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Authors: David Farland

BOOK: Sons of the Oak
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THE CHARGE
Every man is born and every man dies. The important thing is to celebrate all of the moments in between.
 
—Hearthmaster Waggit
 
 
 
Asgaroth had hardly escaped into the woods when Chancellor Waggit brought his mounted troops onto the commons, just inside Castle Coorm. He knew that he would have to break the siege and send men into the woods to hunt Asgaroth's troops. But he dared not have his men charge into the darkness, and so he waited for dawn, a dawn that refused to come.
Instead, thick clouds drew across the heavens, like a slab of gray slate, blotting out the light. Sodden curtains of rain began to fall, adding to the gloom.
When dawn came, it seemed almost as dark as midnight, and the field was too muddy for the horses to make a safe charge.
But Waggit had no choice. He had to act soon. So he left three hundred men to guard the castle walls, and let the drawbridge fall amid the rattle of chains and the groaning of hinges.
Then a thousand lancers rode out in an ordered line, the horses walking slowly, followed by two thousand archers with their steel bows.
The air was thick with water. It caught in the lungs and ran down the back of one's throat.
Sounds became elusive. The creaking of leather, the plod of horses' hooves, muffled coughs, the soft clanking of oiled armor beneath surcoats—all such sounds seemed to become elusive, like rabbits leaping through the brush from the beagles, their white tails flashing as they dodged through tufts of gorse.
And so the lancers took to the gray field, and the archers marched out behind them.
Off in the distance, up the gentle rolling hills of the village, warhorns blew, and through a curtain of rain Waggit could make out the shadows of men flitting away from stone cottages, racing behind high hedges toward the woods.
Waggit chuckled. Asgaroth's men had no stomach for a fight, he could see. They would make a hunt of it, their men fading into the trees and sniping with arrows from thickets where the horses could not charge.
There would be no easy way to get to them. The sodden weather wouldn't allow him to put fire to the woods.
So, he told himself, we'll hunt them, man to man.
Waggit suspected that his men outnumbered Asgaroth's, but he couldn't be certain.
He'd see their number soon enough.
He raised his horn to his lips. It was an ancient thing; the ebony mouthpiece smelled of lacquer, sour ale, and the previous owner's rotting teeth. He blew with his might, a long wailing burst that made the horn tremble beneath his palm.
His troops began advancing slowly, and suddenly the rain pelted, becoming a gray veil that blocked out the hills ahead.
Riding forward, Waggit turned his mount, sent the charge south, and hurried his pace, racing blind, his horse's hooves churning up mud.
He was alone with his thoughts, and fear rose to his throat. He would be glad when this day was done, glad to ride home to his wife and sit beside a roaring fire with his daughter on his knee. He conjured a scene where Farion giggled as he sang to her and fried hazelnuts in butter and sea salt over the open hearth, while their yellow kitten crept about, trying to see what they were up to.
That is the way it will be, he thought.
He could not face any other alternative.
And all too soon, they came out of the rain. Ahead lay a stone fence, with a high hedge that blocked his way to the right and left; barring the road ahead was an old sheep gate made of wooden poles. Beyond, a lonely-looking road stretched through sodden woods.
Asgaroth's soldiers guarded the road. Waggit could see warriors of Internook hunching down behind the gate in their sealskin coats, horned helms making them look laughably like cattle, their huge battle-axes at the ready.
Others hid behind the stone fence to the right and left of the gate, their bows drawn.
“Clear them out!” Waggit shouted to his men. “Clear them out!”
Holding a shield in his left hand, and a black lance in the crook of his right arm, he nodded sharply so that the visor of his helm dropped. He spurred his mount.
Arrows began flying past as he raced toward the gate. One blurred toward his chest, and only luck let him angle his shield to catch it on the edge, sending it ricocheting into the sky. Another glanced off of his epaulet, and a third struck his mount near the throat, shattering in the barding, and the broken shaft went flying into his leg.
Waggit heard horses scream and men grunt in surprise behind him as arrows took them.
Then his own archers began firing back, sending a hail that blackened the skies.
Ahead, some of the axmen roared in anger as arrows plunged into them. Waggit saw one huge axman, his golden hair flowing down his shoulders in braids, pull an arrow from his gut, shake it in the air, then lick the blood from it, as if to mock the attacker's petty efforts. At the last, he bit the arrow in two and spat it out, then shouldered his ax, eyes blazing as he held his post.
That man is mine, Waggit thought.
His horse was charging directly toward the fearsome warrior.
He'll cut my mount's belly open when it tries to leap the fence, Waggit thought. That's what he's after.
But Waggit had a lance in his hand, a cold wet lance that was growing slippery in the rain. He gripped it tightly, tried to steady his aim as he squatted low.
Suddenly Waggit became aware of a dozen riders thundering at his side and behind him. The riders on the left held their shields in the left hands, while those to the right shielded the right. Thus they rode in a shield wall to meet their destiny.
And suddenly Waggit's horse was leaping in the air to clear the gate, and his own lance was aimed at the warlord's head.
The warlord grinned, bloody teeth flashing, and tried to duck and swing his ax all in one swift motion, aiming to disembowel Waggit's leaping mount.
But Waggit quickly dropped the point of the lance, taking the warlord in the face.
As the metal point of his lance bit into flesh, snicked through bone, and clove through the warlord's skull, Waggit shouted, “Chew on this!”
Then the weight of the carcass dragged the lance from Waggit's hand and he was over the wall. His horse hit the muddy road and went down, sliding.
Arrows whipped overhead and one snapped into Waggit's helm.
The other horsemen were coming, and Waggit realized that their mounts would trample him to death if he didn't get out of the way.
Waggit tried to leap from his own saddle and pull out his saber as the horse skidded.
He hit the ground and went down, skidding as he fell, realizing too late that the enemy troops had trampled this part of the road and peed on it, turning it into a muddy brew, all in an effort to slow just such a charge.
He heard other horses falling behind him, and he had the good sense to try to get out of their way.
Keeping his shield high, Waggit tried to leap up, but found himself scrambling and crawling through the mud toward the safety of a beech tree. Another horse fell behind Waggit, clipped his leg, and sent him sprawling backward.
A swordsman of Ahshoven, in battle armor as gray as the rain, raced up toward Waggit, intent on dealing a death blow, his breath fogging the air around his black beard, and all that Waggit could do was to raise his sword and parry feebly.
But suddenly a horseman came thundering down the road, and a lance struck the swordsman in the gut, lifting him from his feet.
So powerful was the grip of the lancer that the man was borne away, his face a mask of shock and regret, until the lancer deigned to hurl him and his lance aside.
Waggit whirled and searched for more attackers.
But Waggit was a scholar more than a warrior, and better fighters with grand endowments of brawn and metabolism were already ahead of him, masters of the slaughter. Asgaroth's troops were no match.
Waggit saw that there had only been a hundred men or so at the gates, hardly enough to slow his troops, much less stop them. And now they were
running along the hedgerow, heading toward the wooded hills, hoping to escape.
Waggit suddenly became aware of a sharp pain in his leg, a pinching sensation.
Reaching down near his crotch, Waggit felt the broken shaft of the arrow that had pierced his thigh. In the heat of battle, he'd forgotten about it.
He pulled, felt a sharp pain as the bodkin came clear. The arrowhead was not a broad tip, thankfully. Such a blade would have been likely to sever an artery. Instead it was long and sharp, like a nail, meant to pierce armor.
He peered down at his wound. Blood wasn't pumping out. The shaft had missed the artery. He licked the tip of the arrowhead, in mockery of the enemy warriors that were dying on the battlefield, and tasted the salt of his own hot blood. He hurled the broken arrow to his feet, where he crushed it in the mud.
Then he pulled out his kerchief and tied it around his leg. The best thing that he could do now was to apply some steady pressure. And what better way to apply pressure than to sit on the back of a horse? he wondered.
His mind clouded by the haze of battle, he decided to ride on, to let the wound close even as he tracked down and slaughtered Asgaroth's scouts.
MISTRESS OF THE HUNT
In a good battle, every man is a hunter and every man is hunted.
 
—Sir Borenson
 
 
 
Iome listened for sounds of pursuit, but the burble and rush of the river as it flowed among stones and hanging branches masked everything. She relied upon her several endowments of hearing as she listened for pursuit, but the only sounds that came to her were the wind hissing through trees, the occasional water rat rustling among the reeds at the water's edge, the cries of burrow owls hunting on the wing, and, at last, the soft snoring of the children in their little shelter.
The miles flowed past, and with each mile traveled, Iome rested a little easier.
Overhead, a storm brewed, heavy clouds scudding in from the west, blotting out the stars. The air was heavy, but not with the familiar taste of fog. Instead when Iome breathed, it came in sickly and smothering, so that she found herself gasping for breath like a fish out of water.
A wind suddenly rushed up the canyon, and the boughs of pine trees bobbed and swayed while dried cattail reeds along the bank gave a death rattle.
Myrrima glanced back at Iome, worry on her brow.
There are other Powers at work here, Iome realized. Perhaps Asgaroth is sending the wind to blow the mist off the river. Or perhaps he has other purposes in mind.
For a long while, the storm built, layer after layer adding to the clouds, and the night grew bleaker. Then lightning began to sizzle across the sky, green as an old bruise, and a drear rain simmered over the water and pooled in the hull of the boat.
As Iome poled at the rudder, her robes turning into a sopping weight, she heard the first of the warhorns blow, soft and distant, like the braying of a donkey. They were too deep of timbre to be horns of Mystarria.
Asgaroth.
Upstream behind them.
Someone had found the dead strengi-saats in the shallows, and now they called to other hunters.
For the next long hour, the horns continued to draw nearer. Ten miles back. Six miles. Three.
The steep banks and thick growth along the river seemed not to slow their pursuers. The hunters had to be on foot, but they were men with endowments of brawn and metabolism and stamina, so that they could run faster than a normal man, faster even than the swift current that bore the little boat along at perhaps eight miles per hour here in the hills.
But the longboat would soon be heading into deep valleys where the water grew sluggish and the pursuers' path would grow easy.
Iome looked down to Myrrima and Hadissa. Both of them had endowments of hearing. They too had heard the pursuers and thus held worry on their brows.
“Pull close to shore,” Hadissa whispered at last as he reached into a rucksack and drew out his weapons. He held a strange assortment—throwing darts like small daggers, their blades green with poison from the malefactor bush; a garrote woven of golden threads; a curved steel club; a horn bow that would quickly lose its strength in the damp woods. He attached the darts to his belt, looped the garrote around his waist, and otherwise armed himself for stealthy battle.
He hesitated at the horn bow. He dared not remove such a fine weapon from its oilskin case, let it be ruined. The glue that bound the layers of ox-horn in it would turn to mush in a matter of hours.
But he was in great need. At last, he took it, still in its oilskin, along with two quivers of arrows.
Iome steered the boat close to a rock.
“Want help?” she asked.
She feared that Hadissa was on a suicide mission. He might be the most dangerous man alive, but even he could not hope to defeat Asgaroth's army.
He smiled, a show of bravery. “It is time to repay an old debt.”
Iome nodded. Years ago, assassins from Indhopal had killed her husband's mother, brother, and two sisters. It was only by luck that Gaborn had escaped that night, for he'd sneaked down to the garden to play with the wild ferrins.
Thus, Hadissa had missed killing the child who would grow up to become the Earth King.
When Gaborn met Hadissa again, years later, he'd looked into Hadissa's heart and seen what he had done.
It was devastating. Yet in the world of the Runelords, an assassin's trade was considered necessary. Some even thought it honorable. So Gaborn forgave Hadissa and Chose him under one condition: that from henceforth Hadissa would guard the family he had once tried to wipe out.
Now, Hadissa would seek to redeem himself.
“The fog will hide you, so long as the wind doesn't pick up too much more,” Myrrima whispered. She knelt and reached into the water, brought up a handful, and sprinkled it upon him. “Blessed be your blades. May they strike true against Asgaroth and all enemies of Water.”
Hadissa bowed in token of his thanks for the blessing. Then with the grace of a deer he leapt from the boat and landed upon a rock. He squatted for a moment, perfectly still, like a dark cat, listening.
Then he leapt under the shadows of a pine bough, and Iome could see or hear him no more.
He will take a mighty toll, Iome assured herself as the boat flowed inexorably on.
The boat rounded a corner, and spanning above the river ahead was a land bridge, a huge natural arch of stone, with pine trees growing atop it, green ferns clinging to its side, and vines hanging toward the water. There were huge stones in the river beneath it, and the river split. There was a dark V of water, and the roaring of rapids beyond. This bridge was called Eiderstoffen, and not far below it, the river came out of the mountains and dumped into a broad plain. There the river slowed, flowed into the warmer waters of the River Dwindell, and meandered; once they reached that junction, though they were but fifty miles from the seacoast and the castle at the Courts of Tide, it would take many hours for their little boat to reach safe harbor.
Our enemies will be upon us well before then, Iome knew, and mentally
she prepared herself for her death, for she suspected that she would not be able to buy her son safe passage with anything less.
The boat raced toward the archway under the stones, and Iome suspected that Myrrima would turn and ask if they should beach the boat, carry it around the rapids, but Myrrima did not turn. She aimed the prow into the darkest V of water, and the boat rushed through it, then suddenly dropped and lofted again as they hit white water.
Overhead, as they passed under the land bridge, hundreds of swallows' nests could be seen, smears of white mud and twigs against the darker stone.
Then they rode through, and Iome saw a bit of snow in the branches of trees. But as the boat drew near them, the snow suddenly lifted, and white birds flew in a miraculous cloud that took her breath away. Snow doves, they were called. They must have come down from the mountains, where they fed on pine nuts and other seeds at the snow line.
For a long minute, she watched their white wings against the deep gray clouds as the flock veered this way and that. It seemed to Iome to be the most beautiful sight that she had ever seen.
The river twisted ahead, and white water roared and foamed over rocks everywhere. For several long moments the boat rocked, and some of the children cried out as it bucked.
Plumes of water surged over the gunwales.
The boat hit a submerged rock; boards cracked under the impact.
Then it slewed through swift water, around a second bend, and they rushed out of the hills and could see only plains ahead.
The boat hit the slow waters, and Iome spotted a small cottage high up on the banks, its stone walls and heavy thatch roof hidden behind a screen of cattails. A child's rope swing hung beneath an elm that leaned out over the river, and a small fishing boat was perched on the shore.
But the sight of a peasant's cottage offered no comfort. With a cottage near, Iome knew, a road will run beside the river. Our pursuers will make even better time.
The sounds of rapids faded.
For twenty minutes they rode the slow river. Around every bend she feared that Asgaroth's troops would meet them. But she saw nothing, and she realized that Hadissa, brave Hadissa, was indeed holding back an army.
For twenty minutes more they traveled. She heard a horn again, not more than two miles back, high and clear—a horn of Mystarria.
Fierce braying answered from deeper horns.
“The battle is joined,” Sir Borenson said, grasping his warhammer and staring back longingly. “Waggit's men have finally arrived.”
“One can hope,” Iome said.
In the slow water, they rode along, fully exposed.
Iome watched behind. The cottage faded away, but before they rounded a wide corner, Iome saw dark figures running along the riverbank, flashing through trees.
The boat rounded the corner. For a few seconds their pursuers would be hidden.
My turn, Iome thought as she quietly took her long sword and leapt from the boat. The water was shallow, no more than three feet deep, and numbingly cold. Iome landed a dozen yards from shore, then waded in among some cattails and crept up on a bank thick with moss.
Overhead, the skies were cold and gray. Rain fell. The thin mist that had been on the water all morning held. Iome knew that her hunters would be blinded by it.
She quietly crept up to the top of the riverbank and took a post behind a tree, waiting. She did not have to wait long.
Several fat axmen from Internook came huffing along the river at three times a normal man's speed.
Fast, she told herself, but not as fast as me.
Iome glimpsed them through the branches, then hid herself for a moment.
She had ten endowments of metabolism, three times as much as these men. They could not hope to match her speed. And suddenly the endowments that had been sending her racing headlong toward her death for these nine years became an asset, here at the end of her life.
When the axmen drew even with her tree, she leapt in front of them; their eyes went wide with shock when they saw her suddenly rush toward them from the mist.
They tried to halt, tried to raise their weapons. One man cried, “Och!” But with greater speed, Iome dodged their blows and with three quick slices took their heads off.
The bodies were still falling when she whirled and raced along the riverbank, following the boat. She remained in the brush along the riverside, but now the land around them opened up into fields for cattle to forage, and there was little cover at all.
In the morning, she raced through a meadow, where cottontail rabbits held as still as stone, ears pricked up, water sparkling in their fur as she passed. A pair of grouse leapt up from a bush, their wings thundering, and in seeming slow motion they winged over Iome's head.
I am a ghost in the mist, she thought. I am fleet and fierce and untouchable.
Then she heard shouting on the river, and whirled to glance behind her. Just then, the heavens shook and lightning arced from horizon to horizon, and a fierce wind rumbled through the trees, making proud elms bow before it while drier grasses were knocked flat.
Asgaroth, Iome realized. He is blowing the fog away.
There was a shout from the river, and Iome saw that the wind had shoved the boat against the far bank, and now it was stuck there, lodged between two rocks.
Iome looked back upstream, saw dark figures racing through the trees along the bank. She dropped to her belly and eeled through a patch of tall meadow grass toward the boat, then lay concealed behind a fallen log.
Get Asgaroth, she told herself, and the rest will flee. He's all that matters.

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