Crusader

Chapter 58

Cyrus

The tent was stuffed, filled to the brimming with servants and clingers-on for both Syloreas and Actaluere. The men from Syloreas were big, of course, the rough and marked sort whom Cyrus had come to expect, with their beards and long hair and fierce looks. There were not many useless, effete ones surrounding Briyce Unger, but the few there were made up for the lack with annoying precision.

The men from Actaluere, on the other hand, were swarthier, smaller on the whole, and reminded Cyrus of the men who worked the docks in Reikonos before the dark elves had moved in and taken over the labor force there. Their hair was short, the fighters were easy to tell from the talkers-and there were talkers aplenty who had come with Milos Tiernan.

Cyrus sat on a cloth stool that had been provided for him by one of the talkers of the Actaluere delegation. It was a small thing, annoying in its way, and it made him yearn to stand, especially now that the most troubling aftereffects of his injury had passed. Every eye in the tent was on him, and he had just finished speaking about the bodies, the ones that had come down the stream while he had been there beside it only the night before.

“You’ll forgive me, Lord Davidon,” Milos Tiernan said, a slight grimace on his face, as though the very news pained him, “but … how many bodies were there?”

“More than I care to count,” Cyrus said. “I stopped trying after thirty.”

“And they were men of Syloreas?” Tiernan asked, couching his words in a tone that sounded uncomfortable to Cyrus.

“So it would seem,” Unger said. “I looked them over when Lord Davidon’s people came for me. They look like village folk from the foothills, judging by the goatskin clothing. I would presume that they washed down after their village had been wiped out.”

“Fair to say.” Cyrus stood, hearing the clink of his armor, unable to bear sitting any longer, not on the tiny stool. “The scourge is sweeping out of the mountains it seems, coming south now, just as we expected.”

“Have you been informed of our battle plan?” Briyce Unger asked, the smell of sweat thick in the tent, the breeze of yesterday gone and replaced by the hot sun overhead, which turned the tent into a makeshift oven. The mountain men around Unger were shifting, listless, even though most of them remained seated.

“Seems simple enough,” Cyrus said. “Form a line in the middle of the plains north of here when we know they’re coming, sit and wait, and let them fall on us like wave after wave on the rocks.”

“There’s a bit more to it than that,” Tiernan said, with that same slight grimace. “Though not much, admittedly. Every suggestion I put forward with the idea of a flanking maneuver was roundly rejected.”

“If they come in as great numbers as we suspect,” Cyrus said, “we’ll be too busy protecting our own flanks to launch a counterthrust. With our healers at work, this seems like the best solution. If they come at us in a small number, we can get elaborate and envelop them. If they’re going to mass and swarm at us with the ridiculous amount of them that we think are lurking in the north, then we’re better off keeping it simple and defensive.”

“Yet,” Tiernan said, and stood, “if we allow our army to become pinned down, will it not mean our defeat? Will we not be pushed back, lose ground and lose heart?”

“Losing ground is an acceptable trade-off in this situation,” Cyrus said as he watched Briyce Unger nod his head. “We have hundreds of miles of open ground to lose before we butt up against a forest and have nowhere else to fall back. Losing heart would be foolish so long as we keep them from breaking through. If they flank us, we’re in trouble. If we can keep them in front of us rather than behind and continue to hammer them, we stand a chance. This battle is as much about standing toe to toe with them and bleeding them through attrition as it is about land and position. Let them have the whole plains,” Cyrus said with a wave of his hand to indicate the land around them. “So long as we can bleed them dry in the process and lose few enough of our own, we win.”

Tiernan conceded with a slight nod of his head. “Very well. This has been explained to me more than once, but the way you say it seems to make more sense than the others.” He nodded in deference to Briyce Unger. “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying so.” Unger waved him off, and Tiernan went on. “Can you guarantee that your healers will be able to hold our lines together against the death and serious injury that these beasts bring with them?”

“I guarantee nothing in a battle save for bloodshed and death,” Cyrus said, looking at Tiernan, a smaller man than he, as most were. He saw a hint of Cattrine in the King of Actaluere’s cheekbones. “You will lose men, no doubt, even if my healers were to perform miraculous feats. The army is too large and my healers too few to effectively protect the entirety. They will do their best, especially since your army will be holding the left flank, and I have no desire to see you take casualties that will weaken my defenses in that area.”

“Fair enough,” Tiernan said, and his voice was graver than Cyrus had heard it at Enrant Monge. “Then I suppose we have our plan, we have our roles, and all that is left to do is to wait for my army, and then move north into the jaws of the enemy.”

“Aye,” Briyce Unger said, “and let us hope that this time, we bring a morsel too large for them to digest, a bone that they might finally choke upon.” With that, the King of Syloreas stood, and as though his nervous energy was in need of a release of its own, walked briskly out of the tent without another word.

Cyrus watched him go, and saw the members of the Actaluere delegation begin to file out as well, save for a few-Milos Tiernan and two of his closest advisors, men Cyrus had seen at Enrant Monge. Tiernan caught Cyrus’s eye, and the meaning was clear-Wait a moment.

Cyrus did as he was bade by the King’s gaze, and after only another moment, Tiernan’s advisors nodded in turn and left the tent, the flap closing behind them. The air was still now, and Cyrus stared at Tiernan, his piercing green eyes staring into Cyrus’s own. The King held a brass cup that had been resting at his side during the convocation and he drank from it now, his eyes never leaving Cyrus. “So, you’re the general of Sanctuary,” Tiernan said when the cup had just barely left his lips. “You’ve caused quite the stir since you came to our land.”

“None of it was intended to harm your realm, I hope you understand.” Cyrus did not bend as he spoke, kept the deference he might otherwise have offered well out of his words. He said it harsh and firm, keeping it from being any sort of offering or concession.

“I do understand,” Milos Tiernan said, though he kept his distance. “You trespassed, and I would have been content to let you do so, because there was little margin in me keeping you from crushing Syloreas so long as you didn’t turn against me afterward.” The King of Actaluere let out a bitter laugh. “Hell, even if you had, I would have been better off than opposing you while you were in the middle of my territory; having you come at us from the border with Galbadien would have been less sensitive than letting you sack Green Hill. That was a black eye for us.”

“Yet you don’t seem that upset by it.” Cyrus watched Tiernan’s reaction; there was a subtle tightening of the man’s jaw as it slid to the side and his lips drew tight together, wrinkling as they pursed in an almost-smile.

“I don’t have to live in Green Hill,” Tiernan said, and took a small sip from his cup again. “Nor was I the one who gave the order to muster forces against you. That was your friend Hoygraf. Obviously, I don’t care to see any part of my realm destroyed, but as I said-I would have let you pass, if for no other reason than it benefitted us greatly to not stop you.”

“How does it benefit you to have us save Galbadien?” Cyrus asked, watching Tiernan carefully.

“How would it have benefitted Actaluere to go from two enemies to one?” Tiernan shrugged. “Luukessia has a delicate balance of power, one that none of the Arkarians I’ve met seem to fully appreciate, coming from so fragmented a land. If there comes a war to Luukessia-and there always does-it rarely involves all three parties. Alliances last a year, perhaps two, enough to firmly shellack one of the powers and to allow the other two to remember their disdain for each other, and then they dissolve.” He touched his chest with a single finger. “I like the balance. I like knowing who my enemies are, always. I prefer to know that I can’t trust anyone on my borders and that my best bet is to always keep a wary eye on both of them.” His expression turned sober. “And I always liked to think that if an outside threat came from over the bridge, our three Kingdoms would band together and toss them back without a second thought.”

“Second thoughts seem to be abounding in this situation,” Cyrus said, catching Tiernan’s eye after the King had seemed to go pensive. “Your whole land was almost in an uproar; you barely made it to this conflict yourself, and whatever is coming down from those mountains is looking to me a whole lot worse than most of the things that might have come across the Endless Bridge.”

“Perhaps,” Tiernan said with a ghostly smile. “But part of that was your doing-your interference. No one but an outsider would have caused the fragmentation that you did when you took my sister away from Hoygraf. No Luukessian, at least.”

“I didn’t know she was your sister when I did it,” Cyrus said.

Tiernan gave a small chuckle. “If you had, would that have swayed you?”

“Doubtful.”

“Then it matters little enough, doesn’t it?” Tiernan started toward a pitcher of water that rested on a table near the side of the tent. “Your attack on the Baron-I’m sorry, it’s Grand Duke now, isn’t it? — on his castle and your subsequent actions forced me to guide my land toward a war I never asked for. That would be the only reason we wouldn’t have rendered aid to Syloreas given what’s happening, at least after my scout saw with his own eyes what we faced.”

“You seem to like the idea of fragmentation in the land of Luukessia as a whole,” Cyrus said. “But I note you don’t seem quite so fond of it when it happens in your own Kingdom.”

“No man enjoys having his own house thrown into chaos,” Tiernan said, his back to Cyrus while he hefted the water pitcher and poured it into his cup. “Make no mistake, Hoygraf has enough power to throw my house into a good deal of chaos.”

“You’re very frank about that,” Cyrus said. “I would have expected you’d do more to hide it, given your reputation for maneuvering and canniness. There doesn’t seem to be much advantage to be gained from telling me you’ve elevated a man to Grand Duke who is poised to tear your Kingdom apart should he so desire.”

Tiernan didn’t stiffen, not exactly, though his expression was masked from Cyrus, with his back turned as it was. The King took another sip of water without turning, and the warrior wondered if perhaps it was because Tiernan was taking the time to compose his reply. “There is little advantage in lying about the troubled state of my Kingdom to an outsider.” Tiernan pivoted and gave Cyrus a twisted smile. “Let us not be coy; you were my sister’s lover not so very long ago. I might not speak as freely with a complete stranger, but if she did not tell you at least a majority of the things I’ve ‘admitted’ to you in the last moments, I’ll eat my own horse for dinner.”

“She did tell me quite a bit about the goings-on of Actaluere,” Cyrus said, arms still folded. “But I assumed that it was from the perspective of the Baroness Hoygraf, not the … whatever her title was … Tiernan.”

“Her primary title would be ‘Princess,’” Tiernan said with a nod and a pained expression.

“Sounds oddly condescending,” Cyrus replied. “So your Kingdom is in trouble, what of it? Why are we discussing this?”

“We’re discussing it,” Tiernan said with a slightly raised eyebrow, “because you began with an admission that you intended my Kingdom no harm, and I responded by offering a similar statement which we then proceeded to descend into until we reached the current point of conversation.” He took a sip of the water, lightly, almost daintily, then pulled it away from his lips with a flourish. “I assumed that like my conversations with Unger, you preferred to remove all the guile from the subtext by throwing everything onto the table first, so that then we could proceed with our talk unfettered by the political silliness which I, incidentally, excel at.”

“Putting aside your strengths in a conversation with me doesn’t seem to be to your greatest advantage, either,” Cyrus said.

“It’s a strength; it’s hardly the only one I possess,” Tiernan said. “Speaking in circles around men like you and Unger nets me little when it’s only the two of us; you may discern what I’m going about but it profits me nothing when I’m merely trying to make a point.”

“What is your point?” Cyrus asked, not feeling half as overwhelmed as he thought he should given the waves of admissions and dizzying maneuvers that seemed already to have been employed. Is he being genuine or trying to muddle the issue? Damnation and hell if I can tell. Then again, his sister was quite good at misdirection as well …

“I’ve yet to approach it,” Tiernan said. “But here, let me say it without mincing the words-leave my sister be.”

Cyrus didn’t respond, not for a long, silent minute. “I have no more intention toward your sister.”

“Oh?” Tiernan stared him down, a smoky-eyed gaze. “You swore you’d protect her, go to war for her, but now you’re content to leave her to the hands of her loving husband?”

Cyrus felt a tightness all over his face. “Doesn’t it make it easier for you if that’s the case?”

Tiernan stared back at him. “As the King of Actaluere, yes.”

“And as her brother?”

Tiernan’s face twisted, his eyes narrower, little specks of green visible between the eyelids. “I don’t have the luxury of being her brother right now. I’m trying to keep a Kingdom from a bloody civil war at the hands of a sadistic madman while laboring to help save Luukessia from something we’ve never seen before.”

“I have no intention of making your job any harder as King,” Cyrus said. “She made her choice, for her own reasons. She went back to him, and this after lying to me about who she was and doing everything in her power to insult and provoke him.” He shrugged, dismissing the rumbling within him that wanted to argue. “I’ve done all I can for her at this point. My responsibility lies with helping to destroy this scourge that afflicts your land.”

“And after that?” Tiernan asked.

Cyrus laughed. “After that …” He let his words fade. “I suppose it’ll be time for me to go home, won’t it?”

“As the King of Actaluere, I would find great relief if you did.” Tiernan set aside the cup, and started toward the flap of the tent. “After all, there’s nothing so dangerous to a land that thrives on having a balance of power as something that could upset that balance, say, an army with more ability than anyone else’s. So, as King, I would heartily support your leaving after you finish your duty here.”

Cyrus shook his head in deep amusement. “To the hells with what you’d want as King. What you’re not saying is at least ten feet deeper than any of the shallow platitudes you’re throwing at me about what you’d desire and support as King. You want me to rescue her before I leave, don’t you?”

Tiernan held still, his body facing away from Cyrus, but he slowly pivoted on a foot, his cloak swaying at his feet. “As the King, you know I could never ask such a thing.”

“Well, all I’m looking at right now is a King and not much else,” Cyrus said. “Not much of a man, that’s for certain-”

“Easy to say without the responsibility,” Tiernan said. “I hear that when I walk among the people in Caenalys, sometimes, when I don a cowl and go out to hear what word on the street is. ‘If I were King, I’d …’ followed by a suggestion of such gut-wrenching stupidity that it would annihilate my entire Kingdom with more certainty than disbanding the army and sending written invitations to Galbadien and Syloreas to come visit and bring all their soldiers.” Tiernan took slow, striding steps toward Cyrus, his every word filled with emotion that Cyrus hadn’t caught even a hint of in any of the meetings he’d been in with Tiernan. “To be a statesman is to do what is best for the land you rule and to do that first. Family comes second, and your own concerns come later, if at all. So I’m quite content if I’ve measured up in the first way, and forgive me if I give less than a damn how much of a man or a brother I look like to you.”

“You sold your sister in marriage to a monster who whips her, naked, in front of crowds,” Cyrus said with barely controlled disgust. “Better hold to that Kingly air you’re sporting as tightly as you can. Did you know what he was when you gave her to him? Did you know what kind of man he was when you elevated him to Grand Duke?”

“I knew what kind of power he held when I did all those things,” Tiernan said with little other reaction. “I knew what my Kingdom’s peril was when I did it. I knew what the danger was if I didn’t hand her off or elevate him for his service. And by service I mean his stupidity in becoming entangled with an army from the west.” Tiernan spun, keeping his face away from Cyrus again. “I knew what I did as a King and I ask for no forgiveness. I made hard choices that others might not have. You may believe that or not. What I ask is that if you are going to leave these shores, take my sister with you so that she might have the opportunity to escape the horror of Hoygraf’s charms.”

“And thus allow you to salve the conscience of the brother so the King may continue to happily rule without one of his own.” Cyrus shook his head, the disgust welling up within him. “It must take courage indeed to ask a stranger to make right by his own risk what you refuse to make right with yours.”

“One life or a million,” Tiernan said quietly. “I rule a million, and I gave over one to smoothe the passage of all of them. Find me another man who would not make the same choice in the same situation, and I’ll show you a better man than I, one who perhaps enjoys a quieter mind and less concern for the far-reaching consequences of his acts.”

“It’s funny how a man can have such a long vision, to be so farsighted as to see all the problems of his land,” Cyrus said, “but shortsighted enough to miss the ones that happen in his own house. I believe that could be called a form of blindness-or perhaps uncaring.”

This time, Tiernan bristled. “I will see you at the battle and likely not before then. When we speak again, as surely we shall over the course of these events, I shall not make mention of this.” Tiernan reached for the flap of the tent.

“Just as well,” Cyrus said. “We wouldn’t want to inflame that long-buried conscience of Cattrine’s brother, after all. It might interfere with the plottings of the King of Actaluere.”

“I did what I had to do, and I thought that perhaps you, as one who I had heard held some affection in your heart for Cattrine, might do me some small service and allow her a measure of happiness. I apologize, sir, for confusing you with someone who cared for her.” He pulled the tent open and let it flap shut behind him.

Cyrus sat there in the empty tent for a long time after that, pondering what reply he might have made. Ultimately, he said nothing to the empty tent, though much to himself on the inside.