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.
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 Indhopaclass="underline"
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.