Crusader

Chapter 71

Cyrus

They rode south for more than a month, and the autumn hounded them the whole way as though they were the prey and it was a predator. The steppes near Filsharron were low, and the yellowed grass went green for a time as they rode west to avoid the swamps southeast of Enrant Monge. It was a long, drawn out course, but they saw no sign of scourge as they went, and after a week’s travel, Longwell looked ahead upon the apex of a small hill and pointed; ahead of them was a short wall, and tucked behind it was a stone house.

“Guard house,” Longwell said. “At least a couple men manning it. They should have seen us already; though they may report to a larger watch, which would be …” he held a hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun, “over there.” He pointed to a nearby hill that was taller, covered with trees. Cyrus could see man-made structures breaking up the symmetry of the woods atop it, but it wasn’t easily defined. “We’re at the crossing for Gundrun; they’ll be wanting to know who we are and for what purpose we’re coming to Galbadien there at that house.”

“Might I suggest we not tell them we’re here to overthrow the King?” J’anda said it with a wry smile, but it caused a pallor to settle over them all.

The smell of autumn was in the air; the wind came from the east, the stink of the scourge was gone for at least now, and the leaves were turning all along the road. Reds and golds were full fledged, and the shock of them together was something Cyrus couldn’t quite recall. The air was crisp, like the first bite of an apple, and the briskness spread across his skin, the sweat from riding giving him the chills. The woods had been quiet around them, this intermittent sea of trees and fields that was something much less desolate than the steppes had been.

“Are you ready for this?” Cyrus asked Longwell, as they trod along the road on horseback. It was only the ten of them; Cyrus, Aisling, Longwell, Martaina, J’anda, Nyad, Scuddar, and Calene Raverle, along with a healer whose name Cyrus had yet to catch, a human who said little to nothing. Raverle had made a fairly quick recovery after Green Hill and had made no mention of what had happened, though Cyrus knew there was a stillness about her that hinted at things, things going on in her depths that he preferred to not inquire about.

“Ready to either usurp my father’s throne or claim my birthright, depending on how things go?” Longwell did not look at him, merely kept his gauntletted hands on the reins as they went. “I suppose I’m as ready for that as I’ll ever get.”

“Glad you’re keeping it in perspective,” Cyrus said, and they went on in silence.

The border crossing was a simple thing. The guards said nothing to them, merely nodded assent as they approached the shack. When they had gone a few hundred feet past it along the path into the woods, Cyrus turned back to Longwell. “That was easy.”

“They see ten people, one of them wearing a surcoat of the Galbadien dragoons,” Longwell said without emotion, “they probably assume we’re not going to invade the Kingdom as we are.”

“That makes them all the more foolish, then, doesn’t it?” J’anda asked from behind them.

“Not in the context of Luukessia,” Longwell said. “A man with a spell may do much damage in Arkaria, but very few spellcasters would care to brave the bridge simply to come to Luukessia for the joy of it.”

The weather over the next days was pleasing to Cyrus, who had not missed the hot, listless days of summer, even after the few he had spent waiting at the camp near Filsharron for the battle to come to them. The nights he spent under the bedroll with Aisling, separated slightly from the others. She was the only thing that allowed him to sleep soundly at night; her activity, her vigor. He lay down at night spent not only from the ride but from her, letting himself rest in her.

His dreams were clear, surprisingly so, considering the scourge and all that it meant for Luukessia. They rode on at a fast pace but at one which allowed for proper care of the horses. He watched Martaina at night when she looked after them, picking out their feet, using Nyad’s ability to conjure grains and oats for them when they stayed in the wilderness instead of an inn. Some nights they did stay in towns and ate hot food made in the taverns instead of the hard cheese they carried with them. Occasionally Martaina would bring down an animal on an evening when they took extra rest and would make a stew or something similar. Occasionally it was long into the night before she was done cleaning and preparing the animal, but when Cyrus had the first taste, he knew the wait was worth it, even tempered as it was with the pickled eggs and conjured bread that they had to cut the hunger pangs.

They crossed through canyons and foothills, came down through wide forests choked with game. Those nights were bounteous with their harvests, and the nights spent in roadside inns where the fare was little more than warmer bread and the barest stew were ill enjoyed by comparison. Cyrus began to feel the slightest of his life’s blood come back to him one night sitting by a fire, in a circle with the others, his patera-a cooking pot, cup and bowl all in one-filled to the brim in front of him with something Martaina had created from some animals she had snared and the spices she carried with her.

“This is really quite magnificent,” J’anda said, supping it straight from his patera. “Where did you learn to do all these things-hunting, fishing, cooking, tracking?”

“My father,” Martaina said, stirring the small cauldron that she carried on the back of her horse. “He was one of the last of the breed of elves who lived their lives in the Iliarad’ouran Woods outside Pharesia. That forest is rich with wildlife, and a small band of our people chose to live outside the city gates, off the land rather than within the walls, herding, domesticating animals. It was a simpler life, a subsistence life, rather than one focused on creating excess and serving the monarchy, with their demand for as much of your grain and livestock as they could lay hands on.”

She stirred the spoon slowly in the cauldron, a small one, only slightly larger than Cyrus’s helm. “He taught me how to fire an arrow as quickly as you can pluck it, how to follow tracks, and skin a beast fast, get it over the fire and roast it on spit.” She blinked. “It was all we did, all day long, and the sooner we finished those chores the sooner we could get to the idle fun of the things we wanted to do.” She smiled. “So we got very good at it.”

“I take it he’s passed on now?” Nyad asked quietly. “If he was one of the Iliarad’ouran woodsmen, I know the last of their number was-”

“Yes,” Martaina said simply, cutting her off. “About a milennia ago. He was the last. I chose not to follow in his footsteps to carry it on.”

Nyad nodded without saying much else; it occurred to Cyrus after a space of seconds that the tension was heavy, which was probably due to the fact that Nyad’s father was the monarchy that Martaina’s father resented. “So,” he said, trying to break the silence, “what do you think they’re doing back home right now?” He felt a peculiar twinge at the words, especially the thought of Sanctuary as home. It’s been nearing a year since we’ve been away …

“It’s fall now,” Calene Raverle spoke up. “Apples would be coming into season in the Northlands.” Her voice was soft but strained, as though it had been poured through a sifter and all that was left was smoothness. It could barely be heard it over the sound of the crickets though everyone listened intently. “Have you ever walked through an orchard on a fall day and picked apples as you went?” Her eyes were far off now, thinking about it. “Felt the cool grass beneath your feet, like a thousand tickling kisses?” She let a small smile crop up on her petite face. “You take the first bite of one, hear the crunch, feel it crackle in your mouth, the tartness of the yellow ones.” She took a breath. “They make cider with some of the excess, you know, and if you can get some cinnamon for it …” She breathed again and a sadness crept over her. “I don’t suppose they have much in the way of apple orchards around Sanctuary though, do they?”

“I believe there is one across the river Perda, to the south,” J’anda said. “I miss fall nights at Sanctuary, when the barest chill cancels out the warm sun. You know that two-week period after summer ends and we get our first chill, but then the warm weather comes back before it turns a little blustery? I like that. It’s like the last kiss of summer before it leaves. Not that it gets desperately wintery in the Plains of Perdamun, like it does outside Saekaj, anyway, but I like that last … that last goodbye. A fond farewell, if you will.”

“The gardens around the palace have a certain kind of vegetation that only blooms in fall,” Nyad said. “Pharesia is far enough south that winter’s touch is not that painful, but when they prepare the gardens for winter, it is an impressive sight … for the few days when it freezes, they make ice sculptures and fill the grounds with them. And at the smaller palace outside Termina, they used to-” Nyad’s broad face carried a smile that faded as she looked around and settled on Martaina, who stared evenly back at her. “Well, it was beautiful. Though I suppose that’s gone now,” she said with a touch of sadness.

“Longwell?” Cyrus asked, and the dragoon seemed to settle into deep thought.

“Vernadam sits so low in the land that summer lasts longer for us than it does for most of Arkaria,” he said. “Winter is a short affair, a few months only of lower temperatures, and a very quick autumn to bridge between the two.” He shrugged. “I spent time in my youth at Enrant Monge and in the northern parts of Galbadien and found them to be very different than life at Vernadam. Autumn in the north is like winter at home.”

“What about you?” Aisling spoke up, dragging Cyrus out of his quiet. “What do you miss most about autumn at home?”

Cyrus pondered that for a moment. “I don’t, I suppose. I mean, Sanctuary’s been home for the last couple years. Before that I was living in the slums of Reikonos, where every day is the same, even the ones where the snow goes to your knees. Before that …” he shrugged. “Still in Reikonos, all the way back to when I was at the Society of Arms.”

“So,” Nyad asked, “you don’t have any distinct memories of autumn? Nothing?”

After a moment’s thought, Cyrus shrugged. “We went on a training exercise to the Northlands once in the fall, the year after I joined the Society. It was almost as much a camping trip as anything, to get us familiar with staying out overnight, sleeping under the stars. But they took us away from the city for this one, on a long hike, aided by a wizard for transport. I remember seeing the leaves change. You don’t see much of that in Reikonos, because it’s not like Termina; there aren’t many trees in the city itself, it’s mostly houses and buildings. I remember that pretty well, the hues of the leaves, how different they were from the green ones I was used to seeing. Trees all down the road and beyond.” He hesitated. “I think that was the training exercise where I finally got the Able Axes to leave me the hell alone.”

“Able Axes?” Nyad said, her brow puckered with confusion.

“Blood Family,” Cyrus said. “The Society of Arms splits its trainees into two separate classes, the Able Axes and the Swift Swords.”

“Ah,” she said, with a subtle nod. “They were bullying you, then?”

Cyrus shrugged, felt the cool breeze. “They had their reasons. It’s all very competitive, very ‘us vs. them’ in the Society’s structure. They saw me as an easy target, so they took their turns trying to break me.” He shrugged again. “It didn’t work.”

“What did you do?” J’anda asked. Cyrus looked around; every eye was on him, even Martaina’s, which was decidedly knowing.

Cyrus waited before answering, sifted through his emotions to see if he could find it, a thread of regret for what had happened. It was strangely absent. “I killed their leader.”

Nyad choked on a spoonful of stew, and a little of it sluiced out of her upper lip, dribbling down her pale chin and along the cleft. “I’m sorry … you killed him?” She waited for the nod, then looked around, wide-eyed, to the others sitting around the fire before she came back to him. “How old were you?”

“Seven, I think,” Cyrus answered, racking his memory.

“My gods,” Nyad said, holding her bowl apart from her as though it contained something appalling. “How old was he?”

Cyrus gave it some thought. “He was about … oh, I don’t know, sixteen or so? Perhaps seventeen.”

Nyad stared at him, gaping. The look was not held by anyone else, though Longwell watched him sidelong, wary, and J’anda seemed disquieted, his teeth visible in a grimace. “Why did you kill him?” Nyad asked.

“Well,” Cyrus said, “in fairness, it was a training exercise, and it was Swift Swords versus Able Axes, and while we were supposed to keep it non-lethal and strictly to more of a ‘tag, you’re out’ system, he didn’t play fair. So I killed him.”

“Oh,” Nyad said with a distant sort of nod, “so it was an accident.”

“No,” Cyrus said, and took another sip of his stew, “I knew full well what I was doing. I bludgeoned him with a tree branch until his head split open.”

“But …” Nyad’s voice came again into the quiet. No one else was eating now. “… You did it for your team, then? To win the game? For the … Swift Swords?”

“I wasn’t on the Swift Swords team,” Cyrus said, and this time he did feel a pinch of emotion, but he took another sip of the stew anyway.

“So you killed your own teammate?” J’anda asked, watching him carefully.

“No,” Cyrus said and finally felt the burn of it. He looked to his left to see Aisling watching him, curiosity in her eyes. So she doesn’t know, either. He looked to Martaina. But she does. He slowly looked around the circle and saw only Scuddar In’shara nodding in agreement. “I was on my own, you see.”

There was a steely quiet that was finally broken by J’anda. “I admit my understanding of the Society of Arms is somewhat … flawed. But I was given to understand that every single child brought in was given a Blood Family-for kinship, for a familial structure and familiarity.” The enchanter spread his arms wide. “For support. So that even while learning the hardness of battle, you are not ever fully alone.”

“True,” Cyrus said, and put his patera aside, the stew now gone. “But occasionally an inductee is deemed unworthy of having a Blood Family and is separated out to survive on their own.” He felt a tightness in his jaw. “I was one of those.”

There was a silence. “But …” J’anda said, “they would have all been arrayed against you, yes?” He stared at Cyrus, and there was a horror behind the enchanter’s eyes. “They base everything in their training off of Blood Families?” Cyrus nodded. “Every exercise pits the Blood Families against each other?” J’anda kept on, and Cyrus nodded every time. “So if you are without a Blood Family, then you huddle with the others who are without one? Make your own sort of small circle?”

Cyrus smiled, but there was no warmth to it. “It’s a rare thing, being without a Blood Family. I was the first in five years. The one before me died two months into the training. Typically ‘outcasts,’ as they’re called, don’t survive six months.” He gave a slight nod. “And I do mean survive. They’re usually found dead in the morning hours, well past the time when a resurrection spell would be able to bring them back.”

“Murder,” Nyad said with a quiet whisper. “Nothing more than child murder.”

“Aye,” Longwell said, arms folded where he sat on a log. “That’s pretty savage, even for a guild that trains warriors.”

Cyrus shrugged. “If you know that’s how outcasts die going in-and they do tell you, by the way, probably as a suggestion to the Able Axes and Swift Swords, but I took it as a warning to me to be scarce during the nighttime hours-it makes it that much easier to avoid that sort of death.”

“Barbaric,” Nyad said, shuddering. “Absolutely barbaric.”

“I’m certain that back when Pharesia had a Society of Arms, they did it the same way,” Cyrus said lacksadaisically. “But it’s all rather irrelevant now.”

“How is this irrelevant?” J’anda said. “How did you survive? Most don’t make it six months? You were there for … twelve years?”

Cyrus shrugged. “I fended them off. I did what I did on that training exercise after the first year and gave the Able Axes a string of injuries that made them afraid of me. And I held the Swift Swords at bay until Cass Ward came of an age to keep them off me.”

“He was your friend, then?” Aisling spoke up at last. “Cass? He’s an officer of The Daring, right? But he was your friend?”

“No,” Cyrus said with a slight smile. “An outcast lives and dies alone in the Society of Arms. They’re not considered of the Society, you see, not part of the family. So you’re not allowed to talk to them. But he respected me because we fought together. We didn’t speak until after we graduated; but I did know him. Friends? Hardly. I didn’t have friend until …” Cyrus swallowed heavily. “Until Narstron. Or at least Imina, if you want to count her as that.”

There was a deadened silence after that, a quiet that settled on their party that no one seemed to want to break, so Cyrus did it himself. “Come on. This was all years ago. I don’t feel sorry for myself about it, so none of you should, either.”

“Sorry,” J’anda said, with a weak smile, “it’s just … uh … that is truly appalling. It might take a bit of adjustment to get over that. I’m no stranger to the cruelties that others may deal out, but that … is a special sort of disturbing, if I may say so.”

Cyrus felt a cool settle over him, like the waters deep in his soul became placid. “It was life. It made me who I am today.”

“The only one without a Blood Family to ever graduate the Society of Arms,” Martaina said from behind the stew pot; her gaze was not accusatory, but something else, her words tinged with slightest awe. “To survive being an outcast.”

Cyrus shrugged. “You do what you have to. It was just a day-to-day struggle, like everyone else experiences in life-” He held up a hand to stop Nyad’s protest, “a different level of struggle, perhaps, but a struggle. Everyone has adversities. I made it through, and we don’t really need to go sift it. I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t faced what I faced then.”

“And they do teach you how to be fearless?” Longwell asked, perked up with interest. Cyrus saw the others, as well, easing up, paying attention, waiting for his answer.

“As close as they can get,” Cyrus said. “They expose you to it, over and over, things that scare you, and it just gradually fades away, like night turning to day. Snakes, bugs, battle, blood, everything, all the major things. They talk about fear all the time, how it can hurt you, how it can make you flinch. Fear is death on the battlefield, the surety of injury and failure because you’ll hesitate at the wrong moment and it’ll cost you.”

“Interesting,” J’anda said, as though he wanted to say more, but didn’t. “I believe … I have reached my end for the evening. With a nod to each of them, he spoke once more. “Good night, all.”

“I should probably turn in as well,” Cyrus said, and stood, grasping his patera.

“I’ll wash that for you if you want,” Martaina said from behind the cauldron. “I have to stay awake a little longer anyway, and I’m going to take care of the cauldron before I go to bed.”

“Sure,” Cyrus said and set it next to her. Aisling did the same a moment after him, and he walked behind a tree, about twenty feet from the campfire, where he had set his bedroll alongside Aisling’s.

“You never had a friend until after you left the Society?” She watched him closely as he took to a knee, preparing to brush himself off and remove his armor. Her hand rested on his shoulder, and he could only just feel her touch through the metal.

He pulled the snaps and freed his neck from the gorget, then slid his pauldrons off before unfastening his breastplate. “It’s true.”

Her hand was on his chainmail now, and he could feel the lightness of her touch as her slightly elongated fingernails rose to his neck and applied the gentlest of pressure. “No lovers either, then?”

He shook his head. “Not until Imina.” He unsnapped his greaves, then slid off the chainmail pants and shirt while she watched. He looked at her, gauged her expression. “You’re feeling sorry for me, aren’t you?”

“Not too bad,” she said with a whisper. “More sorry that you didn’t have much of a life for all those years. That you didn’t get to feel so many things …” Her fingernails danced down the cloth that still covered his chest, and she tugged it up over his head, then ran her fingers down his chest hair, gently pulling the strands. “Like making love in the autumn woods as the leaves fell down around you.”

“Oh?” He took a look around, and a breeze came rustling through, shaking a few leaves loose and causing one of them to land in her hair. “It would appear to be autumn now, and leaves are falling around us.”

“You caught that too, huh?” She didn’t bother to pull the leaf out of her hair, just left it there as she kissed him. Even through the activity that followed, it stayed there as though some sort of badge until the breeze kicked up the following morning and it was carried it off on the winds in a way that Cyrus’s past never could be.