David Farland - Wizardborn

The thought of Wuqaz running free worried him. It meant that he had either gone north into Deyazz, or more likely to the western coast—to Dharmad, Jiz, or Kuhran...good places to cause trouble.

Raj Ahten had sent eighty men to ride Wuqaz down. He suspected that it would not be enough.

Gaborn turned from the fleeing reavers. They would not attack. His remaining Earth Powers let him feel confident of that much, at least.

He did not need to fear.

Nor did he need to count his dead. He’d felt the deaths in battle: twenty-four men. Twenty-four men had fallen, and with each death, he felt as if the man were being extracted from his own flesh.

He’d tried to warn them, tried to call to them in the battle. He sought to serve the Earth in that way, and he hoped that the Earth would restore his Powers.

But he’d been unable to reach them. He’d sensed their danger, shouted his warnings, but it was like shouting at deaf men.

Iome and Myrrima held back, stayed with Hoswell for a moment. Gaborn felt eager to begin searching among the dead, hoping to find the Waymaker. His Days rode at his side.

A Frowth giant roared, off to his right. Gaborn glanced at the beast. It pointed at the fleeing reavers, roared again. There was a question in its voice. It wanted to know why Gaborn was letting the reavers get away.

“The battle was a glorious victory,” the Days said. “It will be noted as such.” Gaborn had seldom heard a word of praise from the historian.

In his memory, Gaborn rehearsed what he’d done. He’d ridden the reavers’ flank, sensing with his Earth Powers, until he felt the moment for the charge was perfect. Now, he could see that more than two thousand reavers lay dead. The lives of so few men were a small price to pay for such a victory.

His Days was right. It was a great conquest.

Out on the battlefield, a few warriors were wounded. He saw them limping about, bandaging themselves as best they could. Binnesman went to his wylde as she broke open the skull of a scarlet sorceress and began to feed.

Binnesman had allowed the creature to enter battle. Once the charge began, she’d leapt from her horse and run to the center of the fray, attacking the monsters bare-handed with a ferocity that was hard to credit. Gaborn had not even numbered her kills.

Now lords sat down and began to clean and sharpen their weapons. A few scouts began making a count of their fallen foes.

Gaborn could not order a second charge immediately. He didn’t have the lances for it.

When he dared consider the very notion of charging, he felt uneasy. There was a change among the reavers. He did not yet fathom it, but he knew that he would never be able to charge them so successfully again.

Binnesman began tending the wounded. Iome and Baron Waggit went with him.

Gaborn told Averan, “Come with me. Let’s see if we can find the Waymaker.”

With that, he climbed down from his mount, helped the child from hers. He’d promised Averan that she would not have to eat the reaver’s brains in public. So when other lords and counselors sought to follow, he waved them back.

They began to walk together through the reavers, down among the furrow. Walking into it was like stepping down into a grave. The smell of beaten soil was all around. The hulking reavers lay dead and bleeding, cutting off the light. Gree wriggled in the air above them, lit on the corpses. The small black creatures scurried about like bats, with the claws at the tips of their wings hooked into the reavers’ hides. But aside from the wings, that’s where the similarity to bats ended. The gree, like reavers, had four small legs in addition to their wings, and their eyeless heads had tiny philia of their own. The gree scampered about over the carcasses and scaled the dirty creases of flesh to search for shelter and to feed on the parasitic skin worms that had plagued the reavers in life.

Each time Gaborn neared a dead reaver, the gree would make small squeaking noises and crawl away, or take flight.

Averan strolled along, searching the reavers slowly. Her freckled face was pinched, her pale blue eyes alert. She stopped and looked at a blade-bearer for a long time, squinting and leaning her head to the side, as if she were inspecting an apple in the marketplace.

It was a ghastly enterprise.

“This one has thirty-six philia,” Averan said. “And he’s large enough. But his paws are too small, kind of delicate.”

Gaborn felt eager for any additional information he could gather on reavers. “Does the number of philia mean anything?”

“More philia means that a reaver might smell things better, and hear better,” Averan said. “But that’s not always true.”

“Do you know who the new leader of the horde will be?”

Averan thought about it. “I’m not sure who is alive still.”

Gaborn accepted that. “But they won’t return to Carris?”

“No,” Averan said. “I don’t think so. You held your ground, and the reavers worry when humans hold their ground.”

“Why would they worry about us?”

“Because we defeated them in the past,” Averan said. “Erden Geboren fought with the Glories beside him. To the reavers, they shone like the sun. They blinded the reavers.”

Two thousand years ago, Erden Geboren had fought the reavers, and nearly been destroyed by them. In the old songs, it had seemed to Gaborn that he fought overwhelming odds. He found it fascinating that the reavers would recall their own account of that battle, and still fear a pair of Glories.

“Why didn’t the reavers harvest one another at Carris?” Gaborn asked. “I saw the dead. None were harvested.”

“Because,” Averan said as if she were lecturing a child, “the spoils go to the most powerful reaver lords. The dead belonged to Battle Weaver. They were hers to divide. But you killed her, and with the lightning and all of the confusion in the retreat, the lesser mages didn’t dare to harvest. They were probably afraid that the Glories were returning. At the very least, they were afraid of getting punished.”

Gaborn understood. Even among men, when dividing the spoils of war, the captains and sergeants would normally get first pick of the bounty.

Averan stopped at another reaver, squinted at it for a long time. They’d gone through nearly a third of the fallen.

“This could be him,” she said at last. “I can’t be sure.” She went around to the monster’s anus, sniffed at it, and staggered backward, wrinkling her nose.

“Is this the one?” Gaborn asked.

Averan shook her head. “I can’t be sure. I can’t smell him well enough to know.”