Crusader

Chapter 64

Cyrus

Nightfall came upon the steppes-as Cyrus had heard the locals call the plains they fought upon-and still, the enemy came. The scourge filled the horizon as far as Cyrus could see, but as the light drained out of the day and the crescent moon cast its luminescence, there was no end in sight to the enemies that came upon them, filling the battlefield with their dead. His line of sight diminished to only thirty feet or so in front of him, Cyrus watched for the flashes of spells to give him guidance. The sounds of battle still rang around him, and the height of war was taking place on three sides. The smells that filled the air were all of the scourge, the decaying scent of dead flesh and nothing else.

They were overwhelming, so much so that Cyrus knew the army had been falling back all day, not out of a genuine pressure put upon them by the enemy but from a general weight of numbers pressing against the armies. The bodies piled up, too, and while it didn’t seem to bother their enemy, as the creatures merely crawled over and avoided their own dead, for Cyrus they became a hazard after a short time, stacking three and four deep and providing an excellent ambush point for a live enemy to jump from behind their own dead and attack. He had seen a few of his guildmates attacked that way.

“It’s nice to know we’re at least running free of casualties,” Odellan said between the clashes of weapons cutting into flesh.

A bellow sounded to Cyrus’s right and another shockwave burst forth from Partus, blasting aside a line of the scourge, sending bodies into the air once more. “We’re taking them out in great numbers, no doubt,” Cyrus said. “But we’ve been swapping out people along the line all day as though this was some sort of sporting event where you can bow out any time you please. Our people are exhausted and there’s still no sign that the enemy is coming close to running low on more bodies to throw at us. It makes me wonder just how many souls Mortus kept in his lands, if it’s all of them, all the way back to the beginning of time, or if somewhere we’ll eventually reach the end.

A cry and hue came from farther down the line, to the right. “Not a good sound,” Cyrus said under his breath. “Do you think that means …?”

There was no need for him to finish, as Martaina appeared out of the darkness to his right, firing two arrows in rapid succession, both hitting one of their foes in the face and causing them to cease all motion. She slid to a stop in front of Cyrus, slung her bow over her shoulder and drew blades, slipping into the formation next to him. “Bad news from the Sylorean lines, sir.”

“Let me guess,” Cyrus said, cleaving another head as one of their enemy slid past him in a foiled attack, “the Syloreans broke in the middle.”

“Solid guess.” She buried a dagger in a grey face and another in a stout, four-legged body. “Our healers did their best, but they ran short of magical energy about ten minutes ago. Mendicant is about to try something to drive them back, but we’re running low on things we can throw into the breach.”

“What about the cavalry reserve?” Cyrus asked. “Longwell was waiting for the right moment to turn them loose, and this sounds like it.”

“He moved into action to shore up the left flank and give some relief to the army of Actaluere about two hours ago,” she said, and her smooth motions with the blade prompted him to wonder how long she had been using them, she did it with such fluid grace. “They’re still committed over there; I guess the enemy moved fast and doggedly, because from what I can see from here, it looks like they’re barely holding, even with the cavalry reinforcement.”

“Okay,” Cyrus said, and motioned for two warriors in the line behind him to move up. “Let’s you and I head over there, see if we can help. What’s Mendicant planning to-”

There was a blast of fire that lit the night sky, a circle of flame that turned the whole field of battle orange with fury then red with its intensity as it burned brighter still. Cyrus watched as it slid around a widening hole in the line that he hadn’t even been able to see without the fire. It pushed back, back toward the scourge, and Cyrus watched the four-legged creatures run from it in a way they hadn’t run from anything he’d seen thus far.

“It would appear they’re afraid of fire,” Cyrus said, pushing through the line and making for the place where the flame glowed. “Nice to know; kinda wonder why we haven’t figured that out before.”

“You’re the one who wanted the spellcasters kept in reserve in case we had to fall back,” she said, leading him. Her bow was unslung now, and she fired it three times as she ran, picking off targets as she brushed by Sanctuary members locked in combat along the front. “Not such a bad strategy, actually, because we’d been doing well enough before now that they didn’t need to intervene.”

“We may yet need them to cover our retreat,” Cyrus said as they reached the end of the Sanctuary line; he passed a few men of Syloreas who were in battle with the scourge, and Cyrus aided them with a few well-placed slashes as he did so. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve easily killed ten thousand of these things and they’ve yet to blink at throwing another ten thousand at us.”

“Being not quite as blind as you in the dark, I have noticed,” she said. “I have also noticed that their number continues to extend beyond the horizon, which is a mite worrisome seeing as we’re supposed to kill them all and then continue north to destroy the portal. I believe we may have the order wrong on that; we may need to destroy the portal before we can go north.”

“A fine contradiction, isn’t it?” Cyrus brought his sword around and slashed a foe that charged hard at him, killing it with one well-placed stroke. “I, for one, wish there were another way to do it, but as I don’t possess a single flying mount with which to carry myself over these enemies, let alone a bevy of them to carry an entire army to the portal without fighting them, I’m afraid we may just have to do it the hard way.”

“I don’t know that you could define this as the hard way, sir,” Martaina said, and her short blade was out again, working in a flash of metal against two of the scourge at once, “I believe this may in fact be the impossible way.”

“I don’t believe in the impossible,” Cyrus said, greeting a jumping enemy with a kick that knocked it back to its fellows.

“Then I’d like to see you try and give birth to a child yourself, sir.”

Cyrus shot her a sideways look and got one in return, only a hint of a smile as Martaina stabbed into another one of the beasts as it jumped at her. The fire of Mendicant’s spell had died out, finally, and Cyrus wondered idly if the goblin had sacrificed any life energy to make it last as long as it did. The two of them were now firmly in the middle of the sagging Sylorean line, and they had, as predicted, failed squarely in the middle of the amateurs who were carrying hand-me-down weapons and wore no armor. It’s not from lack of courage that they’re breaking, because none of them are running; they’re literally being killed here in the center at too high of a rate to keep the line solid. He looked back and saw holes that stretched clear through the middle, no reinforcement to seal them; the Syloreans had run out of men to throw at the problem.

“I believe that if you were looking in a dictionary,” Martaina said through gritted teeth as she dropped to her back and let two of the enemy run headlong into each other while she executed a backward to roll to get to her feet again, “this might fall under the word ‘untenable.’” Cyrus gave her a blank look for only a moment before he was forced back to attention on the battle as a foe went for his knee with glistening teeth. “It means-”

“I know what it means,” he snapped, driving the tip of his blade through a skull and then whipping it out sideways to intercept another running foe’s forehead. A slap of black blood hit his armor, where it blended with the metal and the night and a thousand other splotches that had already landed there in the day-long battle. “I don’t like to retreat.”

“Perhaps you should think of it as an opportunity to find some reinforcements and re-commence the battle on more favorable ground, then,” she said. “Because we’re only about five more minutes from ending up in the middle of that village, Filsharron, if we keep having to fall back like we are.”

Cyrus cast a backwards glance and realized she was right, that the village was just behind them now, only a few hundred feet away. There were torches burning, and he could see motion in the streets; the back rank of the Sanctuary reserve of spellcasters were already standing in the outskirts. “Dammit.” He turned to say something to her and watched as she landed two blades in a rampaging enemy’s shoulder and neck, keeping it from attacking him, and he shook off his surprise. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get distracted.”

“I’m here to watch your back,” she said, the slight tension evident in her voice as she threw the body back at its fellows, bowling over another one of them.

“And what a fantastic view that must be,” Cyrus said as he waded back into the fight.

“I’ve seen considerably better, even lately,” she said, fending off three of the scourge at the same time.

“I’ll try not to be insulted by that.”

“Nothing personal, sir.”

Cyrus waved at the Sanctuary line, motioning for several of the warriors toward the back to move to them, which they began to do, filtering in. “How long do you think we can keep this up?”

“When we hit the village, we’ll fold,” she said. “We don’t possess the ability to continue falling back the way we are, especially not with that stream and all those houses providing obstacles.” He didn’t say anything, and she continued after a pause in which she dispatched three enemies with her blades. “The obstacles don’t work to our advantage because we have to dodge around them, but it makes holes in our lines that they can exploit, because I think they can jump onto the roof of the houses in town and use it to leap over our lines. We of Sanctuary might be able to pull that sort of a retreat off, but the Syloreans are going to break. When they do, it’s going to be near-impossible for us to form a survivable order of battle with all the enemies crushing in on us from our right.”

Cyrus gave it a moment’s thought. “Fair assessment.” He let that seep over him as he dealt the deathblow to three enemies in rapid succession. “So, it’s time to retreat, is it?”

He caught the motion of a shrug from her. “You could try and reform south of Filsharron, but I doubt the men of Actaluere are going to go for that, and I even more seriously doubt you could get the Syloreans to pull it off.” She puffed as she struck again and again. “We’ve been fighting for a day; the Syloreans have lost half their number. We need more men to be able to beat them.” There was skepticism from her now. “If we can.”

“We retreat, they’ll come after us,” Cyrus said. “They’ll keep coming, too, unless we can outrun them. Any suggestions on that?”

“Plan for it ahead of the battle next time?” Martaina asked, still fighting. “Falcon’s Essence. If you can get a couple of the druids to spread it around the entire army, we can not only fly high enough to avoid them but it also gives you the ability to run faster. Couple it with a few wizards dropping some flame spells as we go, and you can pull off an orderly retreat.”

“Not bad,” Cyrus said. He looked back at the village. “Now seems the moment.” He raised his voice, loud enough to overcome the battle and the crashing of the fight. “RETREAT! RETREAT!” He heard others take up the call, but he knew his own voice was heard in the back of the Sanctuary line, and that was all that mattered.

Like a flame moving across spilled kerosene, the fire spread across the ground in front of them. It stitched a line before the front rank of the army, a wall as tall as two men, and it lit the night with a flickering orange glow that reminded him of a night spent around a campfire. There was no smoke, only the smell of the fire at work on the grasses, and then on flesh as a few howls cut through the night, the bellows of their enemy as the flames licked at the grey rot. Cyrus watched a pair of black eyes through the wall of fire; they stared back at him, glaring, leering, jagged teeth held at bay by the flame.

The gentle sweep of magic ran across him, and he felt himself float off the ground. He turned to look at Martaina, and saw the Syloreans already moving behind her, well into the retreat, each of them floating, flying, and moving faster at a run than would normally be possible.

“You already had it planned, didn’t you?” she asked, watching him warily.

“Of course,” Cyrus said, and nodded his head as he sheathed Praelior and ran for the back of the lines, where he saw the horses all saddled and waiting. “Do you think me so arrogant that I wouldn’t consider the possibility of retreat?”

She raised an eyebrow at him, and he caught it out of the corner of his eye as he ran. “Normally, no. In your current state, however, I have seen you make one or two errors of judgment, in my estimation.”

“Touche.”

He climbed onto Windrider, who ran out to meet him at his approach. The flames were burning behind him, a steady wall of fire that kept the enemy at bay. “Our wizards will give us about a five-minute head start,” Cyrus said. “After that, I’ve got them riding in groups to cover the retreat, taking turns protecting us and burning them back.”

“That may keep them off of us,” Martaina said with a tight jaw as she brought her horse alongside, “but you know that won’t stop them. There are villages along the way, and if we’re not going to fight, and we’re going to retreat, they’ll be caught in the path of-”

“I know,” Cyrus said. “We’ll warn them, get them to flee, but …” He shook his head. “You know they won’t all listen. They won’t all be able to run.” He felt the tightness in his own jaw, the slight swell of emotion. “They’ll be overrun. Just like Termina.”

“We won’t stand and fight for them?” Odellan rode up and joined them, now, then Curatio and J’anda. “You know what these things will do to the land, what they’ll do to the people as they come down across the plains.”

“I do,” Cyrus said. “But we just threw everything we presently have at them and they chewed it up and spat it back at us.” The Sanctuary army was already in formation and moving, Cyrus saw. Actaluere’s was in motion also, even faster than Sanctuary’s, and they were on the march south. It was the Syloreans who were the slowest to move, some of them still looking back through the fire at the demons on the other side that were pacing there, waiting to get through. “We could make a stand like this on every bit of open ground between here and Enrant Monge and we’d only succeed in slowly bleeding ourselves dry. We need to stage a slow retreat. We need to trade land for time.”

“Time for what?” Odellan asked; Cyrus could see the ripple of emotions on the elf’s young-looking face. “You just said there’s no hope to beat them with what we have, and I can’t see where you’re far wrong about that. What could we possibly do with more time other than throw more of these men’s lives down their jaws?” He gestured at the armies of Actaluere and Syloreas in turn, a sliding wave of the hand that came down in disgust.

“Simple enough,” Cyrus said, grimly, as he urged Windrider forward, following the last rank of the Sanctuary army. The wizards and druids were riding at the rear, ready to hold the retreat against the overwhelming numbers of the scourge that waited just beyond the wall of fire, their black eyes shining with orange firelight as they paced, their number growing, crawling and scrabbling over each other now, waiting for the fire to subside. Cyrus watched them, stared back at them, at death, at fear itself, so overwhelming in its scope that it could eat whole armies and never even taste them, ready to devour them whole. The maw of death, he thought. “There’s only one thing we can do, now.

“We get a bigger army.”