Wizardborn (62 page)

A memory carried Averan back to when she was small. She remembered a picnic with her mother at Kellysbrook, just outside the Boar and Stag back home.

She must have been very small. It was the first time she remembered ever really seeing a stream.

The water of Kellysbrook tumbled down from the hills, burbling over round stones pounded as smooth as porcelain by the waves. Water so cold that it should have been ice spilled upon the gravelly banks. The taste of the freshet was like freezing rain in the air, and the jingle and chink of water on rock became a soothing music. The water misted her face.

In places the stream slowed and dropped into languid pools. There, minnows darted in the shadows of moss-laden logs, and water striders danced upon the deep.

For hours she had searched among the pools for shy crayfish that walked about with their bouncing gait.

Afterward, Averan lay beneath a willow in a patch of sunlight as her mother told her stories, stroking her hair. But Averan was a long way from Kellysbrook now. It seemed like forever ago.

As Averan shivered in the green woman's arms, she looked up into the creature's eyes. Spring's touch was soothing, and Averan could feel Earth Power in her, but it wasn't soothing like a mother's touch.

Something enigmatic, wild and feral, gleamed in Spring's eyes. The green woman was not a woman at all, not her mother or a friend. Spring was not even an animal.

“Can you help me?” Averan asked. “Can you help me find the Waymaker?”

The green woman made no answer. She didn't even understand the question.

Suddenly, from the wagons and men all around, a cheer arose.

Averan climbed up, looked around. The soldiers were riding slowly across the plains, the frowth giants following in their trail. The reavers kept to their formation. She could see no cause for celebration.

“What's going on?” Averan asked the wagon driver.

He glanced back over the buckboard. “We've passed the point of no return. It's closer for the reavers to head to the Underworld now than to turn back for Carris.”

The men cheered as if it were a great victory.

Gaborn spurred his mount past the line of wains, and a wounded knight in a wagon ahead called, “Are we going to make another charge?”

“Not yet!” he warned. Gaborn studied the reavers pensively, looked to Averan as if for advice, but asked nothing. Instead, he continued to ride alongside her wagon.

The reavers dragged themselves homeward at a plodding pace as Gaborn's armies rode their flanks.

The sun had just topped the horizon when Gaborn suddenly blew his warhorn, calling retreat. He shouted to the wagon drivers. “Turn the wains around, quickly! Go back!”

“What is it? What's going on?” Averan's driver asked. He studied the reavers uncertainly. Nothing had changed. They still moved south. He slowed the horses, wheeled the wagon. He snapped his whip over the horses' heads, and the wagon began to bounce over the highway as the force horses gathered speed.

Still, he couldn't give the animals their heads. These were big draft horses used for carrying goods swiftly, but few had more than a single endowment of metabolism. The train could move along the road only as fast as the slowest team.

“Get off the road!” Gaborn shouted to the drivers. “Give your horses their heads. The reavers are going to charge!”

Averan climbed up from her blanket, and watched the reavers for any sign of danger.

She could see no hint of it. Her driver pulled off the road
and snapped his whip. The wheels sang and the wagon bounced over rocks and roots. The wagons and their drivers threw long shadows in the early morning light.

After two or three minutes, suddenly the whole horde halted in their march, and a hissing erupted from the reavers' lines.

Thousands of the behemoths rose up on their back legs and stood for several long seconds. They faced east into the morning light, philia waving excitedly.

The hissing grew louder and louder. The reavers seemed agitated, or maybe frightened.

Averan's driver cursed his horses and asked, “What's going on?”

“They smell something,” Averan warned. Gaborn's men had been riding their flanks. Averan's wagon was perhaps two miles up the side of their lines.

It looked almost as if the reavers were trying to catch a glimpse of something, or to taste an elusive scent.

Averan turned east, but could spot nothing on the horizon—only golden plains with oaks rising here and there, some distant hills.

Do they smell another war party? she wondered. Were they hoping for reinforcements, or was an army riding to Gaborn's aid? She doubted it.

She searched the skies for sign of thunderclouds on the horizon.

As she did, the reavers charged straight toward Gaborn's troops. The lords on their force horses easily outpaced the monsters, but the frowth giants were hard-pressed. They loped along the field, swinging their arms hugely in a bouncing gait. The frowth's nostrils flared, and they called out to one another in their own tongue.

Now the wagon drivers whistled and cracked their whips, shouting, “Haw, there! Haw!”

Horses whinnied in terror.

She saw one team of horses swerve into another. Their lines tangled and a horse tripped. A wagon spilled lances to the ground, throwing the drivers down like dolls.

One driver limped up to grab the back of the closest passing wain. The other driver did not move.

Reavers thundered toward Gaborn's flank. They ran with renewed vigor, faster than she'd have thought possible, their teeth flashing in the morning sunlight.

Averan couldn't understand why the reavers suddenly took the offensive.

Gaborn's knights wheeled northeast. The men on chargers could easily outpace the monsters. But her wagon was another matter. It bounced over the plains, and threw Averan into the air each time a wheel hit a rock. She heard a crack as an axle split.

She clutched the sideboards. The frowth giants raced along now, almost to the wagons. The reavers closed the gap. Her heart hammered.

Spring stood up in the wagonbed. The Wylde watched the monsters intensely, as if she would pounce on the first one that drew near.

A reaver close to the front ranks grabbed a fair-sized boulder and hurled it. The stone streaked ahead two hundred yards and slammed a nearby wain.

The wain shattered. Its driver and horses disintegrated without a scream, becoming a bloody spray. Splinters of the wood hurtled dozens of yards in the air, and spokes and bits of metal rained down over the plain, among gobbets of flesh.

Other reavers quickly repeated the feat, demolishing another dozen supply wains.

Averan's driver cracked his whip, sent his wagon bouncing over the prairie even faster. It hit a dip, and Averan heard the axle crack again.

A reaver roared, went striding past her wagon.

One reaver galumphed forward, an enormous blade-bearer with a knight gig in its front paws. She recalled from Cunning Eater's memories how brutally effective such a weapon could be in experienced hands.

“Help!” Averan screamed.

She needn't have bothered. Her driver was snapping the
whip at the horses' ears, shouting for them to hurry. He urged the team east, nearly tipping the wagon, but effectively racing from the monster's path.

The enormous blade-bearer cut off the retreat of the wagon behind them.

Averan saw the driver's face. He was an old man with silver hair and a worn leather coat over his ruddy tunic. He screamed in panic, tried to veer east too.

The blade-bearer's huge paw snaked out, and she feared that the monster would impale the man before her eyes. Instead its knight gig snagged the lead horse by the neck. The reaver jerked hard, tearing the horse away. But it was tied to its traces.

The whole wagon jerked violently, and the second horse went down as the singletree snapped. The wagon's front wheel hit a falling horse, and the wain bounced high in the air. Then the whole wain came down hard, flipping end over end.

Averan closed her eyes, didn't want to see what happened to the wagonmaster.

Suddenly she realized that her driver was pulling away from the reaver's lines.

The reavers could have turned to press the attack, wiping out another thirty or forty wagons, but they didn't. Instead the horde flowed together, taking a new formation, as they rushed to the east.

Huge blade-bearers joined ranks in a pentagon nearly a mile to each side, while smaller reavers made up a star at its center. Within each arm of the star, a few scarlet sorceresses gathered in an elongated triangle. A fell mage and her escorts took up the center of the star. Averan recognized the formation, dredged it from Cunning Eater's few memories.

The reavers called it the Form of War.

It was not a formation designed for speedy flight. It was designed for a military charge.

She clung to the side panels of the wagon, heart pounding
in terror, thinking furiously. Her stomach knotted. She fought to calm herself.

The driver let his wagon slow. The reavers had passed them now, were charging away.

Averan had flown over these plains before, knew every city, every hamlet. To the east lay only hills for a bit, and beyond that the Donnestgree River twisted lazily over the plain. Villages and farms were everywhere along its banks. But the only city of import was Feldonshire, forty-five miles east.

Feldonshire was a sprawling tangle of cottages, shops, wheat mills, farms, and breweries set in wooded hills. From the sky it didn't look like a city quite so much as a cluster of villages strung together.

Averan could think of nothing there that the reavers might want—no fortresses, nothing.

Gaborn shouted as his charger raced up, paced beside the wain. “They're attacking Feldonshire.”

Gaborn, riding hard, watched the reavers' lines in confusion. He could feel danger rising rapidly in Feldonshire, some forty-five miles to his east. Many of the wounded from Carris had floated downriver in the night. Now they were bivouacked in the city. His Earth senses screamed a warning to his Chosen, “Flee! Flee!”

The horde stampeded in a strange new formation over the golden plains. Dust and chaff thrown in the air during their passage rose for thousands of feet. The morning sun arching through the clouds cast a strange, yellowish pall.

But why Feldonshire?

“Water!” Averan said. “They're going to water!”

“In Feldonshire?” Gaborn asked.

“No, to the ponds at Stinkwater, just three miles past the city!” Averan said. “I've seen them from the air—like green gems. The water has sulfur in it!”

Gaborn knew of the ponds. The hot mineral water that flowed up from the ground was a curse to those who lived
nearby. No one farmed for miles around, and on cold winter mornings, vapors from ponds sometimes blew all the way to Feldonshire.

Could it be? he wondered. “But Feldonshire is forty-five miles from here!”

Averan nodded vigorously. “We know it's forty-five miles, but maybe the reavers don't. To them the water is just a smell in the air.”

Could a reaver scent water that far away? he wondered. Wolves could smell blood at four miles, and the Stinkwater probably had an odor stronger than blood.

So the reavers charged east, straight into the wind. A line of oak-covered hills rose up. The reavers would bull through the woods, blazing a trail of devastation a mile wide.

Gaborn licked his lips. Some reavers had already fallen out of the ranks, too weak to keep up the grueling pace. Several hundred lancers chased after them.

Forty-five miles. How long could they run before they exhausted themselves?

One way or another, he was determined to kill the Way-maker. He'd have to move quickly to head them off.

“Skalbairn,” Gaborn shouted. “Send a dozen of your fastest riders to Feldonshire. If it's water that the reavers want, make sure that they don't get it.”

“Milord?” Skalbairn asked.

“Poison the ponds,” Gaborn ordered.

“Poison them?” Binnesman demanded.

Gaborn frowned. He was the Earth King, and the Earth was allied with Water. For generations, his forefathers had allied with Water.

“It's not a choice I make lightly,” Gaborn said.

“What should we use?” Skalbairn asked.

“Anything at hand,” Gaborn said. “Go to the woodcarvers' guild. Ask Guildmaster Wallachs for help”

“Aye,” Skalbairn said. He called out to some men, sent them racing off for Feldonshire. Baron Waggit rode with them.

But poisoning the water wouldn't be enough. The reavers would head through Feldonshire.

Gaborn sensed danger to thousands of refugees. He could imagine what the banks of the river must look like, with the camps of the wounded there.

He would need to turn the horde if he could, block their path—or at least delay them long enough to save his people.

At the rate the horde was running, they'd reach Feldonshire in two hours. Even his fastest couriers would have to ride up the road nine miles to Ballyton, then cut southeast. Their trail would be sixty miles. Even on force horses, that would take the better part of an hour.

That would leave the people of Feldonshire only an hour to evacuate.

“You men,” Gaborn called to another dozen Runelords. “Go get the philia from some reavers' bungholes. We'll set another fire against them! Perhaps we can scare them off again. Does anyone here know Feldonshire?”

A young lord answered from the ranks. “Your Highness, my family is from there. I grew up in Darkwald.”

Darkwald was a forest of black walnut north of Feldonshire. The local craftsmen used the wood for carving tables, placards, wooden bowls, fine chests and wardrobes, decorative mantels, and ornate doors. Many of Mystarria's finest treasures had been carved in Feldonshire.

“Then you'll know where to start the fire?”

The lord glanced at the reavers' trail. “Shrewsvale.”