Crusader

Chapter 67

After the meeting broke a few minutes later, Cyrus found himself walking beside Longwell back to the Sanctuary army. The lines of march had dissolved and men and women were lying about, scattered, some asleep and some not, all of them grizzled veterans now. How unlike they were when we left out the Sanctuary gates … when was that? Nine months ago? Ten? He shook his head in disbelief. How different were they when we left? Like newborns. Now they’re not new anymore, and they’ve seen more of war in this time than even most guilds have.

“Sir.” Longwell spoke, jarring Cyrus out of his meditation. “I’ll need to be leaving soon, as soon as possible.”

“I won’t have you go alone,” Cyrus said. “You’re talking about deposing your father. You’ll need some help.”

“And I’ll have it,” Longwell said, tense, “but it must be from within Galbadien, not without. If I come to Vernadam at the head of the Sanctuary army, it won’t have the proper effect. It’ll be seen as an invasion. It will be an invasion, the west to the east, the conquering lord of Arkaria come to destroy the peaceful traditions of Luukessia. Of power over peace, of domination and control rather than what this is supposed to be-me taking my birthright to save the land that I love.”

“You cannot possibly expect me to let you do this alone,” Cyrus said. “To go into the heart of the Kingdom of Galbadien as you are, without a single person to aid you? You’ll take an escort-not an army, an escort, so that you’ll at least have a healer and a wizard in case things become truly sticky. An enchanter seems useless against the scourge, so we’ll bring J’anda with us.” Cyrus gave it a moment’s thought. “Nyad, Martaina, Aisling and I will accompany you also, along with a healer and a couple warriors and rangers. Less than ten, total. That could hardly be mistaken for an army by most eyes.”

“Yet to the eyes who know,” Longwell said, narrowing his, “that is more army than most of Luukessia could put together.”

“Yeah, well, not everyone has to know that,” Cyrus said. “It’s a war of perception, not of force. Coming to Vernadam at the head of a foreign army doesn’t sit well with me, either. It’s when you come out that you need to be at the head of an army.”

“Aye,” Longwell said. “What are your intentions for the Sanctuary army, then, while we’re away?”

“Odellan will lead them,” Cyrus said, “and Curatio will take overall command. They’ll move with the armies of Actaluere and Syloreas as they continue a fighting retreat across the steppes trying to winnow down the scourge’s numbers while we’re absent. Perhaps they’ll get lucky and strike the great victory we’re looking for.”

“Sir,” Longwell stopped his walk and laid a gauntleted hand on Cyrus’s shoulder. “You need not come with me. You are an army unto yourself, and more valuable here at the front than as an escort to me.”

“I doubt it,” Cyrus said and felt a sharp pain within. “The army will fight here to hold back the tide, but they won’t actually be able to do it, not without more men. Actaluere is sending more, but having me at the center of the line is useful insofar as I can hold it better than perhaps anyone else, can kill more than any other soldier, but I can’t win the battle by myself, and I can’t make up for the weakness inherent in this army. We lack men. We lack mobility. We needed ten thousand of your dragoons in that last fight, and a wider front to press up against without the weak men that Syloreas stretched to shore up our formation. We need soldiers, real soldiers, not farmers and field hands. We need men who can swing a blade and throw an axe, and the men who can’t, who don’t have the experience, are nothing but chaff.”

“Why, then, do you come to Vernadam?” Longwell asked. “Even if it is as you say, and you believe that there is no hope to beat them here, only to delay them, what possible greater good could you do at Vernadam that you could not do more effectively here?”

Cyrus let out a long breath, and with it felt the emotions ground up within pass, as if he could expunge a plague of doubt all at once. “Your father is obtuse, we both know that. He won’t come around, he won’t listen to reason. But there is one man in that castle that will, one man who could command the legions of Galbadien with or without your father’s blessing.”

“Count Ranson,” Longwell said with cool acknowledgment.

“Ewen Ranson is no fool,” Cyrus said. “If both of us come to tell him what he already knows, then I think we can convince him to move the army. No coup necessary, because your father’s will is irrelevant without an army to back it. Let him have Vernadam because we’ll have the army, and that is what we need to beat these enemies back.” Cyrus took another breath, and this one felt as though all his doubts and fears came back unto him, like he inhaled a lungful of death. “If we can beat these enemies back.”

“I thank you,” Longwell said, and bowed his head. “This was never your fight, not when we came here to battle the Syloreans, not when we ran afoul of Baron Hoygraf, not when we had to adjust and face the possibility of war with Actaluere. You have never once tried to bow out when things became more difficult than we had anticipated, and I think that would have been the first thought of most men, to run from such an unstoppable and implacable a foe as we now face.”

“Implacable foes are the only kind I’ve ever known,” Cyrus said without mirth.

Longwell nodded, but there was confusion hinted at on his young face, the lines that had just started to show expressing those emotions. “I thank you, regardless. I owe you more than I can possibly repay, yet still I shall endeavor to square the debt at some point.”

“I wouldn’t consider you too indebted to me,” Cyrus said, “after all, we did unleash this scourge by our own actions-by my own actions.”

“No one could have predicted that,” Longwell said quickly. Too quickly. “We need to leave soon. Perhaps after a short rest?”

“Early evening, I think,” Cyrus said. “A few hours of sleep if possible, and then we’ll be on our way. Tell the others, will you? I’ll speak with Curatio and gather us a healer.” He looked around. “They’re pitching tents,” he pointed to a few of Actaluere’s men, already hammering the first stakes into the ground, and the Syloreans across the camp were doing the same, “We’ll rest, then we’ll leave. I’ll need to send a wizard to Sanctuary to request aid again, if they haven’t already sent it. If they have, I’ll still request more.”

“Aye, sir,” Longwell said. “I’ll inform the others.”

“Don’t worry about Aisling,” Cyrus said carefully, drawing Longwell to turn back to him, just as a cool gust blew through. “I’ll tell her myself.”

“Aye,” Longwell said with care of his own, not revealing anything he might be thinking, masklike.

Cyrus watched the dragoon walk away. Does he know? Everyone knew about Cattrine, at least everyone in the castle. I wonder if my soldiers knew? Rumors spread faster than wildfire, faster than the scourge. Even if the others didn’t care, it’s still … unseemly. Isn’t it? He felt the urge fill him, even as he thought about her. Two days of battle? You’d think that would have drained me …

He walked across the campsite, the smell of weary and war all around him. He could hear faint snores from some of the men, light talking from others but in hushed voices, the quiet maintained, as though any sound above a whisper might bring the dread monsters down upon them again. He could feel the light touch of the north wind again that told him winter was coming, was not as far off as he wanted it to be, here at the end of summer. Autumn would surely come first but would be the only buffer between them and the snows that would likely bury these plains in only a few months. The taste of snowflakes on Cyrus’s tongue was something he could almost sense now, and he longed for water to wash it off, as there were another taste he could remember, one from the last retreat he’d ordered, not quite a year ago, in Termina, where the ash fell from the burning city across the river.

Cyrus’s feet carried him along, a short walk to a tree that rested in the middle of the plains. There were men all around, in every direction, and horses beyond them. Even in the quiet of the camp there was activity, though subtle, understated. He could see Windrider where he’d left him, working on conjured oats that a wizard had made for him and the rest of the animals. Cyrus looked over the small knot of Sanctuary officers nearby and then to Mendicant, who sat next to Terian, still bound in chains and watching him.

Cyrus edged closer to the dark knight and the goblin wizard; Mendicant’s back was turned, paying him no mind, but Terian kept an eye on Cyrus, his mouth covered by a rag that was tied in a thick knot. Cyrus could see that there was a rock stuffed between his lips by the tilt of the dark elf’s jaw. His eyes blazed as he watched Cyrus approach, and when the warrior was only steps away, Mendicant stirred and turned to see him there.

“Lord Davidon, sir,” Mendicant said, rushing to his short legs. The goblin came only to mid-chest on Cyrus and seemed nervous in his presence.

“I need you to cast the cessation spell, Mendicant,” Cyrus said. “I need to talk to Terian.”

“Of course, sir,” Mendicant said, and shut his eyes, letting his hand rise as though to cast the power of his spell in the direction he was pointed. His eyes rolled under the thick, scaly lids as Cyrus heard the faintest mumblings under the goblin’s breath. When his eyes opened, Cyrus saw a faint movement around his hands, the barest hint of the air rippling like water, not with the strength of a paladin’s spell but enough to create a disturbance around them, causing the nature of the world to blur within the bounds of the spell in a way Cyrus had never noticed before.

Cyrus squatted down to where Terian sat, legs in front of him. No one had bothered to strip the dark elf of his armor and so he still wore parts of it, dark-tinged metal protection from battle. Normally it was spiked in a way that Cyrus had never seen in armor. Terian’s pauldrons were gone, though, the most lethal piece of pointed armor he possessed, as was the helm, and the jagged additions to his elbows and knees, as well as the dark elf’s boots. He wore a motley assortment of armor and leather, his footcovers now worn, holes in them from all the walking.

Cyrus tugged the gag out of Terian’s mouth, and the dark elf spat out the rock, though not with any particular violence. Cyrus had been ready for him to launch it, but he didn’t. He stared at Cyrus, and Cyrus stared back, but the hostility was all one sided. “I’m leaving,” Cyrus said at last, wondering if Terian would speak at all.

“How nice.” Terian’s tone was cold and flat, and he lifted his hands, still bound. “Finally decided to get out while you can?”

“I’m going to Vernadam to try and involve Galbadien in this war,” Cyrus said, and watched Terian’s expression change not a whit. “I’m taking Longwell and a few others, and I’m going to see if we can tip the scales, because if we don’t it’s going to end very badly. You saw the battle?”

“I saw,” Terian said at last, almost reluctant. “Looks like you’re overmatched.”

“Indeed,” Cyrus said. “This whole land is overmatched by those things.”

Terian shrugged his shoulders; without the spiked pauldrons he was much less intimidating and shorter than Cyrus had noticed before. “They’re all going to die, one town at a time, until this whole damned land is wiped clean. And you get to live with the knowledge that you’re responsible, Cyrus.” Terian broke into a hollow smile. “How’s that feel?”

“I don’t know, Terian,” Cyrus said with more calm than he was feeling, “how does it feel? Because I believe you were right there with me when we killed Mortus.”

“I didn’t make the choice,” Terian snarled back. “I didn’t lunge in front of the God of Death as he was about to strike down a willing sacrifice. I damned sure didn’t cut him or finish striking him down when it was all said and done. I didn’t do it, you did. So, the consequences are yours. Just like my father. I know you didn’t know what it was going to cause you, but the consequences for that are yours, too.” The dark knight let a bitter smile curl his lips. “And aren’t they a real bitch, too?”

“I didn’t know he was your father, you’re right,” Cyrus said, feeling the pressure on his knees as he squatted there next to Terian, “but I would have killed him even if I had.” He watched Terian stiffen. “He was going to kill me, for sure. I know that doesn’t bother you, but I don’t just lie down and die when someone means to have at me.”

“Really?” Terian asked, and it was a cold fury grimace that he wore. “Because I heard you did just that, and Vara had to save you.”

“Maybe she did,” Cyrus said, “but I wasn’t going to let her fall, not at the hands of your father, not at the hands of the God of Death, not by anyone, not then.”

“I dunno, Cyrus,” Terian said, still wearing his smile, “your elf-bitch sounds like more trouble than she’s worth. She seems to have landed you in all manner of shit. You’re in deep now, old friend, near to over your head, if you’re not already.”

“She’s not mine,” Cyrus said. “Not anymore, if she ever was.”

There was a silence for a beat, only the sound of Mendicant’s continued incantation behind them. “You realize, of course,” Terian said, “that if you’d only let my father kill her, none of this would have happened. Not any of the deaths here in Luukessia, not you and I-”

“Somehow, I think if you’d been there on the bridge, you might have seen it differently,” Cyrus said. “Your father, a man you talk about when you’re drunk as though he’s the second coming of Yartraak-” Cyrus watched Terian blanch, “-and yet when he’s dead you lionize him. You’re willing to throw away your entire life to for a man who you couldn’t stand while he was alive. Would you have let Vara die, standing on that bridge? Do you have so little regard for your guildmates that you would have switched sides right there, shifted your allegiance to the Sovereignty without care for the words you swore to Alaric, to the loyalties you pledged to me, to our fellows?” Cyrus gave a wide sweep of the arm to take in all of the people around them. “Or would you have just … abandoned your duty? Let him hammer her down with a sword until she died, let him go through the rest of us one by one until he’d killed us all and taken Termina for the Sovereign?” Cyrus watched Terian with cool loathing, saw the doubt buried deep in the dark elf. “Did you love him? Was his path the one you envied, or did you have prickle of conscience somewhere inside that was as quiet as an ember snuffed out of a dead fire? Which was it, Terian? Did you leave him or did he cast you out? Was he the one you wanted to be? Or was he everything you hated about yourself?”

Cyrus stood, and looked down on the dark elf, who kept his head low, his lips a thin, drawn line, near-purple. “If you’re the sort who would abandon your loyalties the moment any trouble came your way, then I will send you with Mendicant right now, today, when he goes to ask Alaric for more aid. He can decide what’s to be done with you-but as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather see you exiled from Sanctuary if that’s the sort of loyalty you carry.”

“I’m … no … traitor,” Terian said, and he bent his face upward toward Cyrus, contorted in fury. “I would have had my revenge on you and been done with it and quietly, so no one would ever have to know.”

“Well then, it seems you’re in a state of dissonance, Terian,” Cyrus said, and stared down at him, “because you want to maintain loyal ties to Sanctuary and all that entails, but you want to kill a man who upheld the ideals you at least pretend you hold to. Faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty-these aren’t just things we pay lip service to-”

“I … never … just paid lip service to what we do,” Terian said. “I was there in the Mountains of Nartanis, in Enterra, remember? I’ve been there, in the places where we’ve spilled blood, and I never took the craven’s way out, not once. You can call me a lot of things, Cyrus, and I am a lot of things, but I’m not a-”

“Coward?” Cyrus said. “You’re not an … Orion, only in it for yourself?”

A look of loathing came over the dark knight’s features and he leaned forward. “Say that again … and give me another reason to want to kill you.”

“Why wouldn’t I say it? You were there when he betrayed me, tried to kill me-like you did.” Terian struggled against the bonds that held him as though he could break the chains. After a moment, the rattling stopped, the sound of him fighting against the inevitable. “But I tell you what. I’ll give you a chance to prove yourself a loyal guildmate and not a treacherous killer.”

“Oh, this should be good.” The rage broke over Terian’s features and he shook his head. “What would you have of me? To run suicidally into the open jaws of those beasts?”

“I would have you stand at the front of our army and help to lead them, help to hold the line, like you said you would when Alaric allowed you back to our guild,” Cyrus said. “I’m leaving to summon help. We need more of it here. Make a choice, Terian. You can either go back to Sanctuary with Mendicant when he goes to request aid and go wherever the wind and your will takes you after that, or you can stay here, help the Sanctuary army, and try to prove that you still do have some honor-some loyalty-left. That you’re not just some shadow of your father’s, trying to strike a last blow out of an empty sense of revenge that will cost you all that you have left.”

There was a shuffle to Cyrus’s left, and he saw Aisling not far away. She made just enough noise that he knew it was intentional, trying to gather his interest. “Think it over, Terian,” Cyrus said. “Either way, once I’m gone, you’ll be on your way-either back to Sanctuary or turned loose here. Decide what you want to be, dark knight. A defender of those who need it or the avenger of someone who you loathed so much in life that you couldn’t bring yourself to be anything like him or even serve the same master as he.”

“And what are you?” Terian said, and Cyrus heard the clinking of chains as Terian willed himself up, dragged himself to his feet with perfect balance and hard effort. “Some champion of the downtrodden, ready to fight your way to the death to impress a woman who doesn’t want you? Do you think she’ll still be yours if you die here trying to save these people? Do you think it’ll undo all the damage you did, if you just fight for them a little harder? What do you believe in, Cyrus? Protecting people? Rushing headlong into things, hoping to do good? Because it seems like your best intentions are doing more harm than good of late. Maybe you should stop trying to help people.”

“Go back to Sanctuary,” Cyrus said with a wave, and began to walk away. “Go back to them and listen while Mendicant tells them what a coward you were, if Ryin hasn’t already. Be on your way, dark knight. For all your talk, you don’t believe in anything but petty, shallow revenge-”

“You don’t know a damned thing, Cyrus Davidon!” Terian’s roar was loud, and he came at Cyrus in a charge, shoulder tucked low. Cyrus parried and kicked Terian’s legs from underneath him, and the dark knight fell to his face in the dirt, the long grass sticking up all around him like towers hanging over him, the little lines of their shadows stretching across his dark armor as they waved in the breeze. “Of course you wouldn’t, you don’t even know what it’s like to have a father-”

Cyrus landed a kick on Terian’s ribs without even realizing he was going to do it, the white-hot blinding flash of rage subsiding after he heard the grunt of pain from the dark elf. “Now who’s talking about something they know nothing of?” Cyrus asked, taking long, slow breaths. “Make your choice, Terian. I don’t care which it is, but figure out who you want to be.”

“I’ll stay,” Terian said, looking up from the dirt, cradling his arm against his side where Cyrus kicked him. “I’ll help. I’ll help protect the people. But I want you to know-”

“We’re not done,” Cyrus said. “I’m well aware that you’ve still got your axe to grind-though I suppose it’s a sword, now.” He turned to face Mendicant. “Pass the word that when I’m gone later tonight, he can be freed. Until then …” Cyrus knelt down and grabbed the stone off the ground along with the gag, “… back to blessed silence.” Terian glared at him but opened his mouth, accepting the stone, and then Cyrus tied off the gag behind him. The eyes watched Cyrus, though, the hatred burned, and he felt it, it coursed through his veins like a poison as he stared into the eyes of his friend-and gagged him so tightly he couldn’t make a sound.