Crusader

Chapter 66

Cyrus

The retreat was long, aided by the wizards and druids. Fires burned through the night behind them, giving them a rear guard as they retreated, long flaming rows that stretched out along the plain in an infinite line, with only a gap for the river, as the flames burned in a curve to follow the bank. Cyrus didn’t feel the heat, not at the distance he was at; he watched a haggard Nyad keeping her eyes on the fire as they rode into the distance, trying for escape. After a few hours, the dim, distant noises of the scourge army faded, not to reoccur when the fire line came down. By morning, they were not even in sight as the sun came up.

“Where do you reckon they are?” Partus asked Cyrus, atop a small horse that Cyrus believed had been Ryin Ayend’s.

“Spread out along the plains,” Cyrus said, numb. The wind came from the north today, and it was all rot and death, cold and chill. The end of summer is most assuredly at hand and winter is well on its way. “Giving up on us to hit all the ripe, tender villages that are east and west of here. Gone to give some other poor bastards hell.”

“Those things …” Partus said, shaking his craggy, bearded head, “those things are the legends of torment come to life. They truly are Mortus’s works. I’ve been in his Realm, many times, but these … these are staggering, those things. Monstrous works. They look like-”

“Wendigos, a little bit,” Cyrus said. “But four legged, no arms. No hair. I’ve met wendigos that could talk, that seemed like they had a soul. None of that here, just a raw, feral savagery you don’t even see in wild wolves.”

“Aye,” Partus said. “So many, they cover the whole ground and could cover the land like locusts in the harvest. They’ll eat Luukessia whole and everything on it.”

“No,” Cyrus said with a fierce shake of the head. “No, they won’t.” He urged Windrider forward, toward the front of the column, and they rode on until midday.

At midday they stopped by a stream; the armies of Actaluere and Syloreas had marched with them, their darker armor and distinctive flourishes marking them clearly-the Actaluereans had livery and surcoats, like Longwell’s, though they almost all were dirty and stained with the black blood of the scourge. The Syloreans, on the other hand, wore no such livery but their armors carried fur padding that stuck out of the neck and at the shoulders, to give it a different appearance than most kinds of armor Cyrus had seen, and a distinct look that fit the northmen well. There was no tent pitched, and Cyrus knew it was because this was to be a fast convocation. Somewhere to the north, he knew, somewhere below the mountains that stared down from the horizon, was an army that was as relentless as it was unmerciful.

Cyrus took the cloth seat that was offered him again, his officers at his back. Tiernan was quiet, fingers caressing his unshaven chin, the first time Cyrus had seen a hint the man could grow whiskers. In Tiernan’s hangdog look, Cyrus caught just a hint of Cattrine, but he brushed that thought away with all the ease of scouring the remains of baking from a pan. Unger, on the other hand, stared straight ahead, his eyes flicking to and fro from the small, quiet circle to the horizon, as though at any moment the enemy would burst over it and he might have his revenge.

“They’re going to keep coming,” Cyrus said after a moment of silence. Tiernan looked up at him as though Cyrus had drawn a sword; the King of Actaluere’s eyes were wide yet vacant, watching as though he were a child, bereft of understanding for what was transpiring. “We lack the numbers to stop them. We lack the punch.”

“We killed at least ten thousand of them last night,” Briyce Unger said. The King of Syloreas appeared to have no desire to exit his seat, the usual twitch of his left leg muted, exhaustion heavy on the King’s frame. “And more still came. More than could be imagined, I think, though it would be hard to tell in the dark.”

“Yes,” Cyrus said. “My elves tell me that they still filled the ground to the horizon, even after all we did. But there cannot be an endless supply of them.”

“Whether there is an endless supply of them or not is wholly irrelevant,” Tiernan said with an exasperated chuckle that lacked any humor at all, “what matters is whether there are enough to block us from sealing that damnable gate through which they invade our land. There seems no way to be able to pull that one off, as they don’t break or back off even when confronted with overwhelming losses. As he said,” Tiernan raised a hand and gestured to Unger, “we killed numbers of them so staggering it would make any of our armies break and scatter from the loss. We lost few enough ourselves, and yet we were the ones who broke. Still they came on and would have kept pressing on us until we were finished had it not been for the western magic that saved us. Ancestors!” Tiernan said it as though it were a curse. “How do you fight an enemy that will stand before you and let you pound on his face and not even blanch whilst you do so?”

“You pound away at him until he does blanch,” Cyrus said.

“That might hearten me, if we were by some chance facing a human adversary with a human reaction,” Tiernan said. Unger watched, silent, while the King of Actaluere spoke. “These things show no sign that we may ever push them back, that we might ever reach the end of their will.” Tiernan threw up his hands. “They’re purest evil. There is no soul, no essence in these things, just an all-consuming hunger to take life.”

“Aye,” Briyce Unger said at last, “and that is why we must face them again. Why we must hit them until we find their breaking point. You say yourself, you know-they are evil. They are consuming my Kingdom, eating it whole. Yours will be next, and Longwell’s, until there is nothing left of Luukessia.” Unger shook his head. “At this point, even if we went into the teeth of these beasts again, we stand only the chance to hold them back, not to win. We need more, Tiernan. We need more men. We need every man in the land with an able body. We need every army, every soldier, every farmboy who can wield a pitchfork and stand in a line.” Unger waved a hand toward the mountains. “This isn’t a fight to save Syloreas anymore, not that you were here for that anyway, but I say it because Syloreas is lost. It’s gone. I’m sending my soldiers right now, today, to the corners of my Kingdom and I’m telling them to let everyone know-Get out. Go south. Come to Enrant Monge, flee to Galbadien or Actaluere. Buy time because anyone who stays in the north is lost. They’ll all die, every last one.”

“You paint a grim picture,” Tiernan said, his complexion ashen. “Yet you speak the whole truth, no exaggeration. So you would leave your lands behind, have your people flee into the south. What then? Not that they’ll be greeted unkindly by mine own or Aron Longwell’s-”

“They’ll not be greeted at all by Aron Longwell’s armies,” came the voice of Samwen Longwell, and Cyrus turned to see him standing just at his shoulder. Longwell was tall enough already, but he seemed to have gained a solid five inches of height. “I am riding today for Vernadam.” His jaw was squared, straightened, and he spoke from a well deep within. Cyrus could feel the emotion crackling off the man he had known for over two years now but never in this way. “I will ride to Vernadam, right now, today, and I will bring back all the army I can to oppose these beasts. I will turn out every man who is able, and I will come back at the head of them to stand with you in beating back this threat to our land.”

Unger traded a look with Tiernan then cautiously looked back to Longwell. “And if … when … your father opposes you?”

Cyrus watched Longwell’s face carefully, saw the slight trace that came and went before the younger Longwell let slip a slight smile, a false one, to be sure. “Then he will be the King of Galbadien no longer. I will see to it.”

There was a quiet that settled over the convocation. “Well,” Milos Tiernan said, breaking the silence that had settled on them as surely as the first snow, “this shall certainly be a winter for the ages.”

“Aye,” Briyce Unger said, “and perhaps the last one the men of Luukessia will ever see.”