Chapter 40
Alaric
“So...we're to fight the unstoppable odds arrayed against us with just...” Birissa counted around the circle, then twice as she pointed heavenward. “Nine, then?”
“What did I miss?” Hiressam descended the stairs.
“Oh, the blond lady with the sharp ears and sharper tongue left,” Guy said. “So did that rough little Amatgarosan captain. She was a bit of a firework. Wish I could have gotten a ride out of town wif' her.”
Alaric felt his ire rise. “If you wish to leave, please do so now. We have plans to make.”
“Yeah, plan around me, will you?” Guy said, peeking toward the Great Hall. “I don't mean to piss on your little parade, but...it's eight, luv. Not nine.” He winked at Birissa, then headed into the hall.
“Eight, then,” Birissa said. She considered this for a moment, then nodded. “A good number.”
“Glad someone has found that mythical, nonexistent hope in Reikonos during all this,” Cyrus muttered under his breath.
Alaric felt a pain in his head, and he shook it, but it alleviated it none. “I find much less hope in the fact our numbers are dwindling.”
“Vara will be back,” Vaste said with some confidence.
“No, she won't,” Cyrus said quietly. When every eye was upon him, he took note. “This has been the flash point of our entire relationship. Everything she was ever angry at me about just blew up in her face.” He shook his head. “She won't be back. Not soon, anyway.”
“Maybe I should go after her, then–” Vaste said.
“I wouldn't, if I were you,” Cyrus said, “but it's your funeral, not mine.”
“I will attempt to placate Vara – shortly,” Alaric said. “But first, we require consensus. It was but yesterday that we all stood around that table and swore ourselves to a cause–”
“That feels like forever ago,” Birissa said.
“–And already several of our number have departed that pledge,” Alaric said. “First Dugras. Now Vara. Does anyone else wish to leave?”
“I'd love to leave,” Guy called from the Great Hall. “But seeing as I'm a dead man if the Machine catches me outside, I think I'll just lay low here for now.”
Alaric ground his teeth together. “Does anyone other than that festering pustule, desperately in need of draining, wish to leave?”
Pamyra exchanged a look with Shirri, then said, “Not us.”
Shirri nodded. “We're dead if the Machine gets hold of us, but I think it's better to fight and make our stand with you than walk out there or wait here for it to play out.”
Pamyra gave a sly smile. “Better to die on your feet in the fight than on your knees, cowering.”
“Better to cower and get away,” Guy called, “than die. Just throwing that out there.”
“I am considering doing some 'throwing out' of my own,” Alaric said, patience straining. “If you have nothing useful to contribute, at least do us the kindness of keeping your cowardly, viperous words to yourself.”
There was a moment of silence. “Right, then,” Guy said. “I'll try and muster some non-cowardly words later. Until then, is there a place I could sleep?”
Alaric ignored him, which seemed a better idea than gutting him right there in the middle of the Great Hall. “Eight is perhaps not enough to do the thing right when it comes to freeing Reikonos, but we had a crowd only this morning. We need to recapture that. The spirit of courage and hope needs to run through this city again.” He looked squarely at Cyrus. “General. We are few against many. How do we proceed in this fight?”
Cyrus looked as grey in the face as Alaric had ever seen him, but after a moment, he stirred. “We need to keep the fight on our terms, not theirs. If we get into any more big battles like the square, we'll be playing to their advantage rather than ours. They have bounty hunters after us, too, and Baynvyn, at least, is not weak.” He smacked his dry lips together. “Avoiding them for the time being seems wise, but...” He shook his head. “Alaric, eventually this will come to a grand battle.”
“It always does, with you,” Alaric said with a smile. “We will need to postpone that event as much as possible, push it into the future and choose our battles along the way carefully indeed. We may have escaped the jaws of the trap at Vara Square, but I would not care to stake the future of our coming revolution on being able to do that next time.”
“We can pick them as carefully as we like,” Cyrus said, “but our foe is canny. Small raids may be a valid option to weaken our enemy – for a time. Malpravus's concern for his troops is zero. He'll sacrifice them all, we know this. That works against us. Furthermore, we don't know what he values–”
“Power,” Alaric said.
“Well, that's the problem, then,” Cyrus said. “'Power' to him right now is an army. It's the Machine. It's those bounty hunters. Any one of the three are his ways to reach out and strike at us, assuming he stays out of this–”
“He will,” Alaric said. “For now. Until he recovers his strength.”
“Then we have three enemies,” Birissa said. “The hunters, the Machine, and the City Watch.”
Cyrus nodded warily. “I don't know how to eliminate any one of those save for perhaps the bounty hunters, who, while lethal and aggravating, are hardly our biggest problem. It's the twin armies, the remains of the Machine and the city guard. They're the real threat. Their numbers are too great.”
Alaric just smiled. “Then it seems to me that our next move is whittling theirs down while increasing our own. Guy!” He snapped around to look at the darkened entry to the Great Hall.
Guy's shadowed face peeked out moments later, surly and glaring. “What?”
“You know this city as it is,” Alaric said, “and you know the Machine as none of the rest of us do.”
Guy stared at him, frowning. “Yeah. And?”
“If you wish to continue to enjoy lounging about here without regard for fighting battles or being thrown into the street,” Alaric said, “you will need to be of some use. Such as, say, providing us a target for our irritation with both the City Watch and the Machine.”
Guy thought about it for a moment. “You're looking for a place where you can...what? Kick them right in the boys? Make 'em hurt, is that it?”
“But, also,” Hiressam said, looking deeply contemplative, “do something good for the people of this city. Something that will help to get them on our side.”
“Yes, we are heroes for being so charitable with...ourselves, really,” Vaste said. “But something of that sort would be perfect.”
Alaric glanced at Cyrus, who gave a faint nod. “Yes,” the Ghost said with a smile. “Exactly.”
Guy gave it only a moment's thought. “Well,” he said. “I might know a place.”
Chapter 41
Cyrus
“I don't know if this is the greatest idea we've ever had,” Vaste said, swallowing heavily. “And we have a storied history of bad ideas, I'd like to remind you.”
“We've had worse ideas,” Cyrus said, eyeing the structure ahead. A stone fort built in the middle of the city, high walls cordoning it off from the streets – and the people. The whole manner of the place suggested it was not some simple government building. What was contained within was valuable. Too valuable to be left unprotected. Thus the walls. And within, surely, guards.
“I'm not saying we haven't,” Vaste said, looking at the gate waiting ahead, steely and shadowed in the dark of night, torches burning in twin sconces on either side. “Nor am I seeking to rate the idiocy of this experience. Just pointing out that it's stupid so that inevitably, when this goes wrong, I can safely say, 'I told you'.”
“Of all the things you have as fixtures of your personality,” Cyrus said, staring at the forbidding gates, “I find that the most annoying.”
“What?” Vaste bristled, pulling himself up to his full height. “What's wrong with laying down a marker to show you that, indeed, I have value as an intelligent being ca
pable of reason, wisdom, and prognostication?”
“This is none of those,” Cyrus said, snapping a bit. “Stop trying to couch it in such terms. This your vanity. You're trying to suggest something negative, something that you can reflect back on later with smugness to prove that you are smarter than us. Well, if you prove to be right, congratulations, we'll have lost. Perhaps even lost something important to us, like the life of a friend or colleague.”
“Gods, I hope it's that obnoxious Guy,” Vaste muttered. “What were you thinking bringing him to us?”
“I was thinking I couldn't walk,” Cyrus said, brow arcing down. He'd felt his face make this expression quite a bit lately, hadn't he? It didn't help that Vara had left. He felt a sharp pang in his chest—
Ignore it. Ignore it for now. Focus on the mission.
“Thinking about her when you should be contemplating what we're about to fail at is not going to help us win,” Vaste said.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Cyrus said under his breath, then looked both ways before crossing the cobblestone street.
“What are you doing?” Vaste asked, hurrying in behind Cyrus.
“Moving closer,” Cyrus said, gathering his cloak about him. “Now shut up. We're about to start.”
“I don't like any part of this,” Vaste hissed, but he did, indeed, shut up.
Cyrus, for his bit, was not much more enthused than the troll, but he did not say so. What point was there in reveling in discord? Enough of that for a while. Discord had sent his wife away, to who knew where. Discord and intemperance.
I have a task. I have duty. I have...
A son.
He pushed that thought aside, too, stepping up on the curb. The torches burned in the quiet night. A reveler shouted in the distance. Sounded drunk, stupidly so. And probably was, given the hour. A pale moon burned behind the clouds, a faint white disc hidden behind the choking smoke that lay ever over Reikonos.
A click of metal and Cyrus whirled as the door in the wall began to open. He caught it, pulling it out, his sword now drawn and ready–
“Come,” Alaric said, beckoning him in. He'd gone ethereal and unlocked the gate, now disappearing into the shadows within.
Others were slipping out of the darkness now – Birissa, Shirri, Pamyra, Hiressam – even Guy, though he looked about as sour as a lemon tea. Cyrus waved them in before following Alaric within.
A courtyard lay beyond the shadowy gate, this structure not unlike the castles of his youth. This had been built not that long ago, though, a fortress within the city, made for a specific purpose. The bailey was empty, no guards on duty.
Cyrus frowned. None had been on the wall, either. That was...peculiar.
A building lay in the center like a keep, but square and smaller than one of those. Around the wall lay a dozen wooden stalls like those of a barn. At least half of them were closed tight, prompting Cyrus to frown deeper, though not because of them.
Because of the ones that lay open and empty.
“This is not quite what I expected,” Vaste mumbled low, only a few feet behind him.
“Shhh,” Cyrus said. Where had Alaric gone?
“Who goes there?” came a voice from the shadows by the central building. Cyrus turned his head to look.
Guards. Two of them, in the livery of the Reikonos City Watch.
“That I was expecting,” Vaste said, not bothering to whisper any longer. “See?”
“Shut up,” Cyrus said, and slipped his hood back, lifting his sword at the guards, and setting his off-hand aflame with a spell like a torch. “My name is Cyrus Davidon. That's who goes here. Who are you?”
The light of his hand shed a soft glow over the guards. The orange illuminated their faces, revealing the closest in clear detail. He was Cyrus's age or thereabouts, a couple wrinkles starting to creep into his otherwise youthful looks. Dark roots vanished beneath his metal helm, and his jaw was wide, his sword losing its resolution, dipping low as he stared at Cyrus. The other guard, less visible due to his lack of proximity to Cyrus's burning hand, also lowered his blade, though his reaction was not quite as pronounced.
“My name is Butler McCoie,” the first guard said, dropping to a knee and lifting his blade, hilt-first, toward Cyrus. He did not dare look up. “And my lord...long have I prayed for your return.”
“Oh, wonderful, we've found the village idiot,” Vaste mumbled.
Cyrus turned enough to whack Vaste with the flat edge of his blade across the back of the troll's legs. He evinced a sharp gasp at the slap, then shut up, blessedly. “Butler McCoie,” Cyrus said, then looked past him at the other guard, who was not kneeling, but neither did he have his blade up. “Are you the only ones here?”
Butler McCoie quivered slightly, but his voice, when he answered, was resolute. “We are, my lord.”
Cyrus felt his frown could not get any deeper until he heard that answer, and then, somehow, it did. “Two of you. That's all? To guard this entire place?” He swept an arm around to indicate the entirety of the fort.
McCoie took a slow breath. He seemed to only answer with great difficulty. “Yes. Just two of us.”
Cyrus let out a long breath. “Why?”
McCoie blinked. “Why...what, my lord?”
Cyrus looked once more around the courtyard, the sealed doors. “Are there normally only two of you here? To guard this place?”
McCoie looked up at him, perplexed. “No, my lo—”
“Stop with the 'my lord' shit,” Vaste said. “He's already insufferable, coming back to find himself deitied. His name is Cyrus Davidon. Just call him–”
Cyrus managed to douse his flaming hand and wedge it into Vaste's open mouth, making the troll sputter and scream before spitting it out and dancing off, shouting, “Hot! Hot! Hoooooot!”
“My lord...?” McCoie asked, staring at him with wide eyes. Then he bowed his head and relaxed.
Finally Cyrus got it. “I'm not going to kill you, McCoie. I'm not here to kill...well, anyone, if I can avoid it.”
The guard next to McCoie looked about to collapse, shoulders sagging. McCoie just nodded once, and said, in a voice thick with emotion. “Truly, you are merciful as they have said.”
“And generally not a murderous person if I can find another way,” Cyrus said, trying to decide whether he had been wronged here or not. “McCoie – why is this facility unguarded?”
McCoie let a small sniffle. He wasn't crying, but he had clearly had a break of emotion following the knowledge he was not going to die. “Earlier today wagons came. Many wagons.” He looked up at Cyrus. “They took nearly everything–”
Alaric appeared next to Cyrus. “The grain, you mean?”
Cyrus looked at the open stall doors, the ones that seemed like they were right out of a barn.
This was a granary, one of several scattered throughout the city. Its contents fed the people of Reikonos.
And it was empty, or as near to it as not to be worth quibbling over.
“Yes,” McCoie said, looking squarely at Alaric. “They took the grain. All of it.”
“Where?” Alaric asked.
McCoie shook his head. “I do not know. They did not say. With them, they took most of our men, leaving only the two of us behind with no relief nor promise of it.” He swallowed visibly, and looked at Cyrus. “I am sorry, my–”
“For what?” Cyrus asked, wanting to avoid being called 'my lord' again at all costs. Especially in such a reverential tone.
McCoie bowed his head deeper. “My wife has said for so long now that you would be angry with me when you return.” His neck arched further forward, as though threatening to snap off. “That you would be furious because I have served these...” His voice trailed off.
Cyrus stared at him for a moment, then stepped forward and laid a hand upon Butler McCoie's armored shoulder. “Did you join the City Watch to hoard grain away from the people of Reikonos?” He glanced past McCoie at the other guard and saw a subtle shaking of the he
ad in the darkness.
“No,” McCoie said simply. “I joined because I wanted to protect the people.”
“Do you feel you are protecting the people?” Cyrus asked, hand still there on his shoulder. “By your deeds? By the orders you've received?”
McCoie shook his head. “No. No, my lord. I do not.”
“Then you have two choices, by my reckoning,” Cyrus said. “You can remain here, and leave once we're gone. Go back to your masters, tell them what has happened. Receive whatever punishment or reward they feel obliged to give you. Continue serving for gold or whatever it is they reward you with. Or...”
McCoie looked up at him. “Yes...?”
“Or you can leave this bullshit behind and follow me as we free this city from the yolk of that tyrant the Lord Protector,” Cyrus said. “Because he seems to have it in mind to starve the people physically just as he and the Machine have starved them of their hope spiritually.” Cyrus sheathed Rodanthar with a dramatic flourish. “And I don't know about you, McCoie, but I cannot stand by and let that happen.”
McCoie rose to his feet, lifting his sword hilt toward Cyrus. The guard next to him did the same, offering it freely. “I will follow you,” McCoie said. “Whatever you tell me to do, I will do.”
“Will you let him thrust a burning hand in your mouth?” Vaste asked, wandering back over, tongue hanging out, drool dripping down his chin as he spoke. “Because let me tell you...it appears it could happen.”
“Whatever you require, my lord,” McCoie said, looking Cyrus dead in the eye. “My sword. My tongue. My life.”
“Let's start with the sword and the tongue,” Cyrus said, and the guard flinched just a bit. “Tell me, McCoie...where is the next nearest granary?”
Chapter 42
“Five granaries, all empty,” Alaric said. They stood in the center of the foyer once more, now returned. McCoie and his partner, whose name was Willems, were both with Birissa several streets away, for they had not trusted the new men with the location of Sanctuary – yet, anyway. “Malpravus is moving swiftly.”
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