David Farland - The Sum of All Men

Raj Ahten sometimes had that effect on people. It made him smile. From behind, the boy looked familiar. Yet Raj Ahten suddenly felt a certain muzziness, a cloudiness of thought as he tried to recall. Then he had it—he had seen the boy on the street, earlier this morning.

But no, he now remembered, it had not been the boy. Merely a statue that looked like him. The young man led the horse from the stable, began buckling and cinching the saddle, tying on saddlebags, just out of earshot.

Alone with his Days in the shadowed stable, Raj Ahten whirled and caught the Days by the throat. The man had been following two paces farther back than normal. Perhaps a sign of guilt, perhaps in fear.

“What do you know of this attack at Longmont?” Raj Ahten asked, lifting the Days from the ground. “Who betrayed me?”

“Not, aagh, me!” the Days responded. The man grabbed Raj Ahten's wrist with both hands, clung for dear life, trying to keep from strangling. Fear lined his face. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“I don't believe you,” Raj Ahten hissed. “Only you could have betrayed me—you or your kind.”

“No!” the Days gasped. “We, ugh, we take no sides in the affairs of state. This is...your affair.”

Raj Ahten looked in his face. The Days seemed terrified.

Raj Ahten held him, muscles strong as Northern steel, and considered breaking the man's neck. Perhaps the Days was telling the truth, but he was still dangerous. Raj Ahten longed to crush the fellow, to rid himself of this pest. But if he did, every Days across the world would unite, would reveal Raj Ahten's secrets to his enemies—the numbers of his armies, the locations of his hidden Dedicates.

Setting the Days down, Raj Ahten growled, “I am watching you.”

“Just as I watch you,” the Days said, rubbing his sore neck.

Raj Ahten turned, left the stable. The captain of his guard had said that Gaborn Val Orden had slain one of the Wolf Lord's scouts near here. The Prince would have left his scent behind.

Raj Ahten had endowments of scent from over a thousand men. Most of his scouts had taken endowments of scent from dogs, and hence feared the dogbane that the Prince carried.

“My lord, where are you going?” Jureem asked.

“To hunt Prince Orden,” Raj Ahten decided on impulse. His men would be long at work preparing for the march. With Raj Ahten's endowments of metabolism, he could spend time doing something of value, while others worked. “He may still be in the city. Some jobs you should not leave to lesser men.”

“Och, orders is orders! His Lor'ship tol' me to put the King and his girl on proper 'orses—even if I had to tie 'em in the saddle! The wagon's too slow on such a long march, thru them woods,” Gaborn said, affecting a Fleeds accent.

The finest horsemen came from Fleeds, and he wanted to play the part of a trusted stableboy.

Gaborn sat atop his stallion, gazing down at the captain in the Dedicates' Keep. The guards had raised the portcullis, and busily filled a great covered wain with Dedicates gained here at Castle Sylvarresta—those who acted as vectors for Raj Ahten, including King Sylvarresta.

“He say to me none of thees!” the captain said in his thick Taifan accent, glancing about nervously. His men had abandoned their posts to raid the kitchens for provisions. Some officers looted Sylvarresta's treasury, and others down on Market Street were breaking shopwindows. Every moment the captain spent talking to Gaborn meant the captain would have less time to stuff his own pockets.

“Aye, what do I know?” Gaborn asked.

Gaborn turned to leave, nudging his mount with his heels, pulling around the four horses he had on his lines. It was a delicate moment. Gaborn's mount grew skittish, laid its ears back, rolled its eyes. Several soldiers hurried into the Dedicates' Keep, to help loot the treasury. Gaborn's stallion flinched at each soldier who crowded past, ventured a small kick at one man. One of the tethered stallions responded to the sudden move by bucking. Gaborn whispered soothing words to keep the whole bunch from bolting.

In the last few minutes, the streets had suddenly come alive with people—a mob of Raj Ahten's men sprinted to the armory to grab supplies, weapons, horses; merchants rushed hither and thither to protect what they had from looters.

“Halt!” the captain of the guard said before Gaborn got the horses turned. “I put King on horse. Which one ees for him?”

Gaborn rolled his eyes, as if the answer were obvious. If he'd truly been a stablehand, he'd have known which mount would remain calmest, which horse would try to keep the idiot king from falling. As it was, he feared that all five horses might bolt at any second. His own horse, the stallion he'd ridden into town the day before, had been trained to recognize the Wolf Lord's soldiers by their coat of arms, and to lash out against them with hoof and tooth. Surrounded by the Wolf Lord's troops, his stallion tossed its head from side to side, shifting its weight uneasily. Unsure. His mood unnerved the other horses.

“Och, today, who knows?” Gaborn said. “I smell a likely storm. They're all a wee skittish.”

He looked at the horses. In truth, two mounts seemed less concerned by the commotion.

“Prop the King on Uprising, and here's to hopin' he don't fall!” Gaborn patted a roan mount, inventing the horse's name on the spur of the moment. “The Princess, she sits on his sister 'ere, Retribution. Their Days can ride the skittish horses and plummet to their asses for all I care. Oh, and watch that girth strap on the King's saddle. It wiggles loose. Oh, and Death Knell there, put her last in your line. She kicks.”

Gaborn handed the lines to the captain, giving him the reins to all four mounts, and turned to leave.

“Wait!” the captain said, as Gaborn suspected he would.

Gaborn craned his neck, sat with a bored expression.

“You geet King on horse! Everyone on horse. I want you personal to geet them down through gates.”

“I'm busy!” Gaborn objected. Sometimes the best way to secure a job was to pretend you did not want it. “I'm wanting to watch the soldiers leave.”

“Now!” the captain shouted.

Gaborn shrugged, urged the horses through the portcullis, into the bailey of the Dedicates' Keep, near the huge wain.

No one had yet managed to bring the draft horses to pull the wain, so the wagon merely sat, its axletree lying on the ground.

Gaborn looked into the wagon, tried not to stare too hard at Iome. He wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a sleeve, then got off his horse, helped Iome mount. He had no idea whether she could ride, felt relieved when she sat lightly atop her mare, took the reins confidently.

The drooling King was another matter. His eyes grew frightened and he hooted and grasped the horse's neck with both hands as soon as Gaborn got him saddled, then tried to slide off. Though the King had once been a fine horseman, he gave no evidence of it now. Gaborn realized he would, quite literally, have to tie the man to the pommel.

So Gaborn used one of his lead ropes and did just that, wrapping the rope around the King's waist twice, then tying him to the pommel in front, and to the hitches for the saddlebags in the rear.

Gaborn's heart pounded. He was taking an insane risk: Iome could ride, but the King would pose a definite problem.

Gaborn planned to take the King and Iome through the city gates, then gallop for the woods, where Orden's forces could protect him. Gaborn hoped that none of the enemy archers would dare shoot the King. As a vector, he was too valuable to Raj Ahten.

Gaborn most feared that Raj Ahten's forces might lead a mounted pursuit.

Fortunately, the King's horse seemed more intrigued by the King's whooping and grasping antics than frightened. After Gaborn tied the King securely into his saddle, Sylvarresta became more interested in petting the mount and kissing its neck than in trying to unhorse himself.