3-Brisingr-3 (46 page)

And then what?
asked Saphira.
How could we keep them as prisoners? Would you drug them like
Durza drugged you in Gil’ead? Or do you just want to kill them?

I don’t know! We could help them to change their true names, to break their oaths to Galbatorix.

Letting them wander around unchecked, though, is too dangerous.

Arya said,
In theory, you are right, Eragon, but you are tired, Saphira is tired, and I would rather
Thorn and Murtagh escape than we lose the two of you because you were not at your best.

But—

But we do not have the capabilities to safely detain a dragon and Rider for an extended period,
and I do not think killing Thorn and Murtagh would be as easy as you assume, Eragon. Be
grateful we have driven them off, and rest easy knowing we can do so again when next they dare
to confront us.
So saying, she withdrew from his mind.

Eragon watched until Thorn and Murtagh had vanished from sight, then he sighed and rubbed Saphira’s neck.
I could sleep for a fortnight.

As could I.

You should be proud; you outflew Thorn at nearly every turn.

Yes, I did, didn’t I?
She preened.
It was hardly a fair competition. Thorn does not have my
experience.

Nor your talent, I should think.

Twisting her neck, she licked the upper part of his right arm, the mail hauberk tinkling, and then gazed down at him with sparkling eyes.

He managed a ghost of a smile.
I suppose I should have expected it, but it still surprised me that
Murtagh was as fast as me. More magic on the part of Galbatorix, no doubt
.

Why did your wards fail to deflect Zar’roc, though? They saved you from worse blows when we
fought the Ra’zac.

I’m not sure. Murtagh or Galbatorix might have invented a spell I had not thought to guard
against. Or it could just be that Zar’roc is a Rider’s blade, and as Glaedr said—

—the swords Rhunön forged excel at—

—cutting through enchantments of every kind, and—

—it is only rarely they are—

—affected by magic. Exactly
. Eragon stared at the streaks of dragon blood on the flat of the falchion, weary.
When will we be able to defeat our enemies on our own? I couldn’t have killed Durza if
Arya hadn’t broken the star sapphire. And we were only able to prevail over Murtagh and Thorn
with the help of Arya and twelve others
.

We must become more powerful.

Yes, but how? How has Galbatorix amassed his strength? Has he found a way to feed off the
bodies of his slaves even when he is hundreds of miles away? Garr! I don’t know.

A runnel of sweat coursed down Eragon’s brow and into the corner of his right eye. He wiped off the perspiration with the palm of his hand, then blinked and again noticed the horsemen gathered around him and Saphira.
What are they doing here?
Looking beyond, he realized Saphira had landed close to where King Orrin had intercepted the soldiers from the boats. Not far off to her left, hundreds of men, Urgals, and horses milled about in panic and confusion. Occasionally, the clatter of swords or the scream of a wounded man broke through the uproar, accompanied by snatches of demented laughter.

I think they are here to protect us,
said Saphira.

Us! From what? Why haven’t they killed the soldiers yet? Where
—Eragon abandoned his question as Arya, Blödhgarm, and four other haggard-looking elves sprinted up to Saphira from the direction of the camp. Raising a hand in greeting, Eragon called, “Arya! What’s happened? No one seems to be in command.”

To Eragon’s alarm, Arya was breathing so hard, she was unable to speak for a few moments. Then:

“The soldiers proved more dangerous than we anticipated. We do not know how. Du Vrangr Gata has heard nothing but gibberish from Orrin’s spellcasters.” Regaining her breath, Arya started examining Saphira’s cuts and bruises.

Before Eragon could ask more, a collection of excited cries from within the maelstrom of warriors drowned out the rest of the tumult, and he heard King Orrin shout, “Back, back, all of you! Archers, hold the line! Blast you, no one move, we have him!”

Saphira had the same thought as Eragon. Gathering her legs under her, she leaped over the ring of horsemen—startling the horses so they bucked and ran—and made her way across the corpsestrewn battlefield toward the sound of King Orrin’s voice, brushing aside men and Urgals alike as if they were so many stalks of grass. The rest of the elves hurried to keep up, swords and bows in hand.

Saphira found Orrin sitting on his charger at the leading edge of the tightly packed warriors, staring at a lone man forty feet away. The king was flushed and wild-eyed, his armor besmirched with filth from combat. He had been wounded under his left arm, and the shaft of a spear protruded several inches from his right thigh. When Saphira’s approach caught his attention, his face registered sudden relief.

“Good, good, you’re here,” he muttered as Saphira crawled abreast of his charger. “We needed you, Saphira, and you, Shade slayer.” One of the archers edged forward a few inches. Orrin waved his sword at him and yelled, “Back! I’ll have the head of anyone who doesn’t remain where he is, I swear by Angvard’s crown!” Then Orrin resumed glaring at the lone man.

Eragon followed his gaze. The man was a soldier of medium height, with a purple birthmark on his neck and brown hair plastered flat by the helmet he had been wearing. His shield was a splintered ruin. His sword was notched, bent, and broken, missing the last six inches. River mud caked his mail hose. Blood sheeted from a gash along his ribs. An arrow fletched with white swan feathers had impaled his right foot and pinned it to the ground, three-quarters of the shaft buried in the hard dirt. From the man’s throat, a horrid gurgling laugh emanated. It rose and fell with a drunken cadence, pitching from note to note as if the man were about to begin shrieking with horror.

“What are you?” shouted King Orrin. When the soldier did not immediately respond, the king cursed and said, “Answer me, or I’ll let my spellcasters at you. Be you man or beast or some ill-spawned demon? In what foul pit did Galbatorix find you and your brothers? Are you kin of the Ra’zac?”

The king’s last question acted like a needle driven into Eragon; he straightened bolt upright, every sense tingling.

The laughter paused for a moment. “Man. I am a man.”

“You are like no man I know.”

“I wanted to assure the future of my family. Is that so foreign to you, Surdan?”

“Give me no riddles, you fork-tongued wretch! Tell me how you became as you are, and speak honestly, lest you convince me to pour boiling lead down your throat and see if
that
pains you.”

The unbalanced chuckles intensified, then the soldier said, “You cannot hurt me, Surdan. No one can.

The king himself made us impervious to pain. In return, our families will live in comfort for the rest of their lives. You can hide from us, but we will never stop pursuing you, even when ordinary men would drop dead from exhaustion. You can fight us, but we will continue killing you as long as we have an arm to swing. You cannot even surrender to us, for we take no prisoners. You can do nothing but die and return this land to peace.”

With a gruesome grimace, the soldier wrapped his mangled shield hand around the arrow and, with the sound of tearing flesh, pulled the shaft out of his foot. Lumps of crimson meat clung to the arrowhead as it came free. The soldier shook the arrow at them, then threw the missile at one of the archers, wounding him in the hand. His laugh louder than ever, the soldier lurched forward, dragging his injured foot behind him. He raised his sword, as if he intended to attack.

“Shoot him!” shouted Orrin.

Bowstrings twanged like badly tuned lutes, then a score of spinning arrows leaped toward the soldier and, an instant later, struck him in the torso. Two of the arrows bounced off his gambeson; the remainder penetrated his rib cage. His laughter reduced to a wheezing chuckle as blood seeped into his lungs, the soldier continued moving forward, painting the grass underneath him bright scarlet. The archers shot again, and arrows sprouted from the man’s shoulders and arms, but he did not stop. Another volley of arrows followed close upon the last. The soldier stumbled and fell as an arrow split his left kneecap and others skewered his upper legs and one passed entirely through his neck—punching a hole in his birthmark—and whistled out across the field, trailing a spray of blood. And still the soldier refused to die.

He began to crawl, dragging himself forward with his arms, grinning and giggling as if the whole world were an obscene joke that only he could appreciate.

A cold tingle shivered down Eragon’s spine as he watched.

King Orrin swore violently, and Eragon detected a hint of hysteria in his voice. Jumping off his charger, Orrin threw his sword and his shield into the dirt and then pointed at the nearest Urgal. “Give me your ax.” Startled, the gray-skinned Urgal hesitated, then surrendered his weapon.

King Orrin limped over to the soldier, raised the heavy ax with both hands, and, with a single blow, chopped off the soldier’s head.

The giggling ceased.

The soldier’s eyes rolled and his mouth worked for another few seconds, and then he was still.

Orrin grasped the head by the hair and lifted it so all could see. “They
can
be killed,” he declared.

“Spread the word that the only sure way of stopping these abominations is to behead them. That or bash in their skulls with a mace or shoot them in the eye from a safe distance. . . . Graytooth, where are you?”

A stout, middle-aged horseman urged his mount forward. Orrin threw him the head, which he caught.

“Mount that on a pole by the north gate of the camp. Mount
all
of their heads. Let them serve as a message to Galbatorix that we do not fear his underhanded tricks and we shall prevail in spite of them.”

Striding back to his charger, Orrin returned the ax to the Urgal, then picked up his own weapons.

A few yards away, Eragon spotted Nar Garzhvog standing among a cluster of Kull. Eragon spoke a few words to Saphira, and she sidled over to the Urgals. After exchanging nods, Eragon asked Garzhvog,

“Were all the soldiers like that?” He gestured toward the arrow-riddled corpse.

“All men with no pain. You hit them and you think them dead, turn your back and they hamstring you.”

Garzhvog scowled. “I lost many rams today. We have fought droves of humans, Firesword, but never before these laughing ghouls. It is not natural. It makes us think they are possessed by hornless spirits, that maybe the gods themselves have turned against us.”

“Nonsense,” scoffed Eragon. “It is merely a spell by Galbatorix, and we shall soon have a way to protect ourselves against it.” Notwithstanding his outer confidence, the concept of fighting enemies who felt no pain unsettled him as much as it did the Urgals. Moreover, from what Garzhvog had said, he guessed that maintaining morale among the Varden was going to be even more difficult for Nasuada once everyone learned about the soldiers.

While the Varden and the Urgals set about collecting their fallen comrades, stripping the dead of useful equipment, and beheading the soldiers and dragging their truncated bodies into piles to burn, Eragon, Saphira, and King Orrin returned to the camp, accompanied by Arya and the other elves.

Along the way, Eragon offered to heal Orrin’s leg, but the king refused, saying, “I have my own physicians, Shadeslayer.”

Nasuada and Jörmundur were waiting for them by the north gate. Accosting Orrin, Nasuada said,

“What went wrong?”

Eragon closed his eyes as Orrin explained how at first the attack on the soldiers had seemed to go well.

The horsemen had swept through their ranks, dealing what they had thought were death blows left and right, and had suffered only one casualty during their charge. When they had engaged the remaining soldiers, however, many of those they had struck down before rose up and rejoined the fight. Orrin shuddered. “We lost our nerve then. Any man would have. We did not know if the soldiers were invincible, or if they were even men at all. When you see an enemy coming at you with bone sticking out of his calf, a javelin through his belly, and half his face sheared away, and he
laughs
at you, it’s a rare man who can stand his ground. My warriors panicked. They broke formation. It was utter confusion.

Slaughter. When the Urgals and your warriors, Nasuada, reached us, they became caught up in the madness.” He shook his head. “I’ve never seen the like of it, not even on the Burning Plains.”

Nasuada’s face had grown pale, even with her dark skin. She looked at Eragon and then Arya. “How could Galbatorix have done this?”

It was Arya who answered, “Block most, but not all, of a person’s ability to feel pain. Leave just enough sensation so they know where they are and what they are doing, but not so much that pain can incapacitate them. The spell would require only a small amount of energy.”

Nasuada wet her lips. Again speaking to Orrin, she said, “Do you know how many we lost?”

A tremor racked Orrin. He doubled over, pressed a hand against his leg, gritted his teeth, and growled,

“Three hundred soldiers against . . . What was the size of the force you sent?”

“Two hundred swordsmen. A hundred spearmen. Fifty archers.”

“Those, plus the Urgals, plus my cavalry . . . Say around a thousand strong. Against three hundred foot soldiers on an open field. We slew every last one of the soldiers. What it cost us, though . . .” The king shook his head. “We won’t know for sure until we count the dead, but it looked to me as if three-quarters of your swordsmen are gone. More of the spearmen. Some archers. Of my cavalry, few remain: fifty, seventy. Many of them were my friends. Perhaps a hundred, a hundred and fifty Urgals dead. Overall? Five or six hundred to bury, and the better part of the survivors wounded. I don’t know .