He was racing from town, leading the spare horses, glancing behind to make sure that no one followed. He chuckled in glee, thinking he had escaped.
Averan reached out with her mind, tried to touch him more fully. She inhaled with his inhalations, exhaled as he did. She could feel that his bladder was full. He felt so excited, he really had to take a pee.
She delved deeper into his mind, could hear the whisper of his thoughts. “Fine horses. Sell ‘em in Gandry—and this time, won’t settle fo’ no pint of ale, neither!” She glimpsed flashes from his imagination—the thief cavorting with naked wenches.
His mind was a seething place, full of filth. She almost dared not touch it.
She summoned him, commanded him to turn the horses. “Go back,” she sent the warning. “You may be leaving a child to die.”
For an instant the thief caught his breath.
Where’d a thought like that come from? he wondered. He muttered in a prissy voice, “You may be leaving a child to die!”
Then he cackled in delight and spurred Averan’s white mare on.
Averan withdrew, snapped back into her own consciousness, and her legs nearly buckled beneath her. Her attempt had drained her, and drawn beads of perspiration on her brow.
Maggots would be easier to summon than that piece of filth, she realized. And they would be a whole lot cleaner, besides. Binnesman had warned her that it was harder to reach a complex mind.
Maybe I should have stuck with the horses, she thought regretfully.
Averan went to the guildhall. Just inside, Binnesman was coming down a grand staircase, talking urgently to Guildmaster Wallachs, an imposing man who wore wooden chains of office and bore himself with great authority. Spring walked behind them.
The guildmaster was saying, “I understand your concerns, but my men left fifteen minutes ago. I suspect that the first wagons full of poison are already in the water.”
“What did you send?”
“Nothing much—lye soap and lacquer. I thought to use ale. Not all of it that comes out of Feldonshire is fit for consumption. I’d rather see it used to poison a pond than to affront my gut.”
The men were so deep in conversation, neither of them even noticed Averan. “Binnesman,” she called, grabbing a nearby wall for support. “We’ve been robbed: a man took our horses!”
“What?” Wallachs demanded. “What man?”
“A stranger,” Averan said, searching for a way to describe him. “His...his breath smelled like rye bread and...fish.”
“Where is he?” the guildmaster demanded.
“Long gone!” Averan said. Outside, the noises of the city could be heard, the shouts of people, the tumult of horses.
The guildmaster sighed deeply. He apologized. “Don’t worry. You can ride out of town on my wain. I’m sorry about your horses. We’re good people in Feldonshire. But—”
Binnesman looked to Averan. “Did you try to summon the beasts?”
“I...tried that, and the thief, too. He won’t come back.” Averan crossed the room and collapsed into a chair in defeat.
55
A Fire in the Hills
In ancient texts it is said that Fallion’s men scouted the Underworld, searching for Toth. It was only in the deepest recesses, many mites below the surface, that they began to find “much foretoken” of reavers. Most of Fallion’s men died not in battle with reavers or Toth, but from the “arduous heat which grieved us unto death.”
An unending thunder rumbled through the hills beneath Shrewsvale. With it came a sound as if a million dry leaves hissed to the forest floor at once.
The horde forged onward.
Crows flapped up from the old forest, black pinions groping the sky as they sought to escape the onslaught. They winged about in a dirty haze amid the gree. A cold sun glared down through a thickening yellow brume. Huge oak trees, browned by autumn, shivered and cracked, leaving holes to gape in the canopy.
The reavers advanced in a formation that men had never seen, the strange new Form of War. Gaborn stopped his mount on a hilltop and peered at the forest. He saw the reavers scurrying forward, glimpsed gray carapaces beneath the trees. They loped with a newfound fury. A hundred times he considered sending men to ambush the reavers, but his Earth Powers warned against it. No lancers dared attack. To even send men within archery range was futile. Something had happened to the horde.
The hope of water lent the reavers new heart. They were learning, surely. Averan said that they knew his name, and feared him.
Gaborn had beaten them easily enough at Carris, when the lightning threw them into a panic. But he’d lost so many of his powers. Now, he dared not attack.
Perhaps they sensed his weakness.
The very fact that they were learning how to defend themselves alarmed him. What if they taught other reavers their secrets?
With each minute, Gaborn more strongly suspected that he could neither stop the horde nor turn them from their destination.
He worried about whether his men could reach the ponds at Stinkwater in time to poison the pools. A cold terror seized him.
He’d passed through his ranks on the way up, and had expected to find Binnesman near the lead, riding his fine gray warhorse. But the wizard was nowhere in sight.
He reached the green fields and meadows of Shrewsvale barely half an hour in advance of the reavers. When he arrived, he found Baron Waggit ringing the town bell.
“Have you seen Binnesman?” Gaborn asked Waggit.
“He’s gone to warn Feldonshire,” Waggit offered.
Gaborn breathed a sigh of relief.
In the village, peasants and merchants had already harnessed horses to wagons. They were pulling goods from their homes and barns—pillows, food, blankets, piglets, and lambs. One woman outside the inn stood beating a pan, shouting frantically for her son. Another man was not fleeing at all. Instead he had opened the door to a root cellar, and Gaborn watched him usher his wife and eight children down into it; then he came back up and started carrying a lamb down in one hand, and a rooster in another.
Gaborn shouted to Waggit, “Go and get that man and his children out of there!”
He could not hide his despair. He was not just a king, he was the Earth King. Yet his subjects would not always follow his counsel, even to save their own lives.
Gaborn sized up the terrain, decided where to set his battle lines. No one had ever built a siege wall here at Shrewsvale. A sheep stockage bordered the woods, and would have to serve as the only barricade. The low wall would not hold back reavers, wouldn’t even slow them down. The carefully piled slabs of gray stone were no more significant than a line drawn in the sand.
He went down into a field where an old haycock sat, the straw in it having grayed with mold over the past year. He fumbled with flint and steel to get a fire going. In five minutes the haycock was ablaze.
The wind worked against him. Down on the plains the wind had gusted to the east. But here in the vale at midmorning, the air grew still. He’d not have a driving fire.
He’d hardly got the haycock to blaze when the main force of his army began to ride in, just over a thousand men, with lances held high. Lords hurried down to the vale and formed up in ranks behind the sheep stockage, as if they would hold fast if the reavers charged.
Skalbairn reported, “Milord, the reavers are less than six miles off, and they’re running faster now. They know that they’re close to water. We got word not half an hour ago that Langley’s men are making a good accounting. Many reavers can’t keep up the pace.”
Gaborn nodded, numb. He looked uphill. “Where are those men with the philia?”
Skalbairn just shook his head in consternation. “They’ll be here soon.”
Gaborn couldn’t wait. “Put a torch to the trees,” he ordered. Fifty lords came forward in a rush. They tied cords of twisted straw to their lances, then set them afire. The mounts leapt the low stone wall and charged into the trees.