David Farland - Wizardborn

Marshal Chondler replied, “Mark my words, nothing good will come of it. Men are never content to merely plant the seeds of their own destruction. They must first till and dung the ground, then nurture and water the tender sprout of it, until at last they’re ready to reap the full harvest.”

High Marshal Skalbairn guffawed at the comment. “No one would knowingly court disaster.” Chondler’s mount forged through the trees ahead of Skalbairn’s, and the marshal let a limb fly back and slap Skalbairn in the face. Obviously he did so in retribution for the rude noise.

“Ah, I’m wounded,” Skalbairn said.

“Sorry.”

“If that’s the most significant wound I take this night, I’ll be glad for it,” Skalbairn replied.

He was preparing another attack on the reavers soon. He wanted to reach a knoll where Sir Skerret, a far-seer, had lit a signal lantern in warning, but not a single damned trail seemed to lead to that knoll. The night was still overcast; and so high up in the Brace Mountains, the misting rain was turning to snow.

“Men do court disaster in a hundred ways,” Chondler affirmed. “For example, have you ever noticed how easily a man can turn a virtue into a vice?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, when I was a lad I knew a woman so charitable that everyone praised her. She baked bread for the poor, gave coins to the poor, gave her cow—and finally her house. At last she found herself begging on the streets outside of Broward, where she died one winter. Thus her virtue grew into a vice that consumed her.”

“I see,” Skalbairn said. “And you think this happens often?”

“Ah,” Chondler said. “But my story is not done: now, this very same woman had a son, who, when he saw that he had lost his inheritance, went about the countryside as a highwayman, robbing every man he chanced upon. No one could seem to catch him, and he thought himself to be a wondrously great robber, so that he was always bragging, ‘What a great highwayman I am!’ And thus he was crowing to his cohorts at the very moment that I crept near to his camp and planted an arrow through his throat.”

“Hah, good move,” Skalbairn said.

“So, like the mother we either turn our virtues into a vice, or else like the son we convince ourselves that vice is virtue. But in either case we plant the seeds of our own destruction.

“Our grand Earth King Gaborn Val Orden thinks that his love of mankind is a merit—while it serves to destroy him, and us with him. Meanwhile Raj Ahten hopes to ride us all like mules till we drop.”

“Hah,” Skalbairn chuckled. “What a circular argument!” He spoke the words as if in praise, but secretly he thought that Chondler was a contrary fellow who merely wished that he was a deep thinker.

“And we’re stuck between the bastards! Well, damn all them kings and high lords, I say. It’s every man for himself from here on out.” Sir Chondler reined in his horse and peered ahead. “I can’t see a path.”

Skalbairn had not known that the woods here in the Brace Mountains could be so murky. The pines didn’t seem to branch overhead so much as press in his face; the wind-twisted limbs sometimes tangled like yarn.

After a moment, Sir Chondler blindly forged ahead. Then he pronounced, as if he had just come to a momentous decision, “I’m going to join this ‘Brotherhood of the Wolf.’ What say you?”

Skalbairn didn’t know what to think. The rumors from Carris were so strange that he wanted to learn more before making a commitment.

Raj Ahten had attacked Gaborn. That was a baffling move. And in that attack Gaborn had somehow lost his Earth Powers.

This was perhaps the most discomfiting news Skalbairn had heard in his life. He’d not have believed it if Gaborn hadn’t sent a warning, written in his own hand.

Skalbairn clutched the parchment in his fist even as he rode. In the warning, Gaborn told Skalbairn: “Break off your attack until I join you tomorrow.”

Skalbairn didn’t know what to think. But as High Marshal of the Righteous Horde of Knights Equitable, many would watch to see whom he served.

“Me?” Skalbairn asked. He parried a limb with his ax. “I’ve forsworn myself too often. I swore fealty first to Lord Brock of Toom when I was a lad, and then to the Knights Equitable, and now to the Earth King. I’m getting too old for this. I think I’ll just let my allegiance lie where it’s fallen.”

“But that’s my point,” Chondler argued. “It’s not as if you haven’t forsworn yourself before.”

“True. But you’d have me break oath with the Earth King after only three days. That’s fickle even for a Knight Equitable! Besides, not all men are such fools as you think. Gaborn’s story is not all told yet.”

Chondler laughed. “You have more faith in the lad than I do.” He drew rein, peered ahead through the swirling flakes of snow. “Pshaw!” he said in disgust. “The path is gone. And we’re in a fine spot for an ambush.”

“True enough,” Skalbairn answered, preparing to turn his horse around.

“Listen,” Chondler warned. “We must be close.” He doffed his helm, cocked his head.

Skalbairn pulled off his own helm and relished the cold touch of ice crystals on his sweaty brow. The air was thick in his nostrils. He could easily discern the sound of reavers—tens of thousands of them just over the hill. The horde trampled trees in its passage, mashing them to pulp, and pounded large sandstone boulders to gravel. The ground rumbled, and reavers hissed, letting air vent from their bodies. They were stampeding south toward Keep Haberd, over the same path that they’d blazed on their way to Carris.

Distant lightning speared from the clouds and struck the jagged tooth of a mountaintop. By its light Skalbairn glimpsed an opening in the trees to their left, but waited a moment, counting. It was forty seconds until the thunder spoke, a distant murmur like an old man grumbling over some half-recalled grudge.

Forty seconds was too long for comfort, if the tales were true. Reavers feared lightning. But if it was more than forty seconds off, the reavers could endure it.

Well, I knew that this jig wouldn’t last forever, Skalbairn thought.

For nearly four hours the lightning had held. The height of the storm at Carris brought an incessant groaning from the sky, and hail pellets plummeted like shot from a catapult. Even when the storm quieted, a few clouds wandered overhead, sending out flickering tongues from time to time. Not much of a storm, but good enough.

Skalbairn had seen reavers run headlong into rock walls to escape the lightning. He’d seen some fall insensate, like men who had endured too much pain. Thousands of the great beasts had merely stuck their eyeless heads into the sod and pushed, covering themselves with dirt in an effort to hide.

Easy targets all—blinded reavers, wounded reavers, fleeing reavers. Skalbairn’s Knights Equitable chased the brutes down and made such a slaughter as he’d never dreamed. Nine thousand reavers in four hours, by last account. His knights were joined by various Runelords out of Mystarria, Fleeds, Heredon—even Invincibles out of Indhopal, men who had been his mortal enemies at dawn.

Skalbairn would earn a place in history. The bards would sing of Gaborn’s victory at Carris, and forever now Skalbairn’s own name would be linked to it. It would all sound very grand when sung to pipe and drums—the wild charge through the stormy night.

Of course the truth about his deeds wasn’t half so exhilarating or dangerous as future bards might sing. The fact was that the reavers were fleeing on a course that paralleled a good road. Wagonmasters from Carris were rushing wains filled with lances and food to outposts to the south, so that his men could resupply. Skalbairn’s men had ample time to pick their ground and set their charges.