Master (Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Gods, your mind moves fast to war and all the possibilities,” Vaste said.

  “This is what a General does,” Longwell said, voice radiating a kind of quiet awe.

  “The force they’ll meet us with is going to be predominantly foot soldiers of some kind or another,” Cyrus said, pushing back his chair and causing it to screech against the stone floor as he stood. “There will be spell casters, though, and cavalry. We have the advantage in that department, but they’ll—”

  “I think I’ve heard enough,” Vaste said and stood. “I trust you’ll be blathering like this for some time yet?”

  Cyrus blinked at him. “There are strategic and tactical concerns to work through—”

  “You’ll handle those just fine whether I’m present or not,” Vaste said, and started toward the door. “I’ll tell your squire Odellan to get ready for a volley of orders while I start haranguing the healers into getting ready.”

  “I’ll go organize the druids and wizards,” Ryin said as he stood slowly, almost reluctantly. “Since it would seem we’re once again locked into a course that will carry us into battle for the sake of gold.” He held up his hands, palm out. “Not that I am complaining or suggesting we do otherwise, merely giving voice to that which all of us are thinking.”

  “Yes, well, you could have let the rest of us think it for ourselves,” Vaste said as he opened the door. “Presumptive bastard.”

  “I’ll marshal the dragoons,” Longwell said, standing with a little more spring in his step than Cyrus had seen when he’d entered the chamber. “Should I assume you’ll need us on horseback?”

  “Definitely,” Cyrus said. “The mobility of your cavalry is one of our greatest advantages. Also, Samwen?” He waited for the dragoon to look back at him before speaking again. “Track down our man Forrestant. We’ll need his division to start preparing immediately. Have them find a wizard and get to the battlefield with a scouting party to start making preparations.”

  “Can do. I’ll get to work, then,” Longwell said and thumped the table with a jolt of enthusiasm before he exited behind Ryin.

  “I’ll get out of the way, too,” Erith said, standing slowly.

  “Matters to attend to?” Curatio said with a wan smile.

  “No.” Erith paused at the door. “All this talk of strategy and tactics bores me.” She shut the door behind her.

  “I should like to do a bit more research before we leave,” Curatio said from his place at the table. “I trust you have all this well in hand?”

  “Sure,” Cyrus said, half in thought and half watching who was left in the room with him.

  “Very good,” Curatio said, and walked toward the door. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” He disappeared through the door with nary a sound.

  Cyrus stared, thoughts of the impending battle gone from his mind momentarily. Vara sat across the table from him, staring down at the pitted surface of the wood. “And you?” Cyrus asked. “Do you need to … rally the knights or engage in some preparation?”

  She shook her head slowly, still staring down at the table. “It’s going to be like this from now on, isn’t it?” She looked up at him, her eyes full and tired. “Going from fight to fight, taking gold in exchange, for as long as we’ve got the Luukessians to support.”

  “They won’t need our help forever,” Cyrus said. “We just need to get them up and running, self-sufficient—”

  “And until the day they are, we’ll be whoring ourselves out for gold.” Vara shook her head slowly. “This was not how it was supposed to be.”

  “You said yourself there was no other way.”

  “There must be some other way,” Vara said. “Some other way than casually falling into line with the plans of Pretnam Urides within minutes of his arrival. He throws shiny metals in our direction and we instantly debase ourselves before him? Without even a hint of discussion before deciding?”

  “The purse was rich,” Cyrus said. “More than we’d get from Purgatory in these days.”

  “Purgatory,” Vara said. “There was a time when it was paying us sixty million gold pieces per trip. You cannot tell me that even in current conditions we cannot get—”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand gold pieces,” Cyrus said, and his gauntleted fingers rubbed at his brow. “Last trip. We offered the spoils to our contacts in Fertiss, Huern, Reikonos, Pharesia—even Enterra, for the love of the gods! There are no buyers. Other guilds have begun to regularly best the trials, and the market is flooded. Soon we’ll be fortunate indeed to get a hundred thousand gold for a trip.” He raised his hands. “This is it. Mercenary work pays in this time of war.”

  “And we are mercenaries.” Her voice dripped with reproach.

  “We have consequences to pay for,” Cyrus said, and he could feel a pain in his chest. “I am sorry for them, but they are there. We owe these people for what we unleashed. They grow closer to self-sufficiency by the day. Another year, perhaps two, and I think we’ll be free of—”

  “Then what?” Vara said. “Our guildmates get a piece of the spoils, and they’ve become accustomed to the proceeds of these mercenary jobs. Do you think they’ll settle back into a routine of idle treasure—like the bauble we gained from the Mler—hunting for possible rewards when definite ones are waiting? Do you know what the word in Reikonos is right now?” Her face flushed red. “If you’re looking to join a guild, go to Sanctuary. Because we’re getting wealthy while everyone else is being bled dry by their homestead clauses.” She had no humor in her expression, which was somewhere between sorrow and fury. “Except we’re not, are we? Perhaps our members are, but the guild is poorer than we were at the start of this bloody war.”

  “We have no control over the war,” Cyrus said, speaking cautiously. “We have no control over the price of goods for our endeavors in Purgatory. We have no ability to take back the actions that led us to this place—killing Mortus, losing Luukessia—all we have left is the choice to move forward the best way we know how. That’s by taking care of the people we are obligated to, however we have to do it.” He paused and licked his lips. “Defending Livlosdald is not a bad thing. They would surely be overrun by the dark elven army if not for us—”

  “Don’t,” she said, snapping as she stood. “Don’t justify our mercenary actions by saying we would do these things anyway because they are righteous. If they were truly righteous, we should not have to take payment to do them, and we would not set a date of withdrawal, we would stay until the defense was done!” She lowered her head again, her gaze on the table. “This is not how he would have wanted it to be.”

  “If I could figure out what Alaric would have done in these circumstances,” Cyrus said, “I would do it.”

  She looked up at him, face cold. “You are not him.”

  Cyrus stood slowly and felt the distance of the table between them. “I’m fully aware of that.”

  “I heard them talking to you,” she said, staring at him. “I know what Vaste would have you do—what he would have you be. Guildmaster.”

  “I don’t want it,” Cyrus said, looking away. “I don’t want to be in charge.”

  “It isn’t always about what you want,” she said, drawing his attention back to her. “You won’t run unopposed.”

  “I don’t know that I’ll run at all,” Cyrus said, and he felt himself redden. “I didn’t ask for the position.”

  “Then don’t take it,” she said. “Because if I win, my intention is to hold the role of Guildmaster until the day Alaric returns—”

  “He’s not coming back,” Cyrus said and punched his fist at quarter strength onto the table top for emphasis. “And every time you talk about it, you sound like a delusional madwoman, like one of the washers who wander the streets of Reikonos and wring their garments out after laundering them in the fountain. Spewing your daft ideas across anyone who will listen—”

  “He is not dead,” she said, her face flushed red as fire. “I know it sounds mad, but I can feel it.
He is not dead.”

  Cyrus placed his other knuckle on the table and leaned forward, lowering his head and shoulders so that most of his weight rested on his hands. “Yes. It sounds mad.”

  “Well, you know what sounds mad to me?” Vara said, and she moved from her place at the table around toward him, only a few feet away. “The idea that a man who can go insubstantial on a whim would drown without leaving so much as a hint of his body behind. Nothing. Not a sign but his helm to indicate he is actually dead.”

  “He would not leave Sanctuary,” Cyrus said, still resting his weight on his knuckles but looking sideways now at Vara. “He would not abandon us.”

  “You didn’t see him at the end.” Her body was frozen, stiff and unmoving. “He was slipping. In the last days of the siege he was not himself, he conversed with me in ways that he had never before spoken to me, and about things that felt … simply odd. He snapped and killed Partus in a fit of pique, he acted as though he were drunk and taken to deep ponderings—”

  “I don’t need to know this,” Cyrus said, and turned his head back to the table. “I have a battle to plan.”

  “Do you think me mad?” she asked, and he could feel the stiffness of her posture as he stood there. “Truly mad?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She did not say anything else, and he heard her slow, dignified steps as they carried her out the doors of the Council Chamber. It was only after she left and the door shut softly behind her, that words came back to him, ones he had heard nearly a year and a half earlier—the night before he had left for Luukessia.

  “Goodbye,” Cyrus had said to Alaric, “We’ll see you then.”

  “No,” the Ghost had said, “you won’t.”

  Chapter 30

  Night had nearly fallen upon the Livlosdald keep by the time their preparations were completed. Cyrus stood in the last rays of the sun, shining on him from where it rested on the horizon ahead. Forests flanked either side of the road, a rutted dirt path of the sort found in the more provincial parts of the Confederation. A breeze kicked up and blew cool air with traces of wildflower scent from the open meadow that stretched before the Army of Sanctuary, leading up to the trees in the distance.

  A steady hum of conversation went on behind Cyrus, the dull roar of an army over twenty thousand strong in formation. He stood out front with the other officers, ahead of the massive lines of Sanctuary’s force sorted neatly into divisions as he’d laid them out on the map. He took slow, steady breaths as he stared into the fading sun, knowing from the scouting parties he’d sent ahead that their foes were nearly here.

  And that thought brought only a grim smile to his face.

  “Ryin?” Cyrus called up to the druid, who floated thirty feet in the air above him, the Falcon’s Essence spell allowing him to levitate.

  “I can see them,” the druid said, his voice drifting down to Cyrus. “Less than a mile away and about to come through the trees. They’re perfectly on the road, so it would seem they’ve discovered our preparations.”

  “Good,” Cyrus said. The afternoon had been spent pitting the road through the forest on either side to keep the dark elven army in a long, narrow line. The pits were about three feet deep and concealed well enough that they would be a wicked surprise for anyone who took a wayward step onto them.

  “Their front lines are trolls,” Ryin said, and his voice was higher, alarmed. “Three dark elf knights lead them on horseback.”

  “Oh, good,” Cyrus said under his breath. “I hope they’re not Unter’adons.”

  “Those are children of the Sovereign, yes?” Vaste asked. “Can’t pretend I’m not a bit curious how that works.”

  “Perhaps someone will educate the troll on the art of conjugal relations later,” Vara said with a half-smile. “So long as it’s not me.”

  “That was actually funny,” Vaste said. “But the question remains—immortals fathering children with mortals?”

  “As though that has never happened before,” Curatio said, somewhat amused. “It will happen again, I expect.”

  “Planning ahead, eh, Curatio?” Vaste said. “You old dog.”

  Curatio sighed. “One does not get so old as to lose appreciation for the good things in life.”

  “The first rank is approaching the edge of the forest,” Ryin said. “The three dark knights are still leading the way. They’re getting a bit far out in front of the trolls now.”

  Cyrus looked toward the horizon. The sun was set, a faint purple glow lighting the sky. He could see shadows and silhouettes in the gap between the trees. “I need an Eagle Eye spell, please.” His vision lit a few seconds later and he could see the trolls snap into focus as the whole world became lighter around him. “Thank you, whoever did that.”

  “It was me,” Vaste said. “I wouldn’t want you to have to fight by the light of Vara’s blade alone.”

  Cyrus shot Vaste a look. “How did you hear about that?”

  Vaste shrugged. “As a creepy necromancer once said, ‘dead men tell tales.’”

  “Ugh,” Vara said. “Malpravus. I could have gone the rest of my considerable life span happy without being reminded of his bony arse ever again.”

  “Why do you immediately think of his arse?” Vaste asked.

  Before Vara could reply, Cyrus’s attention was diverted to the three horsemen riding ahead of the troll legions. They were halfway across the clearing toward the Sanctuary army, hundreds of feet from the front rank of trolls and galloping faster toward Cyrus and the officers.

  “Looks like somebody’s keen for a fight,” Erith said.

  “They want to kill Cyrus,” Curatio said shrewdly. “They presume that if they kill him before the battle, it will go badly for us.”

  There was a pause, and the sound of the hoofbeats drew ever closer.

  “Nyad,” Cyrus said, making a split decision, “I need a cessation spell.”

  “Wait, what?” Nyad asked, edge of panic in her voice. “You mean to fight them? You won’t be able to be healed if I’ve got a cessation spell up!”

  “Just do it,” Cyrus said, drawing Praelior. He could smell the leather of the hilt as he drew the blade, the sound of it pulling free like a song to his ears. He took a step forward, then another, the world slowing down around him. The chatter of his army faded. “The rest of you hold position here.”

  “And now we come to the point in the battle where our general goes out and gets himself killed in the name of stubborn pride,” Vaste said.

  “This is foolish,” Curatio said. “You have nothing to prove to them.”

  “It’s not them I’m proving something to,” Cyrus said and broke into a run. His feet thundered against the ground. The three black knights were only a hundred paces ahead, their armor shadowed as he would have expected from their kind. It was smooth, blued steel that looked navy, near black, and his eyes almost slid off it. They rode dark horses as well, big destriers that were as bred for war as the men atop them. Plate mail was even draped across the horses, designed to protect them in a battle.

  The first of the knights dismounted, and the second followed him a moment later. The third remained ahorse, hanging back.

  “Your head will make a fine trophy for my master,” the first dark knight said with a grunt as he approached, slowing to a walk, “and I shall carry your sword into battle as my own.”

  “This old thing?” Cyrus waved Praelior at the dark knight, now only a half dozen paces from him. “You sure you want it? Let me give you a closer look.”

  Cyrus leapt at the dark knight, blade extended before him. The dark knight had no time to react, and Cyrus buried the blade under the dark elf’s chin and thrust it up. He ripped it down, hard, and the blade pulled free, knocking the dark knight’s helm from his head. As the man hit the ground, Cyrus saw that half his face was hanging off. He twitched against the dirt path, well on his way to death, dark blue blood spilling onto the dark ground.

  “Anyone else want my head for a trophy?�
� Cyrus asked, wheeling to face the other two. The one on the ground came at him, but he was too slow. They’re all too slow, Cyrus thought. He whipped a leg out as the dark knight came at him and kicked the dark elf in the knee. He heard bones break and ligaments tear as the dark elf lost his balance and hit the ground.

  Cyrus plunged his sword through the dark elf’s gorget as though it weren’t there, severing the head in one smooth motion. He stooped to pick it up with one hand and pointed his sword at the last dark knight, the one still on his horse. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

  If the dark knight feared him, he did not show it by his action. He spurred his horse into a charge directly at Cyrus. Cyrus, for his part, hurled the head at the third dark knight and hit him squarely in the helm. The clanging of the head against the helm rocked the dark knight’s head back as Cyrus leapt into the air.

  By the time the dark knight was focused back on Cyrus again, it was too late. Cyrus led with Praelior and found the center of the dark knight’s chest plate. His sword slid to the nearest crease in the dark knight’s armor at the shoulder. There was a tearing noise as Cyrus pulled the dark elf from his horse and something gave way.

  A dismembered arm fell before Cyrus, hitting the ground with a thud that was followed a second later by the dark knight himself. Grunts of pain filled the twilight as Cyrus turned from the approaching troll army, still a quarter of a mile away, back to the dark elf with one arm only a few feet from him.

  Cyrus passed over the dark elf’s body and dipped his sword down just long enough to stab the dark knight in the back of the neck. His struggling ceased instantly, body going slack. “Looks like I’ll keep my head for at least a little longer,” Cyrus said as he broke into a jog back toward the Sanctuary line.

  “Best not to tempt fate with that whole ‘keep my head’ thing,” Vaste said as Cyrus closed the distance back to the line of officers. His boots thudded against the packed dirt of the road with heavy footfalls.

  “You heard that?” Cyrus asked, frowning. “The dead came over and had a talk with you?”