David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

“Or me!” other men shouted.

Iome tried to remain calm. “My love, you make a mistake here,” she told Gaborn through clenched teeth. “Let them have him.”

Rage burned in Myrrima’s veins. She’d seen Gaborn’s father alive at Longmot five hours before the castle fell, and he’d refused her entry to the fortress, knowing that in doing so he probably saved her life. She’d seen him cold dead, along with thousands of other warriors, later that night.

She recalled Hobie Hollowell and Wyeth Able and a dozen other boys from Bannisferre who had died in that battle, while closer to home the farmers all around her house had been decapitated by Raj Ahten’s scouts as his army sought to slip unnoticed through the Dunnwood. Even her neighbor, ninety-three-year-old Annie Coyle who couldn’t have hobbled to town to save her life, had been butchered.

Gaborn’s own wife had been robbed of her glamour, had watched her mother die at Raj Ahten’s hand. She’d been present when her own father was assassinated because of Raj Ahten’s deeds, and her armies had been decimated.

Yet Gaborn had the audacity to forbear.

And as Myrrima gazed around at the hard faces of the knights in that company, she knew that not a man among them had lived a life untouched by Raj Ahten’s evil. All of them had lost their kings and queens to his assassins, seen friends or brothers or parents die at his hand.

To think that Raj Ahten should live another minute seemed unbearable. The blood sang in her veins, demanding vengeance.

“As you love me,” Gaborn said to his lords, “as you love your very lives, I beg each of you to spare him. The Earth bids me to let him live.”

In outrage Myrrima studied Gaborn’s eyes. Every muscle in her was tense. She reached into her quiver and drew another arrow, nocked it. The first shaft she’d fired was still lodged in Rah Ahten’s knee, though she’d hoped to hit the bastard in the chest.

“This is unconscionable!” Sir Hoswell shouted. “To let him live is—”

Other men roared agreement.

But Gaborn merely raised his hand, asking for silence.

Gaborn said solemnly, “I Chose Raj Ahten in desperation, and sought afterward to use my powers to slay him. For my sin, the Earth has withdrawn. My powers have diminished, and it may be that I cannot make amends.

“I only know that for the sake of the world, I must lay my wrath aside. No man here wants to see him dead more than do I...”

Gaborn trembled with impotent rage. He groaned in despair. He put the spurs to his charger and fled south toward Carris as if he no longer trusted himself to remain and let Raj Ahten live.

He raced half a mile ahead, and stopped at the brow of the hill, on the blasted earth, looking back. “Come!” Gaborn cried: “Get away from there!”

Aspen leaves whispered behind Myrrima in the evening wind; the grass rustled. She gritted her teeth and waited.

Binnesman climbed down from his own mount, touched the green woman’s shoulder. “Come,” he whispered into her ear. “Leave him for now.”

The wylde backed away, though no one else did. The knights held steady on their horses in the gloom, weapons bristling. Myrrima could hear the hard breath of their anger, smell their sweat.

Raj Ahten sat up, pulled the arrow from his knee. The wylde had torn his surcoat and so decimated his kingly scale mail that the coat now looked a ragged mess, ripped and shredded in the front.

The Wolf Lord of Indhopal stared at the lords, regal and imperious even now. He wheezed as he breathed, as if something inside him were torn. “Were I the Earth King,” he said softly, “I would not be such a pathetic little man.”

“Of course not my cousin,” Iome said, “for you so need to show yourself to be every man’s superior, you would of necessity be both much larger, and far more pathetic than he.

Iome turned from the odious Raj Ahten and spoke to the lords. “Come. Let us go.” She turned and followed Gaborn. Other lords began to file off after her, slowly at first, but then faster, for they feared to be alone with Raj Ahten.

Myrrima stayed, determined to be the last to leave, to show no fear. Sir Hoswell stayed at her back, while Binnesman kept his wylde at his side.

When the others had all fled, Myrrima held Raj Ahten with her glare. Still seated on the ground, he stared up at her as if amused.

“I’ll thank you for the return of my arrow,” Myrrima said, nodding toward the shaft in Raj Ahten’s hand. She wanted him to know that it was her shaft that had scored on him, for all the good it had done.

Raj Ahten climbed to his feet, presented the arrow and answered in a seductive tone. “Anything for a beautiful woman.”

She took the arrow and surreptitiously sniffed at him, to catch his scent, so that if she ever needed to track him, she’d be able to do so.

Raj Ahten said, “I have but three words for you, young woman: Wolf...Lord...Bitch.”

Raj Ahten turned southwest, headed off through the blasted lands.

Myrrima left the blood on her shaft and dropped it back into her quiver. She turned her horse and followed her King, though leaving Raj Ahten alive was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

She did not suspect how much she’d come to regret it.

Averan stayed with Borenson after the battle. Some healers from Carris came and looked at him, learned the nature of his wounds, and then left him in search of others who were closer to death.

She could only vaguely guess what was wrong with the big knight. Though the healers said he would not die of his wound, one woman offered nightshade anyway.

Borenson only growled angrily and lay on the ground, still curled up like a babe.

Averan found herself a cloak from a dead man to keep her warm. She looked for the green woman, but Spring had apparently run off during the battle—or gotten herself killed. Averan didn’t know which, and she found herself worrying, constantly listening for the sound of feet squishing through the mud.

By an hour after nightfall she realized she was hungry, so she took Borenson’s knife for protection and began wandering through the maze of dead reavers toward Carris, searching for the right piece of meat.

Up in Carris, buildings were still afire, and she managed to pick her way among the dead reavers by this faint light.

The causeway was well guarded by thousands of men: warriors of Carris, Invincibles, and footmen from Indhopal. They’d cleared most of the reavers’ corpses from the causeway, shoving them into the lake. The men seemed terrified that the reavers might return under the cover of darkness. They sat beside campfires and swapped tales, sometimes laughing apprehensively. Theirs was still an uneasy peace, but Averan could never have imagined that they would have formed a truce at all.

But she heard little laughter in the camp. Instead, the men spread nasty rumors that the Earth King had died, or had forsaken them all. Others related nervously how they had discovered in the midst of battle that their leader had fallen silent.

Averan tried to conjure up a vision of the Earth King, but when she closed her eyes, she could not see him.

He was dead, she decided.

At the head of the causeway, the warriors had just dragged up part of a huge reaver mage all wet and blackened. Flaming runes still burned all around its head, and As mouth had been propped open with a fence post so that one could see how wide its jaws were.

“What’s this?” Averan asked the men camped nearby.

“The fell mage, or what’s left of her,” one man replied. “We fished it from the lake. Be careful now, she’s still twitching, and she might bite you!” The men all laughed at their stupid joke. Even a little girl of nine could see that the corpse of the fell mage wasn’t twitching.