“Away.” The dwarf swung his hammer with one hand and Cyrus was forced to step back. The dwarf raised his other hand and white light coursed down his side, a small healing spell. The dwarf smirked at him. “Just for a second though, lad. I wouldn’t want to step out on you before I’ve killed you, after all.”
“Not much chance of that.” Cyrus came at him again, ignoring the pain in his ribs, embracing the agony, letting it enrage him.
“Why?” The dwarf smiled, that irritating smile. “Do you think your friends’ll be saving you? Because I don’t.”
“Oh, yeah?” Cyrus brought his blade down and it clanged against the head of the hammer, and he raised it and brought it down again, this time cutting centimeters into the handle. “Why’s that?”
“Because …” the dwarf said, bringing his hammer up and hitting Cyrus in the nose with the handle, “… Curatio there is far too busy trying to rally your spellcasters to keep the Sylorean army from turning around and stampeding through you lot on their retreat.”
Cyrus staggered back, stunned by both the blow to his face and dimly aware that the dwarf had called Curatio by name. He glanced back, a quick turn of the head and saw that it was true; the healer was with the spellcasters, flames were rippling in careful lines across the plains, turning back the tide of screaming Syloreans as the Galbadien dragoons continued to cut through their ranks. Cyrus turned back to the dwarf and over the little man’s shoulder he saw the Sanctuary army, the bulk of it, burrowing into the footmen in the center of the melee while the dragoons drove through the flanks of the Sylorean army.
“So you’re from Sanctuary, eh?” The dwarf leered at him, little half-smile wicked upon his face. “You’re a long way from the Plains of Perdamun, lad.” He balanced the hammer in his hand, bouncing it with one hand and letting the handle slap his palm in the other as he advanced toward Cyrus slowly. “A long damned way you came just to try and kill me and mine.”
“I killed yours,” Cyrus said, trying to shake off the disorientation. Blood flowed freely from his nose down his lips and every word he spoke let more of it run into his mouth, the hard, metallic taste of it drowning out all else. “Now all that’s left is to kill you.”
The dwarf chuckled, his small frame gyrating slightly from the laugh. “Easier said than followed through with.” He extended the hammer with one hand and pointed it at Cyrus. “But if you want to give it a try, now seems the opportune moment.”
Cyrus clutched Praelior in both hands, holding it defensively. “I’ve been known to do dumb things,” he said, staring the dwarf down, “but attacking a strong adversary to no purpose while I’m injured isn’t one of them.”
“Let me give you reason, then.” The dwarf held up his palm and Cyrus nearly flinched as another blast of force hit him before he could dodge.
The spell made contact with his shoulder as it passed and jerked him around in a half-circle before leaving him to come to rest on the ground. He felt the numbness in his arm from the blast, and clenched his other fist to find he had, in fact, held onto his sword. He rolled to the side as the hammer landed in the mud where he had lain, splattering his armor from the force of impact. The hammer came down again as Cyrus rolled to a knee, this blow missing him by only inches.
Cyrus saw Terian, a half-dozen paces away, the flames from the spellcasters behind him, a wall of fire keeping the army of Syloreas from retreating. The dark knight stared at him, blade in hand. Smoke was everywhere, black clouds that drifted lazily around him. “Terian,” Cyrus said. “Help me!”
Terian did not move, and Cyrus cocked his head at the dark elf, who stood still, watching. Cyrus started to call out to him again but the hammer hit him in the face, a short, fast stab that landed on Cyrus’s already-wounded nose and caused a flash in his eyes. He blinked and realized he was on the ground and the dwarf was over him, brandishing the hammer.
“Friends, eh?” The dwarf said, shaking his head. “Guildmates, yah? Someday, lad, maybe if you grow wise, you’ll realize that you really can’t rely on anyone but yourself.” The dwarf chuckled. “‘Course, that’d mean living long enough to learn from your mistakes.” He hefted the hammer on his shoulder. “Best of luck with that.”
The dwarf raised the hammer above his head and brought it down on Cyrus, a full-force swing from on high. Cyrus watched it come down, the arc slow and graceful, and wondered what it would feel like when it—
Chapter 19
Vara
Four Months Later
There was a thundering sound, somewhere far above Vara, and one of the people across the foyer let out a shriek that overpowered the moans of the last few unhealed wounded. “Those damnable catapults,” she said, meaning it. The smell of smoke drifted in from outside, so thick she could taste it. The weight of her armor felt heavy on her shoulders, and it was seldom ever a bother.
“What has happened here?” Ryin Ayend stared around the foyer, the stone that had burst the window only moments earlier was still sitting in the Great Hall, in the midst of splintered tables.
“We are under siege,” Alaric answered him, crossing the distance between them and placing a hand on Ryin’s shoulder. “I am most pleased to see you, my brother, but unfortunately the news you bear will have to wait, unless you have anything life-threatening to tell us?”
“Not exactly,” Ryin said. “But I was sent back to let you know—”
Another thunderous roar filled the room as the entirety of Sanctuary quaked to the foundations. There was a moment’s respite from the fury and then the earth shook again so violently Vara was only just able to keep her footing. Others were not so lucky and landed on the floor in a heap.
“If I am not mistaken, we have just lost the southwest tower to a bombardment,” Alaric said, much more calmly than Vara felt.
“Lucky shot,” Vaste said, pulling himself to his feet. “There’s no way that was intentional, not with a catapult. Those things are hideously inaccurate.”
“You don’t have to be that accurate when you’re firing a ton of stone.” A voice whipped through the room and Vara saw Erith Frostmoor, a dark elven healer, cut down the stairs and take in the foyer in one glance. “I was on the battlements—we did lose the southwest tower, and it was a lucky shot, but the boulders they’re firing at us are bigger than any I’ve seen heaved from a catapult before. Two lucky hits and the tower came down, along with whoever was in it at the time.”
“Applicant quarters,” Vaste said. “Gods, that’ll be messy.”
“Healers,” Alaric said, looking to Erith and Vaste, “get to the wreckage of the tower and begin pulling the dead and wounded out. Any able-bodied warriors should join you. Rangers, I’ll need with me,” he said, voice tight, “along with anyone who can cast a spell. I believe it is time to give the dark elven host a taste of our fury.”
“Taste of our fury?” Vaste said with a frown. “That sounds awfully cheesy, Alaric. Why don’t you give them a taste of our bread and stew while you’re at it?”
“Because at this point our bread and stew are in a puddle on the floor of the Great Hall,” Larana whispered, so low only Vara heard her.
“Spellcasters,” Alaric said, “with me. All others, to your duties.”
Alaric was on the run, out the door and descending the great stone stairs that led to the grounds of Sanctuary. Green grasses of summer had grown in thick, and the sun was shining overhead as Vara ran across the grounds, a few steps behind her Guildmaster. It was a wide lawn, a massive open space in the land surrounded by Sanctuary’s curtain wall, big enough that it protected the enormous stables, a garden out back, a cemetery, an archery range, and other outbuildings that were not part of Sanctuary’s main structure.
The curtain wall was tall enough for them to repel a siege from, at least with archers and spellcasters and swords enough to fight off ladder-climbing invaders and siege towers. But not as tall as I would have made it, she thought. For this I would have preferred walls that stretched halfway to the sky, as can
be found in Pharesia. Or a moat around the whole thing would be a wonderful defense, rather than simply letting them roll their damnable siege engines up to the wall and have at it. “What is our plan, Alaric?” she asked, wondering if she would catch the old knight’s attention.
“Their army is of little threat to us at present,” Alaric said. “But their catapults and siege towers present a slight problem. So we will deal with them.”
“A ‘slight problem’?” She looked at him in astonishment, but he did not turn back to acknowledge her, merely kept running toward the wall. A stream of others following his orders trailed closely behind and the smell of fire and smoke was strong the closer they got to the wall. “Alaric, they just sent the bloody southwest tower crashing to the ground! They launched a boulder into our foyer. If that is only a slight problem, then I fear the day that we face your definition of a major one.”
“Yes,” Alaric said, “I fear that day as well.”
They reached the wall, slipping into the interior of the heavy stone structure by means of a tower door. The wall was miles long and had passages with rooms and accommodations inside the towers that were placed at intervals along the length of it. Its thickness, with a solid mass of stone at the front, was able to stop most projectiles, but toward the interior facing, it made way for a corridor that spanned between the towers. Alaric started up a spiral staircase inside the tower, striding out into the bright daylight when he reached the top. Throughout, Vara followed on his heels, as close as she could keep up to the Guildmaster, who moved faster than his venerable appearance would have indicated he could. But then, she had long ago learned she should not underestimate Alaric.
When she stepped out into the sunlight on top of the wall, the roar reached her ears again, filling them with the sounds of thousands of voices. It was a cacophony of anger and fury coming from the army outside the walls, their battle lines formed in neat rows that Vara could see from where she stood far above them. They filled the plains around Sanctuary, more numerous than she could count, an army arrayed around them for one purpose alone—to break down the walls, sack Sanctuary, and parade the survivors along a celebratory death march back to Saekaj Sovar for the pleasure of their Sovereign. I’ll be certain to be good and dead if Sanctuary falls, she thought with a shudder. Surviving would bring with it unpleasantries I’d just as soon not deal with.
The wall was lined with bowmen, rangers who had strung their weapons and were loosing a tide of arrows down into the army below every few seconds while using the battlements for cover from the counter barrage of arrows. A shout made its way over the cry of the army below, and Thad, the castellan of Sanctuary, giving the orders to the defenders of the wall, cried out over the carnage, “Aim for the towers! Kill the dark elves pushing them!”
Vara came to the edge of the battlement and glanced out. Wooden towers built to the height of the curtain wall were sliding over the uneven ground, born along by the efforts of soldiers below. She looked left, toward the gate, and saw a battering ram working at the front as boiling oil was poured down upon it. A hundred catapults and trebuchets stood further back, behind the first ranks of the army, launching all manner of abuse into the air in addition to a rain of arrows that was being sent at the Sanctuary defenders. Vara ducked behind a rampart as an arrow missed her face by a matter of inches. “I do so love the weather we’re having today,” she said. “Pleasant enough temperature for summer, not overwhelmingly hot, not a cloud in the sky, unless you count the clouds of arrows—and I do.”
Alaric remained standing, tall, above the battlements, and an arrow flew past him, followed by another. Before Vara could cry out, one shot through his head, passing through him as neatly as if it had gone through another stretch of empty air. The Ghost did not even seem to notice it, though Vara felt the cry of warning and alarm die on her lips. “Weather aside, I hope we have a healer upon these battlements for those who are not quite as ephemeral as myself.”
“Ephemeral?” Vara stared at his receding back. “You just had an arrow fly through your head as though it weren’t there.”
“Which?” Alaric asked, halting to look back at her. “The arrow or my head? Because I’ve heard the latter mentioned to me before once or twice—in insult, usually.”
“Bugger it,” Vara said and charged to the next tooth in the wall, now only a few feet from where Alaric stood next to Thad, who was taking advantage of the cover offered by the crenellations. When a swarm of arrows landed around her, soaring through the gaps, she took to hands and knees, crawling the last few feet, shoving the bowmen out of the way as she passed.
“Lass,” Alaric said as she crawled up to crouch behind the crenellation beside Thad, “it would seem you’ve found a somewhat undignified way of hiding from the arrows.”
“Not all of us have insubstantial heads,” she said in irritation. “And I don’t want my quite substantial brains splattered all over the wall whilst I have no idea where the nearest healer may be.”
“Right here,” came a dull, accented voice from behind Thad. Vara leaned out, briefly, to see Andren, the scruffy elven healer, his back against a fortification, a flask in his hand as he calmly took a drink. A strong smell of booze reached her nostrils. Andren’s long, dark hair was tangled even moreso than usual. His beard was thick and seemed to have grown thicker in the last months, as though he were unconcerned about keeping it groomed at all. The bushy beard and long, tangled hair coupled with his white, frayed and dirtied healer’s robe, gave him the look of one of the vagrants found in human cities—and not at all like an elf should look.
“A sober healer,” she said. “I’d like one competent enough to perform a spell.”
“Oh, so that’s how it is,” Andren said mildly, sticking his fingers out and waving them in the general direction of a human a half dozen paces away who was screaming with an arrow sticking out of his palm. “I’m quite competent.”
“I said competent and sober.”
“Meh,” Andren said with some indifference. “I’ll pass on that last one; highly overrated, especially when you’re being bombarded with arrows, projectiles, and some fairly wounding insults, in the case of you.”
“Thad,” Alaric said, cutting off any response Vara might have made, “it would appear they’ve begun the assault on our gate.”
Thad smiled weakly. The younger warrior was human and clad in crimson armor, the steel bearing chipped paint that revealed the metal beneath. He had always reminded Vara of a younger, less adept and perhaps less handsome version of Cyrus. And for that, especially now, I hate him. “I guess you could say that. They started moving toward us with intent about fifteen minutes ago. Before that, they seemed quite comfortable to maintain their distance and keep us blockaded.”
“They’ve clearly changed to a war footing,” Vara said, watching one of the siege towers drawing close to the edge of the ramparts, “and I’d be fascinated to discuss how exactly that happened, but I’d rather do it after we’ve put these bastards to rest and repelled them.”
“Indeed,” Alaric said, and gestured behind himself. Vara turned to see a line of spellcasters—druids, wizards and a few enchanters making their way across the wall, taking positions of their own next to the bowmen at the ramparts. Larana was among them and truthfully the only one among them whose name Vara knew; all the rest were new people who had been recruited in the last few years. New people that I have to get to know and remember the names of. Is there any more annoying bane anywhere in my existence? The thought of the black-armored warrior flashed through her mind. Oh yes. Well, in the scale of things, he’s still rather new, I suppose.
“Let us dispense with this bombardment, shall we?” Alaric stood in the gap between the crenellations as Vara exchanged a look with Thad. “When I signal, spellcasters, unleash hell upon those towers.”
“What’s the signal?” Thad asked then flushed under his helm as Vara sent him a searing look.
“I think this will do,” Alaric said and extended his
hand in the direction of the tower, which was creeping toward the wall only fifteen feet or so away from deploying its bridge to allow the troops within to storm the Sanctuary battlements.
Vara let out a scream of pure fury and stood in the gap next to Alaric. Bombard my home from afar, will you? Send your mindless foot soldiers to knock down our wall and drag us out? I shall show you, oh Sovereign, you bastard of bastards, you terrible and daft ruler of mine enemies. She threw out her hand and began to cast a spell of her own, just as Alaric’s went off, an incantation leaving his palm that shook the ramparts and blasted the stray strands of hair out of Vara’s face as it flew.
She watched the wave of force fly, distorting the air in a line following from Alaric’s palm to the siege tower, where it impacted a third of the way up the structure. The impact was immediate and obvious; the wooden tower splintered, chips exploding outward and showering the army below with splinters as a fearsome groan of breaking logs preceded the awful listing of the whole structure, which began to tilt forward. Cries from behind the rectangular creation’s wooden facade told her that the occupants of the thing knew what was coming and were perhaps powerless to stop it.
The whole contraption came crashing to the ground, the upper two-thirds tilting down, falling upon the army stacked up beneath it. Vara saw a wave of movement as the soldiers beneath it tried to flee, but it seemed unlikely that any of them made it through the panicked crowd; the crash of the tower splattered a hundred or more men beneath its shadow and pulped countless more who had been inside it.
With Alaric’s blast, a wave of spells leapt forward from the Sanctuary battlements—fireballs and bolts of lightning seemed the most popular choices. Vara saw the pale flash of a few charms fly from the enchanter ranks and watched as they took possession of the biggest and strongest warriors below them in the field, turning them against their own allies, the swords and daggers of the Sovereign’s own turning against their fellows. Vara saw Larana loose a particularly large blast of fire at a catapult that was several hundred feet back from the wall and it hit with the same force as Alaric’s burst, if not more; an explosion seemed to follow, launching the operators of the contraption away in flames and turning the whole thing into a pyre that blazed thirty feet high.
Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four Page 21