David Farland - The Sum of All Men

Iome's eyes filled with tears. “Come? And leave my father? No.”

“Raj Ahten will not hurt him.”

“I know,” Iome said. “I—don't know what to think. Raj Ahten is not totally evil, not as I feared. Binnesman hopes for some good from him.”

“ 'When you behold the face of pure evil, it will be beautiful.' ” Gaborn quoted an old saying among Runelords.

“He says he wants to fight the reavers, that he wants to unite mankind for our own defense.”

“And when the war is won, can the Wolf Lord give your endowments back to you? Will he give his own life so that all those who were robbed of endowments can regain them, as Good King Herron did? I think not. He will keep them.”

“You don't know that,” Iome said.

“I do,” Gaborn insisted. “Raj Ahten has revealed his nature. He has no respect for you or any other. He will take all that you have, leave you with nothing.”

“How can you be sure? Binnesman seemed to want him to change. He hoped to convince the Wolf Lord to rid himself of the flame weavers.”

“You believe he will do it? You can stand here, over the body of your dead mother, and believe Raj Ahten has any degree of decency whatsoever;”

“When he speaks, when you look in his face—”

“Iome,” Gaborn said, “how can you doubt that Raj Ahten is evil? What do you have that he has not yet tried to take? Your body? Your family? Your home? Your freedom? Your wealth? Your position? Your country? He has taken your life, as surely as if he'd slain you, for he desires to strip away all that you have and all you hope to be. What more must he do to you, before you know him to be evil? What more?”

Iome could not answer.

“I'm going to cut off the bastard's head,” Gaborn said. “I'm going to find a way to do it, but first we need to get out of here alive. Now will you come with me, if I bring your father out of the city, too?”

He took her hand, and when he touched her, all darkness fled. Iome's heart pounded. She almost dared not to believe her fortune, for when she looked into Gaborn's eyes, all her fears, all her self-loathing and sense of ugliness vanished. It was as if he were some living talisman that wrought a change on her very heart. A stone fortress, she thought. A haven. “Please,” he begged, using all the powers of his Voice.

She nodded yes, numb. “I'll come.”

Gaborn squeezed her hand. “I don't know how, yet, but I'll come for you and your father—soon—in the Dedicates' Keep.”

Iome felt again that sensual thrill, the longing she associated with the presence of Binnesman. Her heart pounded. He had just held her tenderly, as though she still had her endowments of glamour, as if she were beautiful.

He turned, took a short sword from a corpse and tucked it in the folds of his robe, then hurried from the tomb, his fleeting shadow blocking the cold sunlight a moment.

As he fled, she almost dared not believe he would return for her, that he would not save her. Yet a warm certainty filled her. He would be back.

When he was gone, Iome's Days said, “You should be careful of that one.”

“How so?”

“He could break your heart.” Iome could not fail to note something odd in the Days' voice, a tone of respect.

Iome felt terrified. If Raj Ahten caught her trying to escape, he'd show no mercy. Yet she knew that her heart was not pounding in fear, but for another reason. She held her hand over her heart, trying to still it.

I think he already has broken it, she told herself.

Two hours after Gaborn fled Iome in the tombs, Borenson rode up to the ruined gates of Castle Sylvarresta, a green flag of truce flying from a dead nomen's lance. He forced a smile.

His muscles ached, and his armor was covered in blood. He now rode a new horse, gleaned from a fellow soldier who would never ride again.

It would be a game to match wits with Raj Ahten, one he did not want to play. Luck had not favored him. Most of his warriors had been slaughtered. He'd paid for every small victory. His soldiers had slain more than two thousand nomen. He had unhorsed most of the Wolf Lord's army, and had managed to slay or drive off a number of Frowth giants—while a dozen more of the creatures had perished in that insane fire. Dozens of Raj Ahten's legendary Invincibles had followed Borenson's men into the woods, and the Invincibles were now so full of arrows that their corpses looked as prickly as hedgehogs.

Yet Borenson had not won a clear victory, despite heavy enemy losses. Raj Ahten had quit hunting Borenson's men when they got deep into the woods, fearing an ambush. In part, Borenson had hoped that Raj Ahten would brave the woods, where his own men, he felt sure, would have the advantage.

But Borenson also wanted Raj Ahten to fear that ambush, needed Raj Ahten to believe that the woods were full of men. King Orden had often said that even a man with great endowments of wit could be outsmarted, for “Even the wisest man's plots are only as good as his information.”

So it was that Borenson rode up to the gates of Castle Sylvarresta, reigned his horse in at the moat. Smiling.

On the charred wall above the ruined gate towers, one of Raj Ahten's soldiers waved his own lance overhead three times, an acceptance of Borenson's request for truce, then waved at him, beckoning him to ride into the castle. The drawbridge was down, its gears and chains melted. One side of the drawbridge was so charred it had a hole in it large enough to let a man ride through.

Borenson stayed where he was, not wanting to deliver messages in private, and shouted, “I'm in no mood for a swim, not in this armor. Raj Ahten, I bear a message for you! Will you face me, or must you hide behind these walls?”

It seemed madness to accuse the Wolf Lord of cowardice, but Borenson had long ago decided that sanity was no virtue in an insane world.

In twenty seconds, when he heard no response, Borenson shouted again. “Raj Ahten, in the South they call you the Wolf Lord, but my lord says you are no wolf, that you are born of a common whippet, and that you have not the natural affections of a man, but instead are given to fondling bitches. What say you?”

Suddenly, atop the wall, stood Raj Ahten, shining like the sun, the white owl's wings sweeping wide from his black helm. He gazed down, imperious, unperturbed by the insults.

“Serve me,” he said softly, so seductively that Borenson almost found himself leaping from his horse, to fall on one knee.

But he recognized the use of Voice immediately, was able to ignore it. A captain in Orden's guard could not be the kind of man easily swayed by Voice.

“Serve you, the one who's been baying from these walls all morning, breathing out threats to my lord? You must be mad!” Borenson said. He spat on the ground. “I fear there is no profit in serving you. You don't have long to live.”

“You claim to have a message?” Raj Ahten asked. Borenson thought that the Wolf Lord seemed too eager to stem the tide of insults.

Borenson made a show of taking a long gaze at the soldiers along the castle walls. Thousands of archers were there, other defenders with pike and sword. And on the wall-walks behind them were citizens of Castle Sylvarresta—curious boys, eager to hear his message. Some farmers, merchants, and tradesmen stood now to defend the walls for Raj Ahten as vigorously as they would have stood to defend Sylvarresta the night before. Borenson felt acutely aware that his message was for these soldiers and townsmen more than for Raj Ahten. A message foretelling doom that was delivered in private might demoralize a single leader. The same message delivered before an army could subvert an entire nation.

“Such a small army, to be trapped so far from home,” Borenson said, as if musing to himself. Yet he threw his own voice, loud enough so the men on the far walls could hear.