Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (91 page)

Cyrus ran a hand over his chin, brushing the crumbs out of his beard. He let the faintest hint of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth, and stared straight ahead as the others gradually stopped what they were doing and looked at him, at the curious hint of something long gone, now appearing upon his face.
A smile? How long has it been …

“Well, you know … I actually do have an idea …”

The battle raged on; it came evenfall and darkness, and they returned to the front as the line worked its way back to them. The smell of the latrines had grown strong in the hours Cyrus waited with the others—resting, most of them did, lying in their bedrolls. He and Aisling had burned off nervous energy, as always, but he had not joined her in sleep. Also as always, of late. He lay awake in the clouded afternoon light and felt the snowy ground beneath him. The cold seeped, but not too badly; it seemed warmer today than it had the day before for whatever reason, even in spite of the lack of sun. The lingering taste of the water and bread was little enough for sustenance, but he had eaten plenty. Sleep would not come, however, not with the calls of battle growing ever nearer, and the snoring of Terian just across the fire. The thought of his plan rustled around in his mind like a cat trapped in a sack, twisting every way possible to get loose of what held it.

Soon enough it was time to go again, and someone shook his shoulder, waking him out of a sleep he didn’t even realize he had fallen into. It was Aisling, already dressed. She leaned down and kissed him, and for a moment the smell of her sweat from battle and their lovemaking overpowered everything else in the camp. When she broke free of him he sat up and began to put on his armor. She did not help, having already moved on, heading over the hill in the direction of the latrines.

The lines were almost upon them now, Cyrus realized, the sound of fighting coming from only a few hundred feet away.
This will be a long and yet short few days, and then we shall be backed against Enrant Monge, forced into the walls of the keep for safety if we cannot turn them back. Then what? They can breach the walls, surely, as they did at Scylax, and then we will find ourselves surrounded.
He thought of the stableboy, of what he had said, and of the refugees that filled the keep, of their slow, dragging procession out of the gates and toward the south.
This will go ill for them if we cannot hold back the tide of these things; they will run out of places to go.

He waited once his armor was on; the others lingered as well, as though afraid somehow to be on about the day. The line of battle came ever closer, and when they could ignore it no more, Cyrus pulled to his feet, drew his blade and stepped toward the fight. He heard the others with him, and cast a look back to see some stewards and young boys gathering up the things they had left behind, throwing them in the backs of wagons that waited across the camp, horses snorting into the cold air. The wagons began to move as Cyrus reached the back line of the fight, and he wondered how far away they would retreat, and how long it would be before he went back to rest again—or at least try.

He took long, crunching steps through the lines until he reached the front. He began to use his blade to fend off the scourge as they made their way forward, inexorably, open mouths ravenous to take life, to bleed it out on the snow in great red stains. He hacked the head from one, tore limbs from another, then made a move at yet another still that charged him before a perfectly aimed arrow took its eye and caused it to fall still as it slid across the snow to his feet.

The battle turns to a slog,
he thought,
nothing more than a steady expectation that we will retreat, that there is no momentum to be had. What madness is this that we fight a battle with no expectation to win?
Praelior gleamed with its soft glow, and the blood he spilled did not remain on it.

“So are we going forward with this blatant ploy to have ourselves all declared mad?” Terian was close beside him. “Because otherwise I’m quite content to remain here, gradually retreating.”

“The problem with gradually giving ground,” Cyrus said as he slammed his blade home in one of the creature’s ribs, “is that sooner or later, no matter how gradually you’re doing it, you run out of ground to give.” Three sprang at him like dogs and he sliced them out of the air with little thought and only instinct to guide him. “We move now.”

“Oh, good,” Terian said lightly, “I didn’t really want to go on living anyway. Dull existence, you know, drinking, whoring, eating nice foods in pleasant places …”

“You’ve been locked in chains for months when you haven’t been eating conjured bread and water and fighting these things,” Aisling said from Cyrus’s left as her daggers danced while she spun aside to let a charging scourge brush past her. Her daggers hit it four times as it went by and it collapsed, knocking down a warrior behind her as it slid to a stop. “And if you’ve had any woman in that time, I’d be shocked—”

“Fine,” Terian said, and Cyrus could hear the scowl in the way he said it. “I really don’t care if I go on living since I’ve been deprived of all those things anyway, but it would have been nice to have a last meal—not insubstantial bread—before we went forward with this idiocy.”

“Now, Terian,” Cyrus said, “if we’d had a so-called last meal for that purpose, where would your motivation be to fight your way back after what we’re about to do? Nowhere, that’s where; you’d have peaked in your life, and with nothing before you but the dim, boringness of being a soulless mercenary, you’d probably just lie down and let them eat you right there.”

“Wow.” Terian’s answer sounded slightly shocked and partially amused. “I think I miss the dour and sour Cyrus Davidon, the one who didn’t know what to do with a woman in his bedroll. I thought you were truly heading toward the path to desperation and I was eager to see what you did when you got there.” He waved a hand vaguely at Aisling as he brought his sword down in the middle of a scourge’s head. “Other than her, I mean.”

“I think I’m just coming back to myself now,” Cyrus said with a slash that sent a scourge screeching away from him missing a limb. “I want to live. At least long enough to get some hard drink, like Reikonosian whiskey, and throw down a toast to the ones we lost without even knowing it.”

There was a pause then Terian spoke again. “You’re beginning to sound more and more like a mercenary every day, Davidon; loose women, hard drink, strong battle, reckless chances—why soon enough, you’ll ask for money in exchange for fighting something.” Terian paused and let that hang in the air. “Not that I’m knocking it, because as you can tell, the mercenary’s life seems to have pretty much everything I want.”

“Then why didn’t you go do that after you left Sanctuary?” Cyrus asked, turning his hips to level a scourge with a sideways slash. Cyrus got busy afterwards as three more of the grey-pallored scourge jumped at him, one going low at his legs, one coming at him from the side and another head-on in a jump. He swiped the two in front of him and turned to deal with the other when Terian’s sword sliced it in two in midair, sending the pieces tumbling past Cyrus, who stepped adroitly out of the way to avoid them.

“Because …” Terian said, and Cyrus saw a hollowness in his eyes that matched what he saw in the pits of eyes that the scourge possessed, “… Alaric asked me to return.”

“What about before that?” Cyrus didn’t let up, cutting apart a scourge then turning back to Terian. “You were gone six months. Six months you walked the face of Arkaria, could have done anything you wanted. Been anything you wanted. So what was it, Terian? You walked the path of your father in those days, didn’t you? Found out how it was, truly was, to stand in his shadow for a good long while, to see all it entailed?”

The dark elf flinched at Cyrus’s words. “Who told you?”

“No one ‘told’ me, at least not in as many words,” Cyrus said, and with a shake of his head was back at the battle, sword in motion. “The Gatekeeper told me, when he stunned you to silence with a subtle accusation. Partus told me, when he said the word Aurastra and you reacted—as though rumors of that one hadn’t percolated around. That was enough, really, to put it together. You said you were in the Sovereignty before you came back to Sanctuary, that you knew the Sovereign had returned because of it. You were working with your father then. You were doing his bidding.”

“Aye,” Terian said, after a long, strained pause of minutes. “I was.”

“But you came back to us,” Cyrus said, and turned his attention forward again.

“I did.”

“Why?” Cyrus asked, looking out over the field of the enemy, coming at them like onrushing death, their limitless numbers only broken by the countless corpses left on the ground as the front line retreated.

There was another long pause, and Cyrus prepared to issue the advancing order when the answer came, quiet, subtle. “I told you. Because Alaric asked me to.”

Cyrus shook his head. “All right—let’s go!” He leaned into the next one of the beasts that came at him, moving forward instead of back, taking an offensive posture instead of staying with the line. This time, however, the line moved around him. The second rank stepped up, and others came with him—Curatio, mace in hand, smashing the skull of one of the foes that crossed him. Nyad was in the center of the formation, her staff at the ready, two druids alongside her, ready to blaze fire and create a gap if needed. Aisling was at his side, as was Terian at the other. Martaina and Scuddar had blades in hand and were fighting their way through as well. A few others were along, but it was a tight-knit formation, a seed pod in the midst of roiling winds of chaos, and as Scuddar and Martaina pulled away from the front line it became a contained little bubble only so wide, a circular line of their own, now separated from the ranks of their fellows.

Cyrus saw Longwell down the line of defense that they had just left, his lance skewering two of the scourge while his men covered him. The dragoon looked up and saw Cyrus, and hesitated for only a moment before pulling his lance free and attacking the next enemy that came against the Galbadien army that backed him.
He does well at the head of an army of his own; he would make a fine General for Sanctuary.
Cyrus looked back and saw Odellan leading a force of men and women to cover Cyrus’s advance, keeping the increasing numbers of scourge from pushing them back, fighting desperately to keep forward, to not surrender an inch of ground.
He’ll hold til we get back—another fine General.

They were away from the front rank now by fifty feet, surrounded by the enemy, who came at them two and three deep, crawling over each other trying to attack them. Cyrus’s sword remained in motion, constant, flowing, cutting their foes to ribbons of blood in the snow, blooming black flowers of death on the trampled ground of the battlefield.

“It’s moving,” Martaina said cautiously, her short swords a flurry of motion. “Looks like it’s heading away.”

“How far are we gonna pursue this thing?” Terian asked. “And please don’t say all the way to the depths of the Realm of Death, because we’ve been there, and it’s no party.”

“I don’t know,” Cyrus said, his weapon moving in front of him, where he stood at the head of the attack party. “If it’s going to constantly circle away from us, I don’t see much need to keep going because there’s no way we can chop through these things fast enough to catch it.” He brought his sword aloft for a long, swinging chop across an enemy leaping at him, and he watched Praelior glimmer faintly in the close of day.

“Whoa,” Terian said, “it stopped.”

“Sudden, too,” Aisling added. “It was looking at us and just froze.” She let her hands work in a blur, cutting at the scourge that was coming for her; she caught it across the face with a quick thrust, then spun low and opened its neck.

There was a quiet that fell over them, then Cyrus saw the shadow in the distance that jutted over the heads of the creatures, and it rose higher, at least four times the height of the beasts around it. “Not small,” he breathed.

“It’s looking … right … at us,” Terian said quietly. “I find that very, very unnerving.”

“I don’t blame you,” Aisling said.

Cyrus brought his sword up again and drove Praelior into the skull of a running scourge that came at him. He brought the blade up in the air again and let it descend in a hacking motion, the faint blue glow along the length of the blade gleaming in the early, cloudy twilight.

“Whatever you’re doing,” Aisling said tightly, “is pissing him off. That thing is looking right at us.”

“I’m killing its fellows,” Cyrus said, keeping his weapon light and attacking the beasts that continued to come at him. “This is hardly new.”

“His eyes are right on you,” Terian agreed. “I mean, anchored. It’s watching you, not us.”

“Do you think it senses he’s the General?” Nyad asked.

“Could be,” Aisling answered.

“Fine,” Cyrus said, raising his sword again into a high guard and slashing a leaping scourge into halves in front of him. “Whatever the reason, let him come—”

“It’s your sword,” Aisling said as the ground rumbled beneath them, “that’s what’s catching his attention; and it looks like you get your wish because here he—”

The rumble grew loud now, the shadow in the distance that was as large as a small house was crossing the snowy ground, chewing it up with surprising speed. Where Cyrus would have imagined the creature be ponderously slowly, it was anything but, rumpled skin becoming plain as it closed on them, the same grey of dead flesh covering its massive bones.
It really is the size of a dragon with no wings.
“Are you sure it’s my sword that’s catching it?”

“Pretty sure,” Aisling said, steadying herself as she parried the attack of another one of the creatures. “Every time you raised it where he could see the flash, he watched closer. Now that he’s gotten a look at it three times, he’s charging us.”

“I can’t argue with her logic,” Terian said, “her judgment in men, but not her logic. It happened exactly as she describes.”