David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

The tremor could not destroy the bound rune, but it tore asunder more common structures. Towers toppled. Walls began to crumble. Dust rose in the city as inns and homes collapsed.

Even as Gaborn watched, something unexpected happened. The ground beneath him began to roll once again as a new, more powerful tremor made the castle walls shift and sway. The people of Carris cried in terror.

Gaborn’s horse staggered to keep its footing. And in Carris dust and fire rose as more buildings began to collapse.

An aftershock.

He did not need his Earth Sight to warn him that he had unleashed a monster. He could feel the power building. This fault ran deeper, farther, than he’d expected. Just as a shout will trigger an avalanche, so had his small tremor triggered catastrophe.

Gaborn stared at the hapless inhabitants of Carris clinging to its walls. Two minutes ago I sat here congratulating myself, he thought. But by my actions I might have doomed the people I hope to save.

Guilt swept through him. Guilt for what he had done, and for what he knew he now must do.

Gaborn raised his left arm and looked to the castle, to men by the scores who now were crying out in despair.

He shouted to the people of Carris, though at such a distance few men would have had enough endowments of hearing to discern his voice. “I Choose you. I Choose you for the Earth!”

Surely the Earth will allow it, Gaborn reasoned. I was given the gift of Choosing in order to save mankind, and those at Carris need saving.

He had never sought to Choose a man he could not see. Now he tested the utmost limits of his powers. He stared at the castle walls and hoped that with this one Choosing he could protect all those within.

If Choosing Skalbairn would let Gaborn save a thousand, he hoped that Choosing Raj Ahten would let him save hundreds of thousands.

He gaped at the broken walls of the city and whispered, “Even you, Raj Ahten. I Choose you!”

He felt the threads of his consciousness, lengthen, grasp men who fought in Carris, along with women and babes and elderly who only huddled in its dark corners, fearing for their lives.

He reached out even to Raj Ahten.

Gaborn held the Wolf Lord in his mind and whispered, “I Choose you,” as tenderly as if Raj Ahten were his brother. “Help me save our people.”

He felt the tendrils of communication connect, felt overwhelmed by Raj Ahten’s danger. Death lay thick upon the Wolf Lord, heavy and nauseating. Gaborn had never felt a man lingering so near it. Even now he wondered if his own powers would be sufficient to save him.

“Flee!” Gaborn whispered to Carris.

Out on the plains, Sir Langley and Marshal Skalbairn saw how the earthquake struck the reavers, leaving them dazed and wounded. Being farther from the fell mage, these knights were not so profoundly affected by her curses.

Skalbairn wheeled into the reavers, led a charge, hoping to draw more of them from Gaborn. A thousand mounted knights raced across that plain, lances bristling.

Raj Ahten was not surprised to learn that the boy Gaborn sought to rescue Carris even from the reavers. It was an ill-considered move, as foolish as it was daring and chivalrous—an act of self-sacrifice from a weak-minded idealist.

He sprinted up the steps of a tower, looked to the north.

On the plains, Knights Equitable pinwheeled at the base of Bone Hill. Elsewhere, some thousand knights charged across the downs to the south, drawing away the reavers’ forces, as did another contingent to the north.

Raj Ahten almost wanted to congratulate Gaborn. He’d done a fine job of spreading the reavers thin and baffling their lines.

He watched Gaborn’s knights struggle toward Bone Hill, saw the world shiver around them, tearing stumps from the ground, hurling dirt and stones in the air, burying some reavers, tossing others from their burrows, and raising a sound a hundred times louder than the rolling of thunder.

For some reason that he could not understand, Raj Ahten had never been able to see Gaborn. A spell lay on the lad, one that hid him from Raj Ahten’s view. But the Wolf Lord knew that he was out there.

He felt the quake strike Carris, set the walls to weaving like a drunkard, while those around him cried out.

Only the Earth King could have loosed such a monstrosity. In the space of a heartbeat, Raj Ahten saw the danger. It would level the city.

Almost as soon as the quake struck, Raj Ahten heard Gaborn’s voice ring through his mind as he performed the Choosing.

So, Earth King, Raj Ahten wondered; you bless me and curse me in the same breath?

Gaborn’s troops began to advance on Bone Hill and the fell mage. He rode with two thousand knights at his back, as if hoping that such a desperately small force might, by good fortune, strike a lucky blow.

A black wind rolled over Carris, bringing the fell mage’s latest curse.

Raj Ahten tasted the scent, felt fatigue sap his strength like never before, and translated it thus: “Be thou weary unto death.”

Yes, it was a powerful spell. If it were uttered against commoners at close range, Raj Ahten did not doubt that men would collapse with hearts too weak to beat, lungs too exhausted to draw another breath.

On the castle walls around him, many commoners dropped, too stricken to stand.

But Raj Ahten was no commoner.

As Gaborn’s knights in their pinwheel slowly gravitated south, blade-bearers began to amass against Gaborn. Perhaps dismayed by the earthquake, they had turned and charged round both sides of Bone Hill. Indeed, the reavers close to Carris itself were wheeling to meet this new threat.

Gaborn would never repel the attack, Raj Ahten could see. The reavers’ lines were too thick. In the battle for Carris, Raj Ahten imagined that no more than five hundred reavers had died so far. Twenty thousand reavers were still left to charge north. In moments they would crush Gaborn’s troops, rend him to pieces.

“Flee! Flee Carris,” Gaborn’s command rang through Raj Ahten’s mind. “Flee for your lives.”

Even as the Earth King spoke, Raj Ahten recognized the folly in listening. The walls of Carris would come down, true, and many men would die. But they’d die regardless of whether they charged the reavers.

“The clever bastard,” Raj Ahten hissed. He saw the lad’s ploy now: Gaborn merely sought to use Raj Ahten and his men as pawns, as a distraction, to draw the reavers from himself.

Raj Ahten was far too cunning to fall for such a ruse.

Raj Ahten’s Invincibles had already withdrawn from the battle. “Stand fast!” Raj Ahten shouted to his men. To Paladane’s men, he called, “Hold the breach!”

The Earth King will die here, Raj Ahten told himself, and I...I will idly watch.

Yet as Raj Ahten glanced down at the breach, he realized that Paladane’s men suddenly fought as fiercely as reavers themselves. At first he imagined that desperation lent them strength. But it was obvious that an unseen power guided them. These were commoners and warriors of unfortunate proportion. He watched one commoner bait a reaver, stand for it to take a whack with its sword, then leap aside instantly. In the brief opening, two better men lunged forward with axes and took off the reaver’s arm. As, the monster screamed, one quick fellow jumped into its mouth and thrust a longsword through its palate, into its brain. Before the beast ever fell, Paladane’s men rushed forward to take on the next comer.

His men lunged quickly to take advantage of exposed targets, avoided reaver’s blows. They choreographed thrusts and parries, so that the battle suddenly became something more than a frenzied free-for-all.

Now it seemed a macabre and deadly dance.