Crusader

Chapter 6

Thanks to the efforts of Martaina and a few of the more experienced rangers, there was indeed wild boar meat waiting for them the next day at breakfast. The smell of the roasting flesh awoke Cyrus, and he sat up to look at the fires along the beach. Many of them bore spits, and recruits talked while circled around them, their voices loud, with much merriment being made. Cyrus could see even at a distance that there were bottles being passed around, spirits of varying kinds that had made the trip from Sanctuary.

Cyrus pulled himself up next to his fire, a small one down the beach from the others. Someone had added logs to it during the night and done so quietly enough that Cyrus hadn’t awakened. “Aisling,” he said in a low whisper. The next nearest fire was a hundred feet away, and he could see Terian’s shadow next to it in the pre-dawn light, his sword once more across his lap. Curatio and Longwell lay around their fire, still sleeping; he could tell them by their garb.

He looked down the beach in the opposite direction. The angle of the curves on either side told him that they were on a peninsula. He snuck a look back at the joviality around the fires, at the silent stone bridge that watched over them, and began to walk, his boots kicking up sand. He looked again behind him; no one seemed to take any notice as his footsteps carried him away from his army.

His hand fell to the scabbard and the hilt of his sword as though he were looking for reassurance. His blade, Praelior, was still there, ever-present and ready to be drawn. He felt the urge to pull it loose and practice with it. Later. When we’re out of sight of the camp, perhaps.

Tall grasses reached out from the treeline on the berm above the beach, a deep patch of grass that looked as though it would stretch to Cyrus’s waist. The chirp of crickets from within was loud, and the trees hanging over the patch of grass waved in the wind, their branches rustling. Somewhere behind them, Cyrus knew the sun was beginning to rise, even though he couldn’t see it yet.

“You’re not supposed to wander away from the army.” He turned to find Aisling standing behind him, a few feet from the grass, a thistle in her hair.

Cyrus let his hand drift away from the hilt of Praelior, where it had come to rest when she had spoken to him. “You don’t think we can make an exception for the general who leads said army?”

“Mmmm,” she seemed to purr as she considered it, her face pensive. “I think we’re in a foreign land with enemies an uncertain distance away.” He caught a glint of light in her eyes. “It would probably be better to play safe than be sorry.”

He felt his face set in hard lines, an unamused smile only barely there. “You don’t think I could take on an entire non-magical army by myself?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I believe that if anyone could, it’d be you-but I also believe that you might need more than luck in order to do it.”

Cyrus’s hand tensed again around Praelior’s grip. “I have more than luck.”

“Oh, indeed,” she said as she began to walk toward him, her small feet leaving little indentations in the dry sand, small craters where her worn leather boots trod. “But perhaps you’ll accept that having more help would be ideal, especially if you mean to wander far afield.”

“And that’d be you, would it?” He looked back at her, wary.

“Unless you fancy going back to camp and rounding up some others?” She looked at him coolly in reply, impassive.

“What I fancy is doing what I want, when I want, and not being questioned about it.”

“Too late for that,” she said, smug. “It was too late for that the day after you took your officership. Maybe even the day after you joined Sanctuary. It’s hard to go unnoticed around here, even when you’re one of the small folk. As an officer and the general of this expedition, it’s well nigh impossible.”

“I just need to walk-to get away for a bit.” He said it with every element of patience he could summon from within.

“Until you what? Walk her right out of you?” She smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “You’ll be walking a good long time to pull that off, til your feet bleed and your bones rub down to powder. Even then, you’ll be lucky to get her out of you before there’s nothing left to get her out of.”

Why am I talking to her about this? “This isn’t your concern,” he said.

“It kind of is. You are my general, too. Our expedition counts on you.”

He felt a great weariness. “I’m not some sort of communal property that belongs to the whole guild or the army. I’ll lead, but this is a day of rest.”

“And you’re looking so very restful.”

“Why are you here?” He spoke in near-silence, his words almost drowned out by the breaking of waves off the shore.

Aisling did not respond at first, and she turned to look back to the forest, staring into the dark spaces between the boughs of the trees, eyes piercing them as though she could see things hidden within. “Because you look like you could use a friend.”

“I have friends,” Cyrus said, too quickly.

“Do you?” She drew her gaze away from the woods and onto his eyes and he felt himself look away first. “I see a man who leads an army, and who hasn’t had a soul talk to him directly in days but the Elder of Sanctuary and myself. The Elder to relay commands and establish order, and myself-for my own reasons, of course.”

“I’d find great mystery in your words,” Cyrus said, looking away from her and back to the waves and the shore, “if not for the fact that I have known ‘your reasons’ for as long as I’ve known you. Your intentions have been made plain; you needn’t bother trying to be my friend when we both know that my friendship isn’t the part of me you’re interested in-”

She stepped in front of him, eyes blazing. “I’ve never been coy about my intentions toward you, but you fault me for it nonetheless. Would you prefer I dance around it, exchanging biting insults with you? That I berate you for little or no reason and never let a kind word break through my imposing facade?” She stepped closer to him and he caught the scent of her breath, cinnamon, as she brought her face only inches from his. “Are you so steeped in the way of pain and combat that you can’t accept honest, sweet words? Does every advance that interests you have to come couched in the agony of bladed phrase and stinging words?”

Her hand was on his cheek, her fingernails tracing delicate lines down his face. She leaned in closer to him, and he felt the pressure of her nails increase even as she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Do you want me to hurt you? Is that what it takes?” She held her hand still, the pressure constant, her nails pressing into his cheek.

His hand came up and seized her wrist, yanking it away. “No,” Cyrus said, throwing her hand away from him. “That’s not what I want.”

She edged closer and he felt the press of her against him through his armor. “Then what does it take?” Her soft breathing seemed to surround him, filling his senses, drowning out the crashing breakers and the chirps of the crickets. “I’m not her. I’ll never be her. But I could be …” He could feel her push against him, saw her stand on tiptoes to bring her lips to his, “… what you need right now.” He turned his head and her lips found his cheek, and the delicate kiss she left there sent a surge of feeling through his whole body. “I can do … what she hasn’t, what I know you need … it’s been a long time, hasn’t it …?”

“Long time,” he said, echoing her, the truth stumbling from his mouth. He wished he could force it back in there, along with everything else that had happened in the last month, but it was there, nonetheless.

Cyrus felt the moment fade, and as Aisling leaned up to kiss him he gently shook himself free of her. There was no anger in him; only wistfulness and a deep sorrow. “I’m sorry. I don’t need what you think I do-and I’m not what you need, either.”

She looked suddenly very small to his eyes, but she summoned her courage and spoke again. “Do you even know what you need right now?”

He thought about it and heard his own breath as he inhaled then exhaled, thinking. Inhale, exhale. “I don’t. But I don’t think that me-really me, inside, not my urges, but me-I don’t think that’s what I need.”

She nodded, but it was subtle and slight, a barely-there movement of her head. “If you don’t know what you need-really need-then how do you know what I need?”

Without waiting for him to answer she turned and soundlessly she stalked off into the grass, disappearing at the treeline with only a single glance back at him before she faded away behind a tree trunk.

The last look was nothing but regret, pure and longing-and with life of its own.