David Farland - Wizardborn

Baron Waggit’s horse walked beside that of the Earth King, and he watched the Runelords charge into battle. He’d witnessed a hundred deaths in the past day, but would never grow used to it.

He felt loath to lose Skalbairn. As High Marshal of the Knights Equitable, the huge warrior had the respect of every lord in Rofehavan, and to Waggit’s surprise, the man had taken him under his wing. He’d taught him a little of how to use the staff yesterday. Miraculously, he’d even sought to match him with his daughter.

In all his life, Waggit could not remember any man ever wishing him as a son-in-law. No woman had ever desired him as a lover. No man would have wanted him as a brother.

The gift of memory was such a many-faceted thing. Now, for the first time in his life, he was desired. Yet his memory was unstable.

For the past day, he’d troubled himself in idle moments, trying to recall his real name. From time to time, it had come to him in the past, but he’d never been able to hold it for more than a few minutes. He did not want to go through life called by the name Waggit, for he felt sure it had been foisted on him derisively.

Yet his real name would not come to him, and the few memories he dredged up were full of pain. He recalled his father beating him as a child, for he had put too much wood in the hearth and the whole house nearly caught fire. He recalled sitting up in a tree one night, feeling lonely as he watched a V of geese wing past the rising moon, while children taunted him below. Of his mother, he could remember nothing at all.

It seemed that the memories he was making now were all darker still. He’d watched from afar as the horde destroyed Feldonshire. He’d heard the muted death cries on the banks of the river Donnestgree as the reavers fell among the wounded from Carris. Even now, they echoed in his memory. He suspected that they would forever.

Thus Gaborn’s blessing became a curse.

“Skalbairn’s going to die, isn’t he?” Waggit asked Gaborn.

“Yes,” Gaborn said. “I believe so.”

There must be an end to the dying, Waggit told himself.

“Am I going to die today?” Waggit asked.

“No.”

“Good,” Waggit said.

He spurred his mount toward the reavers’ battle lines.

Skalbairn glanced back. Chondler had tried to cut past a huge blade-bearer armed with a knight gig, but it darted in front of him. The monster snagged Chondler’s charger out from beneath him, ripping open the mount’s belly. The horse’s gut spilled to the ground, and Chondler went down with it.

Behind him, Kellish veered and slowed. A sorceress hurled a dark yellow cloud that swallowed man and horse. Lord Kellish screamed and his horse never made it from under the shadow of that foul curse.

There would be no second chance, not in this charge.

Skalbairn burst past the second rank, neared the mage’s escorts—a dozen large blade-bearers. Their ranks drew tight around her. Several of the monsters shifted to meet him.

But the mage was larger than her escorts, towered over them. He could see her well, marching away from him, ass high in the air.

In the distance ahead, he heard warhorns blowing. The foothills that hid Feldonshire rose in brown humps, and suddenly two thousand Knights Equitable topped the nearest rise, not half a mile ahead.

They had heard Gaborn sound the charge, and thought that he called to them!

A blade-bearer swung his knight gig and Skalbairn knew he would never evade it.

Yet the great mage was tantalizingly close. He wouldn’t get a quick-killing’ blow, not one to the sweet triangle.

“Farion!” he cried, as he hurled his lance over the escort’s head.

It lofted up twenty feet, and began to descend in a graceful curve toward the mage’s back. He never got to see it land.

His horse whinnied in terror, tried to turn. The emerald staff hit its breastplate, and searing flames erupted from it, cutting the horse in two. Skalbairn’s weight bore him over as the charger stumbled, and he knew no more.

Waggit raced through the reavers’ ranks. The monsters hissed in seeming astonishment as two thousand knights charged the far side of the field. Sorceress’s spells welled up in dark clouds, sweeping the front ranks. Dozens of lords died under the onslaught.

Suddenly, the reavers’ attention was diverted.

Waggit rode through the horde with no weapon drawn. He dodged past a huge blade-bearer that swiveled its head as if looking for other prey. He rode past a second, using its bulk to shield him from the spell of a nearby sorceress.

He’d had little time to reason it through, but suspected that without a lance, the reavers would not consider him much of a threat. And of all the men in Gaborn’s retinue, he was the least able to bear a weapon here.

Desperately Gaborn sounded his warhorn, blowing retreat.

Waggit had lost track of Skalbairn, but saw the fell mage rear up and whirl about. Skalbairn’s lance had skewered her through the abdomen, and now she tried to pull it out. It was a deadly blow. She’d not last an hour under normal circumstances. But among her faithless companions, she would not last fifteen seconds.

Around her, a few young sorceresses saw her grim wound and rushed in for the harvest. Blade-bearers followed in a grotesque knot.

They tore the mage from limb to limb.

“Skalbairn!” Waggit called.

There was no answering cry. But Waggit spotted Skalbairn’s remains on the field, beneath the legs of a reaver. The reavers had made doubly sure of him. There was nothing left to save, nothing he could do.

Waggit spurred his charger away from the bloodbath, and the poor mount wheezed as it set off through the horde.

He guided it swiftly through a knot of smallish reavers that all fled as if a Glory had appeared among them, and in moments he was racing away from the horde altogether, his horse’s hooves blurring as it sped over the sandy soil.

He charged toward the Stinkwater for a hundred yards, then wheeled back toward Gaborn. Langley and his men raced before him in full retreat.

Waggit looked up, saw a flock of geese in a V above the hills. The sun shone on the sparse fields and the woods beyond, making them shine in shades of wheat and vermilion.

From the dim recesses of memory, he recalled a time long ago, when he watched the geese fly over his father’s barn during the bleak midwinter, and his mother called out warning him to put on his cloak. The memory rose like a clear bubble, and it burst within him.

In the memory, his mother called him by a truer name.

Dust rose in the vale below Averan—the dust of reavers marching to war, the dust of men charging into battle. From her vantage, the dust obscured the details of the fight. Gaborn’s men swept into the horde on their force-horses, their actions a blur.

The lords pounded into the reavers on four fronts, providing the much needed diversion. Skalbairn rode in and died as he skewered Three Kills.

When it was done, fewer men rode back.

Averan thought that she should mourn, but no tears would come. Too many friends had died already.

The reavers hissed, sending their undetectable words across the field, and at once the nine Forms of War began to merge into one. Under new leadership, the reavers marched back west toward Feldonshire.

When Gaborn’s army fled to the south, the reavers did not give pursuit.

The horde was leaving, thundering across the earth in dwindling numbers, hissing like the waves of a retreating tide. The reavers were heading back for their lair, though few had the stamina to survive the arduous journey.