David Farland - The Sum of All Men

“Well...all right,” the Earl grumbled, as if considering some other plan.

“Also,” King Orden said, “you've ordered your men to defend the castle gates, and my men to man the walls. Is there some reason for this?”

“Ah, of course!” Dreis said. “You must realize that my men are fighting for home and country. It is a matter of honor for them to defend the gates.”

“Your Lordship,” Orden tried to explain patiently, “you must understand that in the thick of this battle, all our men will be fighting for their lives. My men fight for their homes and their countries, as well as yours do. And I've brought my best force warriors, men with ten and twenty endowments each. They will fight better than commoners.”

Dreis rebutted, “Ah, your men may fight with swords and hammers, but our men will fight with heart, and with a will!”

“Your Lordship—”

Dreis raised a hand to stop him. “You forget your place, Orden,” he said fiercely. “This is Heredon, not Mystarria. I command this castle, until some greater lord takes my place.”

“Assuredly,” Orden said with a slight bow, though a bending of his back had never come harder. “I did not mean to seem presumptuous. I merely hoped that some of my better guards might fight beside yours. It would show Raj Ahten...our unity.”

“Ah, unity!” Dreis said, taking the bait. “A noble concept. A fine ideal. Yes, yes, I'll order it immediately.”

“Thank you, Your Lordship,” King Orden said with another bow, then turned to leave. He felt he had just got a handle on how Dreis' counselors must have had to work him.

“Ah,” Dreis said, “do not leave. If I might ask: I understand you are recruiting men for a serpent ring?”

“Yes, Your Lordship,” Orden answered, dreading the next question.

“I will be in it, of course. I should be the head.”

“And expose yourself to such risk?” Orden asked. " 'Tis a brave and noble sentiment, but surely we will need you to direct the battle.” He could not help but put a little whine in his tone, as Dreis' counselors must have done.

“Ah, well, I believe in teaching men correct principles, then letting them direct themselves,” Dreis countered. “I will not need to direct the battle.”

“Then, please, milord, at least consider the safety of your lands after the battle. Heredon has suffered losses enough. Should you get killed, it would be a terrible burden. Let us not have you serve as the serpent's head, but only somewhere near the head, in a place of honor.”

“Oh, no, I insist—”

“Have you ever killed a man, milord?” Orden asked.

“Why, yes, yes I have. I hanged a robber not three years back.”

Of course the Earl had not hanged the man, Orden knew. He'd have let the captain of his guard perform the feat.

“Then you know how difficult it is,” Orden said, “to sleep at nights afterward. You know how it is to look another man in the eye as you seize his very existence. Guilt. Guilt is the price we pay for leading our people.

“I killed my first man when I was twelve,” Orden added. “Some mad farmer who tried to cudgel me. I've killed some twenty men in battle since.

“My wife...grew distant over the affair, cold and unresponsive. You would think they'd love you better for it, but the women imagine that a little blood on your hands makes you grow more callous and cruel. It stains the soul, so. Of course, I am no Raj Ahten...Who knows how many men he has personally killed. Two thousand, ten?”

“Yes, the guilt...” the Earl mused. “Nasty business, that.”

Orden could see the slow wheels of the Earl's mind begin to creep, as he wakened the man's fears. Orden was not at all concerned with guilt. He needed only to remind this fool how many men had died at Raj Ahten's hands. “It does stain a man's soul.” Now the Earl had a way out of battle. He could flee it in the name of righteousness, rather than fear.

“Very well, they are your forcibles,” the Earl said. “Perhaps you should be the serpent's head.”

“Thank you, milord,” King Orden said. “I will try to serve with honor.”

“But I will be next in line.”

“Actually,” King Orden said, “I hoped to reserve that spot for another, the captain of my guard. A very formidable fighter.”

“Ah, aha!” Dreis said. Now that he was considering it, he did not seem at all certain he wanted to fight this battle. “Well, perhaps that would be best.”

“But we can reserve the spot after him for you, milord,” Orden said. He knew that he did not have to reserve a place of honor for this nincompoop. Once Dreis gave his endowment to the captain, Orden would be free to put the Duke anywhere in the serpent. Someplace close to the middle would be nice.

“Very well, then,” Dreis said in a tone of dismissal. Then he made it clear to his servants that he was not to be disturbed before dawn, for he would need his sleep.

So King Orden went back to the battlements and fretted and watched for signs of aid, signs of trouble. He put his far-seers, men with many endowments of sight, on the highest pinnacle of the graak's aerie, then sent scouts out to keep watch on the hills and roads both east and west for sign of Raj Ahten's occupying army.

But they caught no wind of it.

Instead, hour by hour, all through the night, men came riding in to give aid—three hundred more farmers from the area around Castle Dreis, all with longbows; they had no armor, but wore woolen vests that might keep out a poorly sent shaft. Borenson's regiment came racing in near dawn—eighty warriors who bore many wounds from yesterday's battle.

They told how Raj Ahten's troops never showed for the ambush at Boar's Ford. Said they'd heard no word of Gaborn.

From the west came a regiment of two hundred lancers on force horses from out of Castle Jonnick, men who'd ridden when they heard Castle Sylvarresta had fallen, then had neared it only to hear that a battle would be fought at Longmont.

From the east, Knights Equitable trickled in from freeholds, a dozen here, fifty there. Mostly they were older men who had nothing to lose, or young men still naive enough to believe that war is glorious. All of these added to the fifteen hundred knights and archers that the Earl of Dreis had brought in, and the two thousand from Groverman.

Then there were the farmers' sons and the merchants out of towns that bordered the woods. Boys with grim faces, some armed with nothing but an axe or a scythe. Young men from the cities who were dressed in finery, who bore light swords that had too much gold in the baskets of their ornate hilts.

Orden did not relish the arrival of such commoners, hardly counted them as defenders. Yet he dared not deny them the right to fight. This was their land to protect, not his.

As each little troop rode between the twin fires burning along the road before the castle gates, men on the walls would shout in triumph and blow their horns, calling “Hail Sir Freeman!” or “Hail Brave Barrows!”

Orden knew men's devices, could name most knights by glancing at their shields. But one rider who came in near dawn both mystified and excited him.

Almost last to ride in that night was a huge fellow, big as a bear, riding a black, swaybacked donkey as fast as it would trot. He bore no coat of arms, only a round shield with a huge spike in it, and he wore a squat helm from which a single cow's horn curled. He had no mail but a thick coat of pig's hide, and his only weapon, beside the dagger on his belt, was a huge axe with an iron handle some six feet long, which rested across the pommel of his saddle. With him rode fifty men as grungy as himself—men with longbows and axes. Outlaws.

The knights on Longmot's walls hesitated to name this warrior and his band, though they could not help but recognize him. Shostag the Axeman. For twenty years, Shostag and his outlaws had been a scourge to every Runelord along the Solace Mountains.