Call of the Hero

by Robert J. Crane

  The streets of Reikonos lay thick with silence as Cyrus rode through them. An ill aura hung in the air, a fear that permeated the bricks and the cobblestones like the ash that settled on everything. The clop of his horse's hooves burst the quiet, drawing eyes from behind nearly every window.

  They know, Cyrus thought. The people could smell the danger in the air, especially after the fight that had raged upon Vara Square only yesterday. It shouldn't have been surprising that a city so thoroughly cowed would be reluctant to raise a hand in its defense. The shops were closed, the streets empty, as though everyone knew there was no grain to be had, and no good could come of sticking one's head out one's door at present.

  This, then, was the problem. With the city shut down, how to feed these people? Surely all of them did not have food in their homes, or at least not enough to feed them over the course of the days or weeks or months that were yet to come. Not with the armies of Malpravus wandering the streets, preparing to besiege the dockyards.

  Malpravus had to be defeated, and soon, his armies – and power – broken.

  But how?

  A door rattled to his side, and Cyrus spun, looking across the sidewalk. A woman stood there, clothed modestly, holding back a child no older than five.

  “Momma!” the boy called, pointing. “Cyrus Davidon!”

  “Come back in sides, Joules,” the woman whispered, glancing at Cyrus for only a moment before averting her gaze. “I am sorry, my Lord Davidon. He is–”

  “A child,” Cyrus said, dismounting Windrider and walking over to them before she could grab her son and shut the door. “Innocent, curious.” Cyrus felt a smile run across his face. “Joules, was it?”

  The boy looked up at Cyrus, clutched in his mother's arms, face sunny, eyes wide and expectant and full of Cyrus, reflecting back in their brightness. “Yes, my Lord Davidon,” the mother answered for him. Joules just grinned broadly.

  “How old are you, Joules?” Cyrus asked, taking a knee and offering a hand to the boy.

  The boy took it up, running curious fingers over the lobstered joints of Cyrus's gauntlet. “Five,” Joules answered finally.

  “A big, strapping five, I see,” Cyrus said, letting the boy curl the finger joints experimentally. “Does your mother require you to play inside today?”

  “Yes,” Joules said, forgetting the articulation of the gauntlet and turning his eyes to Cyrus's face. “But I don't wanna.” He made a face like he'd just tried some food that he would sooner die than eat, like squash, perhaps.

  “It's no fun being cooped up inside on a day like today, is it?” Cyrus looked up. The skies showed a hint of blue above the thinner layer of smoke produced by the city's factories. Most were probably not operating at anywhere near capacity today, not if the citizens were largely shut in their homes.

  “No,” Joules said.

  “You'll be able to play outside again soon,” Cyrus said, pushing back to his feet. He towered over the child, the mother, who still seemed afraid to look at him. “I promise you this, Joules. I will make it so the people of this city are no longer afraid. So that your mother will be fine with you going outside to play again.”

  “Th-thank you, my Lord Davidon,” the woman said, then shut her door. Not a slam, but neither a gentle click.

  Still afraid, then. Uncertain about him, too.

  That was all right, though, Cyrus thought as he mounted Windrider again and started the horse toward Reikonos Square. Why should anyone else be certain about him when he still harbored the gravest doubts himself?

  Chapter 89

  Baynvyn

  “This is foolish,” Baynvyn said. His hands were tightly bound behind a post staked firmly into the earth next to the Reikonos fountain. On a normal day, you could hear the babble of the markets from here. Today, it was nearly silent, scarcely a soul in the square. “He's not going to come for me.”

  A clockwork whirred nearby, hovering beside Baynvyn. It spoke in the voice of Malpravus: “Don't be so sure, dear boy. There is a nobility in Cyrus Davidon that seems lost on you. Which is one of the things I liked best about you.”

  Baynvyn sagged, working at the tight bonds. There was no give, and pulling against the stake offered no yield, either.

  Sweat rolled down Baynvyn's back. He'd been stripped to his undershirt and undergarments before being tied to the stake, and whoever had done the binding had known what they were doing. He was, however, alone in the square save for the clockworks.

  But there were plenty of them, and only one of him. And tied, so there was nothing to do but struggle and wait, wait and struggle against the bindings.

  Futile. Stupid, even.

  But he had nothing else to do, so he continued to chafe his wrists against the ropes.

  “How much do you know of your father?” Malpravus's voice chirped out of the clockwork's mouth. This one was not a little buzzing insect type. It was...bigger. But it stood next to Baynvyn, and even through the crackle the necromancer was easily understood.

  “As much as anyone else,” Baynvyn said, feeling chafed in a different way. He didn't advertise to anyone that Cyrus was his father. It wasn't a point of pride for him, as it might have been for some. His mother had been very clear, very honest, about how he'd been conceived – when he got old enough. It had rankled him, the story of his father. That and his eyes not being as good in the darkness of Saekaj Sovar as a true dark elf's had left him – not blind, but hobbled – for much of his life. He saw little advantage to being the son of Cyrus Davidon, not after the scourge came and they were stuck under the earth eating root and mushroom and fish for the better part of a thousand years. Everyone in Saekaj had more or less forgotten Cyrus Davidon, save for a few, by the time the offer had come, the airship tower had been built and they'd rejoined the rest of Arkaria. Baynvyn seldom even went by his father's surname, preferring his mother's in Saekaj, for it held actual cachet there. “Maybe a shade more, that's all. I know he fought the gods. I know he unleashed the scourge.” Was that rope starting to give? “I know he fought you.”

  “What else?” Malpravus asked.

  “I know...” Baynvyn's voice trailed off as he lost the thought. Utterly.

  “What?” Malpravus's silky voice crackled out of the speaker box of the clockwork as the machine turned to look in the same direction that Baynvyn was facing. “Ah.”

  “I know...” Baynvyn said, mouth dry, almost too stunned to speak, “....that he's an idiot.”

  For there, at the far entrance to the square, sword in hand and staring out at the clockworks between them...

  Was Cyrus Davidon.

  Chapter 90

  Guy

  There was really nothing for it. Guy could see the writing on the walls; this place was going to get hit, and hit hard. No avoiding it, the blow to fall like a hammer on a bloody tomato. Guy didn't want to be the tomato, so he started seeking the exit.

  And he found it. A little drainage tunnel built into the far southern wall, opening out into the street beyond. It wasn't meant for men, certainly wasn't meant for an army, but here Guy's stature worked for him. It took a little crawling, a little squeezing, but soon enough Guy found himself a street away from the dockyards, a bit smelly and a little wet, but none the worse for the wear.

  “I wish you luck, boys and girl,” he muttered under his breath, the stink of mud and musty air still clinging to him. It'd be on him for a while. But that was all right, because–

  He rubbed a bag of gold between his fingers. They were just leaving the gold out, on a cart, so they could pay the shipmasters for their goods. Well, they could afford to pay Guy a minimal amount for his trouble, and, as soon as the guards turned their backs, they had. Just twenty pieces or so, enough to get him a small lodging at the far end of town, farthest from the bloody Machine presence. With all this going on, they weren't likely to be hunting him too hard. Especially thinking he was in the dockyards with their rest of this band.

  With a last look over his shoulder, Guy fe
lt a twinge of something. Small, poking at him. Conscience? Nah.

  Maybe.

  But it was time to go, no doubt. Great battles, stands for courage? He'd heard Alaric's speech, but none of that was him. He wasn't a man who could fight the big fights. Even in the Machine, he was a blender – hide in the crowd. He wasn't the sort to stick his neck out and volunteer, which was why he'd never killed anyone until that bloody alley yesterday.

  Yeah. Good luck to this lot, and their courage, and their big, final stand. None of that was for Guy, though. He'd take his chances with gold, and keep his head down until all this blew over. Last rat standing sounded pretty good to him at this point, because at least the rat would still be alive where everyone else had fallen.

  Chapter 91

  Cyrus

  “I represent that remark,” Cyrus called across the wide gulf of the square. Mighty clockwork machines whirred and clicked around him as his eyes met Baynvyn's. His son was bound to a stake driven into the ground in front of the fountain. No water burbled out of it as in days of old; it looked ashy and stagnant, like Reikonos itself. Dark clouds had moved in overhead, blotting the sun – which was already rapidly falling toward the horizon when he'd left the yards.

  “Yes,” Baynvyn said after a moment of quiet shock, “you really do. You cannot possibly think this is a good idea.”

  “It was a perfectly good idea,” the clockwork nearest Baynvyn said, a voice that had a tinny quality to it, yet was recognizable nonetheless:

  Malpravus.

  “Do I not warrant the honor of your actual, bony-arsed presence, Malpravus?” Cyrus asked. He had his sword in hand because, while a fool for taking this course, he wasn't entirely surrendering to idiocy.

  And he had a plan.

  “I really would love to see you with my own eyes, dear boy,” Malpravus said. “After all, you have once again proven yourself resilient beyond measure. Surviving a fall from atop the Citadel is no mean feat, of course. Surviving all else you have in recent days – the ambush in Vara Square, the taking of the dockyards. As always, you never cease to amaze me with your achievements.”

  “Thank you for that,” Cyrus said, “but I really prefer it when my wife sucks my dick, so you can stop any time.”

  The clockwork was quiet for a long moment. “You should work on your weaknesses, though.” With a click, the great machine's torso pivoted. It had blades for hands, and stood as tall as any troll. “I mean, really...I take as hostage a man who has been trying to kill you, whose age is so much greater than yours...whose mere words are all the proof he has that he is your son. Truly, I almost didn't expect you to come.”

  “You knew I would,” Cyrus said. “I would have if you'd grabbed a random child off the street in his stead.”

  “Oh, so I'm not special,” Baynvyn said dryly.

  “You've been especially vexing,” Cyrus said. “But I just told you I'd come to save an innocent child, so now you know what company I hold you in.”

  “I'm hardly innocent,” Baynvyn called back. “And you're still an idiot for coming.”

  “I wasn't innocent when Alaric Garaunt sacrificed himself beneath the Endless Bridge to save me from the reprisal of the gods,” Cyrus said. “The man spent years in torture at their hands to spare me.” He paused, counted. There were twenty clockworks the size of trolls between him and Baynvyn. They whirred and clicked, looking as though they were ready to burst forth at him any moment. He felt suddenly fortunate that these hadn't been at Vara Square or the dockyards. They looked particularly implacable. “Nor was I innocent when your mother saved me from the King of the Elves.”

  Baynvyn stared at him across the distance. “You're still a fool for coming here alone.”

  “Why?” Cyrus asked, looking through the clockworks at the one with Malpravus's voice. “You're alone. Malpravus has taken all his strength and diverted it toward the thing he wants most – the dockyards.”

  “You think you know me so very well,” Malpravus said, voice thick with satisfaction. “But it seems to me...I know you better. For here you are, as called. And...yes, alone.” The clockworks clicked as one, ratchets and gears turning as they lined up. They were going to come at him any moment. “And I wonder, dear boy, strong as you are...can you get to this lad of yours before I...” The machines clanked as the one that was speaking turned its arms on Baynvyn, “...crush him?”

  Chapter 92

  Alaric

  Looking out over the wall down the avenue to the main gate of the dockyards, Alaric's alarm increased. Then increased again.

  “They're massing down the avenue, my lord,” McCoie said, shot through with clear concern.

  And he was right. For they were, indeed, massing down the avenue that led to the gate. Black Machine cloaks in numbers beyond easy reckoning, mixed with the livery of the City Watch, loyalists that had not joined the Sanctuary force. There were wagons with gatling cannons mingled in there, as well as–

  “What are those?” Alaric asked, pointing at a different type of wagon, one with a strangely formed black object on it.

  “Cannons,” McCoie said. Then, when Alaric's furrowed brow and presumably gape-mouthed curiosity became clear, “Like a larger version of our muskets. Fire a ball the size of your head. They're absolute hell on gates – and men.”

  “More of these uncivilized guns,” Alaric muttered. He looked down the wall. “Send runners to the rear wall guards, inform them that trouble is massing here.” Vaste and Birissa was charged with holding the eastern side. Hiressam, along with that Willems character, was on the western barricades.

  “These are uncivilized times, my friend,” Curatio said, with the hint of a smile audible in his words. “You might wish we had a few of those to point in this direction before this fight is over. Pity that the few we have are mounted on the exterior wall.”

  “Perhaps,” Alaric said, because something curious had started to tickle in the back of his mind. Some ill feeling, but unrelated to this battle...

  Curiously familiar, he could place the sensation. Frowning, squinting down at the army, he wanted to attribute it to the trouble coming. Yet he could not; there was something more, something bothering him, something eminently familiar...

  “They march,” McCoie said, and surely enough, they were.

  The Machine coats and the Watch cloaks moved like a long serpent down the road. With sudden surprise, Alaric finally realized that where he stood, where the entire dockyards lay, was in the part of Reikonos where the road had wended its way to the Elf Gate, the road that led to Termina. Clearly, someone had destroyed the buildings in this part of the town in order to build the dockyards, and walled them off from the interior of the city for defensive purposes. Still, the avenue that ran up to their gates and through the main aisle of the yards was the same one that had once been the most traversed exodus path in all of Reikonos. “And still is,” Alaric muttered, amused that this had come to him in this moment, of all moments, with so much else already on his mind.

  “What's that?” Curatio asked.

  “This is the road to the Elf Gate,” Alaric said. “In the old days.”

  “In the old days of Reikonos, I take you to mean,” Curatio said, faintly smiling. “Not in the days of Sennshann, when they didn't bother with walls or gates.”

  “Well, they didn't have much to fear from the elves in those days,” Alaric volleyed back, though his voice drifted a bit at the end. That nagging feeling had come back, destroying his riposte.

  Curatio, too, had a strange look upon his face. “Is something troubling you?”

  “Yes,” Alaric said. “Though I am unable to decide what it is. Something lingers in the back of my mind like a shadow–”

  “Sanctuary,” Curatio said, standing up straighter.

  With a jolt like lightning had struck his helm, Alaric, too, jerked fully upright. “Sanctuary,” he agreed, every muscle now tense. “Something is happening there.” But how...?

  “We must go to it,” Curatio sai
d, turning to leave.

  “Brother,” Alaric said, as firmly as he could recall ever being with the elf, the healer. “There is an army marching toward us. Our gates are closed.” He caught a stray – fearful – look from McCoie. “These men need us.”

  Curatio looked torn – for a moment. “You lead the fight. I shall go and see.” He held up a hand to stymie the protest that was about to burst forth from Alaric's lips. “I will not open any gate; I will find my way without endangering the defense.”

  “Your lack of presence endangers the defense,” Alaric said. “Note that we are being pulled apart. First Cyrus, now you, though whatever is happening was intended to drag me away, I think.”

  “One of us must see to this,” Curatio said. A look over the parapets revealed the army of Watch and Machine only a few hundred yards away, now. “Stay the course, my friend. I shall return as swiftly as able.”

  And he was off, bolting down the wall at a speed no hundred-year-old man should have managed, let alone one who had lived over twenty thousand of them.

  “Why does he flee at this hour of battle, my lord?” McCoie asked. His voice held the waver of fear.

  “He does not flee, my friend,” Alaric said, putting a hand on McCoie's shoulder as reassurance. “This battle and this enemy come to us on many fronts.” Alaric lowered his head as the first musket shots sounded in the distance, and then they began to strike upon the crenellations of the wall, stone singing as metal chipped it free. “We must therefore fight it on every field from which it comes. But fear not – I remain with you here, and we, my friend...we will be plenty enough to win this fight.”

  Chapter 93

  Curatio