Crusader

Chapter 2

Cyrus

Six Months Earlier

Cyrus Davidon had a dream he was running. A pair of red, glowing eyes were following him somewhere as the fear grew within him. When he awoke, he was on a beach. He sat up in his bedroll, a heavy sweat rolling off his skin even though the air was filled with a pleasing coolness all around him. The sands sloped down to the Sea of Carmas, where the waves lapped at the shore, the ebb of low tide bringing small breakers onto the beach at regular intervals, the low, dull roar of the water a kind of pleasant background noise.

His breath came erratically at first as he tried to catch it and control it, taking long, slow gulps of air as he swallowed the bitterness that had been on his tongue since waking. A hundred fires lit the night around him, providing heat and warmth for his army, protection against the light chill of the tropical winter. The smell of smoke hung around him, of lingering fish on the fire, hints of salt in the air.

A light breeze came off the sea as the wind changed directions, bringing the smell of sulfur and rot. He sniffed and the scent of the seaweed down the shore became lodged in his nostrils, reminding him of the Realm of Death, where only days earlier he had led an assault that killed the God of Death, Mortus. The memory came back to him, of the listless and unmoving air in that place, of the image of death itself, a clawed hand as it reached out, grasping for Vara …

Just over the sound of the waves against the shore, Cyrus could hear chatter from around some of the fires where the members of his army sat huddled for warmth. He turned his head to look; there were warriors and rangers, men and women of no magical ability, still talking, laughing and boisterous.

“I would have thought two days march would have cured most of them of their enthusiasm,” came a voice at his side. Cyrus looked back to see the face of Terian Lepos lit by the fire, the orange glow flickering against the deep blue of the dark elf’s skin. “They were tired enough yesterday from the long march on these sands, I suppose. But now they’re back at it again, all full of excitement, eager to get into their first battle.” The dark elf’s face was narrow and his nose stuck out, coming to a point, his hair black as obsidian, and he wore a half-smile that couldn’t look anything but cruel in the low light.

“They’ll get over it quick enough once they’ve been in it.” Cyrus’s armor creaked as he turned to face Terian. He pulled off a gauntlet and ran his fingers across his bedroll. Sand covered the surface of the cloth. He felt the tiny grains, like little pins as he brushed against them, a few of them glimmering like shards of glass in the light, and he remembered other sand, in another place, a whole pit of it, with red blood pooling and holding it together in great lumps-

“Trouble sleeping?” Terian’s words drew Cyrus back to the present. The dark knight sat slumped a few feet away, legs arched in front of him, his new double-handed sword resting across them, a cloth in his hand, polishing the blade. Cyrus saw the little glint of red in the steel, a hint of the magic that the weapon carried.

Cyrus let a half-smile creep onto his face; the blade had come from a dark elf whom Cyrus had defeated in the city of Termina while defending it from the dark elven army. He felt a pang at the thought of Termina as it led to thoughts of Vara, a stirring pain in his heart and guts, and the half-smile disappeared as quickly as the waters receded down the shore. “Just a nightmare,” he said to Terian. “It won’t be trouble unless it happens over and over again.”

The dark elf nodded, face inscrutable. “Those sort of dreams tend to find me when I’m troubled during the day, as if to follow you into your bed and attack you when they know you’re at your weakest.” He took his shining eyes off Cyrus and turned them back toward the fire. “But I suppose you’d have more experience with those than I would.”

Cyrus caught the knowing tone in the dark knight’s voice. “I suppose I would.” With a low, deep breath, Cyrus pushed to his feet and felt his armored boots sink into the sands. He felt unsteady at first then caught his balance. His breath caught in his throat as another thought crossed his mind, of Vara, of what she had said to him the last time they had spoken.

“Something on your mind?” The low rasp of Terian’s voice drew Cyrus’s attention back to him. “You’re not usually the silent type.” The dark elf took a breath and a slight smile caused his white teeth to peek out from behind his dark blue lips. “Someone, perhaps? Someone tall and blond, with a heart as icy as her eyes?”

Cyrus stared back at Terian, and caught the glimmer of understanding there. Cyrus deflated, his shoulders slumping as the weight seemed to drag him down even as he remained on his feet. “What …” he began to speak, but his words came out in a low croak. “What do you do … when someone that you … when someone close to you … betrays you so thoroughly?” He felt the bitter taste of what he said and remembered the last words she had spoken to him. We will not, cannot be. Not ever … I thank you for trying to comfort me in my hour of need, but I’ll have you take your leave now. He slid his fist back into his gauntlet and felt it clench.

“What do you do when someone betrays you?” Terian’s voice was dull as he repeated the words. “That’s an excellent question.” It hung there between them as Cyrus watched his old friend. Terian ran his cloth down the flat facing of the sword, polishing the side, rubbing the metal.

After a moment of silence, Cyrus looked around, the waves still crashing, inevitably, on the shore around him. He waited, but Terian seemed frozen in thought, staring at the black, endless sea in the distance, listening to the lapping of the tides. The blue skin on his hand stood in contrast to the red metal of the blade and the white cloth. “Terian?” Cyrus asked. “Are you all right?”

The dark knight didn’t answer, his hand still moving in regular rhythm, up and down the blade. His fingers slipped, over the edge, and jerked. The dark knight stared down dully as though he couldn’t quite fathom what he was seeing. Liquid welled up, and the first drops fell to the sands. Cyrus stared at it, and remembered again of a time long, long ago, long before Sanctuary.

“Damn,” Terian said mildly. The dark elf stared at his wounded hand.

“I’ll get Curatio,” Cyrus said, starting to move.

“No,” Terian said, and Cyrus heard the dark knight’s armor rattle as he got to his feet. “I’ll go. I should have been paying attention.” He clenched his fist and Cyrus watched a thin stream of red run out of his palm and form a droplet on the base of Terian’s wrist. The dark knight’s expression was still formless, almost indifferent to his wound. “But about your question …”

Cyrus stared at him. Terian’s eyes seeming to fixate on a point beyond Cyrus, as though he were looking through the warrior, not at him. “Yes?”

Terian’s gaze came back to him, found his, and there was something in it that Cyrus couldn’t define, some depth that made Cyrus think of an open window, curtains stirred by a breeze only slightly to reveal furnishings inside. He caught a hint before the curtains blew back into place and hid the room within from view once more. “I don’t know. You got your vengeance, once upon a time, didn’t you? For your friend, after he died?”

“After we were betrayed?” Cyrus remembered, with a knot in his stomach, Narstron, his oldest friend. Of how he died. “Not revenge. Not really. Besides, this is … different.”

“Is it?” Terian took his hand and brought it to his lips, pursing them to catch the next drop before it fell to the ground. “Hurt is hurt, right? Pain is pain.”

Cyrus recalled the gut-punch pain, the agony of realizing later that people they had been allied with had betrayed him. Vara’s words came back to him again: We will not be, cannot be. Not ever …

“No,” Cyrus said. “It’s not the same.” He weighed the sensations, the loss of his oldest friend, the anguish of it all, and found it … lacking.

“I suppose,” Terian said. “Death is a much more … permanent wound, and the vengeance so much more … deserving.”

Cyrus stared out again, across the dunes, without answering. The hundred fires left spots in his vision as he cast his gaze over them then turned his eyes again toward the sea. Endless, infinite, and deep beyond any measure he could fathom. The sea goes down, perhaps forever. The blackness it contained was akin to the darkness within him, the empty cold that threatened to swallow him in despair. He felt a hand clap him on the back as Terian turned and walked away. He did not watch the dark knight go, absorbed as he was in his own thoughts.

It’s warm enough; I shouldn’t feel a chill. But it was there. The pain of losing Narstron had been bitter and hard, had laid him low for days, long days filled with a despair that choked out any happiness or possibility thereof in the future. It had been darker than the days when his wife had left him-darker than any save for those at the Society of Arms …

Until now. The little points of light that the fires had left in his vision seemed to coalesce, to flash in front of him, to give him an image, one that he wanted and yet wished he could blot from his memory. A face, her skin as pale as the northern snowfields, her hair as yellow as the gold he carried in his purse, eyes as blue as glacial ice. He felt the same pang, again, inside, the dagger wound that she’d left him with.

Cyrus tasted the bitterness on his tongue again, the sadness that clung to him like a cloak. He looked back to his bedroll and knew that his slumber was over for the night. The moon hung in the sky overhead, far above him, and he drew an uneasy breath. The morning was far, far off, many hours away, and yet it would come, inevitably, and he would marshal his armies and drive them across the bridge that he had seen by last light, the one that stretched over the infinite sea, over the unfathomable depths, one that he’d been told led to a new land and an uncertain future.

And perhaps, somewhere over there, I will forget about her-the blond-haired elf with the pale skin, and her words, the ones that had cut him deeper than any pain that the warrior in black armor had ever felt in his life.