All night long, Averan had suffered from strange dreams, unreal visions of the Underworld.
The day was cool. The sun lay behind thick clouds. A thin drizzle rained down. Averan had been dreaming that one of the graaks had brought a rotten goat to the aerie, as they sometimes did, and Brand was making her drag it away.
She cleared her eyes. While she’d slept, the ferns above her had all died. They hung wet and sullen, like limp gray rags. Indeed, every bit of moss at her fingertips, every tender vine, every tree overhead, all had wilted as if blasted by the worst hoarfrost ever seen. The scent of decay lay heavy in the air.
Worse than that, whatever had cursed the ground seemed also to affect her. Averan felt nauseous, and her muscles were weak. A dry film coated her mouth.
If I stay here, I’ll die, she thought.
In mounting curiosity and horror, Averan glanced up at the sky. Sunrise had come and gone hours ago. Soon the sun would set.
She’d run most of the night. In her exhaustion, Averan had slept the entire day. In that time, a horrible change had been wrought upon the land.
Now the green woman lifted her nose so that her olive hair fell back on her shoulders, and she said softly, “Blood, yes. Sun, no.”
Averan leapt to her feet in the evening drizzle, glanced down the long hill. A mile away, a group of huge reavers raced on her side of the canal, following her scent.
The air issuing from their thoraxes made a dull rattle, and they scurried about in a defensive formation called “nines.” A scarlet sorceress led them, bearing a staff that glowed cruelly with obscene runes.
A reaver mage, Averan realized dully, fighting panic. In dull wonder, Averan realized that the scout she had eaten had known this monster and the blade-bearers at her back. These were no common troops. These were some of the fell mage’s most elite guards.
Averan’s shouts of “Beware” must have frightened the reavers, causing them to send some of their most deadly warriors.
Desperately, Averan sprinted through the wilted ferns surrounding the hill, sliding on their slimy surface, hardly daring to make an occasional loop, knowing she could never outrun the monsters, knowing that in moments she would be within their field of vision.
The green woman loped beside her, curious, glancing back like a dog eager to hunt squirrels, unsure whether to fight or flee.
Overhead, the leaves of every tree had fallen. There was no foliage, nothing she could hide behind. With nowhere to go and nothing to lose, Averan did what instinct bade her. She raised a hue and cry: “Help! Help! Murder!”
Even as she screamed, she thought, If I yelled “Reavers!” no one would be dumb enough to come to my rescue.
50
RIDE OF THE MICE
“Open the gates!” Raj Ahten shouted from the bailey. Five hundred force soldiers gathered behind the castle gates, the knights and horses gleaming in armor, painted lances prickling toward the sky.
The only monument left to mankind within sight was Carris itself, still tall, its white plaster walls still proud in the fading afternoon light. Rain had fallen on and off all day long, misting everything. Now a bit of sunlight beamed from a break in the clouds.
The walls of Carris gleamed preternaturally, contrasting with the dark wet mud outside.
The drawbridge dropped, and everywhere within the walls, men began to cheer wildly. Raj Ahten led the foray himself, bearing a long white lance of ash, riding his great gray Imperial force horse.
He swept over the causeway at an astonishing speed, and in seconds thundered over the plains toward the Throne of Desolation. Blade-bearers waiting well back from the causeway charged to meet him.
He swept past the first few of the great monsters as if they were but islands in a stream. His troops flowed behind. Each horse had endowments of brawn and grace and metabolism, and thus even in armor could race over the downs like a gale.
Raj Ahten’s face shone like the sun. Even at this distance, he drew the eye like no other man could, as if he bore beauty with him.
Now the knights took formation, five columns charging north toward the Throne of Desolation. Reavers rushed to block them, their carapaces gleaming darkly from the afternoon rain.
From such a distance, Raj Ahten and his men looked to Roland like a great herd of mice, charging out to make war upon overfed cats.
Their horses were marvelous and speedy, their lances gleamed in the sunlight like needles. The men shouted war cries that were lost on the wind.
And the reavers towered above them, sickly gray and bloated.
Lances struck home. Some knights sought to strike the reaver’s brain by aiming at the soft spot in its skull, or by driving a lance through the roof of its mouth. A reaver so struck died almost instantly.
But others opted to try to drive a lance into the reaver’s belly, a maiming wound.
Thus the Invincibles charged and began to strike, but almost as often as a lance went home, it exploded harmlessly against a reaver’s hard carapace. The unfortunate warriors who failed to strike a deadly blow were often borne backward off their horses, left weaponless to scurry for refuge while hoping that their fellows would slay their foes.
Roland watched one horse slip on the slick mud and crash into a reaver as if it were a stone wall, so that both horse and rider were broken instantly. Elsewhere a bladebearer swung a great blade and sliced the legs from beneath a charging force horse.
Half a dozen reavers went down in seconds, along with several men. As each column of knights met resistance, its men would veer away from the foe, so that the columns quickly became irregular snaking streams.
And once a lancer met his target, his lance would be destroyed. Either it would become hopelessly impaled into the reaver, or it would shatter. In either case the lancer was forced to turn his horse and retreat.
Raj Ahten and a few knights bore down on the Throne of Desolation, his mount racing through the brown clouds that continuously swirled out from it, between wide columns of hardened mucilage that formed the cocoon.
He’s charging like a fly into the spider’s web, Roland feared.
The few dozen enormous blade-bearers rose up to meet him. Atop the throne, glue mums like ugly grubs reared in wonder at the threat, while mages took defensive positions behind the walls of the rune itself. Howlers fled for cover. The fell mage whirled to look at him from her eyeless head, then dismissed the threat and went back to work.
As the Invincibles charged, at the edge of the cocoon reavers reared up on their back legs, great talons gleaming as they clutched their enormous blades or glory hammers.
Then the forces clashed. A dozen reavers were thrust through by the fury of the charge. Lances shattered. Blades whipped through the air faster than the eye could see; Invincibles and their horses were slashed asunder.
In that single charge at the lip of the cocoon, Raj Ahten lost a full dozen men. Those who met the reavers forfeited their lances. Raj Ahten himself brought a reaver down, plunging his lance into its mouth.
But even as it fell, its tonnage blocked the path to Bone Hill. Raj Ahten turned his mount and raced back for the castle, a few knights at his heel.
From the warrens at Lord Paldane’s Slums, reavers issued from their burrows in fury, scuttling from the shadows, while others raced from the western shore of the lake. Along the roads to the south, reavers still marched in an unending line.
Raj Ahten saw the threat, wheeled toward the castle. His men retreated for their lives.
Reavers from the west lumbered up to block the causeway—and Raj Ahten’s escape.
On the castle walls, men began to shout, encouraging Raj Ahten’s troops to better speed, cheering for men who had been their enemies a few hours before.
But Roland merely stood with his mouth agape.
Is that the best we can do against them? he wondered. Shall we halt their work for three seconds and then flee, like a child pelting a knight with rotten figs?
To do so was folly.
&
nbsp; No more than sixty or seventy dead reavers littered the plains; Raj Ahten was forced to retreat, and now he would be chastised by the fell mage and her minions.
As if she had been waiting for this moment all along, the fell mage struck.
The huge mage perched atop Bone Hill raised her great staff to the sky, and an odd hissing roar issued from it. Even now, she wore her fiery runes like a coat of light.
There was a noise like a peal of thunder, and a blast of wind surged from her, sweeping across the hill as if an invisible stone had dropped into a pool, sending out a ring. Roland would not have been able to see it at all if not for the gree that writhed through the air. When the wind struck them, it sent them swirling like leaves.
Down on the plains below, the wind smashed into warhorses. It looked as if they had merely been hit by a blast of air, but the mounts suddenly lost their footing and crashed over the stony land, armor clanging. Warriors cried out as they fell to their deaths. Some got up and feebly began to crawl about, while reavers raced in and finished them.
Raj Ahten and his men neared the causeway, a ragged company of three hundred men and chargers. The knights’ mounts staggered about blindly, as if stricken, while a wall of blade-bearers charged to meet them.
Then the wind hit Roland with a vengeance. He felt the icy kiss as if it were fear itself, an unmanly fear that sent his heart racing and made him wish to hide. The smell of the air was like burning hair, but a hundred times more intense. A roaring sound raged in his ears, far louder than a thundering waterfall. His eyes burned painfully and, in that moment, everything went completely black.
Suddenly stricken blind, with a roaring like the sea blocking all sound, Roland cried out and clutched the battlements on the castle walls. A disorienting dizziness as sailed him, so that he grasped the wall but could not tell which way was up or down.
All about him, men began to scream in terror. “Help! I’m blind! Help!”
But there would be no help. Such was the power of the fell mage’s curse that Roland merely lay in terror, gasping great breaths, struggling to stay alive.
No wonder the reavers do not fear us! Roland thought.
His eyes burned as if a hot drink had scalded them, and the knotty cords within throbbed in pain. He gasped and wiped copious tears from his face. He felt utterly unmanned.
For a long minute he lay thus, until the hammering in his ears began to subside, and through his tears he could see the sun riding dim as the moon through the gray sky. He made it to his knees, peered through his blindness, blinking rapidly. Black clouds seemed to obscure all sight. All along the wall-walks, men around him huddled, wiping their faces, squinting to pierce the darkness.
In moments he realized that reavers must have reached the causeway, coming within artillery range. The marksmen called for the artillery to shoot, and from the castle walls men cut loose with ballistas. Loud whonk sounds filled the air as ropes thudded against the steel wings of the ballistas, then giant metal bolts whooshed through air, landing with loud whacks as the bolts pierced reavers’ carapaces.
Roland blinked into the gloom over the wall, until he could see reavers, gray shapes writhing in the dark. Raj Ahten’s cavalry looked as if it would be overwhelmed.
But Raj Ahten was no common lord, and his men were no common warriors. They’d recovered enough from the fell mage’s blast so that they could fight.
They charged manfully into the fray. Lances pierced reaver flesh. Horses screamed when blade-bearers slashed through them. Glory hammers rang against armor.
Dozens more reavers died in the onslaught as Raj Ahten tried to win his way back to Carris. Men with great endowments of brawn and metabolism leapt from dying mounts, charged into battle, long-handled horseman’s warhammers rising and falling, chopping into the thick skin of reavers.
At the ballistas on the castle wall, artillerymen shouted and struggled to rewind the winches that drew back the ropes on the enormous bows, while boys lifted the heavy bolts and slid them into their grooved channels.
Raj Ahten himself, the most powerful human lord, screamed a war cry that shook the castle, dislodging plaster from the outer walls. As the pain in his eyes eased, Roland could make out reavers falling back, briefly stunned by the sound, but then they attacked more fiercely, as if enraged.
Roland heard men shout in dismay; down at the Stone Shipyards, five dozen ships cobbled from rock and gluemum resin had been launched into the water.
They bore no sails, sported no oars. Instead, reavers thrust long steel war blades into the water, using weapons to row.
Roland blinked and fought back tears. The strange craft with their high prows looked like black halves of walnuts floating in a pond. Except that these ships raced toward him with reavers by the hundreds.
Terror seized him. He’d hoped that he would not have to face the enemy. He was on the south wall, after all, and everyone knew that reavers could not swim, but sank like stone.
Besides, he reasoned, the plaster walls of Carris were far too smooth for man or reaver to get a toe-hold, and though the plaster had been damaged, no one could hope to scale the walls.
He clutched his little half-sword, which had seemed adequate protection from highwaymen just two days ago, and wondered what use it would be in the battle to come.
It was folly for him to be here, folly for a commoner to fight a reaver.
Out on the causeway, Raj Ahten shouted again, hoping to stun the reavers. Roland glanced his way, saw that the reavers not only ignored his cry, but scurried toward him all the faster, as if recognizing that he was a threat.
“Get ready!” Baron Poll shouted. “Get ready!” Howlers began emitting their weird cries in an unearthly chorus.
Everywhere around Roland, men rushed to and fro, hoisting shields, grabbing battle-axes. Some men bellowed for Roland to move, and they came and perched a heavy stone on the merlon next to him, went back for another.
“Damn!” Roland found himself shouting excitedly for lack of anything else to say. “Damn!”
“Look,” some fellow behind him cried. “They’re at the gates!”
Roland glanced west. Blade-bearers rushed behind Raj Ahten’s retreat. They raced in before the gatekeepers could raise the drawbridges, and thus burst past the first two barbicans. Roland could not see if reavers made it into the castle proper, for the gate tower hid his view.
Again the fell mage atop Bone Hill raised her great staff to the sky, and the hissing roar issued from it. All along the castle walls, men cried out, for none wanted to be stricken by the fell mage’s curse again.
“Close your eyes! Cover your ears! Don’t breathe the fumes!” men shouted.
Roland glanced back, toward the gates, watched men fall as the reaver’s curse struck them down.
He crouched down by the wall, clutched his ears and squinted his eyes tightly, held his breath as the second curse washed over him.
It struck like thunder, and the cords in his eyes twitched despite his care. He dropped to the ground, kept his eyes closed for several long seconds, dared not unstop his ears.
To his relief, his efforts helped him somewhat. He felt no disorienting dizziness.
Roland opened his eyes, and though they burned painfully and his sight was somewhat dim, he was not completely blind. He found himself face-to-face with a lad who was so frightened that the boy seemed leached of blood. The boy’s teeth chattered, and Roland knew that he was too afraid to fight, that the boy would lie here and die in exactly this position.
And as he huddled by the wall, Roland also knew that the fell mage was uttering her curse in an effort to keep him from defending Carris.
Roland had always been a man that life happened to. He’d steered the course of his life by a plan that his parents had set out for him, responded to every prodding from his wife with a snarl of his own. He’d ridden north to find a son he’d never known, not because he felt much for the lad, but simply because he knew that it was the right thing to do.
Now he gritted his teeth, filled with regret for all that he’d never done, for all that he’d never be able to do. He’d promised to be a father to Averan, wanted to be a father to his son. Now he doubted that he would ever get that chance.
Either I can lie here and die like this dumb lad, or I can get up and fight! he thought.
He heard a thud as one of the odd stone ships below collided against the castle wall. He could wait no longer.
“Come on,” he growled to the frightened lad. “Let’s get up and die like men!” Roland rose, grabbing the boy and giving him a hand. He leaned between two merlons, tried to peer through foul vapors that made him weep uncontrollably.
A hundred feet below, a reaver ship nuzzled the walls of Carris. One monster thrust its huge claws into the wall of the castle, piercing the thick layer of white plaster that lay over the stone.
A crow went cawing just over Roland’s head as the reaver leapt from the ship. To Roland’s astonishment, the reaver thrust its great blade between its teeth, like a dog fetching a stick, and climbed upward, raking the walls with its enormous foreclaws.
We are all commoners on this wall, Roland thought. No man here could stand against a reaver, even if it was unarmed.
Behind Roland, someone shouted, “Get some pole-arms up here!” Shoving the monsters from the walls with pole arms sounded like a good plan, but there would be no time to fetch such weapons. Most of the halberds and falchions would be in use down below, by the castle gates.
Roland plunged his half-sword into its scabbard and grabbed for the huge stone nearby. He was a strong man, and large. But the stone he grabbed weighed upward of four hundred pounds.
With all his might, he strained to lift the damned boulder and drop it over the battlements.
It landed with a thud, hitting the reaver solidly on its eyeless head, some sixty feet below. The reaver halted for a second, stunned, and clung to the wall, as if it feared another rock.
But to Roland’s distress, the huge boulder was not enough to dislodge the beast from the castle. Instead it hooked the bonespurs at the juncture of each elbow into the stone and continued scrabbling more carefully. The bone spurs dug into the plaster, finding holds that no human could see.
Brotherhood of the Wolf Page 55