The RuneLords (42 page)

Raj Ahten stood above his dead Invincible, fists clenched. Downhill, his army marched for Longmont, archers running the winding road, their colored tunics making them look like a golden snake twisting through a black forest.

Chancellor Jureem knelt over the fallen soldier, robes smudged, studying tracks in the ashes. It took no skill to see what had happened: One man. One man slew his master's Invincible, then stole his horse, rode off with Gaborn, King Sylvarresta, and his daughter. Jureem recognized the dead mare on the ground nearby. It had been ridden by Orden's surly messenger.

The sight sickened him. If a few more soldiers had kept up the chase, Gaborn would surely have fallen into their hands.

"There are but five of them," Feykaald said. "Heading cross-country, rather than over the road. We could send trackers--a dozen or so, but with Orden's soldiers in the wood, perhaps we should just let them go..."

Raj Ahten licked his lips. Jureem saw that Feykaald couldn't even count. Only four people were heading over the trail. His master had lost two scouts to Gaborn already, along with war dogs, giants, a pyromancer--and now an Invincible. Prince Orden looked to be not much more than a boy, but Jureem began to wonder if he had secretly taken a great number of endowments.

Raj Ahten's men had misjudged King Orden's whelp far too often. From the mounts he'd chosen, it appeared Gaborn would head into the woods, shun the highway.

But why? Because he wanted to lead Raj Ahten into a trap? Did the boy have soldiers hidden in the forest?

Or did he merely fear to travel by road? Raj Ahten had a few powerful force horses left in his retinue. Fine horses, bred for the plains and the desert, each with a lineage that went back a thousand years. Perhaps the lad knew his mounts could not outrun the Wolf Lord's horses over even ground.

But Gaborn's mountain hunters, running without armor, with their thick bones and strong hindquarters, would be almost impossible to catch in this terrain. Jureem suspected that Gaborn and Iome would know these woods far better than even the most informed spy.

Jureem drew a ragged breath, calculating how many men to send. Gaborn Val Orden would make a fine hostage, if the Wolf Lord found things at Longmont to be as he suspected.

Though the woods were silent, little more than an hour ago Jureem had heard Orden's war horns blow in the Dunnwood.

In all likelihood, Gaborn had already gained the company of Orden's soldiers, was surrounded by hundreds of guards. Yet...he could not just let Gaborn go. At the thought of Gaborn escaping, a rage burned in Jureem. Mindless, seething.

"We should send men to find the boy," Jureem counseled. "Perhaps a hundred of our best scouts?"

Raj Ahten straightened his back. "No. Get twenty of my best Invincibles, and strip their horses of armor. I'll also want twenty mastiffs to track the Prince."

"As you wish, milord," Jureem said, turning away, as if to shout the orders down to the army that marched below. But a thought hit him. "Which of your captains shall lead?"

"I'll be the captain," Raj Ahten, said. "Hunting the Prince should prove an interesting diversion."

Jureem glanced at him sideways, raising a single dark brow. He bowed slightly, in acquiescence. "Do you think it wise, milord? Others could hunt him. Even I will come." The thought of such a ride, of the pain his buttocks would have to endure, gave Jureem pause.

"Others might hunt him," Raj Ahten said, "but none as tenaciously as I."

The road to Longmont turned muddy in the late morning as storms rolled across the sky. King Orden raced south all the way to the village of Hayworth, a distance of ninety-eight miles. It was a peaceful town spread along the banks of the River Dwindell, a village with a small mill. Green hills rolled as far south as one could see, each hill covered in broad oaks.

People here led a quiet life. Most were coopers who made barrels for wine and grain. In the spring, when the river swelled in flood, one could often see men on rafts made from hundreds of barrels all tied together, floating their goods down to market.

It displeased Mendellas Orden to have to burn the bridge. He'd stopped here often in his journeys, savoring the fine ale brewed in the Dwindell Inn, which sat beside the bridge on a promontory, overlooking the river.

But by the time Orden reached town, rain had soaked the bridge. Great rolling drops pelted his troops, dripped between the cracks of the four-inch planks. His men tried to light a fire where berry vines grew thick beneath the north end of the bridge. But the banks of the river were steep and the road sloped so that water draining down the street became a veritable creek.

Orden had supposed a couple of well-oiled torches would do the job, but even they proved to be of little use.

Orden was cursing his fortune when a couple of local boys pulled the innkeeper, old Stevedore Hark, out of the inn. Orden had been blessed by this man's hospitality many times.

"Here, here, Your Highness, what are you and your men about?" the innkeeper said in a belligerent tone, waddling down the street. Orden's fifteen hundred troops seemed not to alarm the innkeeper in the least. He was a heavy man in baggy pants, an apron over his broad belly. His fat face showed red beneath his graying beard, and rain streamed over his cheeks. "I fear we must burn your bridge," Orden answered. "Raj Ahten will come down the highway tonight. I can't have him on my tail. I'll gladly reimburse the town for the inconvenience."

"Oh, I don't think you'll burn that bridge any time soon," the innkeeper laughed. "Perhaps you'd better come in and have a drink. I can get you and some of your captains a nice stew, if you don't mind a thin broth."

"Why won't it burn?" King Orden asked.

"Magic," the innkeeper said. "Lightning struck it fifteen years back, burned it to the ground. So when we built it back again, we had a water wizard put a spell on it. Fire won't hold to that wood."

Orden stood in the pouring rain, and the innkeeper's words took the heart from him. If he had had his own water wizard, he could easily have countered the spell. But he had no water wizard here. The way the rain was falling, perhaps the bridge could not be burned anyway.

"We'll have to chop it through then," Orden said.

"Here now," the innkeeper grumbled, "no call for that. If you want the bridge down, pull it down, but leave the planks so we can build it back again, after tomorrow. We can store them over in the mill."

Orden considered his proposition. Stevedore Hark was more than the innkeeper, Orden recalled. He was also the mayor, a man with a keen eye for business. The bridge was made of huge planks, bored and doweled together. Three stone pillars planted in River Dwindell held the bridge. Pulling the bridge down piece by piece would take a bit longer, but with fifteen hundred men to perform the labor, it would come down fast enough. The Powers knew that even his force horses needed to rest.

There was also a matter of friendship. Orden could not easily destroy the man's bridge. If he did, on the next trip through the town, he'd find that the ale had somehow all gone to vinegar. "I'd thank you to get me some dinner, then, my old friend," Orden said, "while we hide the bridge for you."

The bargain was struck.

While the rain poured and his men worked, Orden went into the Dwindell Inn, and sat brooding before a huge fire in the hearth.

He'd been promised a quick dinner of undercooked stew, but half an hour later, the master of the inn himself brought out some bread pudding and a warmed joint of pork--from one of the great boars that made hunting in the Dunnwood famous. The meat smelled delicious, sprinkled with pepper and rosemary, marinated in dark beer, then baked on a bed of carrots, wild mushrooms, and hazelnuts. It tasted as fine as it smelled.

And of course, it was strictly illegal. Commoners were not allowed to hunt the King's boars; Stevedore Hark could have been whipped for doing so.

The meat was a fine and fitting gift. Though Hark had obviously hoped to lift Orden's spirits, his kind gesture had the opposite effect, throwing Orden into a dire melancholy that made him sit beside the fire, stroking his beard with his fingers, wondering at his own plans.

How many times had he eaten at this inn on his trips to visit Sylvarresta? How often had he feasted on the bounty of these woods? How often had he thrilled to the baying of the hounds as they chased the great boars, taken joy in the toss of the javelin as he rode a pig down?

The innkeeper's hospitality, the fineness of the meal, somehow made King Orden feel...desolate.

Five years past, while Mendellas Orden hunted here, an assassin had broken into his keep, had slain his wife in her bed, with a newborn babe. It had been only six months since two daughters died in a previous attack. The murder of King Orden's wife and babe sparked outrage. Yet the killer was never apprehended. Trackers followed his trail, lost the assassin in the mountains south of Mystarria. He could have been escaping southeast into Inkarra, or he could have headed southwest to Indhopal.

Orden had guessed Indhopal or Muyyatin. But he could not have struck out blindly at his neighbors, without proof.

So he'd waited, and waited, for assassins to strike again, to come for him personally.

They never did.

Orden had lost a part of himself, he knew. He'd lost his wife, the one love of his life. He'd never remarried, planned never to remarry. If one cannot replace a lost hand or a leg, how can one hope to replace half of himself?

For years now, he'd acutely felt the pain. With so many endowments of wit, he could perfectly recall her tone of voice, her face. In his dreams Corette yet walked and spoke with him. Often when he woke on a cold winter's morning, he felt surprised to find that her soft flesh was not cupping him, trying to drink his warmth, the way she had when still alive.

He found it hard to describe the sense of loss he felt. King Orden had once tried to express it to himself.

He did not feel that he had lost his future, that his life was at an end.

His son was his future. King Orden would continue, go on without his wife, if the Powers so willed it.

Nor did he feel he had lost his past, for Orden could remember perfectly the taste of Corette's kisses on the night of their wedding, the way she cried in joy when she first suckled Gaborn.

No, it was the present he had lost. The opportunity to be with his wife, to love her, to spend each waking moment in her company.

Yet as King Orden sat in the Dwindell Inn, eating roast off a fine china platter, he became keenly aware that something new had been ripped from him.

His past was gone. All of his good memories would soon become unbearable. King Sylvarresta was not dead yet, so far as Orden knew, but sometime this evening, Borenson would try to carry out his orders. Orden would be forced to kill the man he most loved and admired. It was a foul thing, a bitter seasoning to a fine meal.

Perhaps Stevedore Hark understood what he felt, for the innkeeper got a thin stew cooking for some of the men, then came to sit a few moments at Orden's feet, commiserating.

"We heard the news last night from Castle Sylvarresta," he whispered. "Bad news. The worst of my life."

"Aye, the worst in several lifetimes," Orden grunted, looking at the old innkeeper. Stevedore had gotten a few more white hairs in his sideburns this year. Indeed, his hair was more white now than grizzled.

It was said that each year, the Time Lords would ring a silver bell, and at the ringing of the bell, all who heard it would age a year. For those whom the Time Lords disliked, a bell might be rung more than once, while those whom the Time Lords favored might not have such a bell rung in their presence at all.

The Time Lords had not favored Stevedore Hark this year. His eyes looked puffy. From lack of sleep? No, the man would not have slept last night, after such tragic news.

"Do you think you can dislodge the monster?" Stevedore asked. "He has you outnumbered."

"I hope to dislodge him," Mendellas said.

"If you do, then you will be our king," the innkeeper said flatly.

King Orden had not considered the possibility. "No, your royal family is intact. If House Sylvarresta falls, the Countess of Arens is next in title."

"Not likely. People won't follow her. She's married in Seward, too far away to rule. If you win back Heredon, the people will want no one but you for their lord."

Orden's heart skipped at the thought. He'd always loved the woods, the hills of Heredon. He'd loved the clean, friendly people, the sparkling air. "I'll drive Raj Ahten out," Orden said. He knew it wouldn't be enough to drive Raj Ahten from this land. He'd have to go further. A Wolf Lord cannot be whipped like a pup. He must be slaughtered, like a mad dog.

In his mind's eye, King Orden saw the war unfold before him, realized he'd have to prepare to head south, to strike Deyazz and Muyyatin and Indhopal come spring, from there sweep south into Khuram and Dharmad and the kingdoms beyond.

Until all Raj Ahten's Dedicates lay dead, and the Wolf Lord himself could be slain.

If he won this war, there would lands to plunder. He cared nothing for most of the Southern kingdoms, but he would take one thing: the blood-metal mines of Kartish, south of Indhopal.

King Orden changed the conversation, talked with the innkeeper of days past, of hunts with Sylvarresta. Orden joked, "If the day should come that I'm king of Heredon, I suppose I'll have to invite you on my next hunt."

"Indeed, I fear it is the only way you will keep me from poaching, Your Highness," Stevedore Hark laughed, then slapped the King on the back, a touch so familiar that no one in Mystarria would have dared anything similar.

But Orden imagined that Sylvarresta had been slapped on the back by friends many times. He was that kind of man. The kind who did not have to be cold and distant to be kingly.

"It is agreed then, my friend," Orden said. "You will come on my next hunt." Orden changed the subject. "Now, tonight, Raj Ahten's army should come here and find that the bridge is out. I ask a favor of you. Remind them that Boar's Ford is shallow enough to cross."