Crusader

Chapter 81

The snowfall was at a blessed slowdown as they stood all in a line, a quarter mile from the campsite. Cyrus’s nose hairs felt well frozen, and every breath just added to the searing pain behind his cheeks and eyes, as though someone had taken a frozen hammer and tapped behind them gently for quite some time. His sweat had frozen to his skin, and whatever breakfast he’d eaten-he could little recall now what it had been-was sitting poorly, and threatening to come back up. The cold had seeped to the bone and all was quiet save for the roar of the wind when it picked up. It ran with near continuousness now, driving the snow sideways at its worst and at a forty-five degree angle at best.

It was the sound that reached them first, the yells and battle cries of men weary and desperate. They saw them shortly thereafter, in the distance, through the haze made by the snow.

“This is an ill time and place for a fight,” Terian said, and Cyrus glanced over to realize that the dark knight was next to him.

“Because we can see little, our cavalry is unable to operate in the heavy snow and our infantry is slowed to being unable to advance?” Cyrus let the irony seep in as he said it.

“Also, it’s colder than your elven girlfriend’s touch and we’re relieving an army that’s likely to break from fatigue as soon as they realize we’re here to take up for them.” His eyes glittered in the bare light of a sun that none of them could see. “If they manage to let us take over as the front line without breaking, it will be a miracle of military discipline of the highest order.”

Cyrus looked forward to the line stretched in front of him, and saw others closer, the walking wounded, and a few carrying men on makeshift stretchers made of bedrolls and all manner of other things. “Would I be wrong in assuming there won’t be many wounded?”

“Most have been left behind,” Terian answered. “It became obvious after you left that our healers were not nearly enough to handle the entire army under sustained assault; they lacked the magical energy to come close to saving everyone. The Luukessians played it carefully after that; if a man fell and ended up behind the enemy’s line, he was given up lost so as not to cost five more trying to recover him.” The dark knight set his jaw. “It’s an ugly thing, what they do to those who fall. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Our rangers nearly ran out of arrows putting the poor bastards out of their misery.”

“We lose any of ours that way?” Cyrus asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

“Couple of disappearances,” Curatio said from behind Cyrus. The army of Galbadien and Actaluere sandwiched the small group of them on either side. “Likely fell in the night and we didn’t see or hear them, you know … in the heat of the battle.”

You mean in the midst of all the men screaming, Cyrus thought, but did not say. Hard to tell if the scream comes from a man of Sanctuary or one of the Luukessians when you’re bunched tight together along a front line.

The army before them was still falling back in tatters, only a few scant rows deep. Cyrus could see the Sanctuary numbers, the largest part of the force. The army of Actaluere was much reduced over when last he saw it, easily a quarter the size. There were almost none of the Sylorean civilians remaining, the farmers and villagers that had been on his right when they’d fought at Filsharron. The Sylorean army looked smaller, too, and ragged, though it was hard to tell since they had been the most ragged at the outset of the fight.

“It’s the New Year today, did you know that?” Terian looked over at Cyrus. “The Solstice will be here in only a week or so.” He flashed his gaze to the fight, now only a few hundred feet away. “Do you suppose this will be over by then?”

Cyrus felt his jaw tighten; talking to Terian was the most natural thing in the world when he didn’t think about it. When he did … “I doubt it. Depends on how many there are, I suppose.”

Terian gave him a pinched smile. “Do you suppose we’ll ever get to that cave with the portal?”

“That’s the goal,” Cyrus said, irritated.

“Do you believe we’ll get there?” Terian turned to him as Cyrus tensed; the battle was close now, only a minute or two away.

“Yes,” Cyrus lied, “now make ready.”

“Hm,” Terian said, watching him for just a second longer before turning back to the madness unfolding in front of them. It was clearer now, the snow disappating the closer they got, painting a fuller picture in broad strokes, the clarity increasing. “I almost believe you. You truly have changed; used to be you couldn’t lie worth a damn.”

The ranks of battle closed, and Cyrus saw the backs of those in front of him, the line retreating. Furtive looks came his way now, men and women with bone-weariness settled in their eyes, their sunken eye sockets peering at him. Their shoulders hung low, but still they fought, those up front, those behind. It was the army of Actaluere that broke first, their back line disintegrating, and only the four or five disorganized rows in front of them to hold up. The press of the scourge forward meant that the front rows fell back even harder, and Cyrus saw a body tossed into the air, saw the motion of grey flesh ahead of all the humans and dark elves and all else that blocked the smaller creatures from his sight.

The smell of death was pungent now in the cold, and the shiver up his spine was at least as much from the knowledge that the unceasing beasts were trying to clamp down on him even now, that they were coming. They don’t stop, they don’t quit when you hurt them, they only give up when you kill them. He clenched a hand, trying to remember the training of years gone by, the words he learned in the Society when he banished fear from his life. Throw yourself into what you fear, and the death of fear is a certainty. Fear is a ghost, a shadow for lesser beings who worry of death. It is not your enemy but your tool, your business, that which you deal with sword and axe and spear and knife. Death is yours to wield, and it should be your enemy who fears death, not you. Embrace death. The notion of holding onto the corpse of Mortus flashed before his eyes, that strange, shrunken figure that the God of Death turned into at the end, as he faded from life. Death is your talent, your profession, and the end result of your call to war. Death is your blessing, your gift, and your strength in time of trial. All men die, and women too, but few live without fear.

He said the last of the Warrior’s Creed in his head. He had not had need to repeat it to himself in years. Unease settled within him, the acidic taste in his mouth was still there and he spat, trying to rid himself of it. The last rank of the Sanctuary army, unbroken in spite of the sudden fleeing of the Syloreans on one side and the Actaluereans on the other, was only feet away now. He took his first step toward them, watched them watch him. They will not yield an inch, he willed them, not even when all else falls apart around them. I should be proud of them, he thought, dimly aware that that particular emotion was strangely lacking, buried perhaps somewhere beneath his creed.

Praelior came up as the back line folded; the Actaluereans and Galbadiens on either side of him were already moving hard now, trying to stream through the press of their own retreating brethren to form a new front line; it was ugly, a dance of chaos and madness, with men who had been fighting for weeks and months, desperate to escape it. Their tiredness was obvious, their steps in the deepening snow were slow, they dragged, they looked skinny and worn, had been fighting on and off and sleeping in spurts and retreating in others.

Cyrus came up to the second line of the Sanctuary army, perfectly organized, the model of discipline in the heart of the storm. He saw in the motion ahead of him the helm of Odellan, the points of it extending like wings on either side of his head, and his hair moving in the wind. He spun, attacked, parried, and thrust, killing two of the scourge in his next move. Cyrus’s small band came up, Terian next to him, Scuddar just down the row, easing through the tight Sanctuary formation. Longwell was there, too, at the head of his army, his lance in hand, strange-looking without his horse. For a flash Cyrus remembered fighting with Longwell at his side, in the dark, on a bridge, with ash streaming down around them like the snow did now, and it heartened him.

With a last deep breath, Cyrus took the step free of the second line and became one with the front rank. The scourge was here, was upon him now, too numerous to count, filling his sight line all the way to where the haze became too great to see any more of them. He let the breath all out in one great battlecry, and swung Praelior into action, to war, to battle-to life and death-once more.