The RuneLords

by David Farland

  Orden counted off seconds, trying to guess Raj Ahten's speed. A hundred and ten, perhaps a hundred and twenty miles per hour the Runelord raced over the flats, slowing as he careered round the castle, taking to the air as he raced over a hill up the north road--toward the old observatory.

  If that is the fastest you can run, I can beat you, Orden exulted. He glanced at his men along the wall-walk.

  He had a hundred young men lying beneath the merlons, waiting for flameweavers to send their infernal missiles to smash against the castle. Spurts of fire would rise up through the grillwork of the machicolations. Each four or five times such a missile hit, the young men were to cry out as if wounded. Some young men were very dramatic, and at that moment, one of them leapt up, holding a leather vest against himself and batting at it furiously before pretending to fall as one slain. The boy had set the vest there ten minutes earlier, waiting for it to catch fire.

  Many boys nearby tried to stifle chuckles at these antics. But those antics served a purpose. So long as Raj Ahten believed his tactics wore the castle down, he'd keep at them.

  Orden took quick stock. If he could follow Raj Ahten, catch him, he'd be able to battle him alone, man to man.

  "I'd better go," Orden said.

  Beside him, one of his captains gazed longingly toward Raj Ahten. "May the Powers be with you!" The captain clapped Orden on the back.

  "You and I and Sylvarresta shall be hunting in the Dunnwood by nightfall," Orden said. "Have no fear."

  Orden blew a deep, bass hunting horn in signal. Immediately his men at the gates let the drawbridge drop. His energies swelled as all through the castle the men in his serpent ring held perfectly still.

  Suddenly the air seemed to thicken to the consistency of syrup. Orden had the strength of twelve men, but with the metabolism of sixty, it required considerable effort to breathe.

  He leapt forward, bearing a single weapon--a thin half-sword, sharp enough to strike off Raj Ahten's head. He planned to take Gaborn's warning to heart, decapitate the Wolf Lord. And he carried his shield.

  He began running, leaping down the stairs from the castle wall, surprised at the initial push it took to combat inertia. Running required constant, steady pressure. As he spun round a corner, his momentum was such that he accidentally veered from his course.

  He raced down to the gate, and already his men had begun raising the drawbridge, as he had ordered. He bounded up the slight incline, gingerly leapt forty feet to clear the moat, running as he landed, and hurried after Raj Ahten.

  The resistance of the wind against his shield felt tremendous. After a few yards he dropped it, hurried through the charred streets of the city, then veered onto a footpath that led over the downs.

  The grass seemed marvelously green this morning, having been cleansed by last night's rains, and everywhere the little white winterstar flowers lay among the fields.

  Orden raced over the downs, found that like Raj Ahten, when he reached the top of a mound, he was traveling so fast that he became airborne.

  Orden had read of men who had taken great endowments of metabolism. He knew that going airborne was of little danger, so long as when he landed he made certain that he sped a little, kept his feet moving to absorb the impact of his fall.

  He turned a corner. Learning to lean into a turn, he knew, was perhaps the most difficult aspect of running with high metabolism.

  Many people found it difficult to adopt the easy rolling gait necessary to run. They wanted to move fast by pressing hard with their feet, as a normal man would when seeking a quick start, but those who tried it would snap their legs. The resting body had too much inertia to overcome.

  Orden understood this principle well.

  But remembering to lean into curves at the proper angle, that just felt unnatural. As Orden gained speed, he found he'd be running, trying to make a turn in the trail, and it seemed that strange forces grasped him. Gravity did not pull down so much as momentum kept him running in whatever direction he'd taken, and as he hit a muddy spot on one turn, only a great deal of dancing let him stay afoot and keep from smashing into a tree beside the trail.

  Now he saw that Raj Ahten had kept his running speed down to a hundred miles per hour for good reason. It didn't feel safe to run faster.

  Yet Orden sped up, for his life and the lives of all his people depended on it. He raced higher up Tor Loman, through the white-trunked aspens, under their golden leaves.

  As he climbed one hill, looked down into the sun-dappled glen below, he saw a huge hart, its antlers wider than a man's arm span. Startled, it leapt gracefully in the air, seemingly to hang just a few feet above the ground.

  I could run that deer down in a heartbeat, Orden realized, as he raced toward it, passing a span behind as it dropped toward a creek.

  Orden climbed toward the pines, running up a rocky, narrow crag. Ahead, he saw the glint of dark metal as Raj Ahten entered the woods.

  The sound of the steel rings in mail warned Raj Ahten of a pursuer. He glanced back. Orden rushed up the trail.

  Raj Ahten could not imagine someone running fast enough to catch him. He redoubled his speed. The trail now led straight between the dark pines. A shaft of sunlight shone at the trail's end. Beyond it stood the red sandstone of the Eyes of Tor Loman.

  Raj Ahten knew that fleeing was useless. Orden was gaining on him, and had the greater speed.

  "I have you!" Orden shouted in triumph, a hundred yards behind.

  Raj Ahten decided to use Orden's speed against him. He crested a small rise, leapt. He felt a sharp pain in his right leg, for his fibula snapped on takeoff.

  He knew he could heal in seconds.

  As Raj Ahten rose, he twisted, drew the hatchet from his belt, and hurled just where Orden should be.

  To his surprise, Orden had begun to stutter-step, slowing. The hatchet should have cleaved him at something close to two hundred miles per hour, but the aim was high.

  Deftly, Orden dodged under the projectile.

  Raj Ahten's trajectory carried him high. Though the break in his leg seemed minor, it did not have time to do more than begin healing before he hit ground.

  His tibia snapped, along with the first break, and he tried to let himself roll forward, take the weight from his fall on his good leg and shoulders.

  As Raj Ahten came up, Orden fell on him, hacking viciously with his short sword. With Orden having so many endowments of metabolism, Raj Ahten could not prepare for the assault.

  Raj Ahten leaned back from the attack. Orden's first swing hit him full in the throat. Crimson droplets sprayed from Raj Ahten's neck, and he felt the chink of metal as the blade struck bone.

  King Orden exulted as he saw the horrible wound, watched flesh peel from Raj Ahten's throat, saw the Wolf Lord's handsome eyes widen in terror.

  Yet the blade had hardly cleared Raj Ahten's flesh when the wound began to close over, seamlessly. The man had so many endowments of stamina, he seemed no longer human.

  The Sum of All Men, Orden feared, that creature which drew life from so many people that it could no longer be classified as mortal, could no longer die. Raj Ahten was becoming a Power, one to vie the elements or the Time Lords.

  The chronicles spoke of it. The chronicles said Daylan Hammer had lived in Mystarria for a time, sixteen centuries past, before he went south, seeking to suffer in silence. For immortality had become a burden. Daylan's Dedicates passed away, yet he could not die, for in some fashion he had been transformed. The gifts transmitted through the forcibles remained with him eternally--unwanted, a curse.

  Orden had perfect recall, and he saw the words now before him, as he'd read them while young, studying the fragment of an ancient chronicle written by a distant forefather:

  "Having loved his fellow men too deeply, Daylan found that life became a burden. For men he befriended, women he loved, blossomed and died like the roses of a single season, while he alone remained perennial. So he sought solitude beyond Inkarra, in the Isles of Illienne,
and I suppose he lives there still."

  All this flashed through Orden's mind as his sword cleared Raj Ahten's throat; then he realized he had swung so hard that the blade was getting away from him. Pain filled his arm as he strained muscles and pulled tendons, trying to hold it.

  The sword flashed away into a bed of ferns upon the knoll.

  He had no other weapon. But Raj Ahten still sat, frozen in horror at the power of his attack. Orden leapt, kicking at Raj Ahten's head with all his might.

  He wore the steel-toed hoots of war, each with a heavy bar across the toe. The blow, he knew, would shatter his own leg. But it could also crush Raj Ahten's skull.

  As Orden kicked, Raj Ahten twisted away. Orden's heel struck beneath Raj Ahten's epaulets.

  A ripping pain tore through Orden's leg as every bone in it shattered, a pain so profound it wrung a cry from his throat.

  Yet if I ruin myself, Orden thought, then I ruin Raj Ahten. Raj Ahten's shoulder crumpled. Orden felt the bones of the Wolf Lord's arm snap, followed by his collarbones, then the ribs caving in, one by one, snapping like twigs beneath his heel.

  Raj Ahten screamed like one dying.

  Orden landed on Raj Ahten's shoulder, and sat for what seemed a few seconds, gasping, wondering what to do next. He rolled off the Wolf Lord, to see if the man had died.

  To his astonishment, Raj Ahten groaned in pain, rolled in the grass. The impression of Orden's boot lay stamped on the Wolf Lord's shoulder.

  The scapula had caved in. Raj Ahten's right arm twisted at an unnatural angle. The flesh of his shoulder was pushed down six inches.

  Raj Ahten lay in the grass, eyes glazed with pain. Blood frothed from his mouth. The Wolf Lord's dark eyes and chiseled face were so beautiful in that moment, Orden marveled. He'd never seen the Wolf Lord so close, in all his glamour. It took Orden's breath away.

  "Serve me," Raj Ahten whispered fervently.

  In that second, Mendellas Draken Orden was swept away by the force of Raj Ahten's glamour, and wished to serve him with his whole heart.

  Then the second passed, and he grew frightened: for something moved beneath Raj Ahten's armor; the shoulder settled and swelled, settled once again, as if years of inflammation and healing and pain all rolled into one infinite, heart-stopping moment. The shoulder finally grew to a bulbous hump.

  Orden tried to roll to his feet, knowing the fight was not over.

  Raj Ahten crawled after him, grasped Orden's right arm by the wrist, and smashed his helm into Orden's own shoulder, so hard that the helm was jarred loose from Raj Ahten's head.

  Bones shattered all along Orden's arm, and he cried out. He writhed on the ground, his right leg a ruin, his arm and shoulder useless.

  Raj Ahten backed away, stood gasping for breath. "It is a shame, King Orden. You should have taken more stamina. My bones are already fully healed. How many days will it be until you can say the same?" He kicked hard, snapping Orden's good leg. Orden collapsed to the ground, on his hack.

  "Where are my forcibles?" Raj Ahten said calmly.

  Orden gave no answer.

  Raj Ahten kicked King Orden in the face.

  Blood spurted from Orden's right eye, and he felt it hanging against his cheek. Orden fell to the ground in a near faint, and covered his face with his good hand. Raj Ahten kicked his unprotected ribs. Something tore loose inside, and Orden began coughing, spewing flecks of blood.

  "I'll kill you!" King Orden spat. "I swear it!"

  It was a vain threat. Orden couldn't fight back. He needed to die. Needed Raj Ahten to kill him so the serpent ring would break and another warrior could fight in his stead.

  King Orden began to cough; he could hardly breathe in air so thick, so liquid. Raj Ahten kicked his ribs again, so that Orden lay gasping.

  Raj Ahten turned and scrambled up the trail fifty yards, through dry grass filled with yellow tansy, to the base of the Eyes of Tor Loman. A stone stair spiraled three times outside the circumference of the tower. Raj Ahten scrambled up it, limping painfully, one shoulder five inches lower than the other. Though his face looked beautiful, he seemed from the back to be little more than just another twisted hunchback. His right arm hung askew, and his right leg might have healed, but it looked shorter than the left.

  Orden panted, sweated with exertion, tried to breathe in air that felt thick as honey. The grass near his head smelled so rich, he wanted to lie in it a moment, to rest.

  On the heath, Iome and Gaborn rode side by side through the great throng. Gaborn held a shield high, and carried one of the Duke's lances. Tied atop it was a bit of a red curtain from the windows of the Duke's Keep. A white circle of cloth pinned in its middle would make it look, at a great distance, much like the Orb of Internook.

  That is, it would appear like Internook's colors to anyone watching twenty miles away. Gaborn suspected Raj Ahten's far-seers would be watching. It was standard tactics during any siege to place scouts all around the battle.

  For the past half-hour, Gaborn had been busy worrying about the logistics of what he did: trying to drive a couple of hundred thousand head of cattle and horses across the plain was hard work. Even the experienced drovers and horsemen in the retinue could not manage the task easily.

  The work was made harder by inexperienced boys who tried desperately to help but who tended to startle the cattle at every turn. Gaborn feared that at any moment, the huge herd might stampede right or left, tramping the women and children who bore shields in a great line before the herd, as if they were warriors.

  Yet as he watched the skies above Longmont, fear seized Gaborn even more. The skies looked gray overhead, but far on the horizon darkness flashed as Raj Ahten's flameweavers pulled fire from the heavens.

  Gaborn feared he had caused it, that his ruse had led Raj Ahten to hurry his attack on Longmont rather than to simply drive the Wolf Lord off in terror, as Gaborn had hoped to do.

  As he rode, words began to form in his mind, a half-remembered spell from an ancient tome. Though he'd never fancied himself as one with earth powers, now he found himself chanting,

  "Earth that betrays us, on the wind, become a cloak to hide us, wrapped within. Dust that reveals us, in the sky, Hide our numbers from the predator's eye."

  Gaborn felt shocked that such a spell had come unbidden to his mind. Yet at that moment, he recalled the spell, and it felt right to speak it, as if he had stumbled upon the key to a nearly forgotten door.

  The earth powers are growing in me, he realized. He did not yet know what he would become.

  He worried for his father, and as he did so, he felt the man's imminent danger, felt danger wrapped around him like grave clothes.

  Gaborn hoped his father could hold out through the attack. He raised his war horn to his lips, blew once, and all around him, others did the same. Before his army, the marchers began singing songs of war.

  Raj Ahten had dozens of far-seers in his retinue, but none were like him, none had so many endowments of sight. Raj Ahten did not know how many endowments he had, but he knew it numbered in the thousands. He could discern the veins in a fly's wings at a hundred yards, could see as clearly by starlight as the average man did by sunlight. While most men with so many endowments of sight would have gone day-blind, Raj Ahten's stamina let him withstand the full sun.

  It took nothing to spot the towering cloud to the east, an army marching on him.

  As he made his way up the tower, Raj Ahten kept searching to the south and west for signs of Vishtimnu's army, signs of help. With his heightened metabolism, it seemed he scanned the horizon for many long minutes for sign of a yellow pennant rising through the forest canopy, or the glint of sunlight on metal, the dust rising from the march of many feet, or the color that mankind had no name for--the hue of warm bodies.

  But there are limits even to a far-seer's vision. He could not see through walls, and the forest canopy off to the west was wall enough that it could have hidden many armies. Moreover, a moist wind from the south blew in off the heath
, from the vast fields of Fleeds, which were thick with dust and pollen, limiting his vision to thirty or forty miles.

  He stood breathlessly, for a long moment. He did not worry about time. With so many endowments of metabolism, he could not have been six seconds searching the horizon in the southwest before he realized he'd see nothing. Vishtimnu's army was too far away.

  He turned east, felt his heart freeze. In the distance, Binnesman's horse hurtled across the plains. Raj Ahten could see his destination: at the limit of vision, the golden towers of Castle Groverman rose from the plains beside a river of silver. And before the castle marched an army the likes of which he had seldom seen: hundreds of thousands of men.

  A line of spearmen marched in front, five thousand across, and sunlight gleamed on their shields and helms. Behind them marched bowmen by the thousands, and knights mounted on chargers.

  They had already crossed the heath a distance of some five to seven miles from Castle Groverman. At such a great distance, in such dirty air, he could not see them clearly. The dry dust of their passage obscured their numbers, rose from their feet in a cloud hundreds of feet high. It looked almost like the smoke of a range fire.

  But it was not the heat of a fire he saw beneath that dust. He saw the heat of life, of hundreds of thousands of living bodies.

  Among the horde, pennants waved in dozens of colors--the green banners of Lysle, the gray of North Crowthen, the red of Internook. He saw horns among the crowd, the horned helms of hundreds of thousands of warriors--the fierce axemen of Internook.

  It can't be, he reasoned. His pyromancer had said that the King of Internook was dead. Perhaps, Raj Ahten's troubled mind told him, but Internook's armies are marching.

  Raj Ahten stilled his breathing, closed his eyes. In the field below, rising winds hissed through the trees, but distantly, distantly, beneath the sound of the blood rushing through his veins, war horns pealed. The cries of thousands of voices raised in war song.

  All the armies of the North, he realized, gathering against him. At the gates of Castle Sylvarresta, Orden's messenger had said King Orden planned this assault for weeks. And he'd hinted that traitors in Raj Ahten's own ranks had revealed the presence of the forcibles to King Orden.