“It was exceedingly clever,” Ryin Ayend said without a trace of irony. “Though I know you’re being sarcastic, Vaste, it really was a good idea.”
“Me?” Vaste asked, his expression clouded with a sour look. “Be sarcastic? Surely not. But if I were, perhaps it’s not so much that I dislike the idea as I dislike the fact that I’m forced to rise before dawn to help execute the idea.”
“I had just assumed that riding the horse as you were,” Vara said, “you were experiencing some early saddle soreness that was making you complain in an infantile manner. Either that, or the conjured bread we’ve been eating of late is causing you some mild colic.”
“I am not experiencing colic or any sort of saddle soreness—yet,” Vaste replied. “I do expect that once we’ve engaged the enemy a few times and they begin to reinforce their convoys with extra soldiers, I’ll begin to experience some digestive disturbances, though.”
“I’m certain that will be to no one’s advantage,” Ryin muttered as they came over a slight rise in the plains. “Up there.” He pointed to a line visible in the far distance.
“That’d be our first convoy, I suppose,” Vaste said. “Can you tell if it’s the dark elves from here?”
“It is,” Vara replied. “At least ten wagons, no visible column of soldiers marching with it.” She let herself smile then stopped when she remembered that there were others with her. “I believe it is time to show these dark elves the error of their ways.”
“You make it sound as though we’re going to hand them a list of table manner faux pas they committed at a dinner party,” Vaste said. “And if that’s the case, I would like to add that drinking directly from the soup bowl is considered bad form, though not nearly so much as scratching yourself in inappropriate places with your dessert fork.” After drawing a long, uncomfortable look from both Ryin and Vara, he hastened to add, “I learned that one from hard experience myself.”
“Let us have at them, then,” Vara said, and urged her horse into a gallop. “No survivors in military garb. Let any civilians have the opportunity to flee but don’t hesitate to kill. We can always resurrect any casualties later.”
“Says the one who doesn’t have to drain her magical energy to bring them back,” Vaste murmured.
“Keep your wits about you,” she ordered and then glanced at Vaste. “Oh, it’s you. I forgot. Never mind, then.”
“I’m actually very witty,” Vaste said, “though you’d need to loosen up by a considerable margin to appreciate it.”
“Oh, I appreciate it,” Vara said, her horse already hard at work, running full out. “If only I could be as amusing as you.”
“I read once that brevity is the key to wit,” Vaste said, his voice barely audible over the hoofbeats of the entire raiding party. “Perhaps you should talk less.”
They rode hard across the plains, the steady pace carrying them toward the slow-moving wagon train on the road ahead. It was only when they were a few hundred yards away that the convoy began to realize that there was danger afoot, and they hurried to move the wagons along but by then it was far too late.
The wagons were all flat-bedded, stacked high with barrels and crates. Dark elves sat up front in ones and twos, Vara noted as she assessed the threat. There were a half-dozen horsed soldiers with them, their armor of the boiled leather variety. Not a spellcaster among them and woefully underdefended, prepared only for angry farmers upset at the theft of their crops. That will change after today.
She raised her blade above her head and let loose a warcry. It annoyed her a second after she did it; it was far too close to something Cyrus Davidon would have done. Loud warfare is the province of the savage and unskilled. I have other means at my disposal.
She extended her blade as the dark elven soldiers lined up on horseback in a rank two wide, forming a spear as though to charge into the Sanctuary force. She let the tip point just between the first two, and then whispered the incantation she had learned shortly after she turned sixteen. A ripple of air flew forth, channeled from her hand down her blade, her spell sending a burst of concussive force at the riders.
Her blast hit the first of them as the horses made to swerve; they did not make it in time, and the riders were thrown, coming hard to the ground in a crunch of breaking bones and falling animals. Her spell carried through them and smashed the next in the rank, and the next, all the way to the fourth row. Only four remaining now, Vara thought as she sent her horse onward over the fallen enemies. She raised her blade and jerked her horse left, dodging the attack aimed at her by the first of her remaining opponents. She caught him flush against the gap between his leather armor and steel helm, and there was a gasping noise as he hit the ground. She readied her sword again and struck back at the final horseman still in the line, dealing him a glancing blow.
Once she passed, she pulled on the reins with her free hand and brought her horse into a quick turn. Her army of a hundred had finished the last of the dark elves. She turned to see the convoy trying to get away still and sent her horse galloping after it. She pulled aside the first wagon and aimed her sword at the dark elf sitting atop it. His hands came up in front of him, shaking, and Vara could see the age on his lined blue skin, the corners of his eyes with the crow’s feet radiating from them. She did not say a word, merely maintained pace with the wagon and the man brought it to a stop. A few of the wagons behind his tried to escape off the road, and she watched them fail, one of them even losing a wheel trying to break right over a bumpy field. The Sanctuary raiding party was around them in force and they were outmatched.
“Step down,” she said to the man atop the wagon she had stopped. “I won’t harm you or your people, so long as you make no threatening moves. There was the crack of a lightning spell heard several wagons back, and she rolled her eyes. “As I said.” She pointed toward the field to her left. “Go stand over there. Run in fear for your life if you must, but don’t come near the wagons.”
The older dark elf nodded as he climbed down and then turned and sprinted across the field with more speed than she would have given him credit for, given his skin and the salt-and-pepper coloration of his hair. She shrugged and walked around the back of the wagon, where Vaste had already hoisted himself up and had opened a barrel. “Wheat,” the troll said, “grains, oats, all manner of excellent suchness.”
“Oh, good,” she said, and found herself leaning against the side, “and I was somewhat worried we’re ambushing a train filled with women’s clothing or something of the sort.”
“Why, are you looking for another dress?” Vaste asked, not looking up from the crates that he was inspecting. “All in all, not a terrible harvest if we managed to get eight wagons of this stuff. Not enough to bring the Sovereign’s army to his knees, but if we did this regularly it’d be enough to keep us in the fresh foodstuffs for a while.” He gave a long look around, surveying the damage they had wrought. “Well, it worked.”
“Of course it worked,” she said, looking over the ill-gotten gains. “And this is but the first of many. We need to hit them with such force and so often that they are compelled to send hundreds of troops with every wagon for fear it will disappear from the road as though swallowed up by the very earth itself.” Something in the way she said it made Vara’s own scalp tingle, and an idea worked its way in, just a passing one at first, framed from a memory. We could … She shook her head, as if to rid herself of it. No, ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous …
But it stayed with her just the same.
Chapter 60
Cyrus
The days passed slowly after Cyrus’s meeting with Tiernan. Cyrus remained in an agitated state; the river nearby was now clogged with bodies, so many of them falling downstream that he wondered how there could have been that many people in the north for so many to have washed downward.
“There are several major villages on this stream,” Unger said to him as they stood nearby, watching the water source turn more and more tainted as the days pass
ed. “It bodes ill for Syloreas that so many of our sons and daughters are feeling the teeth of these beasts.”
It bodes ill for our army as well, if every source of fresh water is given over to being filled with rotting corpses, Cyrus thought, but he did not say it. Somewhere in the back of his mind was the thought of bathing as well, though that scarcely seemed to matter to Aisling. She had come to his tent in silence every night since their first rendezvous by the river, and she said not a word, no conversation, nothing. He did not want to break the quiet that she imposed to bring about any of the questions she might have that he cared not to answer. So he said nothing, but instead buried his lips in hers, pressing his face against her cheek, her neck, in her bosom. The silence was like water to him, just as vital to his survival, and he needed what she gave him so desperately now that he wondered how he had survived without it for so many years.
The camp had been quiet until the second army from Actaluere arrived. Cyrus watched them stream into the camp, at least thrice the size of the host that Milos Tiernan had brought with him to Enrant Monge. Other armies streamed in, too, from the east and west of Syloreas. “They’ve been turned out by riders,” Unger had said to him as they watched a steady line of men in furs and skins come into camp day after day, few enough of them possessing any armor at all. A few genuine armies of Syloreas came as well, more of them bearing at least some protection for battle but not nearly as many as came in cloth and with rusty swords and spears.
They moved north the day after the Actaluereans joined them, striking out across the plain, following a road that seemed familiar to Cyrus. When the wind blew out of the north it smelled of rot and decay and carried a chill that ill-fitted late summer. When it came out of the south it was enough to remind Cyrus of the harvest and brought warmth aplenty. The memory of the Plains of Perdamun was still strong with him, and though the grains looked marginally different, he was reminded of home nonetheless as the days grew shorter a few minutes at a time. The ride north was slower than when last he had done it, the mountains in the distance still capped with snow.
Cyrus kept his own counsel as the days went on, meeting with his officers only when needed. They were well enough instructed that he didn’t worry, and Odellan had a firm handle on the warriors and rangers who made up the front ranks of battle. He watched them drill at the elf’s commands and tried to feel fortunate at having come across the Endrenshan from Termina. I doubt he would feel quite the same. All things being equal, I rather suspect he’d prefer to still be there, in his city, were it still standing. Hell, perhaps even now that it’s not.
The last day of their ride carried them to a small town on the edge of the river, where the folk they found turned out en masse when Briyce Unger led the march through their village. Cyrus looked over the village, which was no more than a collection of hovels with thatched roofs and stone walls, perhaps two dozen at most, all grouped together around a mill with a waterwheel that turned. There was a sound within that Cyrus presumed was the sound of rocks grinding grist.
Cyrus listened as the townsfolk pelted Unger with questions, their worry bleeding into their voices. What about the dead bodies? Should we go south and find safety? What comes for us? What killed those people? Will it kill us as well? Has Scylax truly fallen?
The voices were overwhelming, and Cyrus watched as Unger held up his hands for quiet. The last of the cacophony died away, leaving an eerie calm settled over the village as the people waited to hear Unger’s pronouncement. “Good people,” Unger began, still atop his horse, looking like nothing so much as a mountain astride his destrier, “I bring with me sad tidings of news you’ve already heard. A vile enemy comes out of the mountains, and yes, it has taken Scylax and slaughtered the people there. This is done, and no amount of wishing will make it undone. But I bring with me allies—magicians from beyond the western shores of our land, the full army of Actaluere and all the men Syloreas can spare. You’ve heard the rumors and heralds and the messengers. Now hear me—we will fight our enemies back. We will drive them from here, whip them before us with sword and shield and send them scurrying back to their mountain den where we will crush them and ensure they never return to haunt our mountain home again.”
Cyrus listened as the King of Syloreas said his piece. There was a certain magic in the way he did it, weaving his words together, causing the crowd to stay silent. Unger was not much of a wordsmith, but his ability to speak in front of the villagers came out and there was a calm in the midst of what was coming, a reassurance from their own King that they would be safe. Cyrus took it all in, unsurprised, and when they met at the inn that night, Cyrus said as much to Curatio, J’anda and Longwell.
“Unger’s long been a thorn in my father’s side,” Longwell said, chewing on the moist bones of a chicken. “Unger’s father was a dreadful King, to hear it told. The people were in an uproar all the time, there was a famine that he dealt with poorly or somesuch, I can’t recall. Briyce, though, has been skillful, especially for a man so focused on battle. What he managed to do—striking into the heart of Galbadien—was shocking, considering that a generation ago Syloreas had lost a quarter of its territory just to our predations. Briyce can persuade and he can fight. He took back all that lost ground and then some.” Longwell shook his head. “I wasn’t looking forward to ever staring across our northern border at him.”
“You were to be a King here,” J’anda said, his delicate hands cradling a battered brass goblet of wine that looked so out of place in the refined enchanter’s grasp as to nearly be alien. “What happened to make you leave?”
“Long story,” Longwell said, and gnawed on a leg bone without enthusiasm.
“It would seem we have time,” Cyrus said, glancing around the candle-lit room. It was dim, and reminded him of a bar he’d been to in Reikonos with Terian at his side. He tried to push that thought away; he’d last seen Terian being walked along behind Mendicant’s pony.
“I suppose,” Samwen grudgingly admitted. “You’ve met my father. You got a sense for what he’s like.”
“More than a sense,” J’anda said, looking sidelong at another table, where Briyce Unger sat with several of his men, drinking mead and speaking in boisterous tones; Cyrus could hear some braggadocio, something about a battle on a western shore.
“He wasn’t always that way,” Longwell said, carefully licking the grease from each of his fingers. His gauntlets lay on the table beside him, and his steel blue armor looked dark, almost black, in the candlelight. “He used to be a warrior himself, a dragoon, like me. He had courage, little fear—they said he won a battle against the old King of Syloreas by riding him down in a charge. Which would be unremarkable except that my father had only himself and the King of Syloreas had a hundred guards following him into the fight.”
Cyrus raised an eyebrow. “I presume the Syloreans backed off after your father struck down their King?”
“You presume correctly,” Longwell said, his head down, voice still clear. “They’re fierce warriors, and they would have been glad to take revenge, but he fought him singly and won. When my father’s army—smaller than the Sylorean one by half—rejoined him after the charge, they formed a line and held against the rage of the Syloreans for a full day without breaking. That was forty years ago or more, I suppose. That was the battle that made Briyce Unger King of Syloreas. My father had only been on the throne of Galbadien five years or so by that point.”
“Briyce had no thanks for the gift of his crown?” J’anda sipped delicately from the cup again, then set it upon the table.
“No,” Longwell said with a shake of the head. “As soon as his coronation was over he rode out at the head of their army and started to take back territory. They gained a half dozen towns and a major seaport by the end of his first week of fighting. Sent my father into a rage. Of course, I wasn’t born yet when this happened, but my mother told me. By the time I came along, she said he was a different man than the one she’d known when he began. He only got wo
rse after that, raging at the wrong people, fearful of losing so much as an inch of his Kingdom. He didn’t lead battles anymore, no reckless charges. He was afraid to take a risk for fear of what it might cost him.” Longwell brought his own goblet up. “And we lost territory after territory, and he got more calculating as time went on. Since the day I was born, Galbadien is a hundred miles shorter across the top than it was. Not much lost to the west, but still.” He shrugged. “Father hasn’t taken it very well, but he’s yet to make an aggressive move to stop it, other than when he tried to invade Syloreas while Unger’s back was turned.”
“Fear of loss does funny things to a man,” Curatio said, speaking for the first time since they’d sat down. The healer’s eyes were firmly rooted in his own wine, though he hadn’t had more than a few sips since they’d arrived, Cyrus knew. “It quickens the blood, slows action, paralyzes you. A man could have everything he wanted and be truly happy, but if you take away only the smallest thing, he becomes angry, resentful, and his happiness rots like a deshfruit left in the midday sun.” Curatio took a finger and dipped it into his glass, then brought it out and let it drip on the table. “It only gets worse as you age, you know. The older you are, the more you see what you have to lose, and the more you fear what that loss might mean.”
“I’ve heard he’s not even the same since I left,” Longwell said. “He dwells in his chambers, doesn’t see anyone for days at a time, that not even the maidens they send him can lift his spirits for more than an hour or so at a go. He’s fearful, all right, though I didn’t see it when we quarreled before I left. He argued me right out of Vernadam, without so much as a notice that it might be anything other than petty anger driving him.”
Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four Page 56