David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

“Flee!” the Earth warned Gaborn.

He was sitting on the ground, looking skyward in astonishment. He’d never imagined that he had the power to summon animals to his aid.

The world worm had hardly risen from the ground. Dust and stones and pebbles gushed skyward above it. The vast beast towered there, twisting and writhing half a mile in the air.

The force of the blast had propelled Gaborn backward. The green woman sprawled beside him.

Lightning flashed amid the dust, creating a crown around the great cloud, a crown of light that for a moment seemed to Gaborn to be his own. All around him, the reavers were turning, fleeing from the battle in terror.

“Go!” the Earth insisted.

Death was coming. Gaborn’s own death. He’d never felt the overwhelming presence of the shroud so completely.

Darkness hovered above him, an immense black cloud of dust and falling debris that hid any remnant of daylight.

In that unnatural darkness, split time and again by lightning, Gaborn lurched to his feet and raced for his horse, calling for his troops to retreat.

Of course, he realized. He’d felt it all along. Strike and flee, strike and flee. That is what the Earth had wanted of him at Carris.

“Come!” he shouted to the green woman, offering his hand. She leapt twenty feet to land at his side, and Gaborn reached down, pulled her onto his horse.

“This way!” Gaborn shouted to his men. He began racing for his life.

He felt inside him.

In seconds, the entire course of the battle had shifted. Tens of thousands of people had fled Carris, and hundreds of thousands more had not yet even exited the city gates, but were still rushing out as fast as possible.

Much had changed for the better.

The reavers fled. Lightning strobed the sky, and reavers abandoned the field Everywhere the threat to his people suddenly diminished.

Galloping past two living reavers, Gaborn careened north filled with a sense of dull wonder and terror—wonder at his victory here, terror at the rising sense of personal danger that assailed him.

The Earth no longer bade him to strike. Now the Earth bade him flee with all haste. He raced past reaver and man alike. He was no longer needed at Carris.

Thus he rode through the dust cloud thrown by the world worm, half-blinded, until he found his way north to the gates of the Barren’s Wall.

The wall was a twisted ruin. Though Gaborn had focused all his attention to the south during the battle, the quakes had struck here, too. Much of the wall had fallen. The parts left standing leaned at precarious angles.

Miraculously, the arch above the Barren’s Wall held, and as he rode toward it, Gaborn glanced back toward Carris.

Several castle towers had collapsed, and others were still burning. Clouds of dust filled the valley. Dead men and reavers littered the plain. Every bit of soil was churned and ruined. Every plant had been blasted and destroyed. The great Black Tower had collapsed in the distance, and a fire raged there. The world worm was slithering back down into the hole where the Seal of Desolation had been. Lightning bolts played overhead, striking through clouds of dust. A sickly brown mist still wreathed the field, carrying a marvelous stench of rot and illness.

No scene of destruction that Gaborn had ever imagined could begin to rival what he now beheld.

A few hundred yards across the battlefield, the wizard Binnesman spotted him. The old man had apparently retreated from the front line; now he galloped toward Gaborn, shouting.

Gaborn felt such a desperate need to escape that he dared not wait for Binnesman.

With only Jureem, Erin, and Celinor still at his back, he wheeled and raced on beneath the Barren’s Wall.

“Milord,” Pashtuk called. “There he is!” Raj Ahten had swiftly gathered a dozen Invincibles and ordered them to help find the Earth King.

Raj Ahten peered through clouds of dust, while thunder pounded overhead. The rising dirt had mingled with the clouds; now a muddy sleet fell. Raj Ahten stood atop a hill formed by two dead reavers and peered through the grit to where Pashtuk pointed.

Now he studied the horse that Pashtuk pointed toward. As for the Earth King, Raj Ahten spotted his mount—an unassuming roan—but he could discern nothing of Gaborn himself, only a green-skinned woman sitting oddly atop it and a piece of oak brush that appeared to be caught before her on the saddle. He rode north with several knights at his side. The wizard Binnesman raced to catch up with him.

Where do you think he is going?” Mahket asked.

It seemed odd for the Earth King to retreat so swiftly when the victory here seemed secured. Lightning flashed overhead, and everywhere the reavers scattered, leaderless and without purpose.

“I don’t care where he is going,” Raj Ahten answered simply. “I’m going to kill him.”

“But...O Great Light,” Pashtuk said. “He is your kinsman....He seeks a truce.”

Raj Ahten glanced at Pashtuk and recognized the face of an enemy.

Raj Ahten had no words that could adequately express his rage. Gaborn had evaded his assassins since youth, had repelled him from Longmot with a humiliating ruse, had stolen his forcibles. Gaborn had brought Saffira to her death, turned her against him. Now Gaborn turned Raj Ahten’s most loyal followers against him.

He wanted revenge.

“The reavers are fleeing,” Raj Ahten said as if speaking to a slow-witted child. “The danger is past, and the truce may now safely be put aside.”

“A battle may be won, but not the war,” Pashtuk replied.

“What makes you think the reavers will return?” Raj Ahten offered in a reasonable tone. “We can’t know that they will return.”

“O Great One,” Pashtuk said, “forgive me. I do not mean to offend, but he is the Earth King. He has Chosen you.”

“I, too, came north to save mankind,” Raj Ahten reminded Pashtuk. “I, too, can destroy reavers.”

Raj Ahten heard Gaborn’s warning in his mind: “Beware!”

Pashtuk raised his warhammer and lunged forward to swing, but the man could not have had more than three or four endowments of metabolism.

Raj Ahten dodged Pashtuk’s blow and struck him in the temple with his mailed fist. The blow shattered Pashtuk’s skull and drove bone into his brain.

“Beware!” Gaborn’s Voice warned again.

Raj Ahten spun. Two Invincibles at his back had drawn weapons, intent on murder. He briefly engaged them, and two others who joined the fray.

But Raj Ahten was no fool. Though his Invincibles might seem awesome to the common man, he had always known that some would turn against him.

He dispatched the four men swiftly, taking only a few light wounds. With his thousands of endowments of stamina, the wounds healed over before the last man fell.

He stood a moment, panting, watching eight other Invincibles who surrounded him. Lightning flickered, thunder pounded. None of the eight dared try to withstand him, yet he wondered dully if he should kill them anyway.

Gaborn’s Voice rang in Raj Ahten’s mind. “Men lie dead at your feet, men whom I have Chosen. Your own death hovers nearby. One last time I offer you protection and hope....”

“I did not Choose you!” Raj Ahten screamed. The force of his Voice was so great that the words rose up louder than the thunder.

As Gaborn galloped from Carris, rivulets of sweat poured down his face. A thousand tiny battles raged around him at once. Sir Langley and Skalbairn slaughtered the reavers mercilessly, attacking to good effect. Though many reavers fled Carris, not all were discouraged.

Yet Gaborn was aware that one intense battle raged nearby. Raj Ahten stood among his Invincibles. Gaborn had thought them all in danger, perhaps from some reaver mage.