Brotherhood of the Wolf

by David Farland

  “She can’t see us from there, can she?” Roland asked, hoping that at such a distance, he might be overlooked.

  “She’s smelling us,” Baron Poll said. “Smelling all eight hundred thousand of us.”

  The fell mage took her great staff in both hands, then leapt from her palanquin and came loping toward Carris. At her back, her whole army, thousands upon thousands of reavers, followed in a dark tide.

  Down above the castle gates, the flameweavers had just vanquished the mages. Now they desperately began pulling fire from the sky, setting down more of their infernal wards before Carris. As they worked, the air grew colder, and the flameweavers leached heat even from the stone walls, until frost rimed them. The falling slush turned to drifting snow.

  Rapidly the flameweavers set nine more wards, and in the process exhausted themselves. The fire curling over their skins died, so that soon all three men stood naked in the cold. All of their hair had burned cleanly away long ago. Snow hissed to steam when it touched their hot skin. Roland could see that the flameweavers did not believe that their wards would hinder a fell mage.

  As the reavers raced forward, many of them stopped to pick up the ruined corpses of Raj Ahten’s foot soldiers in their teeth. These they bore gingerly in their maws, as if to make an offering of them on the causeway, the way that cats might leave dead mice on a doorstep for their master. Some of the men in the reavers’ mouths were only wounded, so that they cried out in pain or pleaded for help in Indhopalese.

  The cries wrung Roland’s heart, but there could be no rescuing those lost souls.

  The fell mage closed upon the castle, but at four hundred yards, she halted. A hundred lesser mages, scarlet sorceresses, spread out and flanked her on either side. Tens of thousands of reavers now gathered at her back, a grim horde that covered the fields; nearly every reaver held a man between its crystalline teeth.

  The reavers were still far back from the fiery green wards of the flameweavers.

  The fell mage raised her citrine staff and played it over the walls of Carris, as if to unleash some dire spell. Men shrieked and dropped for cover.

  Now she’ll show us what she can do! Roland thought.

  43

  ON HUMAN FRAILTIES

  Gaborn took little rest at Tor Doohan. He felt the need to hurry south, to fight the Earth’s battle. The facilitator at Castle Groverman must have been working all night, for by early morning Gaborn had the full complement of fifty endowments that he’d asked for. He felt his muscles straining beneath his armor, and his blood pounded in his veins, pounded for battle.

  So he let the horses feed and rest for only three hours that morning, until he could restrain himself no more.

  Before noon he rode south. Only a few hundred men and women rode with him: a hundred lords of Orwynne and Heredon, another hundred and fifty from Fleeds. But they were a stout war party in many ways, the best to be had from three kingdoms, and hope swelled in Gaborn’s chest. For soon he would unite with King Lowicker’s vast army, and as he approached Carris he hoped to band together with the Knights Equitable and lords from Mystarria.

  He imagined that he might well have half a million men under his command when he reached Carris, and their attack would be spearheaded by some of the most powerful Runelords in the world.

  Time and again he thrilled to realize that old King Lowicker of Beldinook would ride beside him. He’d not expected Lowicker to bestir himself.

  Some called Lowicker a “frail” man, though the description was overly nice.

  His frailty was more mental than physical. Over the past couple of years, his reasoning skills had begun to diminish. Some hinted that he’d grown quite senile. Only the fact that Lowicker had taken endowments of wit from three different men—and thus could store memories in their minds—allowed him to obscure the severity of his ailment.

  Yet Lowicker had always been one of King Orden’s staunchest allies. Not three weeks ago, Lowicker had organized a grand reception in his father’s honor as Gaborn journeyed north.

  Lowicker had praised Gaborn roundly, hinting that the Prince would make a fine match for his own daughter—a plump girl who had not one single distinguishing virtue but also seemed to lack any vice.

  Gaborn recalled a night of drinking mulled wine beside the hearth while Lowicker and his father told hunting stories, since years before, Lowicker had often accompanied Orden north on the autumn hunt.

  But three years past, Lowicker had taken a fall and broken his hip, and now the old man rarely rode a horse at all, and then only in considerable pain. He’d never hunt again, and Gaborn’s father had lamented the fact.

  As Gaborn headed south, he knew that Iome would be angry with him. He had hastened his departure from Tor Doohan in part because of the rising sense of danger that assailed him to the south, the sense that he needed to attack swiftly. But even more than that, he hurried because he hoped to discourage Iome from following.

  He knew that she’d confronted some danger on the borders of Heredon once this morning. And as he rode he began to suspect more and more that men in his care were going to die today. He didn’t want Iome to be among the casualties.

  Kriskaven Wall spanned a hundred and fourteen miles of the border between Fleeds and Beldinook. The bastion of black stone stood twenty feet tall, and was twenty feet wide at the base. Beyond that, a trench had been dug in ages past all along the north face of the wall, so that now a shallow river flowed there at all times of the year except in high summer.

  Two horses could run abreast atop the wall, but the lords of Beldinook had not felt the need to keep Kriskaven Wall properly manned in the past two hundred years.

  When Gaborn rode near the wall early that afternoon, toward Feyman’s Gate, he felt somewhat gladdened to see Beldinook’s warriors thick along the battlements, to see horses galloping atop the wall, to hear welcoming warhorns blowing from it. He estimated that a thousand warriors held this gate alone.

  The wall would be a formidable barrier to Raj Ahten’s troops, if any sought to ride through here again.

  But as Gaborn in company with a hundred knights drew close to the wall, he felt a familiar prickling sensation, as if a shroud dropped over them all.

  The Earth whispered of danger.

  Gaborn called a halt two hundred yards from the open gate, while he studied the sentries ahead. The men wore Beldinook’s uniforms, tall silver caps with square tops, and heavy breastplates. Their shields bore the dun-colored field with the white swan. They carried Beldinook’s characteristic wide bows. They flew Beldinook’s banners. Atop the wall, a captain waved Gaborn ahead.

  But something was not right. Feyman’s Gate opened wide and inviting, as it had for hundreds of years. The gate itself stood forty feet across, and the top of the wall spanned over it, brimming with archery slots and kill holes by the score.

  Silently Gaborn warned the Chosen in his retinue of an impending ambush. The air around him suddenly filled with the clank of metal on metal as lords lowered their visors and unstrapped shields from the backs of their mounts. The chargers knew the sounds of war. Though Gaborn’s own mount stopped, it capered to the side, eager to charge.

  Prince Celinor rode beside Erin Connal, two horses down from Gaborn. The Prince looked about nervously, wondering what was happening.

  “Who opposes us?” Gaborn shouted across the distance. The ride had been long and dusty, and the dust choked his throat. Though Gaborn felt battle ready, he had not taken a single endowment of voice. Now the wind blew northwest into Gaborn’s face, hurling his own words back at him, so that he felt unsure if the men on the wall even heard him.

  The men of Beldinook watched Gaborn’s forces uneasily. Many reached for arrows and stepped behind the battlements on the wall.

  “Who dares oppose the Earth King?” Queen Herin shouted, and her Voice cut across the distance far better than Gaborn’s ever could.

  Suddenly the thunder of hooves rose from the far side of the wall. A row of horsemen
wheeled from both the left and the right, and the knights converged before the open gate, blocking Gaborn’s passage. Through the gate, Gaborn could only see the front ranks, but estimated that more than a thousand knights rode together.

  At their head rode old King Lowicker himself. Lowicker was white-haired, with a narrow face and pale blue eyes that were going gray with age. His long hair was all in braids and slung over his shoulder. He wore no armor, as if to say that he held so little regard for Gaborn as a warrior that he needed none.

  He frowned as he sat in his saddle, pained at his old injuries.

  “Go back, Gaborn Val Orden,” King Lowicker shouted. “Go back to Heredon while you may! You are not welcome on my soil. Beldinook is closed to you.”

  “Your messenger told another tale two days ago,” Gaborn shouted. “For what reason have you become inhospitable? You and I have long been friends. We can be friends still.” Gaborn tried to sound calm, to keep his demeanor friendly, but inside his blood ran hot. He felt confused and betrayed. Lowicker had falsely pledged support and urged him to ride here quickly, to fight at his side. Yet Lowicker himself had plotted to cut Gaborn down like a dog. Though Gaborn struggled to remain calm, in his heart he knew that Lowicker would be a friend no more.

  “Your father and I were friends!” Lowicker raged. “But I am no pawn to a regicide.” He stabbed a finger toward Gaborn as if he’d caught a young scoundrel. “You appropriated your father’s crown as soon as you were able, but found it too small! Now you call yourself the Earth King. Tell me, Earth King, are these hundred men the only ones silly enough to follow you to your doom?”

  “Others follow me,” Gaborn said.

  But Lowicker studied Gaborn severely and shook his head, as if he pitied those who rode at his side. “When you began to practice in the Room of Faces, young man, I was dubious. I thought that if you did not want to learn to be a king, at the very least you would learn to act the part.

  “But now I see you strutting and preening like a great monarch, and I am not impressed. Ride along north, young imposter, while you still can.”

  Gaborn felt a rising sense of danger. Lowicker was not voicing idle threats. Erin and Celinor had warned Gaborn that King Anders had hoped to sway Lowicker and others with his lies, and apparently Anders had managed to do it quite well.

  Lowicker had planned to ambush him, and even now was seconds from ordering a charge. Yet Gaborn hoped that he could persuade Lowicker to see the truth.

  “You accuse me of regicide, yet plot my assassination?” Gaborn said, hoping to reveal to Lowicker his own error. “I fear you are but Anders’s pawn. How Raj Ahten would laugh to see this!”

  “It is not regicide to execute a criminal,” Lowicker insisted, “even if that criminal is a man I have always loved as if he were my own son. I wish that I could believe you are the Earth King.” Yet his tone was cold, and Gaborn wondered at Lowicker’s sincerity.

  “I am the Earth King,” Gaborn warned. He stared hard into Lowicker, using the Earth Sight.

  He saw a man who loved his position, who loved wealth and acclaim more than he loved the truth. He saw a man who had always felt jealous of King Orden’s greater affluence, jealous enough so that he’d always greeted Orden with great pomp—but had schemed to grab a piece of Mystarria for his own.

  Here was a man who had married a woman he detested so that he could gain greater position.

  Gaborn remembered years ago how his own father had mourned the death of Lowicker’s good wife. But Gaborn looked into the aging King’s mind and saw how Lowicker had feigned love so well that when the Queen took a fall from a horse and died during a hunting accident with no witness other than Lowicker, no one questioned the manner of her death.

  He saw a man who thought himself wise, and secretly congratulated himself often for how he’d accomplished his wife’s demise.

  This was a man who was frustrated because Gaborn had not married his own homely daughter, for he’d hoped that Gaborn would love wealth as much as he did, and Lowicker had long calculated how to arrange both Gaborn’s marriage and death at an early age.

  As Gaborn searched King Lowicker’s soul, the soul of a man he’d always thought a friend, he found only a shriveled husk. Where Gaborn had once believed that he’d seen decency and honor, now he saw only a fair mask that hid a monstrous avarice.

  Lowicker was not acting as Anders’s pawn. At the very least he was Anders’s conspirator.

  Gaborn felt ill in his stomach.

  “So then,” Lowicker said, grinning falsely. “If you are the Earth King, show me a sign so that I might believe, and thus become your servant.”

  “I shall,” Gaborn shouted. “This is the sign: All men who refuse to serve me shall perish in the dark times to come.”

  “An easy thing to claim, a hard thing to prove,” Lowicker chortled. “And as all men shall perish whether they serve you or not, I see no advantage in scraping my arthritic knees to you.”

  “If you will not accept that sign,” Gaborn said, “then let me offer another: I have looked into your heart, and found it wanting. I know your secrets. You call me a regicide, but on a hunt eight years ago, you broke your wife’s neck with the butt of your spear. In your heart, you felt no more regret than if you had taken down a pig.”

  King Lowicker’s smile faltered momentarily, as if he considered for the first time whether Gaborn might really be the Earth King.

  “No one will believe your lies,” Lowicker said. “You are a nothing, Gaborn Val Orden—not a king, nor even a fair mimic. You are not even a has-been. You are a never-shall-be. Your nation is at the mercy of the merciless. Archers!”

  Upon the wall, hundreds of men raised their bows. Gaborn stood two hundred yards from Kriskaven Wall. Any arrows shot from such a distance would find it hard to pierce his armor, but few of the mounts in his retinue had barding. A rain of arrows would be devastating, and at this moment, Lowicker craved blood.

  Yet the vile old King hesitated.

  “Wait!” Gaborn called, raising his left hand. “I give you one more fair warning! I am the Earth King, and as I serve the Earth, so it serves me.

  “I have been called to Choose the seeds of mankind, and those who raise their hands against me do so at their own peril! I bid all of you, let me pass!”

  On the wall, Lowicker’s men began to laugh him to scorn, and Gaborn stared at them, amazed at how one man’s evil could subvert so many.

  “Go back!” Lowicker said. Gaborn perceived suddenly that something restrained Lowicker, kept him from releasing his hail of arrows even now.

  Since Lowicker had carefully pared away his own conscience with the precision of a skilled surgeon, Gaborn imagined that only one thing could stay his hand: fear.

  Gaborn glanced from side to side. Binnesman rode beside Gaborn, along with Sir Langley and many other lords from Orwynne, as did Queen Herin the Red and Erin Connal of Fleeds, and Prince Celinor of South Crowthen.

  Shooting at this company would have repercussions that Lowicker did not want to deal with—perhaps most of all because Lowicker feared how King Anders would react to the murder of his own son.

  Indeed, Lowicker’s eyes flickered across Celinor for half a second, giving the lad an evil look, as if begging him to depart.

  Gaborn almost laughed inside. With sudden clarity he saw that the Earth would serve him well right now.

  Gaborn hopped down from his horse.

  Before making a cut in stone, masons would draw upon it a rune of Earth-breaking, and thus weaken the stone so that it conformed better to their will. Only a week ago, Binnesman had destroyed the old stone bridge across Harm’s Gorge in a similar manner.

  Gaborn knew that he could wield such power now. Using the Earth Sight, he gazed not at Lowicker, but at Kriskaven Wall itself. The wall was a great expanse of stone, held together by mortar and gravity.

  Yet as he studied it, he saw flaws within the stone. A splintering crack here where a root had pried the stone, a weakness t
here. It was not so much a wall that he beheld, as a network of small fissures.

  The wall was so weak that with a little pressure here, and some there, and over there, it would come down.

  “If it is a sign you seek, so be it!” he shouted to Lowicker. “I will give you a sign that you cannot deny.”

  Now Gaborn glanced at the wizard Binnesman. The wizard, astride his horse, whispered, “Milord, what are you doing?”

  “I reject King Lowicker and any man who stands with him,” Gaborn replied. “Lend me your staff.”

  The wizard handed Gaborn his staff, saying, “Are you sure this is wise?”

  “No, but it is just.” He looked up. Lowicker still sat his horse, smirking across the distance, confident. But to Gaborn’s satisfaction, Lowicker’s Days nervously began backing his own horse away.

  Gaborn took the staff and carefully traced a rune of Earth-breaking on the dusty road. The rune looked to Gaborn like a mantis with two heads and three claws, all trapped within a circle.

  “Is this how it’s drawn?” Gaborn asked the wizard, to be certain he had done it right.

  “The earth powers are not used to kill,” the wizard warned.

  “The Earth permits death,” Gaborn said, “even our deaths. I will spare all those I can.”

  Yet he wondered if he dared spare Lowicker. Gaborn needed to protect his people, and the Earth had not forbidden him from taking the lives of his enemies. Killing an enemy as vicious as Lowicker was no worse than killing a reaver.

  Gaborn raised the wizard’s staff overhead and shouted a command: “By the Earth I serve, I command this wall: Be thou broken stones and dust!”

  With his mind he reached out to a hundred pressure points on the wall, and then he smote the rune of Earth-breaking with the staff, and felt the impact at his feet as the ground began to roll and buck. The earth rumbled as if it would split apart, and suddenly all the smirking bowmen on the wall began to shout in terror.

  The command that Gaborn uttered came not from a weak-willed mason who served the Earth only enough to get something in return. It was the command of the Earth King, and so carried more force than that of any other.