David Farland - The Sum of All Men

Borenson pulled the hammer, tossed it to Gaborn. He did not rest easy with his decisions. Even now, he barely restrained himself from attacking Sylvarresta. I am not death, Borenson told himself. I am not death. It is not my duty to fight my Prince, to kill kings.

“Hurry to Longmont,” Borenson said at last with a sigh. “I smell a storm coming. It will hide your scent, make you harder to track. Take the main road south at first, but don't follow it all the way—the Hayworth bridge is burned. Go instead through the forest until you reach Ardamom's Ridge, then cut straight south to the Boar's Ford. Do you know where it is?”

Gaborn shook his head. Of course he did not know.

“I know,” Iome said. Borenson studied her. Cool, confident, despite her ugliness. The Princess now showed no fear. At least she knew how to sit a horse.

Borenson urged his warhorse forward a step, pulled the longspear from poor Torin's neck, snapped it off, and threw the bladed end to the Princess. She caught it in one hand.

“Won't you escort us?” Gaborn asked.

Doesn't he understand what I must do? Borenson wondered. Borenson had not yet confided that he planned to slay every Dedicate in the castle.

No, Borenson decided. Gaborn didn't know what he planned. The lad was that innocent. Indeed, if the Prince had even the slightest notion what Borenson intended, Gaborn would try to stop him.

Yet Borenson couldn't allow that. I'll do this alone, he thought. I'll take this evil upon me, stain my hands with blood so that you don't have to.

“I've other duties,” Borenson said, shaking his head. He soothed the Prince with a lie. “I'll shadow Raj Ahten's army, make certain he doesn't strike some unexpected target.”

To tell the truth, part of him wanted to escort Gaborn, to see him safe through the woods. He knew the Prince would need help. But Borenson did not trust himself to lead Gaborn for even an hour. At any moment, he might feel the need to turn on Gaborn, to kill good King Sylvarresta.

“If it will make it easier for you,” Gaborn said, “when I reach Longmont, I'll tell my father that I never saw you in the woods. He does not need to know."

Borenson nodded, numb.

Raj Ahten stood above his dead Invincible, fists clenched. Downhill, his army marched for Longmont, archers running the winding road, their colored tunics making them look like a golden snake twisting through a black forest.

Chancellor Jureem knelt over the fallen soldier, robes smudged, studying tracks in the ashes. It took no skill to see what had happened: One man. One man slew his master's Invincible, then stole his horse, rode off with Gaborn, King Sylvarresta, and his daughter. Jureem recognized the dead mare on the ground nearby. It had been ridden by Orden's surly messenger.

The sight sickened him. If a few more soldiers had kept up the chase, Gaborn would surely have fallen into their hands.

“There are but five of them,” Feykaald said. “Heading cross-country, rather than over the road. We could send trackers—a dozen or so, but with Orden's soldiers in the wood, perhaps we should just let them go...”

Raj Ahten licked his lips. Jureem saw that Feykaald couldn't even count. Only four people were heading over the trail. His master had lost two scouts to Gaborn already, along with war dogs, giants, a pyromancer—and now an Invincible. Prince Orden looked to be not much more than a boy, but Jureem began to wonder if he had secretly taken a great number of endowments.

Raj Ahten's men had misjudged King Orden's whelp far too often. From the mounts he'd chosen, it appeared Gaborn would head into the woods, shun the highway.

But why? Because he wanted to lead Raj Ahten into a trap? Did the boy have soldiers hidden in the forest?

Or did he merely fear to travel by road? Raj Ahten had a few powerful force horses left in his retinue. Fine horses, bred for the plains and the desert, each with a lineage that went back a thousand years. Perhaps the lad knew his mounts could not outrun the Wolf Lord's horses over even ground.

But Gaborn's mountain hunters, running without armor, with their thick bones and strong hindquarters, would be almost impossible to catch in this terrain. Jureem suspected that Gaborn and Iome would know these woods far better than even the most informed spy.

Jureem drew a ragged breath, calculating how many men to send. Gaborn Val Orden would make a fine hostage, if the Wolf Lord found things at Longmont to be as he suspected.

Though the woods were silent, little more than an hour ago Jureem had heard Orden's war horns blow in the Dunnwood.

In all likelihood, Gaborn had already gained the company of Orden's soldiers, was surrounded by hundreds of guards. Yet...he could not just let Gaborn go. At the thought of Gaborn escaping, a rage burned in Jureem. Mindless, seething.

“We should send men to find the boy,” Jureem counseled. “Perhaps a hundred of our best scouts?”

Raj Ahten straightened his back. “No. Get twenty of my best Invincibles, and strip their horses of armor. I'll also want twenty mastiffs to track the Prince.”

“As you wish, milord,” Jureem said, turning away, as if to shout the orders down to the army that marched below. But a thought hit him. “Which of your captains shall lead?”

“I'll be the captain,” Raj Ahten, said. “Hunting the Prince should prove an interesting diversion.”

Jureem glanced at him sideways, raising a single dark brow. He bowed slightly, in acquiescence. “Do you think it wise, milord? Others could hunt him. Even I will come.” The thought of such a ride, of the pain his buttocks would have to endure, gave Jureem pause.

“Others might hunt him,” Raj Ahten said, “but none as tenaciously as I.”

The road to Longmont turned muddy in the late morning as storms rolled across the sky. King Orden raced south all the way to the village of Hayworth, a distance of ninety-eight miles. It was a peaceful town spread along the banks of the River Dwindell, a village with a small mill. Green hills rolled as far south as one could see, each hill covered in broad oaks.

People here led a quiet life. Most were coopers who made barrels for wine and grain. In the spring, when the river swelled in flood, one could often see men on rafts made from hundreds of barrels all tied together, floating their goods down to market.

It displeased Mendellas Orden to have to burn the bridge. He'd stopped here often in his journeys, savoring the fine ale brewed in the Dwindell Inn, which sat beside the bridge on a promontory, overlooking the river.

But by the time Orden reached town, rain had soaked the bridge. Great rolling drops pelted his troops, dripped between the cracks of the four-inch planks. His men tried to light a fire where berry vines grew thick beneath the north end of the bridge. But the banks of the river were steep and the road sloped so that water draining down the street became a veritable creek.

Orden had supposed a couple of well-oiled torches would do the job, but even they proved to be of little use.

Orden was cursing his fortune when a couple of local boys pulled the innkeeper, old Stevedore Hark, out of the inn. Orden had been blessed by this man's hospitality many times.

“Here, here, Your Highness, what are you and your men about?” the innkeeper said in a belligerent tone, waddling down the street. Orden's fifteen hundred troops seemed not to alarm the innkeeper in the least. He was a heavy man in baggy pants, an apron over his broad belly. His fat face showed red beneath his graying beard, and rain streamed over his cheeks. “I fear we must burn your bridge,” Orden answered. “Raj Ahten will come down the highway tonight. I can't have him on my tail. I'll gladly reimburse the town for the inconvenience.”