He waited once his armor was on; the others lingered as well, as though afraid somehow to be on about the day. The line of battle came ever closer, and when they could ignore it no more, Cyrus pulled to his feet, drew his blade and stepped toward the fight. He heard the others with him, and cast a look back to see some stewards and young boys gathering up the things they had left behind, throwing them in the backs of wagons that waited across the camp, horses snorting into the cold air. The wagons began to move as Cyrus reached the back line of the fight, and he wondered how far away they would retreat, and how long it would be before he went back to rest again—or at least try.
He took long, crunching steps through the lines until he reached the front. He began to use his blade to fend off the scourge as they made their way forward, inexorably, open mouths ravenous to take life, to bleed it out on the snow in great red stains. He hacked the head from one, tore limbs from another, then made a move at yet another still that charged him before a perfectly aimed arrow took its eye and caused it to fall still as it slid across the snow to his feet.
The battle turns to a slog, he thought, nothing more than a steady expectation that we will retreat, that there is no momentum to be had. What madness is this that we fight a battle with no expectation to win? Praelior gleamed with its soft glow, and the blood he spilled did not remain on it.
“So are we going forward with this blatant ploy to have ourselves all declared mad?” Terian was close beside him. “Because otherwise I’m quite content to remain here, gradually retreating.”
“The problem with gradually giving ground,” Cyrus said as he slammed his blade home in one of the creature’s ribs, “is that sooner or later, no matter how gradually you’re doing it, you run out of ground to give.” Three sprang at him like dogs and he sliced them out of the air with little thought and only instinct to guide him. “We move now.”
“Oh, good,” Terian said lightly, “I didn’t really want to go on living anyway. Dull existence, you know, drinking, whoring, eating nice foods in pleasant places …”
“You’ve been locked in chains for months when you haven’t been eating conjured bread and water and fighting these things,” Aisling said from Cyrus’s left as her daggers danced while she spun aside to let a charging scourge brush past her. Her daggers hit it four times as it went by and it collapsed, knocking down a warrior behind her as it slid to a stop. “And if you’ve had any woman in that time, I’d be shocked—”
“Fine,” Terian said, and Cyrus could hear the scowl in the way he said it. “I really don’t care if I go on living since I’ve been deprived of all those things anyway, but it would have been nice to have a last meal—not insubstantial bread—before we went forward with this idiocy.”
“Now, Terian,” Cyrus said, “if we’d had a so-called last meal for that purpose, where would your motivation be to fight your way back after what we’re about to do? Nowhere, that’s where; you’d have peaked in your life, and with nothing before you but the dim, boringness of being a soulless mercenary, you’d probably just lie down and let them eat you right there.”
“Wow.” Terian’s answer sounded slightly shocked and partially amused. “I think I miss the dour and sour Cyrus Davidon, the one who didn’t know what to do with a woman in his bedroll. I thought you were truly heading toward the path to desperation and I was eager to see what you did when you got there.” He waved a hand vaguely at Aisling as he brought his sword down in the middle of a scourge’s head. “Other than her, I mean.”
“I think I’m just coming back to myself now,” Cyrus said with a slash that sent a scourge screeching away from him missing a limb. “I want to live. At least long enough to get some hard drink, like Reikonosian whiskey, and throw down a toast to the ones we lost without even knowing it.”
There was a pause then Terian spoke again. “You’re beginning to sound more and more like a mercenary every day, Davidon; loose women, hard drink, strong battle, reckless chances—why soon enough, you’ll ask for money in exchange for fighting something.” Terian paused and let that hang in the air. “Not that I’m knocking it, because as you can tell, the mercenary’s life seems to have pretty much everything I want.”
“Then why didn’t you go do that after you left Sanctuary?” Cyrus asked, turning his hips to level a scourge with a sideways slash. Cyrus got busy afterwards as three more of the grey-pallored scourge jumped at him, one going low at his legs, one coming at him from the side and another head-on in a jump. He swiped the two in front of him and turned to deal with the other when Terian’s sword sliced it in two in midair, sending the pieces tumbling past Cyrus, who stepped adroitly out of the way to avoid them.
“Because …” Terian said, and Cyrus saw a hollowness in his eyes that matched what he saw in the pits of eyes that the scourge possessed, “… Alaric asked me to return.”
“What about before that?” Cyrus didn’t let up, cutting apart a scourge then turning back to Terian. “You were gone six months. Six months you walked the face of Arkaria, could have done anything you wanted. Been anything you wanted. So what was it, Terian? You walked the path of your father in those days, didn’t you? Found out how it was, truly was, to stand in his shadow for a good long while, to see all it entailed?”
The dark elf flinched at Cyrus’s words. “Who told you?”
“No one ‘told’ me, at least not in as many words,” Cyrus said, and with a shake of his head was back at the battle, sword in motion. “The Gatekeeper told me, when he stunned you to silence with a subtle accusation. Partus told me, when he said the word Aurastra and you reacted—as though rumors of that one hadn’t percolated around. That was enough, really, to put it together. You said you were in the Sovereignty before you came back to Sanctuary, that you knew the Sovereign had returned because of it. You were working with your father then. You were doing his bidding.”
“Aye,” Terian said, after a long, strained pause of minutes. “I was.”
“But you came back to us,” Cyrus said, and turned his attention forward again.
“I did.”
“Why?” Cyrus asked, looking out over the field of the enemy, coming at them like onrushing death, their limitless numbers only broken by the countless corpses left on the ground as the front line retreated.
There was another long pause, and Cyrus prepared to issue the advancing order when the answer came, quiet, subtle. “I told you. Because Alaric asked me to.”
Cyrus shook his head. “All right—let’s go!” He leaned into the next one of the beasts that came at him, moving forward instead of back, taking an offensive posture instead of staying with the line. This time, however, the line moved around him. The second rank stepped up, and others came with him—Curatio, mace in hand, smashing the skull of one of the foes that crossed him. Nyad was in the center of the formation, her staff at the ready, two druids alongside her, ready to blaze fire and create a gap if needed. Aisling was at his side, as was Terian at the other. Martaina and Scuddar had blades in hand and were fighting their way through as well. A few others were along, but it was a tight-knit formation, a seed pod in the midst of roiling winds of chaos, and as Scuddar and Martaina pulled away from the front line it became a contained little bubble only so wide, a circular line of their own, now separated from the ranks of their fellows.
Cyrus saw Longwell down the line of defense that they had just left, his lance skewering two of the scourge while his men covered him. The dragoon looked up and saw Cyrus, and hesitated for only a moment before pulling his lance free and attacking the next enemy that came against the Galbadien army that backed him. He does well at the head of an army of his own; he would make a fine General for Sanctuary. Cyrus looked back and saw Odellan leading a force of men and women to cover Cyrus’s advance, keeping the increasing numbers of scourge from pushing them back, fighting desperately to keep forward, to not surrender an inch of ground. He’ll hold til we get back—another fine General.
They were away from the front rank now
by fifty feet, surrounded by the enemy, who came at them two and three deep, crawling over each other trying to attack them. Cyrus’s sword remained in motion, constant, flowing, cutting their foes to ribbons of blood in the snow, blooming black flowers of death on the trampled ground of the battlefield.
“It’s moving,” Martaina said cautiously, her short swords a flurry of motion. “Looks like it’s heading away.”
“How far are we gonna pursue this thing?” Terian asked. “And please don’t say all the way to the depths of the Realm of Death, because we’ve been there, and it’s no party.”
“I don’t know,” Cyrus said, his weapon moving in front of him, where he stood at the head of the attack party. “If it’s going to constantly circle away from us, I don’t see much need to keep going because there’s no way we can chop through these things fast enough to catch it.” He brought his sword aloft for a long, swinging chop across an enemy leaping at him, and he watched Praelior glimmer faintly in the close of day.
“Whoa,” Terian said, “it stopped.”
“Sudden, too,” Aisling added. “It was looking at us and just froze.” She let her hands work in a blur, cutting at the scourge that was coming for her; she caught it across the face with a quick thrust, then spun low and opened its neck.
There was a quiet that fell over them, then Cyrus saw the shadow in the distance that jutted over the heads of the creatures, and it rose higher, at least four times the height of the beasts around it. “Not small,” he breathed.
“It’s looking … right … at us,” Terian said quietly. “I find that very, very unnerving.”
“I don’t blame you,” Aisling said.
Cyrus brought his sword up again and drove Praelior into the skull of a running scourge that came at him. He brought the blade up in the air again and let it descend in a hacking motion, the faint blue glow along the length of the blade gleaming in the early, cloudy twilight.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Aisling said tightly, “is pissing him off. That thing is looking right at us.”
“I’m killing its fellows,” Cyrus said, keeping his weapon light and attacking the beasts that continued to come at him. “This is hardly new.”
“His eyes are right on you,” Terian agreed. “I mean, anchored. It’s watching you, not us.”
“Do you think it senses he’s the General?” Nyad asked.
“Could be,” Aisling answered.
“Fine,” Cyrus said, raising his sword again into a high guard and slashing a leaping scourge into halves in front of him. “Whatever the reason, let him come—”
“It’s your sword,” Aisling said as the ground rumbled beneath them, “that’s what’s catching his attention; and it looks like you get your wish because here he—”
The rumble grew loud now, the shadow in the distance that was as large as a small house was crossing the snowy ground, chewing it up with surprising speed. Where Cyrus would have imagined the creature be ponderously slowly, it was anything but, rumpled skin becoming plain as it closed on them, the same grey of dead flesh covering its massive bones. It really is the size of a dragon with no wings. “Are you sure it’s my sword that’s catching it?”
“Pretty sure,” Aisling said, steadying herself as she parried the attack of another one of the creatures. “Every time you raised it where he could see the flash, he watched closer. Now that he’s gotten a look at it three times, he’s charging us.”
“I can’t argue with her logic,” Terian said, “her judgment in men, but not her logic. It happened exactly as she describes.”
“If that thing hits our line he’s going to trample his way through,” Curatio said as they held there, the beast traveling toward them. “You might want to—”
“Martaina,” Cyrus said warningly, “Nyad—”
Arrows were already in flight before he could finish his thoughts; the spells followed, a flame spell that shot in a small burst. It was hardly enough to compare to the long, flaming lines that had blocked scourge advances, but it was enough to light up the sky, to slow the massive creature as it barreled toward them, legs like tree trunks pounding feet the size of stumps against the ground, leaving tracks as big in diameter as Cyrus’s shoulders. He clutched Praelior close but kept it moving; even with this thing charging them down, the smaller ones keep coming, their onslaught always threatening to overpower our defense.
It grew closer now, a hundred feet away, thundering across the snowy plain like a dead rhino, its eyes different than the others. There was red in them, reminding him of the eye of a white rat he had once looked into when just a boy. There was intelligence burning in there, too, something far beyond the simple ravening hunger of the others, the mass. This one came for him, watched him, not the others. He could see the exhalations of steaming breath as it came forward, jagged teeth as long as his forearm.
“Nyad!” Cyrus called. “Stop him!” Too fast, he’s not slowing enough from the fire and arrows, and if he splits us, we’re dead, damned sure guaranteed to be overrun in seconds—
There was a flash of light, blinding, from behind Cyrus, white in its intensity, and hands yanked him to the side as the thing burst through the center of them, a grey, blurred leg missing him by inches. Cyrus staggered into Aisling, who had pulled him along, and the thing thundered past, stopping just beyond them, snorting into the air as it shook its head. The others, Cyrus realized, had dodged as well, breaking their small formation down the center. They surged back together now, quickly, and a wall of flame burst forth in front of them, in the open, crushed-down snow where the largest of the scourge had charged through, and it half-circled them in a hundred and eighty degrees of protection.
“A little wall,” Nyad said, her voice strained, “to minimize the vectors of attack. I won’t be able to hold it long.”
“He’s pinned between us and our army,” Cyrus said. “CHARGE!” he called out over the lines. “CHARGE!” There was movement on the line, and Cyrus could see them begin to fight forward, on the Galbadien side and in the middle of the Sanctuary forces. With Nyad’s flames stymieing the advance of the scourge behind them, Cyrus moved back toward the army, slicing his way toward the creature—the General, he thought of it—as it stood, shaking its head as though it were trying to get its senses back. It took faltering steps, crushing some of its own kind underfoot.
“Be wary,” Curatio said, grasping Cyrus’s arm. “That is no ordinary creature. No ordinary soul.”
“What is it?” Cyrus asked, pausing for just a second, unable to take his eyes off the beast, standing as it was almost three times his height, with such a massive torso as he had not seen on a creature since Mortus himself or Purgatory before it.
“I have only suspicions,” Curatio said icily. “Be careful. There is more to this thing than is readily apparent.”
As though it heard them, it turned, red eyes almost aglow. There was another flash of light, and Cyrus realized it was Curatio blinding the creature, which screeched at them in a high bellowing noise of pain and anger, then came at them in a head-down charge that Cyrus only missed by throwing himself aside at the last second. He skidded in the snow and returned to his feet, clearing the ground around him with a sweep of his sword and ending three more of the scourge in the process.
The General of the scourge was now before him again, halted before the wall of fire. The line was close by, now, and Cyrus watched them advance, thinning steadily decreasing numbers in the middle of the battlefield that were pincered between the front rank and Cyrus’s separated group. Less to worry about here, and maybe I can kill this thing before it gets its bearings again. He took off at a slow run, approaching quietly, sword in hand as the beast tried to blink its eyes back to normal once more, heavy, grey lids shuttering over the red pupils, irises and everything else.
As Cyrus reached it, he jumped—a hop to take him to the lower hindquarters of the thing, where he plunged his blade into the muscle of the left rear thigh. He drew a shriek of rage more than pain, a
nd the leg moved abruptly where he had planted his feet upon landing, jarring him and his sword loose. He fell the five feet or so to the ground, hit the snow and rolled backward and to his feet again. He spun the sword in his grasp, back to facing upright, and brought it forward into a slicing attack as the creature turned into him. He narrowly dodged a butt of its head as it lashed back at him in a sideways motion.
Cyrus brought a sword slash across the side of its wrinkled, rotted face and it let out a roar that flooded his senses with the smell of dead things; a rot of bodies that made him gag and taste the return of his bread and water with stomach bile mixed in for good measure. His ears rang with the sound of it.
A leaping attack onto the giant scourge’s back caused it to arch its spine and howl. Aisling landed with her blades buried into the flesh and for a moment it bucked onto its back legs. Cyrus watched the sultry grin of the dark elf vanish as she was flung away. She landed on her feet and slithered quickly back while killing two scourge that blocked her retreat.
There were arrows sticking out of the General’s back and head. Cyrus could not see Martaina on the other side of the thing, but her handiwork was obvious when it exposed its other side to him. It came at him, ignoring all else, mouth open and teeth exposed. Cyrus met it head on, driving the sword into its face as it snapped at him. He missed the eyes but caught the snouted nose, leaving a great gash between the nostrils.
“Thick-skinned!” Terian shouted from somewhere to his right. Cyrus saw Scuddar In’shara attack with his curved blade on the end of the tail. Cyrus started to tell the desert man not to bother but was forced to dodge another snap of the jaws.
Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four Page 72