“No war,” Hoygraf said. “You heard them; the Westerners mean to go to Syloreas’s aid. And no war with Galbadien, either; my dear wife has pledged to return to me and has accepted her punishment—and more to come.”
“Has she now?” Martaina heard a distinct frosting on Tiernan’s inflection as it cooled. “I am certain she enjoyed your lash with all enthusiasm; but tell me, Hoygraf, what possessed her to accept your punishment, seeing that she was well free of your loving touch?”
“You would have to ask her,” Hoygraf said, with a minimal shrug. “Love of her husband, perhaps.”
“Trying to save my homeland, more like,” Cattrine said from her hands and knees.
“We all have our own reasons,” Hoygraf said with a further shrug. “She has received what she was promised and shall receive more in the bargain. Now she will return the head of Sanctuary’s General to them, then come back to me, and war will be averted with Galbadien because of it.” Hoygraf’s teeth showed, evenly, far too polished for Martaina’s taste, too white for the blackness of the man’s soul. “And you can send your forces north to Syloreas to counter this threat that has everyone so worried.”
“You know very damned well that western magic works to revive the dead for only so long after they’ve been killed.” Milos Tiernan appeared to shake with this pronouncement, as he stared down Hoygraf, but still he kept his voice low enough that none of the crowd could hear. “You have killed him, which I would suspect would be an act of war in the view of the westerners, and stripped him of his head, and now you sit here, torturing my sister and letting time pass idly by. How long ago did he die, Hoygraf?”
“I hardly know,” Hoygraf said. “An hour, perhaps? Perhaps less, perhaps a little more. It is hard to be worried about such things when you are striving to enforce richly deserved justice.” He broke a little smile again toothily and pretended to wipe a bead of perspiration from his brow that was not even there.
“Now you expect my sister to return him to his people, in the condition you have rendered her to, before the allotted time runs out?” Tiernan’s voice was steady, surprising Martaina. There was an edge of restrained fury in it, she could hear, but it was not raised at all. “You want this war, want to fight the westerners, want your revenge, do you?”
“I fear no westerner,” Hoygraf said, and leaned heavier, both hands on his cane, but the smile was gone. “And certainly no silliness of the north from the Syloreans. Let them come, and we will break these western fools. Let Syloreas fall to whatever chews at it, and the army of Actaluere will deal with that as well.”
“I need a courier.” Milos Tiernan raised his voice now, so that the entire crowd could hear. Martaina had set foot forward before she even realized she had, stepping out of the circle of observers, crossing the ground between her and the post, where Tiernan stood facing Hoygraf and Cattrine. The voice went low again, but Martaina followed it as she approached them, the lone person who did so. “You are a fool, Tematy, and your war is direly timed. You are twice the fool if you think that whatever afflicts Syloreas will be easier to defeat without their aid as with it. You may have dominion over my sister now—to my eternal shame and dismay—but you do not rule my Kingdom. You do not declare war for me or take action that will cause me to have to fight after you provoke others into them.” Martaina arrived at his side, then, and the King of Actaluere looked to her without any sign of recognition. “Please take my sister and her … accompanying package … to the Sanctuary camp to the southeast. Ensure that she is able to return their general’s head to them, but give them no further message.” His face twitched. “Stay with her while she is there, and perhaps one of their healers will find it in them to ease her pain. Do you understand?” Martaina nodded, and Tiernan waved her off. “Be on with it, then, with all alacrity. Hurry.”
Martaina knelt next to the Baroness, whose head snapped back at her approach and again as she wrapped an arm around Cattrine and pulled her to her feet. The Baroness’s legs did not work, not at all, and she was dead weight as Martaina carried her along, half-dragging her to the edge of the crowd, which watched her. There was silence from behind her as Tiernan and Hoygraf continued to stare at each other, or possibly at her, and she could almost taste the bitter conflict between the men, burning hotter than the summer day around them, and with none of the occasional idle breeze to break it up. The quiet was oppressive in its own way, and every step she could feel the Baroness sag against her and the slippery, bloody, naked skin of Cattrine was slick within her grasp.
They made their way past the circled crowd, and J’anda and Aisling joined them as they passed. “I’ll take this,” Aisling said, and laid a hand on Cyrus’s head. “I’ll run ahead.”
“No,” Cattrine said, halting, her words choked with pain. “I need to get it to … Curatio. To the Sanctuary guild members.”
“You have,” Aisling said quietly, and Cattrine cocked her head. Her eyelids fluttered. “Let me take it, so that I can get it there in time.”
“All right,” Cattrine said, weakly, and relinquished her hold. Aisling, for her part, did not waste a moment—she ran, no stealth, no guile, and faster than Martaina would have thought the little dark elf could have moved, disappearing between the tents ahead of them in a flat-out sprint in the direction of the Sanctuary camp.
“I’m going to get you to Curatio,” Martaina said to Cattrine. She could feel J’anda hovering next to her. “We need to get something to cover you, and we’ll make certain you’re healed.”
“I’ll give her my robes when we’re out of the camp,” J’anda said. “Take care with her, those wounds are …” The enchanter cursed, a word that Martaina had heard before, something in the dark elven language that was so foul it left a bitter taste in the air. “Barbarians.”
“No doubt,” Martaina said, hurrying along as fast as she could side-carry the Baroness. The tents around them passed in slowest speed. The soles of Cattrine’s feet were red with blood and covered with dirt, which stuck to the crimson in flecks, dust holding in place from the stickiness. Every time Martaina tried to readjust her grip, Cattrine cried out; there was nowhere to hold the woman that wasn’t hurt, oozing blood with her every motion. “I’m not certain she’s going to survive the walk to camp,” she whispered to J’anda and hoped he caught it.
“I will endure,” Cattrine said. “This is not the worst of my husband’s affections I have experienced, not by a very lot. I have saved him, and with him, this land, and that is all that matters.” With that, her head drooped, and she fell into unconsciousness, yet no more of a weight on Martaina’s shoulder than she was before.
Martaina exchanged a look with J’anda, and they hurried on, the trail left by the Baroness’s feet dragging a line of red through the pale dust that followed them all the way back to the Sanctuary camp.
Chapter 46
Vara
“So they circle,” Alaric said from the head of the Council table, Vara, Vaste, Erith and Ryin there with him. “The Sovereign needs food for his legions, and he turns his eye toward the Plains of Perdamun.” The Ghost rested a hand on his helm, the peculiar, almost bucket-shaped helm. “They will not let us rest long, if their objective is to hold the plains for themselves. We would be like a knife perched at the small of their back, ever ready to strike at our leisure, destroying their caravans and tearing asunder their lines of supply.”
“Not that we would do such a thing, attacking caravans and whatnot,” Vaste said with a sense of irony.
“You’re damned right we would,” Ryin said, frowning at the troll. “This is a war, the dark elves are our enemies, and we would be fools not to toss as much chaos as possible into their camp.”
“I was making a joke,” Vaste said, straitlaced. “Bear with me, as I know it was the first I’ve ever made, so it may be hard to discern given my usual tendency toward the serious—”
“The Sovereign is right to fear us in this way,” Alaric said. “As Ryin points out, our loyalties in t
his war were long ago revealed by our actions, and if they were to begin running shipments of grain to the dark elven armies in the north and west, we would be ill-brained not to cost them as much as we could, especially now that he has tipped his hand to reveal that he wants us destroyed.” The Ghost shook his head. “And so we enter a period of consolidation and licking wounds on the Termina and Reikonos fronts; all that remains to supply his army for the next hundred years is to put his boot on our guildhall and apply the pressure until we are finished.”
“Or so he thinks,” Vaste said then shot a look around the table. “Right?” He looked to Erith. “Right?”
“Why are you looking at me?” Erith snapped. “Because I’m the only dark elf at the table?”
“Yes,” Vaste said, nonplussed, “the same as if we were discussing something to do with trolls, I’d probably be the reference point.”
“Well, I don’t know what the Sovereign intends,” Erith said with little restraint. “He doesn’t run his plans by me, nor I by him. I left Saekaj when they opened the gates and allowed the exodus, and I haven’t been back since. From what I know, he’s vicious enough that yes, he would stomp us down if he thought we were even a slight threat. Just look what he did in Termina, and the elves were doing nothing more than passively supplying food and weapons to the humans.”
“Not the happiest thought,” Ryin said, “but what do we do? Can we take on whatever he sends our way?”
“Yes,” Alaric said.
“No,” Vara said after the moment’s pause that followed her Guildmaster’s statement. “Alaric, the dark elven army at full force must number in the hundreds of thousands, of which there are quite a few magic users. Not as many as we possess, to be certain, but a considerable number. We have something on the order of four thousand at our disposal, and even with the somewhat gross mismatch of our spellcasters to theirs, we are desperately outnumbered.”
“Were we fighting on open ground in a great melee, that would be of greater concern,” Alaric answered. “But we fight behind the walls of Sanctuary, which cannot be breached by magical means, and which we can hold nearly indefinitely against traditional methods of siege, as we have already proven.” The Guildmaster drummed his fingers against the table. “We need only keep careful watch in the foyer and on the wall, so that any catapults, trebuchets, or siege towers are destroyed before they come close enough, and we will be fine.”
“And if they breach the wall?” Vara asked.
“They will not.”
“Your confidence is unfounded,” Vara said, and she felt her blood go up. “They have magics, the same as ours, and they can be detrimental to rock and stone—”
“Which will be nullified by the enchantments that surround the wall,” Alaric said with calm, his hand now at rest. “Should they heave a great exploding fireball at us, it will disappear before it hits anything.”
There was a silence for a beat. “Well, that seems like the sort of thing each of us should be wearing on our persons,” Vaste said. “All the time, you know, in case you’re standing at a privy somewhere and a mean-spirited wizard hurls a lightning bolt at you.”
Heads turned to him slowly. “Happened to you often, has it?” Ryin asked.
“Really, when you’re handling your delicate parts, being struck by a lightning spell even once is quite enough to be getting along with.”
“It is not the sort of enchantment that is easily carried with you,” Alaric said. “It is rather more permanent, in much the same way as the alarm spell protects the grounds. It also has the ability to stop curative magics as well, which would be detrimental if you were, for example, stabbed by a blade and then someone tried to heal you.” The Ghost shrugged, a motion that was, like the man himself, subtle.
“So what do we do?” Erith asked.
“We wait,” Alaric said.
“But if you’re that firmly convinced that Sanctuary is unbreachable,” Ryin said, leaning forward with a passion that was not uncommon in the druid, “shouldn’t we send another army into Luukessia to aid Cyrus? Isn’t our duty to them?”
“Perhaps I have overstated my position,” Alaric said. “I do not believe that they will be able to breach the wall or overwhelm us through an assault on our foyer at present with the numbers we have to guard the wall and our sanctum. To send another army to Luukessia, along with the number of spellcasters and leadership it would take to make any significant difference over there would leave us in a weakened condition here. Our defense would be tenable but also inflexible. The less force we have available, the greater my concern. As it is, we may be able to begin offensive moves against the dark elves should we find ourselves able to confront their smaller armies and do so piecemeal. Sending away another two thousand, which would be the minimum in order to be of any sort of assistance to Cyrus, would leave our cupboard rather bare.” He shook his head. “In the event that they were to break our internal defenses or open the gates, that is not enough to mount a firm defense without resorting to …” He drew quiet for a moment. “… measures that do not bear thinking about.”
“Ooh,” Vaste said with a childlike delight. “Tantalizing! Another mystery with no hope for resolution at any time soon.”
Alaric favored the troll with a carefully measured gaze. “There is more to this place than stone and brick, my friend, and there is more to our guild than a simple roster of warriors, rangers, enchanters, healers, wizards, druids, paladins and that lone dark knight.”
“We do have that rock giant,” Vaste said. “Did we ever get him back?”
Alaric sighed. “I sent a druid after him; he should be back by tomorrow. But over-reliance on Fortin is a folly of its own sort. He can be killed; he is not invincible after all.”
“Neither are we,” Vara said. “Our defense should bear that in mind.”
“Which is why I am not sending away another two thousand of our number,” Alaric said with a deep sigh, “much as I might wish to aid our comrades. No, I am afraid they will have to make do with what they have, and we will re-evaluate should things turn worse.” Alaric raised his hand to his cheek and leaned against it, his dark, weathered gauntlets pressing his tanned flesh white where the fingers lay. “And I have a feeling, given what our friends are up against, that even with our illustrious General at the fore, things will indeed get worse.”
Chapter 47
Martaina
The walk was long and painful, even with J’anda to help her shoulder some of Cattrine’s dead weight. Though she didn’t wish to say it, she could plainly tell the enchanter was not nearly as strong as she, not nearly so capable of feats of strength, and so she suffered under as much of the woman’s burden as she could carry. At least she is only a healthy woman, not excessively weighty, as some are. Though now I wish she were Aisling; the woman is a twi, and would surely be much easier to carry than the Baroness, who was certainly well-fed if not well-treated …
The birds were chirping in the trees above her; they had hurried on, avoiding the slope that had required them to slide down before entering the camp. They took a half-mile detour that had them on the road, watching for any sort of traffic. Not far, by Martaina’s estimate, was the place where Cyrus’s body had been found. Hopefully Aisling got his head back to them and in time …
They came upon the very bend, the place where it had happened. There was nothing there but a bloody mess to mark the passage of events, nothing to show but the disturbed dirt that was as readable to her as any book was to a priest—perhaps moreso, depending on the dialect of the ground. She could see footprints, the places where the Sanctuary warriors had trod, dragging something with them back toward camp. There were other tracks, too, fresher ones, smaller, more dainty, leading out of the woods. “Aisling brought the head back here,” she said. “From here, I think they dragged his body back to camp. Though,” she conceded, “with or without the head, I cannot say.”
J’anda made no reply. The enchanter was thin, dangerously so. Between her and me, w
e would be able to carry him along easier than J’anda and I laboring under just her weight. To the enchanter, who was shouldering as much of the burden as his lean frame allowed, she said nothing.
The camp was in motion when they arrived, armored men moving about, the shine of the late afternoon sun catching on their armor, which was dull and unpolished after the long marches and recent idleness. She could smell the camp scent again. There was a quiet in the air, too. It was not as a meadow at midday to her ears (which was still quite loud) but neither was it as active as the camp had been before. The weight of the leather on her shoulders was nothing compared to the numbness setting in on her right arm where the Baroness had been perched for the last twenty minutes. Her mouth was dry and she craved water, but had feared to set Cattrine down not only for the woman’s own health but because she wondered if she would be able to get her up and moving again should she stop.
“Ahoy!” The call took her by surprise, even as she walked past the sentries, one of whom was Odellan, whom she noticed late.
“Ahoy?” J’anda called back, struggling under the Baroness’s weight, “have you gone nautical?”
“What?” Odellan said, approaching them. He reached out and took up Cattrine’s weight, picking her up. She was wrapped in J’anda’s outer robes, and the dark elf looked odd with only his tunic and pants underneath, both simple cloth and as close to the opposite of his rich red garb as possible. Odellan lifted the Baroness, cradling her in his arms. “I served on a galley on the River Perda early in my career.”
“Oh, good,” J’anda said, “for a moment I thought perhaps a career in piracy was in the offing.”
“An Endrenshan of the Elven Kingdom would not stoop to such a low,” Odellan said, adjusting the Baroness in his arms as he started through the small tent city of the encampment, Martaina and J’anda following behind. “Though another two months encamped here and this soldier might consider a pirate’s life.”
Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four Page 48