David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

“A few others follow, but they will not be here in time to save Carris,” Gaborn said frankly.

“That I can see;” the warrior said.

“King Lowicker betrayed my trust,” Gaborn explained. “None will come from Beldinook, only Queen Herin and a few others from Fleeds, Orwynne, and Heredon. We did not ride soon enough, I’m sorry to say.”

“Can you stop this devastation?” the man asked, motioning toward the tide of dead foliage, the putrid haze that covered the land.

“We must try,” Binnesman answered.

The big warrior grunted. “I was sent to wait back here, in hopes of reinforcements. High Marshal Skalbairn awaits your command. Our troops are moving south, not eight miles down the road, but even the Righteous Horde is no match for so many reavers.”

“Reavers?” Sir Langley asked in astonishment, and the twenty lords who had followed Gaborn abruptly laid propriety aside as they began shouting. “How many? Where? When did they attack?”

Astonished, Gaborn sat in his saddle, unable to speak. Even with all his powers—his recognition that his Chosen were in danger, his often precise knowledge of how to save them—he still could not tell whether his Chosen fought against bandits or lords or reavers—or were simply in jeopardy of falling off a stool.

He’d expected to find Raj Ahten storming Carris.

The three Knights Equitable all began to answer at once. “Our far-seers reported the castle taken by Raj Ahten before dawn, but reavers rode in on his heels. There are some twenty thousand blade-bearers, we estimate, plus many reavers of other kinds. Raj Ahten led a charge against them not an hour ago, and lost some men. The reavers are at the castle walls, but Raj Ahten is making them pay dearly for their conquest.”

Gaborn studied Sir Langley. The young lord was full of power. Langley wore scale mail and a helm, yet in some ways seemed not to wear armor at all. He’d been receiving endowments for two days as the facilitators of Orwynne sought to raise him to become Raj Ahten’s equal. The man wore his armor now as lightly as a farmer would don his tunic, and the profound strength and power in him seemed to overflow, as if it could not be held within a metal skin.

Now Sir Langley proposed that they should attack. “We can charge into their flanks, take the reavers by surprise.” He was eager to fight, over eager.

“Charging a horde of reavers should not be considered lightly,” Binnesman argued. “We don’t have nearly enough troops for such a feat.”

“We have the Righteous Horde,” the big knight of Toom said, “and four thousand decent spearmen who defected out of Beldinook.”

Gaborn weighed what the men had to say.

“Consider well,” Binnesman cautioned Gaborn.

Gaborn glanced at the wizard. Binnesman had an odd green metallic tint to his face and eyes. His service to the Earth had drained him of his humanity decades ago. As an Earth Warden, he was in some ways Gaborn’s senior. He’d given himself in service, and fulfilled his duties honorably, for hundreds of years. Gaborn had vowed to serve the Earth only a week ago. Gaborn respected Binnesman’s counsel, but he did not want to follow it now.

“The wizard may be right, Your. Highness,” High Queen Herin the Red said. “Against so many reavers, I would think we are too few.”

“I never took you for a coward,” Langley growled at her. “Did not the Earth command him to strike?”

The Earth has also been warning me to flee, Gaborn thought.

“Think on this,” a lord from Orwynne said. “Of course Paladane and his people are in Carris...but so is Raj Ahten. Perhaps the reavers will do us a favor and kill the bastard. If the people of Carris die, too, it may not be an easy trade to stomach, but it might not be a bad trade.”

“You forget yourself,” Gaborn warned the knight. “I can’t let hundreds of thousands of good people die just to be rid of one man.”

Though Gaborn spoke of riding to Raj Ahten’s defense, he was weary of trying to decipher the message of his dream from last night.

“Be forwarned that if we go forward, every man among us will stand at death’s door today,” Gaborn warned them. “Who will ride with me?”

As one, the lords around him cheered. Only Binnesman watched Gaborn skeptically and remained silent..

“So be it,” Gaborn shouted. Putting his heels to horseflesh, he raced off for Carris. Every bone in his body ached with the Earth’s pain.

Twenty lords followed him.

For now, that seemed enough.

Gaborn reached a low valley three miles north of Carris, and came upon the rearmost contingent of High Marshal Skalbairn’s troops trudging across the ruins of a blasted land, through the reeking low mist that infused men with a profound feeling of illness.

Farthest away from him, Skalbairn led a couple of thousand knights at the van, followed by eight thousand spearmen marching in formation. Thousands of archers trailed near their rear.

Last of all came the camp followers: carters with huge wains full of armor and arrows and food; artillerymen who skulked behind knowing that they would be of little use in the coming battle; squires, cooks, washwomen, whores, and boys seeking adventure who had no business marching to war.

How can I save them all? Gaborn wondered.

Scouts at the rearguard blew battle horns, and the people turned to look back at the Earth. King and his “reinforcements.”

If the sight dismayed them, they did not show it. The men in back suddenly raised their fists and their weapons and shouted in triumph.

Mankind had waited two thousand years for an Earth King. Now an Earth King had come to these few at last.

On the horizon, the cloud ceiling above Carris was red with flame.

The sound of a distant hissing roar rumbled over the ruined earth. The Knights Equitable continued cheering, but now the camp followers began to cry out. “Choose me, milord! Choose me!”

They turned toward him and some began to run forward to plead for the Choosing. Gaborn realized that if he did not act soon, he might be crushed in the press.

Gaborn raced his charger to a roadside farmhouse. Near the house, a sod barn for storing tubers lay next to the ground with its low roof of thatch rising like a small hill. Gaborn rode up to the barn and leapt from his horse, then sprinted to the rooftop and stood holding an iron weathervane shaped like a racing dog.

He gazed out over Skalbairn’s Righteous Horde. He knew it would be no match for the reavers. Not if these men fought with nothing more than their own strong arms to defend themselves. Yet Gaborn needed this army desperately if he was to strike a blow.

Gaborn raised his left arm to the square and begged to the Earth Powers he sought to serve. “Forgive me for what I must do.”

He gazed over the army and shouted in a voice loud enough so that all could hear. “I Choose you. I Choose you all, in the name of the Earth. May the Earth hide you. May the Earth heal you. May the Earth make you its own.”

Gaborn did not know if it would work. In the past he’d always sought to look into the hearts of men—to judge them fairly to see if they were worthy before offering his gift.

He’d never sought to gather so many at once.

He only hoped it would work. The Earth itself had told him in Binnesman’s garden that he was free to Choose whom he would, but Gaborn did not know if he was free to Choose men he thought unfit.

Far away, at the very van of the cavalry near the hilltop, rode High Marshal Skalbairn.

He sat ahorse, in his full black plate mail, and turned toward Gaborn. He lifted his visor and tapped the side of his helm beneath his right ear, as if begging Gaborn to repeat what he’d said.