Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 46

Yet many questions continued to puzzle her. Who was the One True Master? What did it want? She knew that it wanted the Blood of the Faithful, and that it was human blood, but what would it do with it?

An image flashed in her mind: an enormous reaver, the One True Master, crouched upon a bed of the crystalline bones of those she had vanquished, resplendent among the holy fires, instructing her inferiors how to create the runes that would usurp and dismay the Earth.

Averan knew that the reavers were heading for Carris. The Blood of the Faithful was near there.

Poor Roland, she thought. I hope he gets out of there quickly.

Her best hope of reaching the Earth King would be to go into the mountains. Maybe then the reavers wouldn't follow her. When she reached a crossroads, she turned east, taking a mule trail along a ca.n.a.l.

Since the reavers couldn't "see" more than a quarter of a mile in any direction, she could evade them by keeping far enough ahead of them.

She also knew that when she walked across the ground, she left an energy trail that reavers perceived as a ghostly glow. But half an hour after she crossed a field, the glow would dissipate. And the reaver's depth perception was too poor to let them easily detect her footprints.

Which meant that they'd have to hunt her by scent alone.

When Averan was small, beast master Brand used to tell her stories about how he'd helped the Duke outsmart foxes on the foxhunt.

Duke Haberd had been the kind of man who would pay a huntsman to trap a wild fox, then pour turpentine on its back to make sure that his hounds never lost the fox's scent, So for a fox to survive it had to be crafty.

Whenever the dogs got close, the fox would race ahead and run in circles and curlicues, letting its scent get so twisted that the dogs behind wound up barking at their own tails.

Then the fox would find some low hill and lie behind a bush, watching the dogs, just to make sure that none ever came close.

The reavers were much like hounds, and Averan had to outfox them. So as she ran along the ca.n.a.l, she sprinted here and there for nearly two hours, often circling.

She was still on the flatlands east of Carris, but the towns had thinned out. She knew this place from maps, and had even flown over it on her graak.

Farther west were a few hills and valleys, then the Hest Mountains. She hoped to make it there, for she doubted that the reavers would follow her into the Hests, where it was so cold.

When she judged that she had neared the end of the ca.n.a.l, she took a brief trip through some woods, racing about in circles, doubling back over her own steps, climbing in trees so that her scent would be lost overhead. She painted every tree with the words "Beware!"

A cold drizzle began to fall. Averan doubled back to the ca.n.a.l and jumped in, swam for the far sh.o.r.e.

The green woman followed Averan faithfully, if somewhat clumsily, through all of this. But as soon as Spring leapt into the ca.n.a.l, it became obvious that Averan's plan had gone astray.

The green woman didn't know how to swim. She thrashed about, kicking and squealing and bobbing under. She looked about desperately, swatting the surface of the water.

Averan tried to swim back to save her, but without her endowment of brawn, Averan swam slowly, sluggishly. When she finally did reach Spring, the green woman climbed atop Averan, pushing her under.

She fought to get to the surface, but Spring was too strong. Averan realized that it was no use, that Spring would merely hold her. So Averan dove desperately, until she touched the muddy ca.n.a.l bottom, then pushed up and away.

She broke the surface. The green woman went under, thrashing.

Averan caught her breath. The green woman quit splashing; she had gone down for the last time.

Averan's heart pounded. "Spring!" she called. "Spring!"

But the surface of the ca.n.a.l remained calm.

For several heartbeats, Averan wondered what to do.

Then Spring floated to the top.

Averan swam to her, grabbed the woman's bearskin cloak from behind, and pulled the unconscious form to the far bank. She dragged Spring's head from the water, turned her over.

The green woman coughed and gagged and cried like a child. When she quit throwing up muddy ca.n.a.l water, Averan helped her up the bank. She looked around in the darkness.

Averan had lost her staff in the struggle to save Spring. Even though the water was sluggish, Averan judged that the current had carried them both a quarter of a mile downstream. She'd wanted the staff to help scare off the reavers, but doubted that she'd be able to find it in the dark.

Averan staggered to her feet. By now, she imagined that she was still eight miles west of Carris, and another six miles south. She wanted to turn north, but felt afraid. She could see fires burning on the hills south of Carris.

The wind blew wild, and the clouds had thickened so that Averan could hardly see. Rain pelted her in heavy droplets. There was no way she could get her staff.

Maybe if I'm lucky, we'll get lightning, Averan hoped. Everyone knew that reavers were afraid of lightning, though no one knew why. But Averan had feasted on a reaver's brain and learned its secrets. Now she understood better. Lightning did not frighten reavers so much as it blinded them and caused them pain. To be near lightning was like staring into the sun.

I'm the only person in the world who knows this, Averan realized. Somehow, she had done something no one else ever had: she'd eaten a reaver's brain and gained its memories, just as if she were a reaver herself.

Unfortunately, though rain fell, there was no sign of a thunderstorm.

Wearily, after hours of running, Averan limped west, jogging for an hour while the green woman began to lag behind. An hour before dawn, she heard an odd noise in the distance toward Carris, a strange groaning that shook the earth. A bit later, birds in the meadows began to chirp as they wakened. She thought it odd that the birds would make such joyous noise on such a dismal day.

Near dawn she found a wooded hill on the north side of the road, and decided to play the part of the fox.

So she hunkered down in some scrub oak and tall ferns, in the lee of a huge pine, She waited for sunrise. From her perch, she imagined that she'd be able to see the giant reavers coming for miles, if the monsters didn't lose her trail.

Spring lay beside Averan, in her bearskin cloak. Averan pulled Spring's cloak open enough so that she could crawl under it. The cloak was still damp, but Averan lay warm against the green woman's breast.

CHAPTER 38.

A COLD WIND AT CARRIS.

The wind at Carris had shifted an hour before dawn, driving from the northeast and becoming bitterly cold. With the fog beneath and lowering clouds rushing in overhead, it became darker rather than lighter as morning approached.

The greatest source of light came from Raj Ahten's flameweavers, clothed in living flame, who had driven back the fog at the end of the causeway. Raj Ahten stood between those pillars of light, gazing up at the men on the walls. Frowth giants, war dogs, and Invincibles glowered at his back.

"If it is battle you want, then come against us!" Duke Paladane called valiantly. "But if you hope to find refuge in Carris, you hope in vain. We will not surrender at any cost!"

All around Roland, men raised their weapons, began beating sword and hammer against shield in brutal applause.

Raj Ahten gauged and dismissed Paladane all in a glance. Instead, he looked up at the men along the castle walls, and as he did so his gaze strayed to Roland. Roland tried to hold his eyes, but could not. The challenge there, the look of supreme confidence, cut Roland to the quick, and for the first time in his life he realized what a weak, pitiable thing he truly was. One by one, the men on the walls quit banging weapon to shield.

"Brave sentiments," Raj Ahten said to Paladane. Distantly, from the far edges of the predawn fog below, Roland began to hear distant battle horns, the high horns of Indhopal blowing wildly. With it came a faraway beating of drums, a thunderous boom, boom, boom. A giant at Raj Ahten's back glanced to the south, while warhorses minced their feet nervously.

"They're blowing full retreat," Baron Poll said in wonder at Roland's side. Somewhere out in that fog, perhaps five miles off, Raj Ahten's troops were in flight. Had the Knights Equitable come? Or warriors from the Courts of Tide?

In rash hope, someone on the wall shouted, "The Earth King is coming! That's put the fear into them!"

A trio of dark creatures rippled up from the fog, whipped past Roland's ear. At first he thought they were bats. But they were too small, and the things writhed in the air like pain given form. He recognized them as gree, creatures of the Underworld seldom seen aboveground.

"Begone!" Paladane shouted at Raj Ahten. "You'll find no shelter here! Archers!"

Raj Ahten raised his hand toward the archers, commanding them without words to belay the order. While other mounts shifted about in fear, his gray Imperial warhorse stood calmly.

"It is not the Earth King who comes from the south;" Raj Ahten said loudly enough for every man on the wall to hear. Indeed, the words seemed to slide into Roland's subconscious, piercing him like a knife blade, so that they aroused a subtle fear. "Nor is it salvation for you in the form of reinforcements. Duke Paladane knows what hails from the south; his messengers pa.s.sed through our lines. Reavers are boiling from the Underworld by the tens of thousands. They'll be here within the hour."

Roland's heart hammered and his mouth felt as dry as dust. Reavers, he thought in mounting horror. In sixteen hundred years, men and reavers had not fought a major surface battle. From time to time Roland heard stories of men who lived on the borders of the Alcair who were slaughtered by reavers or dragged to their lairs to be eaten later.

But reavers had never in living memory attacked a castle at full strength--not until they hit Keep Haberd.

Roland would have rather fought Raj Ahten twice over than face a reaver horde. After all, a lucky blow might bring a force warrior down, but a reaver stood taller than an elephant. No d.a.m.ned little commoner with a half-sword was likely to even pierce its skin.

Still the fog hid everything in the fields around Carris. Distantly Roland began to hear a hissing roar, like the pounding of surf against sand. Minutely, the walls of the castle trembled.

Raj Ahten said, "You don't have the force soldiers to defend this rock against reavers. But I do.

"Kneel to me now!" Raj Ahten called. "Kneel to your lord and master. Open your gates! Kneel to me, and I shall protect you!"

Without thought, without willing himself to, Roland found himself dropping to one knee. The command was so persuasive that he could do nothing else. Indeed, he had no desire to do anything else.

Men began to shout and cheer. Many drew weapons and shook them in the air, offering themselves into his service.

Roland's heart pounded. Duke Paladane stood atop the battlements defiantly, his hand clutching the pommel of his sword, a small man, contemptible in his impotence. It looked as if he alone would stand against Raj Ahten, while everyone else embraced him.

Can't the fool see that Raj Ahten is right? Roland wondered. Without the Wolf Lord, we're all dead.

Roland found a cheer ripping from his own throat.

Then the drawbridge came down with a rattling of chains.

Amid the cheers Raj Ahten strode victoriously into Carris. He began shouting orders. "Secure the causeway. Banish this fog so that we can see what we're up against."

His flameweavers turned and began to draw fiery runes in the air at the end of the causeway.

The thick fog collapsed around the flameweavers for a moment, floated back in, so that in seconds the frowth giants that marched into Carris strode waist-deep through the mist, while men on warhorses had their heads barely bobbing above it.

Miles back, Roland could hear men shouting, the sound of horses neighing in fear as Raj Ahten's troops raced for Carris. Warhorns blared retreat.

With it, another distant sound floated over the fields, the buzzing whir that reavers made as air hissed from their abdomens, mingled with the crashing of their thick carapaces against stones as they thundered across the earth.

Reavers were coming, and Raj Ahten's troops raced through the mist to beat them, swelling the castle. The troops came in long lines, mounted knights begrimed and weary, riding their proud chargers. Row upon row of spearmen. Cheers thundered above the clamor of hooves and the clang of armor.

Roland looked over the battlements. Though the flameweavers had begun to banish the fog, it was not something that could be accomplished in a moment. In the early morning, with the wet earth all around it, the fog had grown to the point that it smothered the ground for miles in every direction.

For long minutes Roland waited, his guts tight with terror. A cold heavy rain began to batter Roland's brow, soak his thin tunic. Men nearby huddled beneath their capes and hunkered under their shields as if the raindrops were a hail of deadly arrows. But the small target that Roland had been given just covered his head. It barely kept the rain off his neck.

More gree whipped overhead as if hurled by slings, a flock of hundreds. With the magical fog beneath and the natural clouds above, Roland's perch seemed strange and exotic. In the dim mist, gulls and crows and doves all began to flap about the battlements, disturbed by the commotion, lost between clouds above and fog below.

As the thrill of the moment began to fade, as the power of Raj Ahten's Voice seemed to dim, Roland found himself shaking.

He suddenly realized, like one waking from a dream, that he was forsworn, that he had let Raj Ahten take the city without a fight.

"What does this mean?" Roland asked Baron Poll. "What if the Earth King comes? Will we be forced to fight him?"

"I guess," Baron Poll said. He spat off the edge of the castle, into the fog. The Baron's calm demeanor showed that he had already reached this realization, and that it did not disturb him.

Roland grumbled to Baron Poll, trying to sound confident, "I'll not do that. I'll not fight the Earth King!"

"You'll do as you're ordered," Baron Poll said. "You'll be Raj Ahten's man when he puts you under oath."

That was the way of it. If Raj Ahten secured the castle, he'd give the soldiers here the choice: swear fealty to me, or die.

"I'm Orden's man. I'll not forswear myself!" Roland said. "I'll not bear sword against my own King."

"But it will be your oath or your life!" Baron Poll said pragmatically. "Believe me, a smart man will swear fealty quickly and take his oath back just as quick."

"I never claimed to be a smart man," Roland answered It was true. He couldn't read, couldn't do numbers. He'd never had an answer for the arguments of his shrewish wife. He'd hardly been able to find his way through the fog here to Carris.

But he'd always been loyal.

"Listen," the Baron said fiercely. "Take your oath for Raj Ahten. But once the Earth King comes, no one says you have to fight fiercely. If his troops come against the wall, you can just growl and wag your halfsword in a hostile manner, demanding that they all go b.u.g.g.e.r themselves. You don't have to draw blood!"

"Raj Ahten can go b.u.g.g.e.r himself," Roland said, gripping his sword.

But when Raj Ahten's warriors began to come up on the walls, Roland dared not draw steel.

Instead he hunkered against the battlements and wished anew that he had not given the green woman his bearskin cloak. The cold now seemed more biting than it had been the night before. It pierced all the way to his heart, left him feeling numb and dazed.

After nearly half an hour, Raj Ahten's troops were still not all in, but his flameweavers had drawn mystic fiery runes in the air at the end of the causeway in a great circle. Symbols hung in the fog like tapestries upon a wall until the flameweavers pushed them. Then the fiery runes dissolved The fog began to back away at about the pace that a man could run, opening a little window to the land All during that half hour, the sound of reavers approaching became louder, the dull roar of heavy carapaces dragged across the ground rising like an approaching thunderstorm.

Under the cover of fog, reavers converged around Carris from everywhere--from the north and south and west.

Warhorns blared in the fog, two miles out. Horses began to scream in panic, and Roland could hear horses charge first to the south, then to the west, then reel madly back north.

Men on the walls began to shout, "They're lost! There's men lost out there!" "Cut off."

Roland empathized with them. He knew how maddening that fog could be, how easily one might get lost in it.

The flameweavers had just begun to dispel the mist, and Roland waited breathlessly on the battlements as it began to peel backward, exposing the green folds of earth, the whitewashed cottages with their thatch roofs and abundant gardens, the hayc.o.c.ks and apple orchards and pastures and serene little ca.n.a.ls all about Carris. A single mallard duck beside a bricked well looked up at the sky and flapped its wings in delight at being able to greet the light again.

It was such a stunningly beautiful landscape that Roland found it all the more macabre to be standing here on the battlements in the misting rain, straining to hear sounds of engagement.

On the castle walls, men began to blow warhorns, signaling to the armies of Indhopal lost out in that d.a.m.nable fog, trying to steer them to safety.