David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

A week ago, both of their fathers had been slain. Afterward, Gaborn had wanted to take endowments, to take the strength of a thousand men and the grace of another thousand and to take the stamina of ten thousand and the metabolism of a hundred men and use it all to slay Raj Ahten.

Yet now that deed seemed beyond him. Taking a man’s endowments was risky. A man might give them willingly enough, but there was always a danger. A man who gave brawn would find that his heart was suddenly too weak to beat, and might pass away within moments. A man who gave grace could not properly digest his food, or relax his lungs enough to let out a breath, so might fall prey to starvation or suffocation. A man who gave stamina to his lord could die from infection the next time an illness swept through the castle.

So a man who took another’s endowments could soon find himself poisoned by guilt. Worse than that, since a powerful Runelord was so nearly Invincible, only a fool would attack him directly. Instead, the Runelord’s Dedicates became the targets of his enemy’s wrath. If one were to slay a lord’s Dedicates, he would sever the magical link that raised the lord’s attributes, and in doing so, he would make the lord himself more human, more vulnerable to attack.

Borenson had slain Iome’s own Dedicates a week ago. The pain of it was astonishing. Good men and women had died. She’d wept bitterly about it night after night, for the Dedicates were often friends, people who had loved the kingdom and therefore sought to strengthen it so that they could better maintain her realm.

As Earth King, Gaborn sought to defend his people. He could lock his Dedicates in towers, guard them with his most powerful knights, provide the best physicians to care for them. Still it might not be enough.

Gaborn’s arguments against taking endowments were morally sound. Yet Iome had to wonder. He was the Earth King, the hope of the World. But how great a king could he be, if he left himself open to attack?

“Last week,” Iome said, “you swore to me that you would be an Oath-Bound Lord. Are you forsaking endowments completely? I can’t imagine why. You are a good man. If you take endowments only from your Chosen, I know that you will use them wisely, and prudently. You will be a better king because of it. And because you are the Earth King, you will know when your Dedicates are in danger, and be better able to preserve them.”

“Knowing that a man is in danger and rescuing him are entirely different matters,” Gaborn said heavily. “Even with all of my powers, I may not be able to protect them.”

“But what of Raj Ahten? What will happen when he does send his assassins? Surely he will!”

“If he sends assassins, then I will sense the danger, and we will flee.” Gaborn said. “But I will not fight another man ever again, unless I have no choice.”

Iome felt confused by such talk. She valued life, valued the lives of her people above all. But she couldn’t just turn her back on Raj Ahten. She’d never be able to forgive him for what he’d done. Iome’s mother and father were dead at his hands. Gaborn’s mother and father, too. Gaborn should have been shouting for vengeance. Even now; Raj Ahten was marching on his homeland in Mystarria. All of Gaborn’s counselors had agreed that Heredon’s forces were too weak to pursue the Wolf Lord south. They lacked the warriors and force horses to do so. Raj Ahten’s troops had stolen all of the good horses in Sylvarresta’s stables when they fled. One of the first things that Gaborn did when he reached Castle Sylvarresta was to learn from the stablemasters the names of every horse that had been taken, and the names of their Dedicates. Then he’d sent the list to Duke Groverman, where the Dedicate horses were kept, and had the Dedicates slain.

It was a desperate effort to slow Raj Ahten in his flight toward Mystarria. Raj Ahten’s knights would have been forced to ride common mounts. Perhaps because of this slaughter of Dedicate horses, hordes of Knights Equitable had been able to mount ambushes that took a toll against Raj Ahten’s Invincibles.

Gaborn had bought Duke Paladane the time he’d need to set his defenses against the Wolf Lord, and might well have made it possible to run some of Raj Ahten’s forces into the ground. Gaborn’s home country of Mystarria was the largest and richest realm in all the kingdoms of Rofehavan. A full third of all the force soldiers in the north were under the command of Paladane the Huntsman.

But Iome doubted that Paladane could stop Raj Ahten’s armies. She only hoped that Paladane could somehow hold the Wolf Lord at bay until the kings of the north could combine their armies. Gaborn had sent messengers all across Rofehavan, begging for aid.

Still, Gaborn had not sent men from Heredon to help Paladane.

“Why?” Iome asked. “Why won’t you stop Raj Ahten? You don’t have to do it yourself. Many are gathering here, lords from all over Heredon. You have men who could fight, the lords of Heredon are eager for revenge! I would fight! I hesitate to ask you this, but are you afraid of him?”

Gaborn shook his head, looked at her as if hoping she would understand. “I am not afraid of him,” Gaborn said. “Yet something holds me back.

“There is something...I feel so profoundly...and I cannot express it well. Perhaps I cannot express it at all. But...I am the Earth King, and am charged with saving a seed of mankind through the dark season to come. I don’t feel that the people of Indhopal are my enemies. I cannot harm them. I will not willingly destroy men and women. Not when I fear that the reavers are my true enemies.”

“Raj Ahten is our enemy,” Iome said. “He is as bad as any reaver.”

“He is,” Gaborn admitted, “but think of this: For each four hundred men and women alive, we have but one force soldier, one protector capable of stopping a reaver. And if that one protector dies, then it is probable that four hundred people will die because of that loss.”

It was a terrifying thought, and Iome herself had worried about little else but logistics for the past seven days as she began to consider the enormity of the problem. How many warriors could Gaborn spend fighting Raj Ahten? Was even one warrior one too many?

Time and again Gaborn hinted that he thought so. With the forty thousand forcibles that Gaborn’s father had captured at Longmot, Gaborn might equip four thousand force soldiers. It was a number ten times what Iome’s father had had. Yet it would be a small force compared to what Raj Ahten could marshal.

And there was the Wolf Lord himself to contend with. Raj Ahten had thousands of endowments of his own. Gaborn had talked about using the forcibles to make himself Raj Ahten’s equal, so that he could fight the Wolf Lord man to man.

But if Gaborn did so, if he drained endowments from even several hundred men, he worried that he Would be wasting resources. He did not know if he’d ever get another forcible again. Jureem had warned him that the blood-metal mines of Kartish were played out. These forty thousand forcibles were Gaborn’s best weapons against the reavers.

But suddenly Iome understood something that had eluded her. “Wait, are you saying that you don’t want to kill Raj Ahten?” Until this moment, she had thought that Gaborn would merely stay here in Heredon, hide behind the protective borders of the Dunnwood, and let the shades of his ancestors protect him from Raj Ahten. But Gaborn seemed nervous, and there was an intensity to him, a pleading demeanor, that made her realize that he needed to tell her something she would not want to hear.

Gaborn turned aside and looked at her from the corner of his eye, as if he could not bear to face her fully. “You have to understand my love: The people of Indhopal are not my enemies. The Earth has made me its king, and Indhopal is my realm also. I must save those I can. The people of Indhopal also need a defender.”