“He cares little for the fate of Rofehavan,” Sarka Kaul warned Borenson, “but if the reavers manage to destroy your land, he knows that his own people will have to fight a war.”
The sun seemed to be a great and brittle pearl floating in a distant sea, somehow vaster than any sun that Borenson had ever seen. Below him to the north, clouds covered the green fields of Mystarria like a cloak.
So they rode, racing the horses as fast as they would go down through Batenne and up the roads through the swamps at Fenraven. Verazeth’s mount was as swift and tireless as any that Borenson had ever seen, and it carried Myrrima without complaint. His own warhorse and the white mare both tired more quickly, but Borenson kept from wearing them out by switching mounts each time one got winded. Sarka Kaul too had stolen a kingly mount, one whose coat was a peculiarly bright color of red. “They are called blood mounts in the south of Inkarra,” Sarka told them, “and are highly valued for their ability to see in the darkness.”
His mount followed along behind the others, apparently baffled to be running in the daylight. Sarka Kaul kept his head low as he rode through the towns and villages, his deep hood concealing his face, a pair of black riding gloves to hide his hands, and if any man of Mystarria noted that an Inkarran was riding abroad in the daylight, no one gave chase.
By early afternoon they left the swamps at Fenraven and rode west, where they began to draw near the reavers’ trail.
A fire burned all across the horizon, and in the muggy air, the smoke billowed uncommonly black. It rose heavenward in thick columns, fulminating upward for miles. To Borenson, the columns looked like black vines espaliered against a stone cliff. At their crown, a breeze blew the smoke east in a thin haze, like tendrils of vine hanging over a garden wall.
Along the road, they began to spot refugees fleeing the coming war. Borenson saw a young woman driving an oxcart. Four children slept on a pile of hay in the back. Food and clothes were wrapped into a few meager bundles.
Then he began to see more exiles, old women with staves hobbling along the road, young women with babes in arms. But there were no men—no old men, no young men over the age of eleven or twelve. Not even the crippled or maimed were fleeing Carris.
The smoke’s reach was tremendous. For twenty miles it hung overhead like a ceiling, and Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka rode closer and closer to the dark columns. Powdery ash began to drift from the sky.
Borenson stopped at a stream near an abandoned farm to let the horses drink, and found a crowd of women who looked too exhausted to march any farther.
“When did the fire start?” Myrrima asked, nodding toward the clouds looming in the west.
“The Knights Equitable lit it yesterday before dawn,” an old woman answered. “They’re riding ahead of the reavers, setting fire to everything, hoping to slow the horde.”
If Borenson knew the Knights Equitable, they would do more than just light fires. It was easier to take reavers in the open field than to fight them from behind castle walls. High Marshal Chondler would send sorties against the reavers.
“Have you seen the horde?” Borenson asked. “Do we have any estimates on how big it is?” The last horde sent against Carris had been nearly seventy thousand strong. Sarka claimed that this one might be over a million, but it was hard to credit such wild numbers.
The old woman spoke up. “You can’t count them all. The reavers’ lines stretches for a hundred miles, like a dark river, and the horde is so wide you can hardly see to the far shore.”
“By the Powers!” Borenson swore. “There is no way that we can fight something like that. There aren’t enough men and lances in all of Mystarria!”
But Sarka Kaul gazed off to the north and the west, and whispered, “Perhaps there are enough men to fight, if only they muster the will to do it.”
They took off riding, moving ever deeper beneath the smoky shadow. For several leagues they met women and children fleeing in droves, until at last their numbers began to dwindle.
As the clouds of smoke thickened with each mile, soon it seemed as if night closed overhead. They passed a deserted village, and all the cocks were crowing as if to greet the dawn.
Deep under the shadow, they rode up to a peasant girl trying to carry her two weary sisters, even as a pair of toddlers trailed behind, crying of weariness. Borenson asked, “Where are your mother and father?”
“They went to Carris, to fight,” the girl said.
“Don’t you have any food?” Myrrima asked.
“We had some, yesterday, but I couldn’t carry the children and the food. So we left it. There are farms along the way. I was hoping to find something to eat.”
There was a moment of silence as Borenson considered the girl’s predicament. The land was full of rocks, and there wasn’t a village for forty miles. Half a dozen farms spread out along the road, but other refugees were picking the last apples from the trees as they marched. This girl and her brothers and sisters would never make it.
Borenson would never have abandoned his own offspring like this.
“Give her the spare horse,” Myrrima urged.
Borenson felt torn. He looked to the west. He could see evidence of flames now—an angry red welt on the horizon. If these children didn’t seek shelter soon, the fire would get them before the reavers did. “Nay,” he decided. “We may need the horse for battle. But give them some food.”
“We may need the horse,” Myrrima said, “but they do need it.”
Borenson hung his head. He understood some of the pain that Gaborn must be sensing. If he gave a warhorse to these children, he might save their lives. But he needed the horses for battle, a battle where he could save more than just five small children.
He looked back to Sarka Kaul for advice, but the Inkarran merely shrugged.
It was a bitter choice. He gave the girl some plums and a loaf of bread he’d bought fresh in Battenne, counseled them to head east toward the River Donnestgree, and then rode on.
As he moved toward the shadow, a strange thought took him: this is the road my father traveled to his own death.
It would have been only a week ago now that his father had ridden to Carris. The skies would have been blue and clear, and certainly his father hadn’t known what awaited him, but it was the same road, the same farmhouses and trees, the same dull pond in the distance reflecting the sky.
Still the shadows lengthened, and darkness deepened. The air grew still, motionless. Almost the inferno did not seem to be belching smoke at all. Borenson could imagine that invisible hands had reached into the earth, and were pulling out its entrails, just as a huntsman guts a stag.
At last he rounded a bend and could see a line of red beneath the smoke, the sputtering of flames. The road led through the fire.
They raced the horses then, past scorching flames that rose up on both sides of the road, and found themselves completely beneath the shadow. Ash and smoke filled the air so thickly that they all wrapped scarves over their faces.
The sky was black above, as black as dusk, and the ground was charred and black beneath the hooves of the horses. The only light came from brushfires that raged everywhere in a ragged line, like a fiery snake that stretched across the horizon.
The thundering of the reavers’ feet could now be heard, rumbling beneath the sputter and hiss of flames. Howlers trumpeted mournful cries. Borenson, Myrrima, and Sarka Kaul raced toward the horde. Soon, gree began to whip overhead on wriggling wings, squeaking as if in agony.
Deep in the blackness, the reavers charged. They thundered along beside the charred highway, running hundreds abreast, and the line extended each direction for as far as the eye could see. Firelight reflected crimson from their carapaces. The ground shuddered beneath their feet, and the hissing of their breath sounded like a gasp.