Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (95 page)

“And you shall,” Ivess said. “I will send seven hundred and fifty of my thousand with you. The others have all refused to leave. We will remain to defend Enrant Monge against this enemy.” He held up a hand as the three Kings began to speak as one. “You must remember, our order is old and set in its ways. To die in defense of Enrant Monge is no great burden for us. It is what we have been living for all our lives. And it is a small thing, really, having seen this day come. You are quite right,” he said, looking to Longwell. “We have sought the unification of Luukessia for ten thousand years. Though this is not how we would have hoped it would play out, it is what has happened. Those of us who remain will do so gladly, having known our purpose was fulfilled and that we stood against the single greatest threat our land has ever known.”

“I feel as though I should clap,” Longwell said, finally standing for himself, “but I suppose instead I will have to content myself with bidding you farewell, Brother Ivess.”

“I am not leaving quite yet,” Ivess said, and then looked to Tiernan. “I have some unfortunate tidings to deliver as well.” His hands emerged from his sleeves, breaking them apart, and he handed a small envelope to Milos Tiernan, who took it and walked back to the fire with it in his hands, ripping it open to pull free a letter, which he proceeded to read.

“What is it?” Unger asked under his breath.

“I am not free to speak for the King of Actaluere,” Grenwald Ivess said. “If he means to have you know, he will—”

“DAMN THE MAN!” Milos Tiernan’s voice echoed across the camp. He took the note, crumpled it and tossed it into the fire.

“Luukessia is already beset upon by the most fearsome beasts we have ever known,” Unger said, “and we’ve just decided to tell every man, woman and child of our Kingdoms to flee to the edge of the sea and cross it on a bridge that will take us to a foreign land that likely has no place for us. Something tells me that whatever the contents of that letter, they would have to be powerfully bad tidings to agitate King Tiernan after all that’s already transpired here tonight.”

Tiernan paced, staring for a moment at the flames, regretfully, as though he could snatch back the letter he had cast into it. Grenwald Ivess stared at him quietly, as did Longwell, while Unger stood with his arms folded. “Well?” the King of Syloreas asked. “Out with it.”

“Hoygraf,” Tiernan said, and it came as more of a curse than any word Cyrus had ever heard spoken. A flash of irritation passed through him, and he thought of the dark haired Baron—
Grand Duke,
he corrected himself—and thought of the faded memory of the last time he’d seen the man, knife in hand.

“Oh, yes, that pestilence,” Unger spoke again. “What is your dear brother-in-law up to now? It must be a powerful irritant if it can inspire such rage in you after we’ve already had such a down evening—”

“Oh, it is,” Tiernan said, now pacing before the fire. His head snapped up and he looked to Cyrus. “You.”

Cyrus blinked at him. “Me, what?”

“You must come with me,” Tiernan said, and took two steps forward to grasp Cyrus by the forearm. Cyrus did not stop him, but stared in mild curiosity at the King’s grip on him.

“Come with you where?” Cyrus asked. “We have a battle ahead of us, in case you forgot? So unless it’s to the front—”

“To Caenalys,” Tiernan said, and Cyrus could feel the slight squeeze of the King’s hand even through his armor.

“Your capital?” Cyrus asked. “Any particular reason why?”

“The weather there is bound to be better than it is here,” Unger said under his breath.

“Because that’s where Hoygraf is,” Tiernan said. “He’s taken my sister and captured my city with his forces,” Cyrus felt a cold sensation plunge through him in spite of the warm fire nearby. “He holds her hostage, claiming to be the new King of Actaluere.” Tiernan’s cold eyes burned into Cyrus. “He says that if I attempt to reclaim Caenalys, he will kill her.”

Cyrus’s walk back to the fire that he shared with the others was long and stumbling. The cold bit at him in a way that felt foreign, as though he hadn’t been exposed to it for weeks now. His eyes even felt cold, the air freezing the moisture within them. He cracked his knuckles and moved his tongue around in his dry mouth, as though the bread he’d eaten had formed a coating of yeast around it. The smell of the cold air and the dead around him was overwhelming, and he felt himself stagger from the weariness.

She’s his problem now. She’s the one who went willingly back to him—for whatever reason.
He mentally kicked himself for even thinking it.
She went back for Luukessia. To save her land, to turn her brother loose for war. She went back for—

“Are you lost?” An arm snugged into the crook of his elbow, giving him strength. He smelled the surprising scent of sweat and—faintly—greenery.

“Martaina,” Cyrus said, recovering from a near-stumble. “Watching out for me again?”

“Someone has to.”

He took a few steps with her. “You heard?”

She had her cowl up, but he could see her lips present themselves in a pursing motion. “I did.”

“You have an opinion.”

She smiled, and at this she was almost impish. “Have you ever met a woman who didn’t?”

He chuckled in spite of the fatigue. “You think I should go to Caenalys.”

She waited before answering and came to a halt, their boots crunching against the packed snow, which still gave a little at every step as Cyrus put his weight onto it. “I think that if Milos Tiernan goes to retake his capital in order to save the hundred thousand people that live within the walls, if he doesn’t have some form of magical assistance, then Cattrine Hoygraf will be quite dead by the end of the endeavor.”

“I see,” Cyrus said, and nodded. “And that raises the likelihood that Hoygraf’s army will cause even more damage in Caenalys before he is defeated.”

“Tiernan will have to pull more away from this battle in order to break open the city walls and save those people from Hoygraf’s delusions,” Martaina said. “The man will make Caenalys a mass grave site, bottling himself up with the scourge coming.”

“So I would go for the people of the city?” Cyrus asked, watching her without emotion.

“No,” Martaina said, “you should go because if you don’t, you’ll regret it to the day you die.” Cyrus opened his mouth to speak and her gloved hand came up and a single finger lay across his lips. “You need not posture before me—the others, perhaps, but there is no fooling someone who has watched you so close as I have. You would have an easier time fooling yourself than me—and you have. You feel for her, even now.” She did not break away from staring him down. “In spite of all, just like Vara, it is there. You will regret it to your grave if you don’t save her.”

With that, Martaina turned loose his arm, and he felt as though a weight had been attached to it instead of lifted, as though she had given him strength and taken it all away at once. “Why?” he asked, in the hush of the night, with the battle still raging somewhere in front of them, and the campfires burning all around him. “I wanted so hard to be rid of her, to be rid of both of them—her and Vara, and yet they still torment me so. Why can’t it be …” he let his voice crack slightly, “simple.”

“I believe you have confused matters of the heart with something much different, like fletching, perhaps,” she said, drawing an arrow from her quiver. “Make an arrow, put a head on it, make them of uniform length and material for the same purpose, and be done with it. This is not an occupation. It is not a job, or something that you would do in your spare time. This is love, whether you admit it or not. She was there for you in a time of great sorrow, and allowed you to feel something that you had thought lost. Imagined slights and betrayals aside, you gave her your word.”

“She went back to him,” Cyrus said. “To save her homeland—”

“To save you,” Martaina said sharply. “It was for you that she gave herself back. It was for her home that she remained there under the most odious tortures I have ever seen.” Martaina took a step closer to him and seized his arm again, and he felt for a moment as though a parent were lecturing him. “Do you know the last time I saw her? We came upon her being whipped while tied to a pillar that your head was stuck upon. She was given your head and told to walk it back to Sanctuary. Aisling managed to rush it back in time, but J’anda and I carried her, bleeding, broken, back to our camp so she could be healed. And she went back to him willingly. Yes, she stayed with him for her homeland, but the bargain was struck to save you.” Her hand came loose of him again. “Don’t be a fool. However much you may be doubting everything else right now, believe this—she loved you.”

Martaina turned and began to walk away, back toward a fire that was not so far off, her feet making no sound on the snow as she went. “You were the first for her, I think.” The wind whistled through, but he heard her nonetheless, and shivered as she spoke. “And while you do not owe her your love, you do—in spite of all else—owe her your life.”

The night was terribly cold, and when he lay down next to Aisling, he did what she wanted, perfunctorily, tired, with aching bones and pain in his heart, and he kept himself together through it only by focusing on the smells, the sweat, closing his eyes and remembering the bed in Vernadam. He ran his fingers over her skin, and imagined a back filled with the ripple of scars. Her hands came up to his face, and it was as though he were there again, and the window shone in over him, and a light flashed as he caught his breath, the cold air hitting his lungs, his skin almost as though it were going to burst into flames from overheating. He rolled to his back, off her, and lay there under the bedroll, breathing deep breaths into the air, watching as they fogged in front of him in the firelight.

“That was … more than I expected from a weary man,” Aisling said, pressing the bedroll over her chest but leaving her arms exposed to the night air.

“Yes,” Terian said from a few feet away, “it was very impressive. The rest of us are trying to sleep, though, so maybe save the pillow talk for another time?”

“Most of us are polite enough not to comment,” J’anda said, “recognizing that in a space like this, where there is no actual privacy, the least we can do is respect each other enough to pretend.”

“Gods, man, how much pretending can you do when she’s caterwauling like that?” Terian asked. “Ever since they got back from Galbadien, I’ve been afraid that someone set loose a ghoul from the Waking Woods in our camp. I wake up ready to draw my sword.”

“I thought it sounded lovely,” Martaina mumbled. “I’m left to be a bit envious over here—”

“Come on,” Cyrus said. “I like J’anda’s philosophy. We ignore it from the rank and file, you people can’t ignore it from me?”

“Usually, yes,” Terian said. “Tonight’s round of … I don’t even know how to describe that. I’m fair certain you tried to stuff an angry raccoon into your bedroll, not a full-blooded dark elven woman.”

Aisling froze next to Cyrus. “I doubt you’d know the difference at this point, as cavalier as you are.”

“Oh, I’d know the difference.” Cyrus could hear the grin in Terian’s voice. “More bite and scratch marks from the dark elf.”

There was a pause, and Cyrus looked at Aisling. “Thank you for not biting and scratching,” he said. “Much.”

She shrugged. “I try to be considerate.”

“But not of your neighbors in camp,” Terian mumbled.

“Would all of you shut up?” Curatio said. “Please. As mentioned, this is hardly the first time any of us have heard a couple being intimate in our midst. This isn’t anything new, I assure you—”

“I’m pretty sure I just heard something done that was new to me,” Martaina mumbled.

Curatio glared at her. “And we all have a long day ahead of us. Go to sleep.”

There was a murmured assent to the healer’s words, and Cyrus felt Aisling next to him but not leaning into him tonight. She was like that sometimes, preferring her space. He lay there, eyes open, staring up at the sky as the first flake of snow made its way down onto his forehead. He felt the next on his cheek, and the one that followed landed on his nose. The fire caught them as they descended, more and more of them now, and Cyrus shook out of the bedroll and quickly dressed, strapping his armor on. That done, he sat by the fire and stared into the flames as they licked at the logs in their midst. He paused and found the nearby pile, brushed the newly fallen snow off of it and threw one on the fire.

“I’m surprised you can’t sleep after all that.” Cyrus’s eyes jumped to the voice, sitting opposite him. It was Curatio, his fair hair highlighted by the dancing flames, watching the fire.

“Things on my mind,” Cyrus replied. “You?”

Curatio had his mace lying across his lap and flicked the button to cause the spikes to roll out. “A thing or two I’m thinking about, yes.”

“You could have saved the elves,” Cyrus said, a thought hitting him out of nowhere. “You and your fellow Old Ones. You could have had a mountain of kids with elven women, and the curse would be beaten out by your own efforts.”

Curatio looked at him and raised an eyebrow. “In spite of your obvious efforts at practice, I’m going to hazard a guess you’ve never had children of your own.” He waited for Cyrus’s shake of the head. “I couldn’t do that, just have a hundred or two hundred children and leave them to be raised by someone else. I had two, only seventy years ago. Two very fine daughters, and it was a chore for me to leave them when they had reached the age of human maturity.” He shook his head. “Besides, that wouldn’t have saved the elven people. Not really. Our Kingdom has slouched toward death, become stagnant. The people grow old in spirit but only slowly in body. They live long enough to become fearful for their mortality but not immortal enough to take some reckless chances. Their craving for security over all else makes them weak.”

“Weak?” Cyrus chuckled. “They aren’t that weak.”

“They are,” Curatio said. “The whole Kingdom totters from it. It’ll fall in another thousand years or less, even absent the curse. They need new blood. Having to have their women breed with humans will be good for them. It’ll water down that long life, perhaps force them to innovate and grow again instead of always moving too damned slowly to do anything differently. The world is changing around them and if they don’t change with it, they’ll be irrelevant anyway.”