David Farland - Wizardborn

For a long while he thought about rats. Huge rats, black as coal, burrowing beneath houses. Fat rats on the wharf, feeding on fish heads. Sleek rats in the woods climbing the trees. Rats that carried pestilence and disease.

A notion took him. There were few men so susceptible to his spells that they would fight in his behalf. He had used up three already. But wars did not always need to be fought with men and arms.

Still, to send rats? To call down a plague upon a whole nation—the old, the infirm, women, and children?

In some bright corner of his mind, the man that Anders had once been cried out, The notion is monstrous!

Anders thought himself to be a hard man. He was a king after all. He’d ordered the execution of a highwayman when he was twelve. He’d fought men in battle.

He’d thought little of sending men to kill Iome.

But he’d never brought death upon innocents in such a wholesale fashion.

A cold wind tugged at the hair around his ear and whispered, It would please me.

“No!” he said aloud, shaking his head vehemently.

A cold gust slapped his back. The iciness took his breath. His head seemed to reel, and for a moment he felt dazed, as if he were drunk and spinning.

He suddenly trembled in fear, realizing that the rough paving stones stretched wide below, so close, so very close. He clung to the merlons as the wind rushed at his back. It would take so little to push him over.

Please me, a voice whispered in his ear.

For a second, Anders felt desperate. He’d sought to serve the wind, hoping that it would serve him in return. To some degree it did. Now, he saw that it could turn on him at any moment. He was in its thrall, would either do its bidding, or be discarded.

The cold wind pummeled him, slashing at his thin robes and tunic like a blade. It pierced his heart.

He suddenly stood tall and let the coldness seep into him. “Come, my warriors,” he whispered. “Come.”

The wind had been blowing from the south all day. Now the wizard on the weather vane of the highest tower turned and pointed to the west.

The wind beat down with a new ferocity.

Presently, Anders could hear sounds in the streets, the patter of tiny feet, the squeaking of small voices. He looked down in the deepening shadows, saw dark shapes darting across the cobblestones.

A terrier leapt out, barking, grabbed one of the small beasts. It shrieked in pain as the terrier broke its back.

But the rats continued to rise up from beneath the city. They scuttled out of drains and sewers, came leaping out of barns. They scurried down from trees and crawled up from beneath rotting floors. They went racing over the rooftops in furry little packs, flowing out the castle walls in a dark tide, casting off dank turds in their wake.

Here and there in the city below, a woman would cry out as she discovered a pack of rats scampering beneath her feet.

People would talk about it for days, Anders knew, the mysterious exodus of rats. But he needed them, the dirty little beasts, with their penchant for spreading disease.

They fled the city under the cover of darkness, traveling east with the wind.

Anders whispered softly to the south, “Iome, come home. Your land needs you.”

He had hardly finished when his wife came up to the tower. “Are you going to stay here all night? You have guests, you know.”

King Anders smiled.

Stars smoldered in the cold heavens above Mangan’s Rock. Sunset was gone an hour ago, and still the reavers sat on their pile of stones, casting their spells.

Wains filled with supplies had arrived from Castle Fells, and Gaborn’s army was well fed for the night. Many lords lay in their bedrolls, taking the first real slumber they’d had in days.

Everything seemed quiet, yet Gaborn sat beside his campfire, poised, pensive. He could sense danger approaching his perimeter guards.

Baron Waggit, who was acting as a sentry, called out to Gaborn from the edge of his campfire, “Milord, Skalbairn says that there’s something you should see.”

Immediately Gaborn came alert, sensing for danger. Yes, he could feel trouble brewing along the perimeter. He got up, with his Days in attendance, and followed Baron Waggit. The big man’s yellow hair shone like silk in the starlight, and his back looked broad enough to ride. Watch fires burned steadily in a ring around Mangan’s Rock, every two hundred yards.

Sounds carried preternaturally in the cool night air. Gaborn could hear the rasping of the reavers’ breath, as if the monsters had crawled closer in the darkness. Smoke still roiled from the top of Mangan’s Rock, and blue lights crackled around the Rune of Desolation.

As Gaborn followed, he spotted other sentries out on the plains in their pale livery, starlight reflecting from arms and helms.

He came upon Skalbairn. The big High Marshal had saddled his mount, and stood in the darkness bearing a lance in one hand, the reins of his horse in the other. He gazed longingly over the plains. Marshal Chondler stood watch at his side. They were nearly a mile from the base of Mangan’s Rock.

Chondler was whispering, “You are either the bravest man I ever knew, or more of a fool than I’d have given you credit for.”

“He’s no fool,” Waggit boomed. “You have the word of an expert on that.”

Skalbairn slapped the baron on the back in a friendly greeting.

Gaborn strode up behind the men. “What’s going on?”

“A reaver, Milord,” Skalbairn said. “A monstrous big one, behind those rocks. I want to kill her.”

Gaborn followed his gaze. Behind three humped rocks, a scarlet sorceress ambled on the valley floor. The huge creature glimmered softly, her entire body covered in fiery runes. She circled as if in a daze, dragging her rear legs like one wounded. She was less than half a mile off, about midway between the men and Mangan’s Rock.

“How did she get there?” Gaborn asked.

“We saw her climbing down the cliff,” Chondler said. “She was about a hundred yards up when she slipped and fell. Since then, she’s been wandering all over the field, much as you see her now.”

Gaborn considered attacking, felt inside himself. The notion aroused a sense of near panic.

“Leave her,” Gaborn said. “She’s not as helpless as she seems.”

“Ah, if only I had a ballista out here,” Chondler said, “I’d plant a bolt through her gizzard.”

“We have ballistas,” Gaborn told him. “They came on the wains about an hour ago.”

Chondler and Waggit looked at each other gleefully. Gaborn felt inside himself...yes, it would be safe to get in range of the monster. He urged, “Go get the ballistas.”

Chondler and Waggit hurried off into the darkness, leaving Gaborn alone with Skalbairn.

“You’ve taken a liking to Waggit,” Gaborn observed.

Skalbairn grunted. “He’s a good man, I think. Perhaps good enough for the likes of my daughter, Farion. I’ve long thought that she’d need a kind man, someone who will not condemn her for her weakness. She’s a bit simple, you see.”

Gaborn said nothing.

“You know,” Skalbairn said, nodding toward Chondler, “that man may serve you yet.”

“You mean he doesn’t now?”

Skalbairn shook his head. “He’s sworn to the Brotherhood of the Wolf. He doesn’t completely trust your judgment. He thinks you...too much a gentleman.”