Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four

by Robert J. Crane

  “What about the cavalry reserve?” Cyrus asked. “Longwell was waiting for the right moment to turn them loose, and this sounds like it.”

  “He moved into action to shore up the left flank and give some relief to the army of Actaluere about two hours ago,” she said, and her smooth motions with the blade prompted him to wonder how long she had been using them, she did it with such fluid grace. “They’re still committed over there; I guess the enemy moved fast and doggedly, because from what I can see from here, it looks like they’re barely holding, even with the cavalry reinforcement.”

  “Okay,” Cyrus said, and motioned for two warriors in the line behind him to move up. “Let’s you and I head over there, see if we can help. What’s Mendicant planning to—”

  There was a blast of fire that lit the night sky, a circle of flame that turned the whole field of battle orange with fury then red with its intensity as it burned brighter still. Cyrus watched as it slid around a widening hole in the line that he hadn’t even been able to see without the fire. It pushed back, back toward the scourge, and Cyrus watched the four-legged creatures run from it in a way they hadn’t run from anything he’d seen thus far.

  “It would appear they’re afraid of fire,” Cyrus said, pushing through the line and making for the place where the flame glowed. “Nice to know; kinda wonder why we haven’t figured that out before.”

  “You’re the one who wanted the spellcasters kept in reserve in case we had to fall back,” she said, leading him. Her bow was unslung now, and she fired it three times as she ran, picking off targets as she brushed by Sanctuary members locked in combat along the front. “Not such a bad strategy, actually, because we’d been doing well enough before now that they didn’t need to intervene.”

  “We may yet need them to cover our retreat,” Cyrus said as they reached the end of the Sanctuary line; he passed a few men of Syloreas who were in battle with the scourge, and Cyrus aided them with a few well-placed slashes as he did so. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve easily killed ten thousand of these things and they’ve yet to blink at throwing another ten thousand at us.”

  “Being not quite as blind as you in the dark, I have noticed,” she said. “I have also noticed that their number continues to extend beyond the horizon, which is a mite worrisome seeing as we’re supposed to kill them all and then continue north to destroy the portal. I believe we may have the order wrong on that; we may need to destroy the portal before we can go north.”

  “A fine contradiction, isn’t it?” Cyrus brought his sword around and slashed a foe that charged hard at him, killing it with one well-placed stroke. “I, for one, wish there were another way to do it, but as I don’t possess a single flying mount with which to carry myself over these enemies, let alone a bevy of them to carry an entire army to the portal without fighting them, I’m afraid we may just have to do it the hard way.”

  “I don’t know that you could define this as the hard way, sir,” Martaina said, and her short blade was out again, working in a flash of metal against two of the scourge at once, “I believe this may in fact be the impossible way.”

  “I don’t believe in the impossible,” Cyrus said, greeting a jumping enemy with a kick that knocked it back to its fellows.

  “Then I’d like to see you try and give birth to a child yourself, sir.”

  Cyrus shot her a sideways look and got one in return, only a hint of a smile as Martaina stabbed into another one of the beasts as it jumped at her. The fire of Mendicant’s spell had died out, finally, and Cyrus wondered idly if the goblin had sacrificed any life energy to make it last as long as it did. The two of them were now firmly in the middle of the sagging Sylorean line, and they had, as predicted, failed squarely in the middle of the amateurs who were carrying hand-me-down weapons and wore no armor. It’s not from lack of courage that they’re breaking, because none of them are running; they’re literally being killed here in the center at too high of a rate to keep the line solid. He looked back and saw holes that stretched clear through the middle, no reinforcement to seal them; the Syloreans had run out of men to throw at the problem.

  “I believe that if you were looking in a dictionary,” Martaina said through gritted teeth as she dropped to her back and let two of the enemy run headlong into each other while she executed a backward to roll to get to her feet again, “this might fall under the word ‘untenable.’” Cyrus gave her a blank look for only a moment before he was forced back to attention on the battle as a foe went for his knee with glistening teeth. “It means—”

  “I know what it means,” he snapped, driving the tip of his blade through a skull and then whipping it out sideways to intercept another running foe’s forehead. A slap of black blood hit his armor, where it blended with the metal and the night and a thousand other splotches that had already landed there in the day-long battle. “I don’t like to retreat.”

  “Perhaps you should think of it as an opportunity to find some reinforcements and re-commence the battle on more favorable ground, then,” she said. “Because we’re only about five more minutes from ending up in the middle of that village, Filsharron, if we keep having to fall back like we are.”

  Cyrus cast a backwards glance and realized she was right, that the village was just behind them now, only a few hundred feet away. There were torches burning, and he could see motion in the streets; the back rank of the Sanctuary reserve of spellcasters were already standing in the outskirts. “Dammit.” He turned to say something to her and watched as she landed two blades in a rampaging enemy’s shoulder and neck, keeping it from attacking him, and he shook off his surprise. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get distracted.”

  “I’m here to watch your back,” she said, the slight tension evident in her voice as she threw the body back at its fellows, bowling over another one of them.

  “And what a fantastic view that must be,” Cyrus said as he waded back into the fight.

  “I’ve seen considerably better, even lately,” she said, fending off three of the scourge at the same time.

  “I’ll try not to be insulted by that.”

  “Nothing personal, sir.”

  Cyrus waved at the Sanctuary line, motioning for several of the warriors toward the back to move to them, which they began to do, filtering in. “How long do you think we can keep this up?”

  “When we hit the village, we’ll fold,” she said. “We don’t possess the ability to continue falling back the way we are, especially not with that stream and all those houses providing obstacles.” He didn’t say anything, and she continued after a pause in which she dispatched three enemies with her blades. “The obstacles don’t work to our advantage because we have to dodge around them, but it makes holes in our lines that they can exploit, because I think they can jump onto the roof of the houses in town and use it to leap over our lines. We of Sanctuary might be able to pull that sort of a retreat off, but the Syloreans are going to break. When they do, it’s going to be near-impossible for us to form a survivable order of battle with all the enemies crushing in on us from our right.”

  Cyrus gave it a moment’s thought. “Fair assessment.” He let that seep over him as he dealt the deathblow to three enemies in rapid succession. “So, it’s time to retreat, is it?”

  He caught the motion of a shrug from her. “You could try and reform south of Filsharron, but I doubt the men of Actaluere are going to go for that, and I even more seriously doubt you could get the Syloreans to pull it off.” She puffed as she struck again and again. “We’ve been fighting for a day; the Syloreans have lost half their number. We need more men to be able to beat them.” There was skepticism from her now. “If we can.”

  “We retreat, they’ll come after us,” Cyrus said. “They’ll keep coming, too, unless we can outrun them. Any suggestions on that?”

  “Plan for it ahead of the battle next time?” Martaina asked, still fighting. “Falcon’s Essence. If you can get a couple of the druids to spread it around the entire
army, we can not only fly high enough to avoid them but it also gives you the ability to run faster. Couple it with a few wizards dropping some flame spells as we go, and you can pull off an orderly retreat.”

  “Not bad,” Cyrus said. He looked back at the village. “Now seems the moment.” He raised his voice, loud enough to overcome the battle and the crashing of the fight. “RETREAT! RETREAT!” He heard others take up the call, but he knew his own voice was heard in the back of the Sanctuary line, and that was all that mattered.

  Like a flame moving across spilled kerosene, the fire spread across the ground in front of them. It stitched a line before the front rank of the army, a wall as tall as two men, and it lit the night with a flickering orange glow that reminded him of a night spent around a campfire. There was no smoke, only the smell of the fire at work on the grasses, and then on flesh as a few howls cut through the night, the bellows of their enemy as the flames licked at the grey rot. Cyrus watched a pair of black eyes through the wall of fire; they stared back at him, glaring, leering, jagged teeth held at bay by the flame.

  The gentle sweep of magic ran across him, and he felt himself float off the ground. He turned to look at Martaina, and saw the Syloreans already moving behind her, well into the retreat, each of them floating, flying, and moving faster at a run than would normally be possible.

  “You already had it planned, didn’t you?” she asked, watching him warily.

  “Of course,” Cyrus said, and nodded his head as he sheathed Praelior and ran for the back of the lines, where he saw the horses all saddled and waiting. “Do you think me so arrogant that I wouldn’t consider the possibility of retreat?”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, and he caught it out of the corner of his eye as he ran. “Normally, no. In your current state, however, I have seen you make one or two errors of judgment, in my estimation.”

  “Touche.”

  He climbed onto Windrider, who ran out to meet him at his approach. The flames were burning behind him, a steady wall of fire that kept the enemy at bay. “Our wizards will give us about a five-minute head start,” Cyrus said. “After that, I’ve got them riding in groups to cover the retreat, taking turns protecting us and burning them back.”

  “That may keep them off of us,” Martaina said with a tight jaw as she brought her horse alongside, “but you know that won’t stop them. There are villages along the way, and if we’re not going to fight, and we’re going to retreat, they’ll be caught in the path of—”

  “I know,” Cyrus said. “We’ll warn them, get them to flee, but …” He shook his head. “You know they won’t all listen. They won’t all be able to run.” He felt the tightness in his own jaw, the slight swell of emotion. “They’ll be overrun. Just like Termina.”

  “We won’t stand and fight for them?” Odellan rode up and joined them, now, then Curatio and J’anda. “You know what these things will do to the land, what they’ll do to the people as they come down across the plains.”

  “I do,” Cyrus said. “But we just threw everything we presently have at them and they chewed it up and spat it back at us.” The Sanctuary army was already in formation and moving, Cyrus saw. Actaluere’s was in motion also, even faster than Sanctuary’s, and they were on the march south. It was the Syloreans who were the slowest to move, some of them still looking back through the fire at the demons on the other side that were pacing there, waiting to get through. “We could make a stand like this on every bit of open ground between here and Enrant Monge and we’d only succeed in slowly bleeding ourselves dry. We need to stage a slow retreat. We need to trade land for time.”

  “Time for what?” Odellan asked; Cyrus could see the ripple of emotions on the elf’s young-looking face. “You just said there’s no hope to beat them with what we have, and I can’t see where you’re far wrong about that. What could we possibly do with more time other than throw more of these men’s lives down their jaws?” He gestured at the armies of Actaluere and Syloreas in turn, a sliding wave of the hand that came down in disgust.

  “Simple enough,” Cyrus said, grimly, as he urged Windrider forward, following the last rank of the Sanctuary army. The wizards and druids were riding at the rear, ready to hold the retreat against the overwhelming numbers of the scourge that waited just beyond the wall of fire, their black eyes shining with orange firelight as they paced, their number growing, crawling and scrabbling over each other now, waiting for the fire to subside. Cyrus watched them, stared back at them, at death, at fear itself, so overwhelming in its scope that it could eat whole armies and never even taste them, ready to devour them whole. The maw of death, he thought. “There’s only one thing we can do, now.

  “We get a bigger army.”

  Chapter 65

  Vara

  Day 35 of the Siege of Sanctuary

  The dark elven wizard had appeared in a flash, in the middle of the night and had brought with him over a hundred dark elves, right into the foyer. The sounds of blades clanging against one another made for dreadful noise, but the fighting had spilled out onto the front steps this time, bodies fallen here, there and everywhere as battle raged on. Vara was in the midst of it, on the threshold of the entrance to Sanctuary, and there was war all about. There was no noise from beyond the wall, at least—not this time, thankfully. Her weapon was at a high guard, and it landed squarely between the eyes of a dark elf with all the armor one might expect from a well-trained and equipped warrior.

  The smell of smoke was in the air, smoke and sweat, as she moved her sword in a defensive position. They had come in fast and the stairs were packed, the guard force that had been stationed in the foyer was there, prepared to attack and catch them as they teleported in, but the dark elves were too many to dispatch in a quick moment of frenzied attack.

  “How are there this many?” Vara whispered under her breath as she parried the attack of another dark elf, capturing his blade under her arm and twisting to yank it free of his hand as she kicked his legs from beneath him. She plunged her sword into the weak spot where his armor met his gorget, heard the satisfying gurgling that ensued, and turned to attack the next.

  She felt the dozen cuts she had picked up dispersed as the healing spell ran over her, a light glowing on her flesh. “They’re elites,” Erith said from behind her. “The Sovereign has sent his best in an effort to get that portcullis up so his troops can come running in.”

  “A clever strategem.” Ryin fired off a blast of ice that frosted three dark elves who were at a dead run across the yard, having broken free of the melee at the door and were trying for the wall. “But he can’t possibly believe that a mere hundred or so could break our defenses.”

  Vara frowned and ran through another soldier with her blade. “No, he surely wouldn’t think that after the last time.” She raised her weapon to take on the next comer, but a sound filled the air, a rushing of energy and magic, and she could feel the tingle of power on her skin as the light formed in the foyer, filling the gaps between the combatants with bursts of energy coalescing into figures who flashed into being, another wave of dark elven enemies. “SECOND WAVE!” she cried out and launched herself into a flying leap, coming down with her metal boots on the back of one dark elf while slashing her sword across two more, sending them spinning to the ground in a wash of blood.

  The foyer was packed, flooding into the lounge, out the doors, as more shoving was taking place than blades being swung. She saw the wizard, the one who had brought this flood of enemies, and she leapt for him, dodging a half-dozen strikes from enemies as she passed overhead, but he winked out existence into a blotting of light as she landed, accidentally downing a Sanctuary ranger who had been standing almost on top of the wizard.

  “One more cycle of this and he’ll be delivering the next wave to stand on our shoulders,” Andren said as he stepped out of the shadows under the stairs to the balcony, catching a dark elf by surprise with a dagger, dragging it across the warrior’s throat as he spoke. The dark elf looked immensely shock
ed, hands clawing at his own neck. Andren, for his part, shoved his foe to the ground where the man bled and twitched.

  Vara kept a wary eye on the healer as she swiped hard, using the space created by the wizard’s escape to bring her sword around. She killed and maimed five dark elves in five seconds and then yanked a Sanctuary warrior out of the way to spear a sixth with her blade. “There won’t be another cycle,” she said, “he knows he’s being targeted now. If he comes back, he’ll be the first to die. The element of surprise is lost, and only a fool would continue to pack bodies into this room, knowing that we have reinforcements flooding down even now that will break them before they have a chance to open our gates.”

  “To hear you tell it, there’s nothing but fools in this world, so I find it hard to believe you write off the assumption they wouldn’t do something foolish without giving it a moment’s pause.” Andren stayed behind her, well back as she began to work her way through the mess of dark elves in front of her. They’d begun to pivot to her now that there was space to move again.

  “You make a surprisingly cogent point for a drunkard,” she said.

  “I’m just going to pretend I only heard the complimentary part of that,” Andren said, and she saw him tip his flask up to his lips as she pirouetted to strike another foe. “It could take a while, clearing this room.”

  She didn’t have to labor to hear him over the sounds of battle. “We’re surrounded on all sides by our enemies. We have nothing but time to fill—no expeditions, no operations, no tourism—and speaking only for myself, I rather enjoy turning aside every attempt by the Sovereign to break us down.” She gritted her teeth as a dark elf with an axe rained down a blow that rattled her arm and she replied with a spell that sent the man flying across the room and into the fireplace, where he screamed and struggled to get out.