David Farland - Wizardborn

Yet something even more profound had happened. Gaborn reached out with Earth senses. The Earth warned him that now the danger had risen tenfold. The world’s peril had increased. Gaborn wondered what might have changed.

Then he felt it. Raj Ahten was gone. Gaborn could only surmise that the reavers in Kartish had killed him. With his death, everything seemed ready to fall apart.

Gaborn felt staggered.

Chondler watched the reavers spread their decimation and argued, “Milord, I’m sworn to the Brotherhood of the Wolf. I’ll not stand here idle while people die.”

Gaborn shook his head sadly, tried to make the man understand. “You see their formation? If you attack their lines, the front ranks will retreat a few steps while those at your side move up. Then the arms of the star will swing round and close on your position, circling you. You’ll die!”

“All men die,” Chondler said. “I’m sworn to protect mankind.”

Couldn’t he see? Couldn’t he see that Gaborn acted in their best interests?

“Damn you, Marshal Chondler,” Gaborn shouted. “What do you think I’m trying to do? If you go down there, the reavers will have you and destroy Feldonshire anyway.”

“I’m sworn—” Chondler began to say.

Gaborn drew his sword ringing from its sheath. “For mankind,” he said solemnly, “and for the Earth.” Around him, the men of the Brotherhood of the Wolf cheered.

Chondler stared at him in surprise, unsure how to take this. The king would join the Brotherhood of the Wolf? Was he renouncing his kingdom?

Gaborn knew that his deed put Chondler off balance. But in his own mind, he was only reaffirming the commitment he’d made to his people long ago.

He looked out over the crowd. “So, good sirs, it’s a fight you want?” he asked. “I assure you, this battle has only begun.”

Guildmaster Wallachs’s wagon rounded a corner too fast, slewed as if it would leave the road. They’d left Feldonshire, and as she topped a hill Averan spotted two disreputable warehouses on the flats below. Hides stretched on racks in the sun outside one building identified it as a tannery.

Wallachs slowed his wagon, whistled to some men loading barrels outside the tannery. “Reavers will be here in five minutes. Get to safety!”

The men left off loading their barrels and Wallachs was off again. The horses heaved with every breath, and they frothed now. Wallachs shouted as he sent the whip whistling over their tails.

Wallachs eyed the second building as he passed. Averan could smell the pungent, greasy odor of lye soap cooking.

After that, there was no true road. No cottages bordered the Stinkwater, not even the lowest hovel. Here on the east of town, the only businesses had been those that smelled so bad that no one would want them near.

To the west of town the land had been rich and fertile, covered with cottages and gardens, orchards, vineyards, and fields of hops and barley.

But here even the ground seemed defiled. The land flattened out. During the winters, rain would swell the Stinkwater Ponds, flooding their banks. In summer the water receded, leaving a yellowish-gray crust where almost nothing could grow. Coarse grass thrust up from sandy patches along with a few black, stunted trees that were so twisted they might never have been alive.

Averan could smell the Stinkwater, a stench like rotten eggs.

The ponds, green with scum, boiled out of the ground not far ahead. A thin haze rose up from the steaming waters. A dozen wagons were there, with twenty or thirty men offloading barrels.

Wallachs drew near, shouted, “How do you fare?”

“We’ve got enough lye in there to eat the flesh off your bones,” one man shouted, “and with all the turpentine, I’d not get a flame close to it for any woman’s love!”

Averan looked at Binnesman’s face. He seemed unprepared for how large the ponds really were. They looked larger down here than they did from up in the sky. Each one covered several acres. Kegs of poison floated in them.

In the distance, the earth thundered as the reavers approached. Binnesman’s countenance was pale.

“By the Powers,” he whispered, “I can’t heal those waters—not in an hour, not in a day!”

Wallachs grunted and nodded, as if his suspicions had been confirmed. He shouted to his men. “You’ve got three minutes to clear the ponds. The reavers are coming!”

He snapped his whip over the ears of his team, and raced ahead.

“The road gives out just east of here,” Wallachs apologized to Binnesman in a worried tone. “Not more than a mile, and you’re in the woods.”

He left much unsaid. If the reavers came after them, there’d be no place to run.

“A mile should be far enough,” Binnesman said. “Take us to yonder rise, and let’s see what happens.”

Wallachs urged the horses on, and the buckboard bounced mercilessly over the bumpy trail, rattling Averan’s teeth. Behind them, a cloud of dust rose from where Feldonshire had stood, and the faint screams drifted over the plain.

Averan’s stomach knotted. The horses were tiring. They couldn’t keep up this pace for mile after mile. Even if the road had kept going, the horses couldn’t.

Now the wagon rolled up a small knoll where a few black trees thrust from the sparse grass. From there, Averan could see the hills above town and look out over the Stinkwater.

She’d seen the ponds before from the sky. Up high, they looked like three bright green gems with white edges. But she knew that it was just a trick of the light.

Now the wagons pulled away from the ponds, with men whipping their horses. Broken barrels bobbed on the water, spilling scum. The steam rising from the ponds’ surface made them look like bubbling cauldrons.

Averan’s heart pounded. They had barely stopped, when the reavers crowned the hill above Feldonshire, stampeding for the Stinkwater.

The horde thundered across the plain, teeth gleaming wickedly in the sunlight. For hours they had been running in the Form of War.

Now they broke ranks. The largest and greediest blade-bearers surged ahead, making for the ponds.

But even half a mile from water, most reavers sensed something wrong. Many rose up on their back legs, philia waving madly, and drew back from the stench. Others merely slowed, stalked forward cautiously.

A few thousand reavers, so crazed that their senses were gone, galloped forward and threw themselves into the ponds, dipping their heads down deep in the water, then throwing them back up as they drank in a strangely birdlike fashion. They crowded together, cheek to jowl, a solid mass of gray leathery hides and flashing teeth.

It was a horror to watch.

Behind the reaver horde, Gaborn’s knights advanced over the hills.

With the breaking ranks and their loss of hope, many reavers floundered. They dropped and lay insensate, unwilling to move.