Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four

by Robert J. Crane

  Cyrus looked at the messenger, already well asleep. “We’ll give them as much rest as we can afford. Hopefully this fresh army pouring into the fight will allow us to push forward.”

  Curatio smiled and nodded. “Let us hope.”

  “They’ve changed,” came the muffled words of the man laying on the bedroll, the half-elf. “They’re more dogged now, trying to flank more.” He didn’t roll over, but turned his head slightly. “They come at our weaknesses, too; not that they didn’t before, but Odellan says it’s worse now, as though they can exploit them, sense their flaws and approaches. More strategy, less brutal anger. There’s something else, too.” The half elf rolled over and looked at Cyrus through half-lidded eyes. “There’s a master, we think. One that stays in the distance, but we see him. Tall as two men, a four-legged creature, and it bears a mark of sorts. It stands off, growls at the others, and they move almost like it tells them to. We’ve had archers try and kill it, but it stays out of range of spells and arrows.” He looked directly at Cyrus. “We think it’s their General, the thing that leads them.”

  Cyrus felt the cold wind pick up in a gust just then, carrying the sounds around his ears like a howling of the wind. The snow fell on, down around them, and the quiet descended again, except for the wind, as he sat there near the fire—and derived no warmth from it at all.

  Chapter 81

  The snowfall was at a blessed slowdown as they stood all in a line, a quarter mile from the campsite. Cyrus’s nose hairs felt well frozen, and every breath just added to the searing pain behind his cheeks and eyes, as though someone had taken a frozen hammer and tapped behind them gently for quite some time. His sweat had frozen to his skin, and whatever breakfast he’d eaten—he could little recall now what it had been—was sitting poorly, and threatening to come back up. The cold had seeped to the bone and all was quiet save for the roar of the wind when it picked up. It ran with near continuousness now, driving the snow sideways at its worst and at a forty-five degree angle at best.

  It was the sound that reached them first, the yells and battle cries of men weary and desperate. They saw them shortly thereafter, in the distance, through the haze made by the snow.

  “This is an ill time and place for a fight,” Terian said, and Cyrus glanced over to realize that the dark knight was next to him.

  “Because we can see little, our cavalry is unable to operate in the heavy snow and our infantry is slowed to being unable to advance?” Cyrus let the irony seep in as he said it.

  “Also, it’s colder than your elven girlfriend’s touch and we’re relieving an army that’s likely to break from fatigue as soon as they realize we’re here to take up for them.” His eyes glittered in the bare light of a sun that none of them could see. “If they manage to let us take over as the front line without breaking, it will be a miracle of military discipline of the highest order.”

  Cyrus looked forward to the line stretched in front of him, and saw others closer, the walking wounded, and a few carrying men on makeshift stretchers made of bedrolls and all manner of other things. “Would I be wrong in assuming there won’t be many wounded?”

  “Most have been left behind,” Terian answered. “It became obvious after you left that our healers were not nearly enough to handle the entire army under sustained assault; they lacked the magical energy to come close to saving everyone. The Luukessians played it carefully after that; if a man fell and ended up behind the enemy’s line, he was given up lost so as not to cost five more trying to recover him.” The dark knight set his jaw. “It’s an ugly thing, what they do to those who fall. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Our rangers nearly ran out of arrows putting the poor bastards out of their misery.”

  “We lose any of ours that way?” Cyrus asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

  “Couple of disappearances,” Curatio said from behind Cyrus. The army of Galbadien and Actaluere sandwiched the small group of them on either side. “Likely fell in the night and we didn’t see or hear them, you know … in the heat of the battle.”

  You mean in the midst of all the men screaming, Cyrus thought, but did not say. Hard to tell if the scream comes from a man of Sanctuary or one of the Luukessians when you’re bunched tight together along a front line.

  The army before them was still falling back in tatters, only a few scant rows deep. Cyrus could see the Sanctuary numbers, the largest part of the force. The army of Actaluere was much reduced over when last he saw it, easily a quarter the size. There were almost none of the Sylorean civilians remaining, the farmers and villagers that had been on his right when they’d fought at Filsharron. The Sylorean army looked smaller, too, and ragged, though it was hard to tell since they had been the most ragged at the outset of the fight.

  “It’s the New Year today, did you know that?” Terian looked over at Cyrus. “The Solstice will be here in only a week or so.” He flashed his gaze to the fight, now only a few hundred feet away. “Do you suppose this will be over by then?”

  Cyrus felt his jaw tighten; talking to Terian was the most natural thing in the world when he didn’t think about it. When he did … “I doubt it. Depends on how many there are, I suppose.”

  Terian gave him a pinched smile. “Do you suppose we’ll ever get to that cave with the portal?”

  “That’s the goal,” Cyrus said, irritated.

  “Do you believe we’ll get there?” Terian turned to him as Cyrus tensed; the battle was close now, only a minute or two away.

  “Yes,” Cyrus lied, “now make ready.”

  “Hm,” Terian said, watching him for just a second longer before turning back to the madness unfolding in front of them. It was clearer now, the snow disappating the closer they got, painting a fuller picture in broad strokes, the clarity increasing. “I almost believe you. You truly have changed; used to be you couldn’t lie worth a damn.”

  The ranks of battle closed, and Cyrus saw the backs of those in front of him, the line retreating. Furtive looks came his way now, men and women with bone-weariness settled in their eyes, their sunken eye sockets peering at him. Their shoulders hung low, but still they fought, those up front, those behind. It was the army of Actaluere that broke first, their back line disintegrating, and only the four or five disorganized rows in front of them to hold up. The press of the scourge forward meant that the front rows fell back even harder, and Cyrus saw a body tossed into the air, saw the motion of grey flesh ahead of all the humans and dark elves and all else that blocked the smaller creatures from his sight.

  The smell of death was pungent now in the cold, and the shiver up his spine was at least as much from the knowledge that the unceasing beasts were trying to clamp down on him even now, that they were coming. They don’t stop, they don’t quit when you hurt them, they only give up when you kill them. He clenched a hand, trying to remember the training of years gone by, the words he learned in the Society when he banished fear from his life. Throw yourself into what you fear, and the death of fear is a certainty. Fear is a ghost, a shadow for lesser beings who worry of death. It is not your enemy but your tool, your business, that which you deal with sword and axe and spear and knife. Death is yours to wield, and it should be your enemy who fears death, not you. Embrace death. The notion of holding onto the corpse of Mortus flashed before his eyes, that strange, shrunken figure that the God of Death turned into at the end, as he faded from life. Death is your talent, your profession, and the end result of your call to war. Death is your blessing, your gift, and your strength in time of trial. All men die, and women too, but few live without fear.

  He said the last of the Warrior’s Creed in his head. He had not had need to repeat it to himself in years. Unease settled within him, the acidic taste in his mouth was still there and he spat, trying to rid himself of it. The last rank of the Sanctuary army, unbroken in spite of the sudden fleeing of the Syloreans on one side and the Actaluereans on the other, was only feet away now. He took his first step toward them, watched them watch him. They wil
l not yield an inch, he willed them, not even when all else falls apart around them. I should be proud of them, he thought, dimly aware that that particular emotion was strangely lacking, buried perhaps somewhere beneath his creed.

  Praelior came up as the back line folded; the Actaluereans and Galbadiens on either side of him were already moving hard now, trying to stream through the press of their own retreating brethren to form a new front line; it was ugly, a dance of chaos and madness, with men who had been fighting for weeks and months, desperate to escape it. Their tiredness was obvious, their steps in the deepening snow were slow, they dragged, they looked skinny and worn, had been fighting on and off and sleeping in spurts and retreating in others.

  Cyrus came up to the second line of the Sanctuary army, perfectly organized, the model of discipline in the heart of the storm. He saw in the motion ahead of him the helm of Odellan, the points of it extending like wings on either side of his head, and his hair moving in the wind. He spun, attacked, parried, and thrust, killing two of the scourge in his next move. Cyrus’s small band came up, Terian next to him, Scuddar just down the row, easing through the tight Sanctuary formation. Longwell was there, too, at the head of his army, his lance in hand, strange-looking without his horse. For a flash Cyrus remembered fighting with Longwell at his side, in the dark, on a bridge, with ash streaming down around them like the snow did now, and it heartened him.

  With a last deep breath, Cyrus took the step free of the second line and became one with the front rank. The scourge was here, was upon him now, too numerous to count, filling his sight line all the way to where the haze became too great to see any more of them. He let the breath all out in one great battlecry, and swung Praelior into action, to war, to battle—to life and death—once more.

  Chapter 82

  Vara

  Day 150 of the Siege of Sanctuary

  “It’s not the idea of being cooped up here that I object to,” Partus said, in the closest imitation to whining that Vara could imagine without actually being a whine, “it’s the fact of it. I know you’ve sent expeditions to other places to gather food, to get relief and supplies, and yet I wasn’t offered a chance to go along with them.”

  Vara listened, waiting for the dwarf to say more. When he didn’t, she let herself take a breath and count to five before answering. “As we have discussed, I would be more than happy to send you along to Fertiss with not only the utmost haste but also with a bounty of gold simply to be rid of you.” She caught the cockeyed gaze of the dwarf, and wondered if he was as insulted by that as she had intended him to be. “Unfortunately, Alaric seems to be of a different opinion—and, in a stunning reversal of his previous nature to this point, he is keeping that decision secret for reasons that I cannot possibly fathom.” She shrugged broadly, trying—Oh, how I try—to keep it amusing. “I wish he would send you away. Were it in my power, I would send you away. I would walk you to the gate right now, open it up, roll you under it, and be done with it. Unfortunately, it is not in my power, nor the other officers of Sanctuary either, because—”

  “Alaric has some ill intention toward me that he has no desire to disclose to the rest of you,” Partus said, still squinting at her with one eye half-closed. “I see how it is. He knows strength when he sees it, and he knows you’re in a dire situation. He thinks by backing me into this corner with you, I’ll have no choice but to fight for Sanctuary when the time comes. You know what? The sneaky bastard is probably right. I’ve got no love for the dark elves, not after Aurastra, and they don’t take prisoners, as well you know. Well, they take the women ones, but not like—”

  “Thank you, for that,” Vara said, wondering if her fake smile was holding. Alaric compelled me to be nice to this one. I cannot imagine what reason he might have for that, nor why he would ask it of me, OF ALL PEOPLE. She felt the strain inside, the desire to scream, to raise a booted foot and punt the little blighter—but she resisted. He’s a strong paladin, she grudgingly admitted, stronger than me. Two days earlier, the dark elves had begun constructing siege towers from logs hauled to within sight of the Sanctuary walls; Partus, in an annoyingly boastful show of force had bragged that he could destroy every single one of them before they had started moving. No one had believed it. There had been bets placed, gold wagered. Partus had taken all of it and left fifteen siege towers in wreckage, showering splinters into the army of dark elves huddled around them. There were bodies lying there, too numerous to count, from the explosive force with which the wood had splintered into both the engineers and laborers that had built the things, and also warriors and fighters that had been standing nearby. He’s a wealthy little git now, eager to spend his newfound winnings and make his escape while the getting is good; he’s unlikely to manage another gambling win such as that.

  “You know that no other paladin could match my power—other than Alaric, of course.” Partus gave her a wink, causing Vara to restrain an explosive fury of her own. I could surely blast him at least a quarter of the distance he managed to send his spell; far enough to kill him, perhaps. Instead, she rolled her eyes and realized that the smile had long since vanished, and that now all she wore was a look of undisguised loathing.

  “I recognize that you are quite strong in the powers of the white knight,” she answered, “though it mystifies me that you can even call yourself one given that you seem to believe in nothing, and certainly have no sort of crusade, if you ever did—”

  Partus let out a soft laugh. “You’re a young one, aren’t you? Being a paladin has little enough to do with having a crusade or a cause.” Vara bristled at this, and Partus laughed further. “It doesn’t matter what you believe in, some god or cause or nothing at all. All that matters is that you know how to use the spells to their maximum effect. That you put in the practice to push them to the limits of what they can do.”

  Vara listened to him, taking care not to grind her teeth. “Is that so? Believe in nothing—”

  “But yourself,” Partus said, correcting her not at all gently, “if you’re into saying it that way, I suppose.”

  Vara let her eyes slip sideways, darting around the foyer. “And how would you say it?” She watched him shift on his short legs; he only came up to her chest in height, a fact that was not lost on her. Or him. “If you were forced to describe it.”

  “If I were forced to describe it,” Partus said slowly, “I would say it’s believing in power. Not in yourself, exactly,” he cringed, his face turned mocking, “because that’s a little elven and weak for my tastes, frankly—no offense. Your people make good mystics and warriors, but they talk such a pitiful line of effeteness when it comes to yourselves. You have to see your ability to cast a spell that mighty—” He held his hand out in front of him, aimed it just past her. She kept her cool, and realized he was watching for her reaction, his palm pointed into the lounge. “It’s all to do with seeing it, saying it, bringing it to form. It’s not just the words.” He ran the back of his hand over his brow. “Then, after you’ve done it once, you know you can, so then it’s about stretching your magical energy to accomodate, exercising your abilities to adapt to casting it more often.” He used his tongue to suck at something stuck in his teeth. “Then, it’s about practice. Constant, diligent practice.”

  She eyed his short frame, at the slight paunch that hung over his belt. “And you did this? Practiced diligently?”

  “Aye,” Partus said, “I may not look it now, but I put in thousands of hours of effort when I was at the Holy Brethren. More than anyone else, that’s certain.”

  “Yes,” Vara said with a trace of irony, “I’m certain you practiced by yourself constantly, until you became a tremendous master.”

  Partus caught the hint of insincerity and squinted at it, then shrugged it off. “It doesn’t matter that you believe I did it, you can see the results for yourself. Care, don’t, pay attention, heed me not, it’s all the same to me until those dark elves come crashing in; then you might wish you’d done things a bit differ
ently.”

  With that, the dwarf wandered off, toward the lounge and the casks of ale that remained there, even in this time of crisis. Vara wanted to sigh but she didn’t, instead letting the smell of the hearth burning give her a moment’s peace, that slight homey feeling to calm her nerves, then she turned to see Vaste watching her by the stairwell. She hesitated, unsure of what to do. He’s standing right in my path. Should I avoid him entirely? The troll watched, giving her a slight smile, then continued to speak with the human he had been talking to. It would appear he’s focused upon his own matters; just as well, I do not know that I could handle much more in the way of sympathy from him at this point.

  She headed for the stairs, her head involuntarily moving to look in the open doors of the Great Hall. Larana waited within, seated at a table inside. The druid looked more ragged than usual, her face smudged with a little dirt or grease, and her hair in a muss—that part was usual. Vara pondered speaking to the chief cook, but she sat alone, by herself, and seemed to be working on nothing at all. I haven’t said more than a dozen words to her since I came here. This seems an ill time to start, simply because I know she may be the only other one in Sanctuary who misses … she cringed … who wishes Cyrus were here. She felt the physical reaction in her face as she thought it; a tightening of the muscles into a scowl, the lowering of an eyelid, the muscles straining and causing it to twitch.

  She made for the stairs instead, keeping her pace slow, neutral, until she had passed Vaste. Then she sped up, taking the steps two and three at a time, letting her frustration come out in a near-aggression. She reached the Council Chambers and paused; the door was parted slightly, as though someone had left it open for some purpose. She stopped, pondering, then opened the door and stepped inside.