The RuneLords Read online

  Gaborn stretched his arms and shoulders, limbering them. He slid his saber from its sheath, as familiar with its balance as if it were part of his own body, then slid it back carefully.

  He couldn't disguise his horse. The beast stood too proudly, like a being of stone or iron come to life. Its eyes glowed with fierce intelligence.

  Gaborn whispered in his horse's ear. "We must hurry, my friend, but travel quietly."

  The horse nodded. Gaborn couldn't be certain how much it understood. It couldn't follow a conversation. But with endowments of wit from other horses in its herd, it followed several simple verbal commands--which was more than could be said of some men.

  Gaborn dared not ride the beast at first. Instead, he led it. There would be outriders, he knew, both behind and before Raj Ahten's army. Gaborn didn't want to be a silhouette in the fog for some archer to practice on.

  He began running lightly at a pace he could keep up for days. In the unnatural fog, the fields were strangely quiet.

  Field mice scurried from his approach; a lone crow cawed from an oak. Sparrows flew up in a cloud. Somewhere, in the forest, he could hear a cow lowing, wanting to be milked.

  For a long time as he ran, there was only the dry rattle of bending grass, the muted thump of his horse's hooves.

  As he sprinted north through the close-cropped fields, he made a personal inventory. As far as Runelords were concerned, he was not powerful. He'd never wanted to be so. He could not bear the guilt he'd have borne to become powerful, the cost in human suffering.

  But shortly after birth, his father had begun purchasing endowments for him: two endowments of wit, two of brawn, three of stamina, and three of grace. He had the eyes of two, the ears of three. Five endowments of voice, two of glamour.

  Not a powerful man. A weakling compared to Raj Ahten's "Invincibles." He had no endowment of metabolism. Gaborn wore no armor. None to protect him, none to slow him down.

  No, Gaborn could rely only on cunning, courage, and the speed of his stallion.

  Gaborn passed two more houses, both with dead occupants. At the first, he stopped at a garden, let the horse eat apples from a tree, pocketed a few for himself.

  A little beyond the last house, the fields ended at a forest of ash, oak, and maple. The border to the Dunnwood. The leaves on the trees were dull, as they will get in late summer, but so low in the valleys the colors had not yet turned.

  Following the edge of the field, Gaborn smelled the scent of leather now, of horses hard-ridden, of oiled armor. Still he'd seen no one.

  Gaborn found a track for woodcutters' carts leading into the forest. He stopped at the edge of the trees to tighten the cinch on his saddle, preparing to ride hard, when he suddenly heard the creaking of branches.

  Just inside the line of trees, not forty feet away, stood a Frowth giant. The huge creature, its fur a tawny yellow, stared at him from wide silver eyes, peering into the mist, perhaps unsure whether Gaborn was friend or foe. The sun slanted over the woods, sending shafts of golden light into the giant's face.

  The giant stood twenty feet tall, eight feet wide at the shoulder. Ring mail covered its thick hide; for a weapon it carried a large oak pole bound with iron rings. Its snout was much longer than that of a horse, its mouth full of sharp teeth. The Frowth giants looked like nothing human.

  The giant flicked one small, round ear, ridding itself of some stinging fly, then pushed a tree aside as it leaned forward, peering.

  Gaborn knew enough not to make a quick move. If he did, the giant would know he was an enemy. The fact that the giant hadn't attacked already told Gabon something: the outriders would be dressed like him, wearing dark robes, riding force horses.

  The giant merely wanted to smell Gaborn, to learn whether he was friend or foe. Gaborn would not smell of curry, olive oil, and cotton, as did the soldiers in Raj Ahten's forces.

  One way or another, the Frowth giant would be after Gaborn in a moment.

  Gaborn wanted to strike, but he couldn't drive a sword through such thick ring mail. He couldn't engage the monster in a drawn battle. Couldn't let it cry out in warning. An arrow wouldn't kill the beast quickly.

  No, Gaborn's best chance was to let the giant draw close, bend near enough to sniff him, so that Gaborn could pull his saber and slice the monster's throat. Quickly, quietly.

  "Friend," Gaborn said softly, reassuringly. He dropped the horse's reins as the giant approached, dropped his bow. The giant warily leaned on his pole, hunched forward, sniffed from ten feet away. Far, too far.

  It drew a foot closer, sniffed again. Frowth giants do not have keen noses. The monster must have been two feet between the eyes. Its broad nose wrinkled as it sniffed.

  Gabon smelled rotting meat on its breath, saw dried blood matted into its fur. It had fed on carrion recently.

  It drew half a step closer. Gaborn ambled forward, making soft noises as if he were a friendly soldier trying to prove himself.

  The size of the beast overwhelmed him. I am nothing beside it. Nothing. It could lift me like a pup. The beast's huge paws were each almost as long as Gaborn's body. It did not matter that Gaborn was a Runelord. Those enormous paws could smash his bones, rake through his muscles.

  The silver eyes drew near, each as large as a plate. Not the throat, Gaborn realized. It was too far for a lunge. Don't stab the throat. The eye. The huge silver eyes were not protected by thick pelt.

  The creature was old, its face scarred beneath the fur. One of the ancients, then, that had come over the northern ice. A venerable creature. Gaborn wished he knew some of its tongue, had some way to bribe it.

  The Frowth giant knelt forward, sniffed, and its eyes drew wide in surprise.

  Gaborn pulled his saber and lunged, ramming the blade deep. The blade twisted when it hit the giant's eye, slid behind the socket, far into the monster's brain. Gaborn wrenched his saber and danced aside, slicing as he pulled free. He was unprepared for the volume of blood that gushed from the wound.

  The giant lurched back, grabbing its eye. Its lower jaw went slack in that moment. It bolted upright, staggered a pace to the left, and raised its muzzle to the sky.

  Even as it died, the giant bellowed in warning. A thunderous howl shook the forest.

  And all around Gaborn, to the north, south, and west, giants howled in answer.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  IN THE DEDICATES' TOWER

  Below Castle Sylvarresta that evening, the city lay quiet, hushed. Traders from the South had come in unusually large numbers throughout the day--caravans bringing valuable spices and dyes, ivory and cloth from Indhopal.

  Bright silk pavilions decorated the greens before the castle, the lanterns within the tents making them glow like multicolored gems--jade, emerald, topaz, and sapphire.

  From the dark, forbidding stone of the castle walls, it seemed a beautiful Yet discomfiting sight.

  The guards on the wall all knew that the "spice merchant" had been ransomed too quickly that day, the King's outrageous price accepted without argument. But the Southerners could not be happy about the ransom. Tempers were short. Everyone feared the Indhopalese might riot.

  But with caravans of pack mules and horses came something new and marvelous, something never seen in all the centuries merchants had traveled from Indhopal:

  Elephants. Fourteen white elephants, one branded with runes of power. The elephants wore colorful mats made of silk and beads and gold and pearls on their heads, and bore decorative reins and silk pavilions on their backs.

  Their owner, a one-eyed man with grizzled beard, said he'd brought them as a curiosity. But in Castle Sylvarresta it was known that in Indhopal force elephants were often dressed in armor, then sent to ram castle gates.

  And the merchants had too many "guards" hired to protect the caravans. "Ah, yes," the merchants would say, clasping their hands beneath their chins and bowing. "The hill bandits are very bad this year. Almost as bad as the reavers in the mountains!"

 
Indeed it seemed a record year for reavers. Troops of them had harried the mountain borders to the south in Fleeds, and to the west in Orwynne. Sylvarresta's soldiers had even discovered tracks in the Dunnwood last spring--the first such tracks seen in thirty years.

  So the people of Heredon were willing to overlook the hordes of guards in the caravans, and few but King Sylvarresta and his troops worried about elephants in their midst.

  A cool wind blew in after sunset, and fog began roiling off the river. A fog that wreathed the city in mist, crept to the parapets of the Outer Wall.

  No moon burned in the sky. Only stars. Bright eternal diadems shining in the fields of night.

  It is no surprise that the assassins made it over the Outer Wall unobserved. Perhaps the men came into the city during the day, acting the part of traders, then hid in some dovecote or manor-house stable. Or perhaps in their escalade the men took advantage of the way wisps of fog seemed to play between the merlons like tendrils.

  Nor was it a surprise when a lone sentry in the King's Keep spotted shadowy figures, like black spiders, scrambling over the King's Wall, down by the Butterwalk.

  The King had set extra eyes to watch that direction. Indeed, eyes watched from every arrow slit along each tower.

  No, it was no surprise that the assassins attempted an escalade that night. But even the guards felt amazed at how swiftly the assassins came, how silent and deadly.

  Only men with endowments of metabolism could move so fast, so swiftly that if you blinked, you almost believed you hadn't seen them. To take such endowments was suicide: an endowment of metabolism let you move nearly twice as fast as a normal man, but also caused you to age at twice the speed.

  Yet as the King's far-seer, Sir Millman, watched the escalade, he suspected that some of those assassins were moving at three times the normal human rate. Men so endowed would be decrepit in ten years, dead in fifteen.

  And only men with inhuman strength could climb those walls, prying with toes and fingers to grip at cracks in the stone. Sir Millman couldn't even guess how many endowments of brawn each assassin had.

  Millman had been watching from inside the King's Tower. With endowments of sight from seven men, he was well qualified for this post. Now he called softly at the door to the King's chamber, "Milord, our guests have arrived."

  King Sylvarresta had been sitting in his father's favorite old reading chair, his back to the wall, studying the tome of Emir Owatt of Tuulistan, trying to decipher which of Raj Ahten's battle tactics were so original that he'd kill to keep them secret.

  Now Sylvarresta blew out his lantern, went to the oriel, and gazed out a clear pane in the stained-glass window. The window was so old that the glass was all wavy and distorted, had flowed down like lumps of melted butter.

  The assassins had just reached the final defensive wall in Castle Sylvarresta, the wall of the Dedicates' Keep, which housed those people who had granted endowments to House Sylvarresta, for the use of the King's family and soldiers.

  So, Raj Ahten's assassins came to destroy Sylvarresta's Dedicates, murder those whose minds and strength and vitality fed the King's forces.

  It was a vile deed. The Dedicates could not protect themselves. The brilliant young men who'd given endowments of wit no longer knew their right hands from their left. Those who had granted brawn now lay like babes, too weak to climb from their beds. It was craven to kill Dedicates. Yet, sadly, too often it was the easiest way to assail a Runelord. By murdering those who constantly fed a Runelord strength and support, one deprived the lord of his powers, making him into a common man.

  As the attack progressed, Sylvarresta barely had time to marshal his defenders. Boiling oil had been lugged up to the wall-walk shortly after dark. Though the normal complement of three guards marched along the Parapet, a dozen more crouched behind the battlements out of sight.

  Still, defenders needed to be warned. Archers manned the towers; soldiers hiding in the city needed to be notified so that they could cut off the assassins' escape.

  From behind his stained-glass window, Sylvarresta watched the assassins reach the halfway point on the stone wall of the keep; then the King opened the window and blew a soft, shrill whistle.

  As one, his soldiers leapt up and poured oil down the keep's walls, tossing great iron cauldrons over as they emptied. The oil did not have the desired effect. It had cooled too much since sunset, and though the assassins cried in dismay at their burns and some plummeted when swept from the walls by falling cauldrons, more than twenty still scrambled up the walls, swift as lizards.

  The guards atop the Dedicates' Keep drew swords and pikes. From the King's Keep, some hundred yards distant, archers let arrows fly. A few more assassins plummeted, but Raj Ahten's knights were frighteningly swift, terrifyingly determined.

  King Sylvarresta had imagined the assassins would run when they met resistance. Instead they scurried faster, reaching the tops of the parapet, where razor wire hindered them. Sylvarresta's soldiers hacked at the assassins, so that a dozen more plummeted from the keep's tower.

  Still, seven assassins won the top of the tower, where their incredible skills as fighters came into play. The assassins moved so swiftly, Sylvarresta's men could not well defend themselves. Yet four more assassins got cut down, while a dozen defenders were slaughtered.

  The three remaining assassins hurtled down the steps into the Dedicates' Keep--just as the King's pikemen rushed from the guardroom beneath the portcullis.

  The assassins ignored the guards, instead leapt to the iron grate that covered one low door to the Dedicates' Hall. Though the door was barred with heavy iron, two assassins grabbed a bar and pulled, ripping it from the wall, dislodging two-hundred-pound stones set with mortar.

  The third assassin faced the pikemen, ready to defend.

  But these pikemen were no common soldiers.

  Captain Derrow and Captain Ault came, side by side, holding back nothing. Captain Ault stabbed at the assassin's head, a lightning thrust.

  The assassin dodged, his own short sword snaking out, biting Ault's gloved hand. The assassin was a dark monster, draped in robes of black, a man whose speed astonished. He shifted on his feet, weaving from side to side so quickly that no commoner could have landed a blow. He drew a second knife, his hands whirling in the deadly Dancing Arms style.

  In that second, the door to the Dedicates' Keep screamed as if in agony.

  The two assassins pulled the door wide. One assassin bolted through the door.

  Captain Derrow swung his pike as if it were an axe. An assassin by the door took a firm knock to the head.

  The assassin guard ducked. Ault anticipated his move and lunged. Ault slammed the pike into the man's chest, then lifted, flinging the assassin up and aside.

  Ault tossed away the pike, drew a long dagger, and bolted into the Dedicates' Keep.

  Inside, Ault found that the last assassin had already slaughtered two guards posted by the door, then had run into the hall, felling some five or six Dedicates who should have been abed. Even now, the assassin knelt over a victim, scimitar in hand.

  Ault threw his short sword, caught the assassin solidly in the back. Had the assassin been a commoner, he'd have collapsed. Had he been an angered man with great stamina, he'd have turned and gone berserk.

  What the assassin did next chilled Ault to the bone.

  The assassin turned, all dressed in a black caftan and black cotton pants, a black kerchief hiding his face. A gold ring glittered in his ear.

  He studied Ault thoughtfully, eyes filled with deadly intent. Ault's heart pounded, for he wondered how many endowments of stamina it took for a man to ignore a sword in his back.

  A dozen soldiers rushed through the broken door, filling the Dedicates' Keep. Ault took a hammer from a dead guard.

  The assassin looked Captain Ault in the eye, then raised his hands. He said in a thick accent, "Barbarian: As you see this tide of men sweep over me, so shall my lord's Invincibles sweep over you!"
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br />   Raj Ahten's Invincibles were elite troops--men with great stamina, each of whom had at least one endowment of metabolism. The assassin made as if to charge. Yet Ault knew it would be a feint. Having won through to the Dedicates' Keep, the assassin would now continue with his duty, to slay as many Dedicates as possible.

  Ault lunged, swinging his hammer, just as the assassin spun toward the beds of the sleeping. The warhammer bit into the assassin's neck.

  "Don't bet on it," Ault said.

  In his keep, King Sylvarresta felt the deaths of his Dedicates as he began to lose his magical connection to them. It was a nauseating sensation, like a cold snake writhing through his innards. Men who had endowed him with wit died, and Sylvarresta was assailed by a sudden emptiness as rooms of memory closed off forever.

  He'd never know what he'd lost--memories of friends from childhood or a picnic in the forest, memories of important sword strokes practiced time and again with his father, or a perfect sunset, or a wife's kiss.

  He only became aware that he was sundered. The doors to the rooms of memory slammed shut. The shutters to the windows fell. And in his mind there was a great moment of darkness, a keen sense of loss.

  As he rushed downstairs to guard his Dedicates himself if need be, he felt as if he wallowed through the darkness.

  A minute later, Sylvarresta reached the Dedicates' Bailey, counted his losses. Ten guards dead, five wounded. And five Dedicates lost.

  In studying the corpses of the Muyyatin assassins, he found that each had been formidable. Their leader, whom Ault had slain, had over seventy runes burned into his flesh. With so many endowments, he had to have been a captain among the Invincibles. Many others had twenty runes or more, making them equal to Captain Derrow.

  Five of Sylvarresta's Dedicates lay dead. Two gentlemen who had granted Sylvarresta wit, two who had granted sight to the King, and one who had granted sight to the King's far-seer. Sylvarresta imagined that the blind men must have been telling stories by the hearth, and the sound of their voices had brought the idiots their deaths.