Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (73 page)

“You mean battle discipline?” Cyrus asked.

“Compared to the men who compose more than half of Syloreas’s fighting force, yes, I speak of discipline,” Odellan said. “But when comparing us to Actaluere, I mean belief. I think the men of Syloreas who came here of their own volition will fight harder than the professional army of Actaluere,” he said with a nod to the left. “I’ve looked in the eyes of some of those men dressed in skins and furs, with their swords and wooden shields handed down through generations. They’re here to fight for their homeland, for revenge in some cases if they made it out of the towns that fell. They won’t break for lack of courage and will fight so long as someone keeps leading them. Actaluere’s army, on the other hand, seems to know which way the wind is blowing. They’ve done this before—not this, specifically, but they’ve been in battles. Their men will keep an awareness, and if things turn unfavorable, I suspect their officers will be the first to order a careful retreat.”

“You think we’ll have a concern with our left flank?” Cyrus asked.

“I think I’d have a care with both flanks, if I were you, General,” Odellan said lightly. “But I wouldn’t concern myself overly much with the left. Theirs will be an orderly retreat if it comes, and they’ll warn us first so we can compensate. If the right breaks it will be quite a different story. They’ve got the volunteers sandwiched between us and the army regulars, so we may need to work harder to relieve the press on them if things get rough, may need to alter our line to cover their ground as the Syloreans fold toward us.”

Cyrus let a smile show, one he did not remotely feel but knew was necessary. “You’ve given this a great deal of thought.”

“As I should, General,” Odellan said. “As well I should.”

“Enemy on the horizon!” The shout came over them from the left, and Cyrus instinctively looked ahead, toward the mountains in the distance, trying to find the place where the fields met the lines of the mountains. There was movement there, to be sure, something too small to quite make out.
If I had elven eyes, I might be able to see.
His mind wandered.
If I had elven …
She flashed through his mind so quickly and subtly that he didn’t even know from whence she came.
Dammit. Not now.

They waited in a tense formation as the movement went on, miles away, but edging closer. Cyrus had no spyglass like the kind he had seen in use on the top of the wall at Sanctuary from time to time. There was tension in the air, and the scent of the makeshift latrines blew from behind him, not so heavily it was overwhelming but enough to distract.
I would hope that it shifts directions, but coming from the north might not be any better than the present option, given the smell of death that these things carry with them …

The wait was long, an hour or more before they were fully in sight, a few hundred feet away now. They became clearer as they got closer, and by the time that clarity was obvious, it was also clear that there were more of them than he had seen at any time previous. The ground crawled, a solid mass of grey flesh as far as his human eye could see, all the way back to the horizon and coming along the plains in a wedge that pointed directly at him, at his army.

There was no fear to be had for Cyrus. It was a cool sort of uncaring that filled him. Those around him made little enough noise, a few prayers offered up from some of the men as the enemy closed on them. There were shouts down the line in the ragged army of Sylorean volunteers, and little else but battle orders and invocations for calm coming from the officers at the front of Actaluere’s forces. In the distance, Briyce Unger was giving a speech to the Sylorean army, but Cyrus was too far away to catch any of it. Milos Tiernan quietly disappeared into the ranks of his force just moments before the first of the scourge closed the distance with them. Cyrus watched them draw nearer, shuffling across the plains in a loping run, their four-legged gait unlike that of any animal he had seen before.

Their flesh was still pallid, the nearest thing to the rotting dead he could imagine without taking a trip to a graveyard with a shovel. In a flash, he recalled the wendigos of Mortus’s realm and realized that these were just a touch like those horrors but different somehow. Wendigos could speak, he knew, possessed some measure of conscious thought, though it was buried below the battle frenzy almost every time he had encountered them. These things were as dead inside as the worst criminal offenders he had ever encountered.

Their bleak eyes stared at him, black holes in their grey-skinned visages, their teeth pointed fangs. And how they ran: faster than a man, but slower than a horse, their gait akin to a three-legged animal but faster than one would expect of such a creature. They kept coming, Cyrus knew, and they would bunch up at the front line as the first of them started to fall. They were close now, only fifty feet away … thirty … ten …

He swung Praelior with brutal force in a short stab as the first of them leapt at him. All along the line he saw similar movement, heard the cries of battle joined, and he killed the first of them with a solid impalement that it ran headlong into. He kicked the body from his sword and brought it up just in time to catch the next one, his speed enhanced by the weapon’s enchantments enough that he could counter them faster than they could attack. He dodged out of the way of the next to come at him, letting the man behind him strike his first blow; he heard the sound of an axe driving home but was too busy dealing a killing blow of his own to shout congratulations. It was irrelevant, anyway; the front line was already beginning to muddle as the fight turned into a melee within seconds of contact with the enemy.

Cyrus waded through them, trying to keep his back to the men in the line behind him and letting through only what he could not stop personally, which was little. His sword moved in a flash of light, a dance of elegance. There was a bellow to his right and Partus unleashed a blast of force that tunneled through their foes and sent several hundred skyward as it flung them in its wake. The line of power cut through them for several hundred feet before it reached its end, but all along that line it appeared as though the earth had been shredded, all the grass cleared, the dirt upturned and every one of the scourge within that space had been tossed clear. That empty ground refilled only moments later, however, as the grey-skinned enemy flooded back into it, still surging forward toward the waiting armies.

The ground was full all the way to the horizon, the scourge lining the grasslands.
Battle. It was the be-all, end-all for me once upon a time.
He swung his sword, cutting the head from one of the scourge, and black blood sprayed out as another of the beasts used its decapitated fellow as a springboard to launch at him. Cyrus stepped aside and drove his blade deep into the flank of the creature as it passed; if it screamed, he did not hear it over the sounds of battle that filled his ears.
I used to thrive in the heart of the battle, used to glory in the destruction of my foes. Titans. Dragons. Goblins,
he thought darkly, and saw three of his own goblin soldiers down the line tear apart a cluster of the grey scourge-beasts with nothing more than their claws.
What happened? When did I go from believing in the glory of battle as an end of itself to thinking of it as a means to an end—to protecting people from it rather than bringing it to the foes most worthy of it?

He racked one of the attacking demons with a sharp downswing that split it to the shoulder then plunged his next attack into the face of another enemy. His blows killed with each strike; he gave no mercy, severing heads and stabbing through hearts.
There can be no room for mercy with these creatures; they will fight on after losing a limb, keep dragging themselves toward you with any life left in their bodies, hoping to sink their teeth into you.
His next swipe killed three.
It would appear that being merciless is not something that I’ve lost with time and age. I lived for battle once. Now it’s become merely a profession.
His blade cut into four more enemies in rapid succession, tearing throats, severing heads, and bisecting one of them.
A profession I’m good at, to be sure, but not the obsession, the glory that it was when I worshipped Bellarum with a faith that burned brighter than the flames of a brazier.

Did I get soft?
His sword moved of its own accord, cutting and slashing.
Did I buy into Alaric’s ideals of honor and nobility and put aside the glory of combat? Did I do it because of him? Or for her?
The blond ponytail flashed into his sight again, as though he could see her dancing out there in the mass of the scourge, her own blade in hand, though he knew she was as far removed from this place and this battle as one could be.

No answer was forthcoming. Still, he worked his profession, Praelior in his hand, as the midday sun moved deeper into the sky above him, and night began to fall. Still the enemy came, on and on, wave after wave—and he slaughtered all of them that he could.

Vara

Day 29 of the Siege of Sanctuary

The convoys had armed escorts now, almost a hundred soldiers of the dark elven army led by officers on horseback, their troops following behind them in their leather armor that was as easy to punch through with a mystical sword as unguarded flesh. Vara stared down at them, Vaste next to her squinting through a gnomish spyglass.

“This will likely only work once in this place, you realize that?” The troll asked, not breaking away from the spyglass.

“Not being an idiot, I do recognize that.” She considered some form of physical reaction, like hitting him on the shoulder to let him know what she thought of him, but decided against it.
Too much like Cyrus.
“Although if we covered our tracks exceptionally well, we might be able to pull it off twice before the Sovereignty becomes wise.”

“Perhaps,” Vaste said. Below them lay a caravan, making its way into a short canyon where the road dipped into the plains to follow an old riverbed. “You seem to have no shortage of ideas to help us wage this little war of ours, but it’s disturbing to me how many of them have been borrowed from Goliath.”

“We go with what works,” she said. “How did they manage it? Casting fire at either end of the canyon to spook the horses and then riding through?”

“Something along those lines,” Vaste said, and she caught the unease in the way he replied. “They managed to turn it into a perfect ambush, save for the fact that Cyrus got inside the perimeter of their fire and played merry hell with the goblins until they retreated. I must suggest we do not allow something similar.”

“As I saw it,” Vara said, trying to remain patient, “he was only able to do that because of that wondrous horse of his. Any other horse would have been frightened away from jumping over a wall of fire. Soldiers would similarly know better than to try it in most instances. Besides, my intent is to merely contain the convoy while we eliminate their escort.” She stood and dusted off the plains dirt that clung to her armored greaves. “As always, the drivers are free to go.”

“As you say,” Vaste agreed, but the unease was still there; she knew him well enough to hear it.

She whistled to the others and took up position on her horse. The Sanctuary raiding party was already disguised on either side of the road before the gulch; half a hundred rangers hiding in the brush with bows and arrows, and helping to conceal three wizards and four druids. Vara watched from the ridge above, some fifty warriors behind her ready to ride on her command.
A neat pincer maneuver if ever there was one. With their escort wearing little in the way of armor, the arrows will do their bit while the wagons are contained by the fire. We sweep down and mop up their resistance, and leave them mourning the disappearance of their ill-gotten gains.
She let her hand drift to her sword hilt then stopped herself.
I am not Cyrus Davidon, and I need not adopt his more obvious mannerisms.
She pondered for a moment, then wondered idly:
Does he touch the hilt of his sword not only out of nervous habit but to enjoy the faster reflex it offers? If so, that might explain a choice riposte or two he managed to get out when verbally cornered …

“Shall we go?” Vaste asked, now back on his horse.

“Too soon and we risk being seen, thus spoiling the ambush,” Vara said, holding up her hand to keep the raiding party halted. There were another fifty or more horses with them, those belonging to the rangers and spellcasters below, and the smell of horse was strong here. “Too late and we’re of little use—though I suspect we’ll be of little enough use anyhow, given how well set-up this ambush is.”

“Well set-up is not well executed,” Vaste said, and there was a rumble of disquiet from the troll.

“What is your difficulty?” Vara asked under her breath, moving her horse close enough to him that only he could hear her whisper.

“Hard to explain,” Vaste said, quieter still. “I recognize that we’re in a bit of box here, and that what we’re doing is necessary to draw pressure away from the siege, but there is something about using strategies that were first employed by Goliath while trying to sully our honor that I find damned disquieting in general.”

“So it’s a silly moral issue, is it?” she asked, and found she had drawn a frown from him.

“I have no moral objection to what we’re doing here,” he said. “We’re attacking convoys of dark elves who are blockading us and stealing the goods that they’ve plundered from the farmers of the plains. If I have any objection, it’s that I wish we had thought of the idea ourselves instead of having to steal it from the most loathsome sacks of treacherous flesh that are still strolling the land of Arkaria.” He blinked, and looked pensive. “Speaking of which, where is Goliath strolling nowadays? You can’t tell me there’s a war consuming the land without them trying to get a piece of it.”

“I bloody well wish they were strolling into the Realm of Death, enjoying the lovely taste of those fiends that our army is facing on the other side of the world,” Vara said, no longer bothering to constrain her loathing. “I suspect they’re still where they were when last we heard about them—hiding under the Sovereign’s considerable skirt, doing whatever bidding he has for them.”