David Farland - Wizardborn

To the east, Gaborn’s fire raged, blowing into the foothills of the mountains. In all likelihood, it would continue to sputter and blaze into the forests for days.

With each step that Averan took, ashes stirred in the air, clogging her lungs. Averan, Binnesman, Gaborn, his Days, stalked toward the dead reavers that lay in sordid humps, each monster taller than an elephant.

Thousands had leapt or fallen from Mangan’s Rock in a grisly hail. Some had actually died. The land was covered with them at the south end of the cliff. In a few places, bodies lay three or four deep.

Thousands of the wounded retreated over the plains, legs broken or carapaces cracked. The rest of the horde outran them. Most of Gaborn’s knights went to hunt down the injured, but he’d sent some scouts with torches in hand to search among the grim carcasses for the Waymaker.

Averan did not want to eat another reaver. The last one had wrung sweat from her, sickened her, caused her profound pain. Her nerves still jangled, and her muscles ached. It was too soon to eat again.

But dead reavers lay everywhere, and Gaborn didn’t dare waste an opportunity.

Averan stalked through the ashes. A falling star streaked above her.

She looked up, saw another almost immediately, and noted that only a few gree remained with the dead reavers. Either the smoke had killed them, or they’d flown off after the rest of the horde.

The ground shook again, and a few stones tumbled down from Mangan’s Rock, bouncing among the reavers.

“Did you make the earthquake?” Averan asked Gaborn.

“No,” he said. “It’s none of my doing.”

She recognized a dying glue mum ahead. It lay on its back, gasping, drawing air in massive gulps. The sacs beneath its jaws excreted oozing mucilage.

“Don’t go near,” Gaborn warned her.

“It’s all right,” she said. “Its philia aren’t even moving.” She stared at it. “This one was called Maker of High Things. It built the nesting hall for the One True Master.”

She went to it. This glue mum had been a fine beast. Many glue mums were trained to use their mucilage to reinforce ceilings in caverns and tunnels, but this one had excelled. Her vaulted arches and buttresses were a marvel of strength and grace.

“You feel sympathy for the monster?” Gaborn asked.

Averan closed her eyes, peered into a snatch of memory. “They’re alive,” she answered. “This one—was an artist. It should have stayed where it belongs.”

Binnesman said, “Good, child. You are learning. All life is precious. All must be revered.”

For a long while Averan and Gaborn hunted, along with a hundred scouts. Word came to them after an hour that more than a thousand reavers had died in the stampede, and Skalbairn’s men were still lancing the wounded, having made another two thousand kills. The main body of the horde was heading south, running along their trail to their bolt-hole in the Underworld.

So Gaborn and Averan hunted among the dead.

At Mangan’s Rock the bodies lay thick against the cliffside, stacked to a depth of five or six deep. The corpses rose in morbid piles. The scouts searched as best they could, climbing down through little gaps where a reaver’s leg or head wedged open a crawlspace.

But in some cases, it was simply impossible to see what might lie beneath the pile. Even Runelords with force horses couldn’t easily move the massive carcasses of the reavers, and Gaborn was left to worry that the Waymaker would lie forever hidden.

“Milord!” a scout shouted. “I think I’ve found him!” The scout appeared three hundred yards down the cliff, and stood atop a pile of dead reavers, waving his torch eagerly.

Averan jogged to the pile of corpses against the cliff. “He’s a big brute,” the scout said as she neared, “just like you told us. And he’s got thirty-six philia, and big paws. It’s hard to see much down there, but there’s a rune on his right shoulder, just like you said. The rest of him is buried down where I can’t see it.”

Averan scampered up a jagged rock, the lichens on it rubbing her hands raw.

She climbed up on the corpse of a reaver with Gaborn’s help. The pile of dead reavers here was deep, and to get to the one that she wanted, she had to go up and over. She was on a sorceress when the reaver twitched, and for one heart-stopping moment she dared not move, thinking it was alive.

She watched the scout crawl into a little cave formed by dead bodies. He squeezed under one reaver’s leg, into a grotto. The torch lit the way.

Averan followed him down. The path was precarious—step on this reaver’s leg here, watch out for the spike on that one’s elbow, climb onto that one’s head, don’t let the torch burn you. And try not to worry that one of the reavers might twitch or shift, and the whole pile of them collapse on top of you.

Gaborn and Binnesman followed her down.

The scout reached the bottom, stepped back into a smaller space, and stopped. Averan followed. Smoke swirled in the still air, and the torch burned hot. She looked up in the torchlight and saw a reaver’s head. She stifled a cry.

That’s him! she thought immediately. Four dead reavers covered much of the corpse. But one huge paw protruded near his muzzle, and part of his shoulder could be made out between the legs of another reaver.

In size and shape, it looked like the Waymaker. Averan closed her eyes. Her only memories were seen from a reaver’s point of view. They didn’t see the world exactly like people do. To a reaver, the whole body glowed in different shades of blue light. So it was hard to tell.

“Yeah,” Averan said, her voice coming out rough with anticipation and dread. “It could be him.” After hunting through thousands of reavers today, she felt skeptical.

The body of another reaver squashed the Waymaker’s face so that the bony plate on its skull angled back, distorting the reaver’s visage. “Maybe if it wasn’t squashed, I could be more sure.”

“What of the rune?” Gaborn asked. The reaver had a rune on his shoulder, still glowing in smoldering colors.

“I don’t know,” Averan admitted. “Reavers can’t see those colors. To them, the runes are just smells, magical incantations written in smells.” Averan ‘s memory didn’t let her see the shape of the rune, and she couldn’t tell if it was placed properly on the body.

She stared for long minutes. She couldn’t smell anything but smoke. If she’d had a reaver’s strong nose, and if she’d been able to get at its bunghole, she would know. “I just can’t be sure.”

“Will you eat from this one?”

Averan looked up. Fear made her breath come out ragged, and she found herself clenching her fist, so that her nails bit into her palm. “I’m not sure. It might not be him.”

“But it’s the closest match you’ve seen?”

Averan’s stomach cramped in fear. “Yes,” she said. “But I can’t do it.”

Gaborn took her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes. “Listen, the world needs you to be strong. We may have driven the reavers from the rock, but already I sense a rising threat. Men are going to die in battle tomorrow, hundreds of men, maybe thousands. And tens of thousands more are at risk.”

“Is that supposed to make it easier?” Averan asked. “I’m afraid. I got so sick last time—”

“Men are taught to give their lives,” Gaborn said. “They give them in war. They wear themselves out working to support their wives and children.”

“Women wear themselves out, too,” Averan said, thinking of her mother.

“Agreed,” Gaborn said. “I’m not asking you to do anything more than what every man and woman does. When you grow up, you have to give yourself away. Sometimes you give your life all in a moment, but mostly you give yourself away laboring one minute at a time. I need you to grow a lot now.”