson hesitated.

“What?” Myrrima asked. “You still don't want me to come to Inkarra?”

“I'm torn. The reavers are going south, we're going south,” Borenson said. “They make fair traveling companions, aside from their table manners.”

Myrrima grinned fiercely. She supposed that any creature that tried to eat you could justly be accused of having bad table manners.

So, he wanted to fight some more reavers. Myrrima glanced up at Mangan's Rock. “This looks like a siege, though,” she said. “We could be here for weeks.”

“All right, then,” Borenson conceded. “We'll leave for Inkarra.”

Myrrima couldn't quite believe that he would take her without more argument. She'd known from the moment they met that he desired her as a woman. Now, she knew that she had earned his respect.

Only one thing remained. She would teach him devotion.

Mangan's Rock towered above the plains, a lone sentinel. Its ragged gray cliffs rose three hundred feet at their highest point, and sloped on the southern face to only ninety feet.

Nearly a thousand years before, at the peak of the Dark Lady Wars, the lords of Rofehavan had carved a fortress at the summit of Mangan's Rock, and had dug a road that wound along the cliff face.

But that was ages past. Various lords had undertaken the task of restoring the fortifications. But there was damned little water up on the rock and too little forage on the plains. In the long run, the cost of maintaining the fortress was too high.

Parts of a magnificent castle still stood. Its towers had been blasted by lightning and strong winds; some of the walls had tumbled down over the ages. Ivy climbed the
walls of the castle, and where once a city had stood, oaks raised their magnificent branches. Its courtyards had become the abode of owls.

But the image of Mangan himself stood facing north, some ninety feet high. Two dogs of war flanked him. At one time, it was said that he bore a huge bronze spear in his right hand, but now the hand was gone. Still, he stared to the north, ever vigilant.

The road winding up to the castle had suffered most of all. Landslides had borne it away in places.

The reavers did not mind.

As Myrrima and Borenson rode toward Mangan's Rock, the reavers scrabbled up the cliff face as easily as a cat would climb a tree.

They clambered up to the castle walls, perched in crevasses like massive dark gargoyles. They took posts along the sheer cliff, and all of them raised their heads and stood waving their philia.

Gaborn, his Days, and the child Averan were among the last to leave the battlefield. Even the frowth had gone before them. They rode together with Iome, Binnesman, Jureem, and Feykaald.

“I'd not have thought that they would run to ground so easily,” Gaborn was saying. He studied the reavers, mystified.

“Maybe they're going to hold a tournament,” Averan suggested. “We killed their leader. They may have to fight to pick a new one.”

But Gaborn squinted up at the reavers, shook his head in bafflement. “That's not it. They're planning something … more sinister.”

“Your Highness,” Borenson broke in. “May I have a word?” Gaborn gave him his attention. “I'll be taking my leave now.”

Gaborn reined his horse to a halt, sat looking at Borenson for a long moment, as if to simply hold the image in his memory.

Myrrima felt deeply aware of the fact that she might
never see these people again. In only a few days she'd become a fast friend with Iome.

“May the Earth Powers guide you,” Gaborn said at last, “and may the Bright Ones light your way.”

Iome said quickly, “Sir Borenson, I repent of the quest I laid upon you. You are a man of honor, sir, and I was wrong to question it.”

But Gaborn raised his hand, begging Iome to be silent. She'd laid the quest upon his head in front of ten thousand men, and there could be no recalling the words. Borenson would go to Inkarra and search for Daylan Hammer, the Sum of All Men whom legend said had so many endowments that he could not die. Iome hoped that he could help Gaborn defend his people against the perils to come. More than that, Borenson had killed Iome's father and had slain some two thousand Dedicates. For the sake of his own soul, he needed to redeem himself.

And Gaborn truly did need help. Whether it came from Zandaros, or whether Borenson found Daylan Hammer, or he got it from Raj Ahten himself, Gaborn needed help.

“I have the letter here,” Gaborn said, reaching back into his bags, “for the Storm King. It explains your mission and begs his aid.

“And there is another small favor I would ask—” Gaborn broke off suddenly and whirled on his mount, as if someone had shouted an alarm.

Up ahead a couple of miles, the tail end of the reavers' forces were still marching toward the rock. They traveled as they had before, in a file seven reavers across. Nothing had changed in their configuration.

But fifty Knights Equitable with lances raced up behind, veering from the east.

“Damn the fools,” Gaborn muttered. He reached for the warhorn slung over his saddlebags, blew a retreat.

Several knights glanced toward him, then looked away and sped their charge.

“Humph,” Borenson grunted in amusement.

Instantly, Myrrima sensed that men were about to die.

Gaborn blew the retreat more vigorously. All along his lines, knights turned and raced to Gaborn, as if the summons were meant for them. But the fifty lancers held their course.

Gaborn blew more frantically.

At two miles, the men were tiny figures on the slope. Sunlight gleamed on white lances, on helm and armor. Myrrima watched as they raced up to the reavers' lines.

The charge did not go as had the previous one. The reavers were not blindsided.

Instead as lancers approached, the blade-bearers on the eastern flank did something totally unexpected. The huge monsters each spun and shoved their shovel-shaped heads into the topsoil, then stood flailing their great battle arms.

The maneuver effectively covered their sweet triangles, giving the lancers no target but the reavers' armored heads. In effect, the blade-bearers created a wall of flesh.

From behind that wall, other reavers hurled stones over the heads of their companions, as if from a flight of catapults. Scarlet sorceresses cast spells.

Thus, the reavers formed a shield wall and attacked in a way that had never been seen before.

In seconds the battle concluded. Thirty-two men and horses were cut down in an instant. Those who managed to survive the hail of stones fled, some wounded and barely clinging to their horses, others leaving fallen mounts behind.

Gaborn quit blowing retreat. He hung his head in anguish while the remaining reavers scaled Mangan's Rock.

   30   

Of all the beasts of lore, the reavers remain among the most mysterious, for the few who observe their habits seldom manage to survive the encounter.

—
Hearthmaster Valen, of the Room of Beasts

Averan felt as if she carried the world on her shoulders. Yesterday as she'd run for Carris fleeing the reavers, she'd imagined that life could never get harder or more desperate than she'd felt at that moment.

Now, she knew that she was wrong.

Gaborn needed another victory from her. He wanted answers to questions, but she had none.

Almost immediately after feeding on this reaver, she began to feel ill. At first, she thought the sickness was a product of her own worries, despair at her own failings.

She knew within moments of eating the gray matter of this reaver that it was not a Waymaker.

The reaver was called a Keeper and he was intimate with all facets of animal husbandry and butchery. He knew how to gut a carcass, prepare it for his masters.

Visions of the Underworld she'd never seen unfolded to her view: she saw caverns where weird plants grew. Some were tough as gristle and did their best to look like rocks. Others were spiny like sea urchins that thrived in open air, or hung from the cavetop like ropes.

The reavers carefully tended the plants in special chambers. But the reavers did not eat their own crops.

Instead, giant segmented worms grazed among the fields, along with strange animals that Averan would have taken hours to describe—spidery animals as a large as cottages, and horned beetles the size of bulls.

So the reavers raised their herds.

Keeper was filled with a jumble of intimate details about the life cycles of each animal. He knew how to prod a cottage-sized spider with an iron pole so that she would leave her cache of freshly laid eggs. He knew how to use a knight gig by feel, so that he hooked blindfish by the belly. He knew which parasites fed on giant worms, and which scents to use to rid the worms of such parasites.

Useless information flooded Averan's young mind in a torrent, a jumble of images and thoughts and scents that left her dazed. She could glean almost nothing from it.

Yet the images were more coherent than before. Averan had eaten more of this creature than she had of the others. Maybe that was part of it. Or perhaps the difference was that she understood the context of this reaver's thoughts better than she had the others'.