Cyrus looked between the Kings of Luukessia. “All right. We’ll pull back to the bridge with the dragoons and any men you want to send our way, and we’ll hold there until the last are on it. After that, we’ll go and cover the retreat—and hope that we make it far enough, fast enough to leave those bastards behind.”
“We’ll give you all the time we can spare,” Milos Tiernan said. “We’re placing the last of our Kingdoms in your hands—the last of the Luukessians. I dearly hope you’ll save them.” He looked from Ranson to Unger, then back to Cyrus. “After all,” the King of Actaluere said with a smile, “you are our last hope.”
Chapter 104
With the dawn they were headed west, Cyrus and the Sanctuary army, on a slow march along the road. The sound of combat faded behind them as the morning wore on, and they set out pickets that night after sunset. The territory was familiar in appearance, the coastal ground they’d trod in their first days in Luukessia. The crickets sang in the grasses, the winds blew sea air fresh across them from the south, a salt breeze that reminded Cyrus of the boat, or of a day on the beach long ago—the first day he had been in Luukessia. The swaying grass and short sight lines reminded him of plains, just briefly. Of home. Or whatever Sanctuary is to me now.
There was a sound, a low moan. Cyrus turned to look and saw Longwell clutching his head nearby, stirring from the place where he was bound with rope. He had been thrown unceremoniously on the back of a horse and left there for a good portion of the day after a healing spell from Curatio. Cyrus had looked at the damage done by Ranson before the healing spell had been cast; privately he did not envy the dragoon.
“What happened?” Longwell said, trying to sit up and struggling against the rope.
Cyrus looked him over. “Ranson knocked you out and asked me to take you with us.”
Longwell blinked and looked at the ropes that bound him. “You must surely be joking.”
Cyrus shrugged. “I think you’ll agree I haven’t been in much of a joking mood of late. More brooding, I think.”
“Are you going to let me loose?” Longwell said, struggling against the bonds that bound him under his armor.
“In another day or so,” Cyrus said, taking a drink from a skin of water and then holding it up to Longwell to let him sip from it. “Wouldn’t want you trying to escape and go back to throw yourself into a massacre, after all.”
Longwell finished his drink, giving Cyrus a measured glare. “So this is how you would treat me, after all this time? Bind me like a criminal?” He eyed Terian, who sat nearby and cocked his head at the comment. “Sorry.” He switched his gaze back to Cyrus. “You would strike my ability to choose for myself?”
“Yep,” Cyrus said. “I hope you understand. I’m going to need your help on that bridge.” He favored Longwell with a look, a cool, understated one.
“I … what?”
“The bridge,” Cyrus said. “I need someone at my side who can handle this situation. Someone who’s been in a fight like this before because if these things end up crossing, we’re the last line of defense. Your horsemen are going to be useless in a fight of this sort. The Sanctuary army can do some good if we fail, but we need to be the stone wall upon which the scourge breaks—for as long as it takes to get your people off that bridge and headed north to the portal, where we can evacuate them quickly.” He took another sip. “Hopefully some of them have already reached the other side and started to head that way.”
“You want me by your side for this again,” Longwell said, letting his bound hands hang in front of him.
“I need your help,” Cyrus said. “You, Scuddar, Odellan,” he darted a look backwards, “Terian, probably. This could be days of fighting. I have a lot of veterans thanks to our army being in a near-constant battle these last few months, but I need an elite, a front rank that won’t buckle, no matter what.”
Longwell settled, his struggle with the bonds done. “It almost sounds as though you mean to try and drive them back; to stand and fight and make them feel the pain and blink.”
Cyrus looked at Longwell out of the corner of his eye, just for a moment, then back to the dark, swampy night. “Maybe I do. Maybe I do.”
Longwell gave a short nod after a moment of thought. “Very well, then. I cede the wisdom of your proposal. I will fight alongside you on the bridge.” He held out his hand. “You may release me now; I won’t go anywhere.”
Cyrus pulled the water skin from between his lips. “I know you won’t. Because you’re going to stay roped until we get to the bridge.”
Even in the dark, Cyrus could see the disbelief as Longwell’s face fell. “What? But I gave you my word.”
“Yeah,” Cyrus agreed. “But a man desperate to die in the defense of his homeland might be possessed to say some untruths. After all, who’s gonna care if he lied after he’s dead?”
“But,” Longwell said, sputtering, looking around for some sort of support. “I’m the King of Galbadien!”
“Right you are, Your Majesty,” Cyrus said, and bowed his head. “Would you like some more water?”
Longwell’s expression turned from disbelief to fury, then slowed to irritation, then finally to a long, sustained eyeroll. “Very well.”
Chapter 105
Two days later, they crossed the berm to see the bridge spanning the sea before them. The last of the straggling refugees were already upon it, barely visible on the horizon. At the base of the span, though, waited a familiar party—two blue-skinned figures at the side of the bridge along with another, her brown hair above her shoulders. Cyrus rode up to them, felt the salt spray of the tide hitting his face, and gazed upon J’anda’s face in shock. His own gasp filled his ears, and a feeling like someone had jammed a rod into his spine set him upright in the saddle. After a moment it subsided, as he got closer, and looked at the lined, worn skin on the enchanter’s face. “You burned through your magical energy,” Cyrus said, “and started trading your life for bread.”
There was a nod from the enchanter, whose hair was now streaked with a faded grey. “Worth it, I think,” he said, voice raspy. “A few hundred years of my life to spare thousands of lives.” He shrugged. “In mere days, it may not matter anyway.”
“Very laudable,” Curatio pronounced as he arrived.
Cyrus shook his head at J’anda. “It’s your life, I suppose.”
“I did what I thought was right,” J’anda said with another shrug. “I regret nothing.”
Cyrus waved toward Longwell, who sat at the front of a line of horsemen. “Start them across. They’ll be able to catch the back line of those refugees fairly easily. Tell them not to hurry, not to push. We don’t want to start a stampede, and we’ve got some time.” He paused. “I think.”
Longwell tossed him a mock salute with only a little acrimony and motioned for the horsemen to start across.
“How many horsemen do you have?” Cattrine asked, with a look of slightly shocked awe as she looked at the perfectly formed lines, moving up the bridge at faster than a walk.
Cyrus dismounted and landed his hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “More than ten thousand. Enough to give the scourge a fight if we can get to open ground on the other side of the sea. Transport will be a problem because you can’t teleport nearly that many in one bunch with one wizard, but if we can get to the portal two days north of the other side of the bridge, we can transport everyone fast—in half an hour or so—back to Sanctuary.”
“Your magic still amazes me,” Cattrine said with a shake of the head.
“I don’t have any magic,” Cyrus said. He gave Aisling a nod of greeting, which was returned with some reserve. He looked Cattrine in the eyes. “I’m sending you with the second regiment of dragoons.”
She looked to him, and her head went from leaning forward, eager to see him, to relaxed and falling back as her face did the same; it fell. “I wouldn’t want to be a bother, I suppose.”
“Not a bother,” Cyrus said. “But I promised your
brother I would see to your safety, and I need to keep my word.”
“Very well,” she said. “Did he send any other message?”
He let his jaw relax. “Just to see you to safety. His last worries, aside from wanting to die fighting the good fight for Luukessia, were about you.”
She gave a slow nod and started to turn away toward the horsemen marching up the bridge. “I don’t suppose he gave a thought to what would happen to our people in this new land? Of how he should have stayed to lead them?”
“I don’t think he much wanted to contemplate a new land,” Cyrus said. “I believe the pain of the loss of the old was the sort of wound he would not ever have been able to put aside.” There was a sting in his words, as though he were rubbing salt on a wound of his own. “That’s my suspicion, at least.”
“I’m certain you have no idea what that feels like,” Cattrine said, her eyes warm, but her tone slightly sardonic. She knows. “I’ll take my leave of you now, Lord Davidon, so you might fight whatever battle comes without concern for my safety.” She stepped to him, gave him a peck on the cheek, then a longer, fuller kiss on the lips. “I do hope to see you on the other side.” She lifted her skirts and trod across the beach, her feet leaving impressions in the sand.
The horsemen went on for the rest of the day. As the night began to fall, the Sanctuary army moved onto the bridge at last, the back ranks going first—the most wearied, in Cyrus’s eyes, along with Windrider and the other horses. Curatio and a few of the others came toward the end, with their spellcasters, and finally Cyrus himself, along with Odellan, Longwell, Martaina, Scuddar, and Terian.
After the first hour, Terian eased over to Cyrus. “You haven’t asked me to fight alongside you.”
“You’ve been fighting alongside me on and off since Enrant Monge,” Cyrus said, unimpressed. “What’s different now? You finally going to try and kill me again?”
“Not today,” Terian replied. The clank of his boots and Cyrus’s, and countless others, was soft in the night, and somewhere far below the splash of water against the pilings of the bridge could be heard. “Maybe tomorrow, though,” the dark knight said with a wicked grin.
“You don’t even really believe it anymore,” Cyrus said.
“Hm,” Terian said with only a trace of amusement. “I think it’s more accurate to say I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
“Lot of that going around.”
“Indeed there is,” Terian said. “We’re still not done yet though, you and I.”
“No,” Cyrus said, “I suppose we’re not. I’m fine with that, so long as it doesn’t bleed into this.”
“No,” Terian said somberly, “I won’t let my personal vendetta against you stop us from saving these people as best we can.”
“‘As best we can?’“ Cyrus mused. “I don’t know, Lepos, maybe there’s some hope for you yet.”
Terian shot him a scathing glance. “Why? Do you think there’s some chance for redemption for me, even after I tried to kill you? Because if you say ‘yes,’ I may have to kill you now, outside of my promise, just on the principle of it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Cyrus said. “Redemption’s a funny thing.”
“Oh?” Terian said with a scowl. “What’s so funny about it?”
“I don’t know.” Cyrus looked back over his shoulder, into the darkness, to the long, empty stretch of stone behind him. “The Kings—Unger, Tiernan, Longwell,” he looked to the side and gestured to Samwen, who trudged alone quietly to their left, “and Ranson, I suppose. They thought they’d failed to protect their Kingdoms, the places they were sworn to serve. They failed their lands, their people. They were Kings, supposed to be the most exalted, but they understood that basic truth that they were supposed to serve their people. Their redemption for that was to stand at the last edge of their land and die trying to stop these things from coming any farther.” Cyrus shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the willingness to fight that hard, to die for what you believe in … maybe that brings its own sort of redemption. And peace, I would hope.”
Terian looked back now, as though he could see the scourge behind them. “I don’t know what peace death brings, not after all we’ve seen this year. Those things. I don’t know what sort of redemption there is out there for those of us who have …” He bowed his head. “Erred, let’s call it.”
“I don’t suppose you’d consider your attempt to kill me in that category, would you?”
“Don’t push it, Davidon,” Terian said irritably. “I’m already having the sort of conversation with you that I don’t comfortably have with anyone else.”
“But because you’re going to kill me, it’s almost like you’re not talking to anyone at all, huh?”
“No one keeps secrets like the dead,” Terian quipped.
They walked on in peace for two more days after that, a solemn, quiet, cool breeze coming off the sea of Carmas in gusts that ran through the cracks in Cyrus’s mail. The salt air was good, a pleasant smell, but it left a film on his armor. The nights were long and he spent them alone. Aisling looked at him from across the army a few times, as though she were waiting for him to beckon her forward. He did not, though, and instead lay awake staring at the stars until his eyes finally drooped into sleep.
It was at the close of the third day that the wind shifted directions, from out of the south. Cyrus could feel it, tangible, a change in current. The stone bridge went on into infinity before him, packed tightly with men and horses as far as he could see. When he turned back, as he had every few minutes for the entire journey, afraid that his next moment would be the one when a scourge jumped onto his back and dragged him down, he still saw nothing but the faint distortion of a mirage in the distance. The sun was falling in the sky but it was surprisingly hot, the southern breeze doing little to shift the air. Early summer weather? It’s not even finished being spring yet.
There was movement to his left and he turned to see Martaina, her cowl falling behind her head and exposing her hair to flutter in the breeze. She stared into the distance behind them, peering carefully, then dropped to the ground and put her ear against the surface of the bridge.
“Interesting place to sleep,” Terian said with a grin.
She waved at him for silence, and they waited. A moment later she sprang up and looked at Cyrus, deadly serious. “They’re coming.”
He tensed. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “I can hear their claws. Much different sound than horses clip-clopping along ahead of us. It’s faint, but there. A whole bunch of them, too, coming on fast. They’ll catch up to us in a few hours, maybe a half-day at most.”
“We’re only two days from the shores of Arkaria. We need to buy time,” Cyrus said, thinking. “Nyad!”
“Buy time for what?” Terian asked. “Once those things hit the shore, we’re done. Good luck bottling them up again, or beating them in the jungle as they sweep north. Once the cork comes out of the bottle, the wine is going to escape all over your new dress.”
“I don’t wear a dress,” Cyrus said as Nyad appeared at his side. “Go back to Sanctuary and warn Alaric that these things are coming and we need help, now, at the bridge. No time to waste. Don’t take any excuses; these things aren’t on Luukessia anymore, they’re coming, and they will destroy our land if we don’t stop them. You need to make him understand. Got it?”
She nodded, and closed her eyes, lips moving in subtle ways as she repeated the incantation. Her hands glowed slightly, and there was a burst of green energy that exploded over them, causing Cyrus to turn his head and avert his eyes. When he opened them again and looked back, Nyad remained standing in the same place, a look of puzzlement upon her face. She closed her eyes again and began to cast the spell, the glow came forth once more, the light burst with sparkles, and when the spots cleared from Cyrus’s vision she still stood in the middle of the Endless Bridge.
“Maybe I should send someone else?” Cyrus asked.
�
��No,” Nyad said with a shake of her head. “It’s not that. It’s not me. It’s the spell—the portal! It’s not working.”
“What do you mean it’s not working?” Terian asked, his eyebrows knitted together in a deep furrow. “How does a spell not work?”
Nyad seemed to consider this for a moment, staring off at the horizon. “There are only two reasons why the spell wouldn’t work. Either the portal has been shut down, or—” She stopped speaking and paled, her complexion looking a flushed orange in the light of the late afternoon, as her voice dropped to a hushed whisper. “Or it’s been destroyed.”
Chapter 106
Vara
Day 221 of the Siege of Sanctuary
The battlements were in motion, a steady flow of people. The smell of them was strong, unwashed after a few days of long watches; Vara could even smell herself from under the armor. There had been only time for a few hours of sleep per night as the dark elves had begun a near-constant assault on the front gates. She looked down on the battering ram they were currently employing, hundreds of arrows sticking out of it in all directions, as the twenty or so dark elves carrying it were surrounded by an additional phalanx with shields to protect them. This situation needs Alaric’s touch. I dearly hope he’s on his way.
The sound was riotous, a hundred thousand enemies surrounding them, ladders flung upward to the top of the wall every few minutes with a clack of wood against stone and thrown back down only moments later with screams. Of course, some of the screams came from atop the wall as well, Vara knew, as there were volleys of arrows coming at them thickly, like a diagonal rainstorm of shafts, fletchings, and arrowheads. She kept her head down and heard them whistling all around her, the occasional scream close by attesting to another poor soul who’d caught one. One came from beside her, presently, and she heard a scuffle. A ranger had an arrow sticking out of his eye and was shouting, his bow cast aside from where he had been using it to aim at the shielded enemy.
Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four Page 84