David Farland - The Sum of All Men

It had been but half an hour since Gaborn mounted his horse, and with a nod, Borenson wished them good speed. In a moment Gaborn, Iome, and King Sylvarresta spurred up the ash-covered hill, into the shelter of the woods. A few snaps of branches and the snort of a horse announced their departure, yet the horses moved so swiftly, in a moment even those sounds faded.

Borenson also rode his warhorse to the edge of the silent woods, taking a different track. Ahead lay a line of ancient oaks and ash—many of which had the tips of branches burned to nothing.

But as he neared the tree line, Borenson noticed something that only now struck him as incredibly odd: It looked as if there were an invisible wall before him, and the trees beyond it had not caught fire. Not a brown twig had kindled, not a spider's web burned.

As if...the flames had raged before the trees, incinerating everything, until the trees had said, “These woods are ours. You can come no farther.”

Or perhaps, Borenson reasoned, the unnatural fire had turned aside for reasons of its own. An elemental had consciously directed the flames for a time, before it lost focus, faded.

Borenson halted just outside the line of trees, listening, afraid to go in. No birds sang under the trees. No mice or ferrin rustled through dead leaves under the boughs. Old man's beard hung from the hoary oaks in an odd way, like great curtains. This was an ancient forest, vast.

Borenson had hunted these haunted woods, but he'd never ridden through them alone. He knew the dangers of doing so.

No, it was not the fire that turned away, Borenson reasoned. The forest had confounded it. Old trees lived here, trees old enough to remember when the duskins first raised the Seven Stones. Ancient spirits walked here, powers that no man should face alone.

He thought he could feel them now, regarding him. A malevolent force that caused the air to weigh heavy. He looked up at the graying skies, the lowering clouds sailing in from the southeast. Wind buffeted him.

“I'm not your enemy,” Borenson whispered to the trees. “If you seek enemies, you'll find them soon enough. They come.”

Cautiously, reverently, Borenson urged his mount to walk under the dark boughs. Only a few yards, far enough so he could tie the big warhorse in a shallow ravine, then creep back to the wood's edge to watch Raj Ahten's army pass on the road below.

He did not have to wait long.

In a few moments, twenty men raced over the hills below, war dogs leaping to keep ahead. To Borenson's horror, Raj Ahten himself led them.

For a moment, Borenson feared the trackers would follow his trail, but down by the river they stopped for a long time, searching the ground at the spot where Gaborn had taken Torin's armor.

Borenson made out some muffled shouting, but did not understand the dialect of Indhopalese the men spoke. They hailed from a Southern province, but Borenson knew only a few curse words in the Northern dialect.

Raj Ahten recognized that Gaborn's party had split.

They followed Gaborn. Borenson felt terrified, wondered why Raj Ahten himself would head a party to capture Gaborn. Perhaps the Wolf Lord valued Iome and Sylvarresta more than Borenson imagined. Or perhaps he wanted Gaborn as a hostage.

Silently, he willed Gaborn to hurry, to ride hard and fast and never slow till he reached Longmont.

The trackers had hardly raced over the hills to Borenson's left when the army of the Wolf Lord came marching down the road, their golden surcoats bright in the last rays of sunlight before the oncoming storm.

Archers came first, thousands strong, marching four abreast. Mounted knights followed, a thousand. Then came Raj Ahten's counselors and magicians.

Borenson cared little for the Wolf Lord's soldiers. Instead he watched what followed next. A huge wain, encased in wood. A wagon to hold Dedicates—probably fewer than three dozen of them. The wagon was guarded closely by hundreds of Invincibles.

An arrow could not pierce its wooden walls. Borenson could see that one man alone would find it impossible to assault the wagon's occupants. No, he knew the truth.

Raj Ahten could haul only a few vectors with him, hoping no one would slaughter the hundreds of poor Dedicates in Sylvarresta's keep, or in other castles he might have taken here in the North.

When the Dedicates' wagon passed, when the cooks and armorers and camp followers and another thousand swordsmen hurried past, followed by the last thousand archers in the rear guard, Borenson grimly realized that killing Raj Ahten's vectors would be impossible.

He would have to concentrate on breaking into the Dedicates' Keep in Castle Sylvarresta. He worried at how many guards waited for him.

He sat at the edge of the wood for long hours, while the storm brewed and clouds engulfed the sky. Winds began to send dry leaves skittering from the trees. As evening neared, the clouds hurled bolts of lightning through the heavens. Rain fell thick, unrelenting.

Borenson drew a blanket over his head and wondered about Myrrima, back in Bannisferre. She had three Dedicates—her witless mother and two ugly sisters. They'd given up much to unite the family, to win their fight against poverty. Myrrima had told Borenson, on the trip to her house, how her father had died.

“My mother was raised in a manor, and had endowments of her own,” she said. “And my father was a man of wealth, at one time. He sold fine clothes in the market, made winter coats for ladies. But a fire burned his shop, and his coats burned with him. All the family gold must have burned in that fire, too, for we never found any of it.”

It was a proud way to say that her father had been murdered, killed in a robbery.

“My grandfather is still alive, but he has taken a young wife who spends more than he brings in.”

Borenson had wondered what she was getting at, until she whispered part of an old adage. “Fortune is a boat...” on a stormy sea, which rises and falls with each mountainous wave.

Myrrima, he'd realized, had been telling him that she did not trust fortune. Though their arranged marriage might seem fortunate at the moment, it was only because, for the moment, they crested the wave, and she feared that at any second her little boat would crash down deep in some trough, perhaps be submerged forever.

That was how Borenson felt now, submerged, drowning, hoping to keep afloat. The whole notion of sending one man to storm a Dedicates' Keep was a long shot. In all probability, Borenson would arrive at the keep, find it well guarded, and have to retreat.

But he knew, he knew, that even if he had only a slim chance of breaking into the keep, he'd have to take it.

When the storm passed that evening, he still sat unmoving, listening to the stealthy water dripping from trees, the creaking of branches in the wind. He smelled the leaf mold, the rich soil of the forest, the clean scent of the land. And ashes.

Murdering Dedicates did not sit well with him. Borenson tried to harden his resolve for long hours, imagining how it might be—climbing the walls in the escalade, battling guards.

Borenson imagined riding into the castle, going to the gates of the Dedicates' Keep, and riding down any defenders, then discharging his duty.

Such an attack would seem heroic, would likely get him killed. He wanted to do it, to finish this horrible task. He would have gladly made a suicide charge, if not for Myrrima.

If he tried to enter the keep during daylight, he'd jeopardize his mission. What's more, even if he gained entry into the keep and managed to slaughter the Dedicates, he'd then be forced to return to his king and report...what took place between him and Gaborn, and tell why he'd let Sylvarresta live.

Borenson could not stomach the thought. He couldn't lie to King Orden, pretend he hadn't seen Gaborn.