Watt-Evans, Lawrence - Annals of the Chosen 01 (77 page)

Breaker
nodded.

They
forged
onward,
passing
town
after
town,
entering
none.
A
few
showed
evidence
that
their
citizens
had
defied
the
Wizard
Lord—burned
houses
and
shops,
thatch
torn
from
roofs
by
storm
winds,
and
so
on—but
most
were
unscathed,
and
the
Seer
reported
mercifully
few
deaths.

Few.

Not
none.

In
all,
the
Wizard
Lord
killed
five
more
people
along
the route
to
assert
his
insistence
that
no
one
aid
the
Chosen.

And
no
one
did.
The
Chosen
did
not
ask
them
to
risk
themselves.
After
all,
it
was
the
role
of
the
Chosen,
and
only
the
Chosen,
to
defeat
the
Wizard
Lord.

All
the
same,
Breaker
thought
this
hardly
seemed
like
the
heroic
adventure
the
Chosen
Swordsman
ought
to
be
having on
his
way
to
slay
a
Dark
Lord.
As
the
Swordsman
he
was supposed
to
fight
other
men,
not
struggle
through
rain
and
snow
and
mud,
help
push
an
overweight,
metal-caged
wagon out
of
ruts
and
mudholes
and
ice,
or
butcher
possessed
animals
that
attacked
them—and
not
dragons
or
hippogriffs
or even
animals
as
exotic
as
ara,
but
just
dogs
and
deer
and
the
like,
and
once
an
immense
bull.

He
would
have
much
preferred
to
be
back
in
Mad
Oak, growing
barley
and
beans.

Still,
he
reassured
himself
that
he
was
carrying
out
his
role,
he
was
performing
his
duties,
he
was
doing
the
right
thing.
The
dead
of
Stoneslope
had
to
be
avenged,
and
all

Barokan
defended
from
this
mad
wizard,
no
matter
how
tedious
and
unpleasant
the
job
might
be.

One
meager
comfort
was
that
the
Dark
Lord
of
the
Galbek
Hills
never
made
good
on
his
threat
to
kill
their
friends
and
family—the
Seer
was
able
to
reassure
them
on
that
count.
It
was
theoretically
possible
that
the
Wizard
Lord
had
sent
others
to
commit
such
murders,
but
he
never
claimed
to have
done
so,
and
such
an
action
would
have
made
no
sense,
so
Breaker
slept
each
night
in
reasonable
assurance
that
his
sisters
and
parents
were
unharmed.

Winter
had come
,
and
the
constant
rain
turned
to
snow
and
ice,
before
they
finally
came
in
sight
of
the
Wizard
Lord's keep,
perched
on
the
highest
peak
in
the
Galbek
Hills.
They still
had
a
good
two
or
three
miles
to
go
when
the
stone tower's
outline
became
unmistakable
through
lingering
fog mixed
with
snow,
and
they
paused
for
a
moment
to
look
at
it—and
for
the
Archer
to
take
a
look
around
for
the
evening
meal.

It
had
been
a
tradition
for
centuries
that
each
Wizard
Lord used
his
magic
to
erect
his
home
and
headquarters,
to
demonstrate
that
he
had
indeed
mastered
enough
ler
to
justify
his
title
as
Wizard
Lord,
and
usually
much
of
his
power
was
tied
to
this
place,
as
if
he
were
a
priest—that
was
one reason
that
the
Chosen
generally
fought
Dark
Lords
in
their
strongholds,
rather
than
chasing
them
across
the
countryside.
In
his
journey
to
meet
the
Seer
and
Scholar
in
Tumbled Sheep,
Breaker
had
glimpsed
from
afar
the
remains
of
one
such
Wizard
Lord's
abandoned
keep
in
the
southern
hills, and
he
knew
the
remnants
of
others
had
been
incorporated
into
the
surrounding
communities—the
onetime
stronghold
of
the
Dark
Lord
of
the
Midlands
was
now
the
central
temple
of
the
town
of
Drumhead,
for
example.