Warlord

by Robert J. Crane

  “Not as many as you’d think,” Cattrine said, stirred back to life by the query. “Perhaps less than a quarter, and it looks as though the titans simply came over Rockridge, ignoring the mines, and came down into town. All the farms are north of here, and thus should be safe.”

  “This entire area should have been safe,” Vara said, and on her scarlet cheeks there was the first brewing of anger. “The pass over the Heia Mountains—”

  “Has always been ridiculously porous,” Cyrus said, catching a flash of anger in her eyes. “Don’t you remember? We went through a few years ago on a three-day march and ended up finding a few titans up there even then. That was before the war, when the King of the Elves had less to worry about.”

  “The war is over,” Vara said sharply.

  “And the losses were great, as well you know,” Curatio said, rather limply. “Garrisoning the pass—”

  “Is now a priority,” came a sharp voice as Nyad edged her way into the circle. Her crimson robes looked fresh, and she carried a staff high, her face flushed with some emotion Cyrus couldn’t quite pin down at first blush. “I just got back from Pharesia.”

  Cyrus glanced at Vara, expecting her to say something, but she held her tongue, much to his surprise. “I take it you have something to tell us?” I didn’t even realize she’d gone; but then again, you could just about move an army in here right now and I wouldn’t have any idea about it unless they were titan-sized …

  “My father wants to hire Sanctuary to garrison the Heia Pass until such time as he can maneuver troops from the northern expanse near Nalikh’akur to here,” Nyad said, more straight-backed than Cyrus could recall seeing her. She looked at Vara. “The King wishes to know if the Lady of Nalikh’akur has any objection to moving troops out of her holdfast?”

  “None,” Vara said swiftly, and Cyrus caught something … strange … pass between her and Cattrine Tiernan without a word spoken. “Bring them down here. Sanctuary will even provide the wizards if it’ll spare them the march.”

  Cyrus paused. “That was … fast.”

  “And not voted on,” Ryin said with a hint of ire. His face was just as soot-blackened as the rest of theirs.

  “All in favor?” Cyrus asked with a certain weariness.

  “Aye,” came the chorus, just as weary.

  “Aye as well,” Ryin said, looking a little put out. “But we could have voted first, that’s all I’m trying to say.”

  “We could also string you up by that high beam there,” Vaste said, pointing his staff toward a piece of wood that extended out of a broken structure, “by your feet, so you were just a few feet above the ground, and then we could take turns thumping you with this,” he brandished the white staff, “or something suitably blunt, until you stopped being so gods-damned contentious all the time. It could take a while, I’ll be the first to admit, but I think we’ll all agree it’s worth it once it’s done—and perhaps during every single satisfying whack of the wood against your thick gourd—”

  “That’s about enough of that,” Cyrus said, waving a hand to cut him off. “We’ll garrison the pass, help King Danay move his soldiers down to reinforce us, and—” He paused as a dark elven man in a white robe approached, his hands pushed inside his heavy sleeves. Cyrus squinted, trying to recognize the fellow, but he was utterly unfamiliar. “Yes? I’m sorry, we’re in the middle of an officer meeting at present—”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” he said, and his face was long as he pushed back his hood. Cyrus heard a squeal of surprise and turned to see Erith smiling broadly at the dark elf. “I only came to speak to Administrator Tiernan.”

  “Dahveed Thalless,” Cattrine said with subtle bow. “What brings you to Emerald Fields on …” Her gaze ran over the smoking wreckage around them; the fires had mostly burned out or been put out by this point. “Well, now?”

  “I come with the condolences of the Sovereign,” the healer said, bowing deeply. His accent was unusual. “As one of your chief trading partners—” Cyrus stiffened at that, “—he directs me to offer you skilled carpenters as well as whatever other aid you might need from the Sovereignty.”

  “Terian—wait—what?” Cyrus shook his head. He rubbed at his forehead with a bare hand and it came back smudged with dried blood and ash. “You trade with—” Cyrus stared at Cattrine, who looked back at him flatly. “You hate him.” He spun to look at Curatio, who was standing, quite still, just across the circle. “I’m not—am I losing my mind? She hated him, didn’t she?”

  “Many things have changed since our days in Luukessia, Guildmaster,” Cattrine said, still without a hint of emotion. “The Sovereign of Saekaj and Sovar bought a considerable amount of our first harvest of the season only a few months back.”

  Cyrus turned to say something to Vara, but her ears were red enough at the tips that he stopped himself before he did. She knows something of this. His eyes narrowed and flitted to Curatio. So does he. He turned to look at Vaste and found the troll already shrugging with a plainly feigned innocence. “We’ll discuss this later,” Cyrus said and quickly dropped the subject.

  “Is there anything we can do for you immediately?” the healer, Dahveed Thalless asked. He spoke with a slow cadence, and his eyes found Erith mid-sentence and offered a smile of his own, something reassuring and laced with a kindness that Cyrus did not immediately associate with dark elves, save perhaps J’anda.

  “We have need of strong hands,” Cattrine said. “To help clear the rubble and build anew, to help harvest more lumber in the east, and …” Her voice drifted off, and for a moment Cyrus was certain she would fall over on her feet, she looked so dazed and tired.

  “We will send help immediately,” Dahveed said with a bow. “We have many eager to work from Sovar, and with our first seed planted above Saekaj and Sovar for the season, plenty of hands to send in aid. The first will begin to arrive in hours.” With that, he bowed once more, met Cyrus’s eyes for only a second, offering an enigmatic smile, and then moved away from the circle. Cyrus watched him walking back to a curious-looking man who seemed like some sort of druid, perhaps. His long hair was pulled back in a queue that hung to his belt, and he sat on air, a Falcon’s Essence spell keeping him aloft. Dahveed spoke to him in low tones for a moment, and the man nodded, then disappeared in the light of a return spell.

  “You look like you wish to say something, Lord Davidon.” Cattrine’s voice nudged him out of his observation of the dark elven healer.

  “I have nothing to add of note,” Cyrus said, shaking his head. “You’ll need help, as much as you can get, and our army is hardly of great use in rebuilding. At destroying, perhaps, but not rebuilding.” He let his gaze drift to Erith, who broke away from the circle of officers and moved toward Dahveed, leaving them behind without so much as a word. She, too, looked tired from the night’s exertions, from their efforts at bringing back the dead and healing the wounded. She fell into conversation with the dark elven man so easily that Cyrus knew there was some long association there. “All I have left are only questions I’m too tired to ask at present, and that you’re not obligated to answer in any case,” Cyrus finished.

  “Yes,” Cattrine said. Her voice expressed weariness and choked desperation, but she was strong enough and skilled enough at hiding it that she smothered it before even another breath of it came out. “We will need help. Again.”

  As for Cyrus, he looked over the town all around, the smoking wreckage, at the hell he had once more indirectly inflicted on these people, and as he caught Vara’s eye he knew she saw the truth in his.

  When will these days of war finally end?

  10.

  Days passed under sunny and cloudless skies. Cyrus spent the majority of them in the central tower of Sanctuary, in and out of Council meetings, and few enough actually out in the world, either at the Heia Pass or in the Emerald Fields aiding the reconstruction. He had been at the site twice in the last week, enough to satisfy himself that he had no skill to contribute, an
d once to the garrison in the pass to inspect the preparations. That was dull work, and when Martaina made her report to tell him that nothing had come through since the titans almost a fortnight ago, it was enough for him to gladly make his retreat back to the Tower of the Guildmaster.

  Now he stood in the middle of the breezy space, all four balconies open to the gusts from the Plains of Perdamun, and looked out onto the grasslands below. There were still tents within the curtain wall, the last of the Emerald Fields refugees who had been evacuated after the attack seemingly content to shelter on the Sanctuary grounds. There were children, there were the aged and infirm, those who would not or could not fight. Whole divisions of the Luukessian cavalrymen were sweeping the southern end of the Elven Kingdom even now, making certain that not so much as a single titan remained north of the mountainous divide between the southern lands of their residence and the north, which desired them not.

  “You sulk, still,” Vara said as the door to the tower opened. The elf ascended up through the narrow slit that held the stairs. He did not turn to greet her, merely cocked his head in response to her observation, letting the wind stir his hair as he stood with gauntlets clenched behind him.

  “There’s little else to do,” Cyrus said, looking north and catching movement at the portal in the distance. A single figure, ahorse, rode south toward the Sanctuary gates, a traveling cloak billowing grandly behind them. It was blue, the color of the Torrid Sea off the shores before the tideturn where the currents grew rough, and it caught his eye as it moved against the dark green grasses of the plain.

  “There is much to do, Guildmaster,” she said, coming to stand just behind his shoulder. “Always so much to do, as well you know.”

  “There’s little I want to do, then,” Cyrus said, turning his head to regard her with his careful stare. Surely she knows what I want to do, truly.

  “Oh, you’re not back to that again, are you?” She eyed him. “Because we can, but I’d rather either wait until the fall of night and douse the lamps, or else close these doors and draw the curtains, because last time Vaste made the rudest comment after apparently overhearing us—”

  “Not that,” Cyrus said, waving her off in frustration. He paused. “Well … maybe later,” he conceded. “But I meant …” He lowered his voice, ashamed, “… revenge.”

  “Ah, the prickly path,” Vara said, eyebrows arching even as her face fell a notch. “I had assumed you would bring it up before now.”

  “I assumed you’d assume it before now,” Cyrus said, turning to look back over the plains. The figure on the horse was gone, in the shadow of the tower by this time. “In the past, you’ve never hesitated to think me certain to snap straight to vengeance.”

  “In the past, I was not sharing your bed,” Vara said with enough crispness to remind him of a fall day, “and I had not seen you pass on nearly so many opportunities as you have in the past few years.” Her voice softened. “Besides, I assumed you would consult the Council and perhaps myself before launching a full-scale invasion of Kortran.”

  “You knew I’d want to, though, didn’t you?” He bowed his head slightly.

  “You wouldn’t be Cyrus Davidon if you didn’t want to strike back at those who did harm to your own,” she said quietly. She looked around, as though she were afraid someone were watching. “You wouldn’t be the man I've come to care for if you didn’t possess that finely honed protective instinct, as though all Arkaria were under your wing.”

  “It’s not all Arkaria,” he said. “But it is a people I feel a great obligation to.” He strained as hot anger bubbled up. “They’d just become independent, just gotten their feet underneath them, and now—” He pulled his hand out of his gauntlet and wiped a sweaty palm over his upper lip, freshly shaven. “Gods, the timing. Why now?”

  “Because this was the moment the titans chose to be enormous jackasses, presumably.”

  “Who taught them magic?” Cyrus asked, turning to face her. “Something is amiss here. The titans are not a civilized people, they don’t have Leagues, and they’ve never had magic instruction until now—”

  “Something is amiss, I agree,” Vara said, nodding. “But to assume some nefarious evil at the heart of this is … well, it’s a bit much, as such things go.” She cracked the faintest smile. “I know it won’t stop you from blaming yourself, but long before you came into the picture, the titans were more than happy to strike through the pass. In fact, if you recall—”

  “Alaric lost his wife to Talikartin,” Cyrus said, memory jarred loose by Vara’s mere suggestion.

  “Yes,” Vara said, her voice suddenly ghostly in its reduction to near-whisper. “He did.”

  Cyrus stared down at her, their difference in height somehow all the more striking in this moment. “I fear it, you know.”

  “You don’t have a wife,” she said, playfully, an impish smile returning to her features, but still somehow less cheerful than it might have been a few moments before.

  “Yet,” he said, and smiled back at her. “I—” A knock sounded at the door, causing him to frown. “Yes?” he called.

  The door at the base of the stairs clicked open a crack to reveal a ranger, a human, thin and wiry with dark hair. “There’s an envoy to see you, sir,” she said, breathless from the ascent.

  “From where?” Cyrus asked, frowning. He glanced at Vara, but she maintained her distance.

  “Amti, sir.”

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” Cyrus said, pondering that one, “assemble the—”

  “Orders already went out, sir,” the ranger said. “The envoy asked to meet with all of you.”

  Cyrus felt his eyebrow rise. “Did they? How … presumptuous of them.” Giving orders already? I can’t imagine what sort of arrogant prig this elf must be—

  “The order to assemble came from Lord Curatio, sir,” the ranger said. “He and Larana are speaking to the envoy even now.” The ranger lowered her voice, like she was passing on some form of forbidden knowledge. “They seem to know this lady envoy quite well, if I may say so.”

  “What?” Cyrus blinked and looked at Vara, who held a look of undisguised curiosity of her own. “And yes, you may say so, along with anything else you know that might shed light on this mysterious envoy before I meet them face to face. What’s your name, young lady?”

  The lady ranger paused for a moment, slipping just a little further inside the door. “Carisse Sevoux, m’lord. Of the Riverlands.”

  Cyrus watched her, could see the bubbling excitement beneath her youthful facade. It was not well hidden. “Spill it, Carisse Sevoux. Who am I dealing with?”

  “Only caught her name, sir,” Sevoux said with a hint of pride. “Said it was Cora.”

  It took Cyrus a moment more to get there than it did Vara, who stiffened immediately. He started to reach out for her, but the elven paladin was already in motion, sprinting toward the stairs. Carisse Sevoux scarcely had time to dodge out of the way, flattening against the wall of the stairway trench before Vara shot past, her armored boots clanging hard with every step.

  “It would appear Lady Vara knows this envoy as well,” Sevoux said as she pulled herself off the wall, lithe figure balancing on the tips of her toes, silent.

  “She should,” Cyrus said, taking a breath as he moved toward the stairs himself. “I feel like I know her as well, though we’ve never met.”

  Sevoux looked up at him, tanned face perplexed. “Sir?”

  “Cora is the last surviving founder of Sanctuary,” Cyrus said, making his way down the stairs and opening the door for Carisse Sevoux, whose mouth opened just a hint in surprise. Can’t say I’m not surprised either, Cyrus thought as he let the ranger walk through the door first before stepping through and pulling it shut behind him. “And as far as I know, this is the first time she’s set foot in this place in … years.”

  11.

  Cyrus decided he liked Cora immediately, though it would have been hard not to. She was an elf, of course, but wit
h hair that was a lustrous auburn, an unusual shade for elves in Cyrus’s experience. It reminded him of autumn foliage in the north for some reason, and her handshake was firm, her eyes clear and hazel when he looked into them. There was also a hint of familiarity about her in that regal bearing, the august presence he’d come to expect from elves. The dark blue cloak that she wore drawn about her shoulders hid spell caster vestments from his sight, hinting only that they were there by the small bit that stuck out of the collar.

  “It is good to be back in this place,” Cora said in a light voice, less serious than many of the elves he’d met. They stood in the Council Chamber, around the table, with an extra chair pulled up to accommodate their guest. “Though it has changed considerably since last I was here.” She looked around the room with an appraising eye. “The table was smaller then, I think.”

  “Same table,” Cyrus said, settling back in his enormously high-backed chair. Suddenly he felt the pressure of the Guildmaster medallion strung round his neck, and felt self-conscious about the chair he was inhabiting. When she was an officer of this guild, I was not even a member. Now I am the Master of Sanctuary and she is not even a member. Sometimes I forget the history of this place predates me by some considerable margin. “We haven’t replaced it.”

  “Indeed?” Cora looked it over again. “Memory is a most malleable thing, I suppose, making days that were a struggle seem like halcyon stuff after a sufficient distance of years. Merely shrinking a Council Chamber seems an easy task compared to that.” She forced a smile. “I am sad to say that I recognize few enough of the faces around me.”

  “But a few of us recognize yours,” J’anda said with a smile of his own, warm, sincere and genuine.

  “Oh, J’anda,” Cora said with a tinge of regret. “It does my heart ill to see you this way.”