Crusader

Chapter 102

“Well, that was effective,” Terian said beside the fire as the sun was rising nearby. Martaina was there, as well as Curatio and Nyad, who was sacked out already. Calene Raverle and Scuddar In’shara shared the fire with them, the desert man strangely quiet-though not strangely for him, Cyrus reflected. The battle had lasted most of the night. “I’ve never seen that many scourge die so quickly.”

“Yet, we still find ourselves a mile back from where we started the night,” Curatio said, studying a book draped across his lap. “Tens of thousands of the enemy dead but ultimately irrelevant. Even with the effectiveness of the dragoons, we’ll be seeing the Endless Bridge inside of a week.”

Cyrus sat staring at the fire in front of them. “That means we’ll see the end of the bridge in a week or so after that. And after that …” He let his words trail off. “There’s no holding them back at that point. They can flank us in the jungle and we’ll have a hell of a time doing much other than forming a line on the beach and fighting with our backs to the waves.” A thought occurred to him. “Actually … we might try that here, on the shores of Luukessia.”

“Not a bad idea,” came a voice from behind him, and Longwell trudged up, lance in hand, his helm under the other arm. He threw down his weapon, careful not to hit anyone. The smell of activity came with him, the strong scent of sweat. Cyrus knew it well, having smelled it on himself earlier, but it had faded away now, blended into the background behind the smell of the logs burning. The crack and pop of them owned the air while they waited for Longwell to speak again. “A last stand against the shores of the sea might just produce some killing results.”

“For the day or so you lasted,” Curatio agreed, “yes. Then, when you became too tired to fight any longer, you’d likely be up to your chest in water already, and left with no options save one: drown.”

“Perhaps,” Longwell said. “But to take as many of those things down with you as possible before the end, to have them keep coming and to refuse to yield, to not leave Luukessia’s shores and lay down your life for the country?” He gave a subtle nod as he fixed on the fire. “I could think of worse ways to go. Besides, if those things do make the choice to crawl over the bridge,” he waved a hand behind them in the direction of the Endless Bridge, “our days are over soon enough anyhow. I don’t expect drowning would be much worse than being devoured by one of them.”

Curatio looked up from his book with a raised eyebrow. “Drowning is agony.”

“And being ripped apart and crushed in the jaws of one of those creatures is a fun and easy way to leave this life?” Calene Raverle asked, looking at the healer.

“Point,” Curatio said. “The only thing I was suggesting was that of all the ways I could pick to go out, drowning is not a good one. You struggle for breath for agonizing minutes, fighting to get air, and it lasts what seems like forever.”

“Drowned to death once or twice in your life, have you Curatio?” Terian asked.

“Just the once,” Curatio said. “I wouldn’t do it again.”

“I’m now taking recommendations for ways to die,” Calene said. “I will say that hanging wasn’t terrible,” she shuddered, “though what came before it was a bit … much.”

“Do you remember it?” Martaina asked. The ranger’s eyes were on her counterpart, and Calene Raverle seemed to focus on a distant point behind them.

“Sort of,” Raverle said. “I mean, yes. But it’s almost as though it happened to someone else. It feels … very long ago, very far away.”

Cyrus did not say anything; he just kept his head down and watched the fire.

“I believe it’s time for me to sleep,” Terian said as he stood, and his spiked profile receded into the darkness.

“Not staying by the fire?” Martaina teased as she stood, disappearing into the black as well.

“Gods, no,” Terian replied. “Too hot.”

“I kind of figured that out for myself,” Martaina said with a roll of her eyes.

“I mean I’m too hot,” Terian said with a wicked grin. “Wouldn’t want any of the rest of you to get-”

“All right, that’s enough for me,” Curatio said as he stood, and then walked off in the other direction.

“It seems likely we’ll be awakened in the middle of the night,” Longwell said, and grabbed his lance, using it to push himself to his feet. “To move back or come to the front. The advance is harsh, and the dragoons are doing great damage, but not nearly enough, I think.”

“How much more flat ground do they have to fight on?” Cyrus asked.

“A day’s worth, perhaps,” Longwell said with a shrug. “After that, the land becomes swampy, the grasses hide water and soft ground, and we’ll need to withdraw. “We’ll do as much damage as we can for as long as we can, but in another day, we might as well be infantry for all the good we’ll do.”

“Your day will come again,” Cyrus said. “On the other side of the bridge, I think. We’ll need to move you out to flat ground if we’re to carry on. Perhaps use a wizard to teleport your men to Taymor or one of the portals northwest of there. You can assemble on the flatlands north of the Inculta desert and make another defense there as these things come north.”

“I don’t love the turn of inevitability this conversation has taken,” Calene said from across the fire.

“Nor do I,” Scuddar said quietly from behind his cowl.

Cyrus stared at the two of them; though he had shared a fire with both of them on numerous occasions, he could hardly say he knew them well. “I’m sorry. But this is not going well, and I think we have to conclude that we need a plan to deal with what’s about to happen.”

“And what’s that?” Calene asked. Scuddar’s eyes watched as well, silently accusing.

“We’re going to get pushed back to the bridge,” Cyrus said. “And once we’re on the bridge, we’ll be pushed back all the way to Arkaria.”

“Why?” Scuddar was the one who asked this time.

“Because,” Cyrus said, feeling as though he were explaining the concept to children, “there are more of them than there are of us. Because the viciousness of their attack inevitably requires us to give ground.”

“Why?” Scuddar asked.

Now I really am explaining to a child. “You’ve fought them,” Cyrus said. “They come at you, they lunge, you kill one, you parry another, the next comes, you have to take a step back to avoid getting hit. There’s push. It’s a natural part of the battle.”

“It’s a natural part of losing a battle, seems to me,” Calene said quietly, avoiding Cyrus’s eyes.

“Which makes sense,” Cyrus said with as much patience as he could find, “since we are losing this battle. This war, really. As much as I’d like to rail against the inevitability of loss, I can’t find an example to point to of when we’ve ever pushed them back. We’ve only seen the opposite happen.”

“It would seem we lack only belief and hope,” Scuddar said quietly.

Cyrus tried to avoid rolling his eyes but only succeeded in looking to Longwell, who shrugged in some agreement. “Really?” he asked the King.

“He makes a point,” Longwell said. “We retreat because we accept the inevitability of their advance. We don’t fight to push them back because we believe they’re going to keep coming long past the point when we’re willing to stand and die to push them back. Because that’s what it would take-a full-blooded, mystic-bladed warrior with the conviction that they could singlehandedly cut the enemy down if they advance one step further.” He shrugged. “You put someone like that in front of the scourge-on a bridge, no less, where all their myriad numbers count for less-I believe they’ll buckle before the warrior.”

Cyrus hid a foolish grin, a patronizing one, behind his hand. You cannot be serious. “I don’t know where you’d find this warrior-”

“It’s you,” Calene said without hesitation, causing Cyrus to freeze in place. “It’s always been you.”

He pursed his lips and felt the guilt well up. “I appreciate that, really I do, more than you know. But that’s a vote of confidence I don’t think I deserve. If anyone on this expedition should be skeptical of me and my ability to command effectively it should be you, after what you went through-”

“After what I went through?” She bristled. “I got captured by the enemy, a cruel, vicious and subhuman one. He did some nasty things, things that made me feel like less than a person.” She leaned forward. “But you weren’t him. And you didn’t let him get away with it, either. You came for me, and you didn’t have to. Anyone else would have left us behind, or struggled to get us back. You saved me. You saved the others-”

“But not until after-”

“After what happened had already happened,” she said, and Cyrus heard the razored steel in her voice. “You saved us. Led us out and made him suffer.” She sat back and looked at him coolly. “I believe in you.”

Cyrus put a hand against his face. “Everyone keeps saying that. I’m not even sure I know what it means anymore.”

She stared back at him, quiet, then looked at Scuddar, then Longwell. “Haven’t you ever had someone you knew you could count on before? That no matter how bad it got, you knew they’d be there with you, no matter what?”

Cyrus felt an icy chill run through his gut and a memory flitter. They all left, one by one. Left me alone. Father. Mother. Imina. Narstron. Orion. Niamh. He looked around the fire. And this lot … they’re the ones counting on me. Who am I supposed to count on?

Vara. He blinked away the thought. “I don’t know,” he said at last, almost mumbling.

“Belief in others is a powerful thing,” Scuddar said, his quiet, deep timbre. “Hope is sometimes all we have. There’s an old legend among my people, the story of the Ark. Have you heard it?”

“No,” Cyrus said with a shake of his head.

“When the world was first new,” Scuddar began, “there were only two gods who ruled over it-the God of Good, and the God of Evil. They divided among themselves all the attributes and aspects that each prized. Courage, Light, Knowledge, Life-these were but a few of the virtues held by the followers of good.” His countenance darkened in the firelight. “Darkness, Despair, Death and War-those and others were held high in esteem by the God of Evil. It was a mighty struggle, waged day and night over the surface of the bare land. But the forces were too evenly matched, as evil had captured the hearts and souls of mortal beings to even the score. Mortals began to despair, so wracked were they with the darkness sent from evil. And so the God of Good sent forth his last gift to mortals-the Ark. It was to be what they looked to in times of trouble, as within they could find that most ephemeral of all the virtues.”

Cyrus stared across the fire at the desert man, heard the pop of the logs, felt the smoke fill the air around him as though the words were taking on a mystical quality of their own. He took a deep inhalation through his nose and the smell of the wood fire took him back, as though he were around a campfire in the days when the story was happening. He listened on as his skin prickled from the back of his neck and up his scalp, and he watched through the flames as the man of the desert moved his hands in time with the story, as though he had told it numerous times before. “What was it?” Cyrus asked, and realized that if Scuddar had, in fact, told this story numerous times before, he had paused and was waiting for someone to answer.

“Hope.” Scuddar’s hands came down. “It is in our darkest hours that we let despair creep in, let it drain us of any faith in ourselves. Hope is our respite, the answer to our cries. The belief that darkness can be destroyed by the light, that despair can be turned back if we believe-if we have hope for a brighter day ahead.”

Cyrus ran his hand up to his long hair, tangled and matted. How many days has it been since I bathed? Since I breathed? Since I slept in my own bed, lived in my own walls, breathed air that didn’t have even the slightest tinge of decay and wondered if these things would be coming? How long since I first started to lose … hope? The thought came easy: It was the day I carried her to her room and listened to her say that we would never be together-could never be together. Everything since has made me question every action taken, every consequence I’ve set loose. “How can you dare to hope …” Cyrus began, “… when you know that all you have wrought is … darkness … and despair … and death?”

Scuddar leaned forward over the fire, and his eyes caught the light; they were yellow, and Cyrus had never noticed that before, but they glowed. “Because darkness … and despair and death … these are things all rooted in your past. Hope … is about a future. You need not live your whole life governed by them. That road is despair. Futility. Hope is the idea that no matter what evil you might have done, willing or unwilling-it can redeemed.”

Cyrus felt the gut clench of emotion. “I fear that there are some things so wrong, so dark, that there is no redemption for them.”

Scuddar’s yellow eyes narrowed. “Well, that is not really up to you now, is it?”

“Didn’t you believe in the God of War, once upon a time?” Longwell asked, breaking Cyrus out of his trance and turning his head away from Scuddar. “In battle and chaos, destruction and death?”

“For combatants, yes,” Cyrus said. “Not for the innocent. For those who wanted it, for those who thrived on battle, the clash of blade, the evangelism of the trial by fire.”

“Those things are combatants,” Longwell said, pointing him toward the field of battle, somewhere ahead in the darkness, barely visible beyond the fire-lit camp. “You don’t believe they deserve to die?”

“They’re already dead,” Cyrus said, “but yes, they deserve to die. And I’ll kill as many as I can.”

“Ah,” Scuddar said. “So you believe in something, at least. Even something so minor as that. It’s a start.”

“And what do you believe?” Cyrus asked, watching the smoke waft between him and Scuddar, between the night and those yellow eyes.

“I believe that when you come to the moment when you believe all hope is gone,” Scuddar said, “you will be forced to reach down inside yourself, to touch whatever remains within you. I believe in that moment, General … you’ll find the embers of whatever is left. You’ll find what you truly believe in. And I think …” the desert man smiled, “… that whatever it is, our enemy will have cause to fear. Because a man can only live with despair for so long before hope resurges.”