Master (Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Yes, they’re rather displeased with you at the moment,” Vaste said. “For some reason I can’t fathom, they think you cheated, beating them three on one like that in mere seconds. Something about how they’re all good soldiers, from good families, and it’s just not fair—” Vaste’s face changed to a frown. “They’re really quite the group of whiners. I’m glad you killed them.”

  Cyrus fell back into the line and exchanged a look with Vara, who made a harrumphing noise as he turned to face the coming trolls. “What?”

  “You were toying with them for entirely too long,” she said, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

  “Maybe I’m just not as good as you,” Cyrus said with a faint smile.

  “You were showing off,” Vara said.

  “I had something to prove,” Cyrus said, and looked to Curatio. “Not to me, not to them, but to our army. You can’t ask our people to face overwhelming odds without at least showing them that victory is possible in that sort of battle. It’s a morale thing.”

  “I bow to your august wisdom in leading an army,” Curatio said. “But the trolls—”

  “Ah, yes,” Cyrus said. “Ryin?” He looked up. “Signal Forrestant to begin.”

  “Aye,” Ryin said. “Forrestant—BOMBARD!” The druid’s call echoed over the Sanctuary lines.

  Somewhere in the back of the Sanctuary army, in the sudden silence that followed Ryin’s call, Cyrus could hear faint shouting. A moment later, the creak of wood straining, of machinery moving, came loud over the army. In mere seconds, balls of flame overflew Cyrus’s position, trailing fire behind them on their way to the forward line of the trolls.

  The first impacts came with thunderous explosions. Blasts of fire hit the front rank of the trolls and enshrouded them in orange. Cyrus could feel the heat even at that distance, and the noise that followed was like the loudest thunder he had ever heard.

  The front troll line disintegrated under the bombardment, disappearing beneath the flame as surely as if a wizard had sent a spell against them.

  “I have to admit,” Vaste said into the quiet awe as another wave of flaming spheres filled the air above them in a lazy arc toward the troll legions, “when Mr. Forrestant came to our doors with his proposal, I was somewhat skeptical. I mean, who has even heard of a … a …”

  “Combat engineer,” Cyrus said.

  “Yes, who has even heard of one of those?” Vaste said. Another wave of explosions detonated a little farther back, lighting the black smoke left by the first wave’s landing. “And when he started talking about building catapults with bombs of Dragon’s Breath, and ballistas, and trebuchets—I mean, I honestly tuned him out. But this—” Another explosion filled the air with fire up to the height of a three-story building. “This is impressive. I’m almost awed into silence. In fact, I think I’ll just shut up now.”

  “Finally,” Vara said.

  Trolls began to stagger forward through the smoke in ones and twos, their green, armored forms appearing out of the dark and shadow. “Archers!” Cyrus called out. “Fire!”

  Rangers with bows were stationed on both sides of the formations, out in front of the left and right flank of the Sanctuary army. They looked curious in their cloaks and light leather armor, but when their bows came aloft in perfect synchronization, Cyrus almost felt like he should blanch and duck away. When they loosed their volley of arrows it was not the aimed shots that he was so used to from Martaina. This was a black cloud of arrows, the shafts darkening the twilight sky as they flew in a lazy arc toward the trolls advancing on the Sanctuary army.

  Trolls were thick-skinned creatures, Cyrus knew, but as they advanced it was clear that they had lighter leather armor rather than hard steel or mystically enchanted plate mail. The arrows landed among the first wave, a half dozen of which were still advancing, and brought them all to the ground.

  “They’re certainly not as well equipped as the ones that invaded us last year,” Erith said. “Those had hardened armor.”

  “That stuff is expensive,” Cyrus said. “I’m guessing the Sovereign saves it for his elite troops.” He looked back at the trolls falling upon the earth before them. “Not the chaff.”

  The catapults fired again behind Cyrus, and the sky was once more filled with burning projectiles, like shooting stars of incredible intensity propelled through the twilight. They made a screaming noise as they passed overhead, and Cyrus wondered idly where from sprang the noise.

  From the fire and storm of flame, dark shadows marched forth. Few here and few enough there, but they gathered on the closer side of the blazing maelstrom, backlit by the light of the inferno. Cyrus saw the arrows descend in volley after volley, a steady downpour of fletchings, wood, and steel, but still the shadows gathered. They formed, a trickle coming onward through the scorching heat, and they marched for the front rank of Sanctuary’s army.

  “A determined lot, these,” Ryin said.

  “I don’t think determination was missing from the last few groups,” Vaste said, “it was their skin, their limbs, and their lives being burnt away that kept them from coming at us the way these are.”

  And on they came, as Cyrus watched. They closed the distance, more trolls filling in behind them, survivors of the blistering heat of the Dragon’s Breath that fell in continuous explosions on the road.

  “Up there!” A voice cried, and Cyrus looked. Above the falling projectiles was the outline of a figure, running across the air.

  “Druid?” Cyrus asked. They were only a hundred feet away from the front line of the Sanctuary army and partially obscured by smoke. “Martaina—!”

  The figure cast a spell that shot from an aimed hand toward the back of the line. There came a great cry from somewhere at the rear of the army, and an explosion roared behind Cyrus, knocking him forward a step. He looked up, and saw an arrow catch the running figure through the head. It fell like a lifeless doll as the explosions in the road in front of him ceased, and the sound of the one behind him faded in his ears.

  “Well, damn,” Vaste said, casting a look back. “I can’t say for certain, but I think that was our catapults.”

  “It was,” Ryin said from above them. His face was as ashen as the falling powder that came to rest on Cyrus’s cheek. It was nothing compared to that which he had seen in Termina, but this product of the Sanctuary bombardment was much closer. “It was an ice spell, freezing a lit bomb to a catapult—”

  “Yes, well, next time perhaps mind the skies while you’re up there so someone doesn’t blow up our artillery,” Cyrus said, more than a little crossly. The trolls were advancing unhindered now; a trickle at the front, still harried by the falling arrows of the rangers, but bulkier, heavier lines followed not far behind. “Remember!” Cyrus called out to the army behind him. “The bigger your foe is—”

  “The harder he’ll pound you into stuffing when he hits you,” Vaste said under his breath.

  “—the bigger the target,” Cyrus said, sending Vaste a searing, sidelong glare as he lost the thread of his thought. “And also, if you can see the whites of their eyes—”

  “Quickly relocate to somewhere less dangerous,” Vaste said. “Such as the Sovereign’s throne room.”

  “Shut up!” Cyrus and Vara hissed in chorus. They exchanged a look, and Vara blushed before turning back to the advancing troll army. The earth shook beneath them, and Cyrus could feel the shocks in his legs. Acrid smoke drifted toward them on the wind.

  “Oh, to the hells with it,” Cyrus muttered, trying to remember what he’d been thinking of saying before Vaste’s jibes had distracted him. “Just follow me!” he shouted, loud enough for it to echo over his army.

  The nearest trolls were advancing, only forty feet away now. The front line of Sanctuary officers was holding their ground and waiting. “Follow,” Cyrus said and began his advance. He started to run, gripping Praelior tight and turning his gaze toward the troll at the front of the line ahead of him.

  Cyrus felt his legs sh
ake with each step, the combination of the trolls’ immense weight shaking the ground coupled with his own momentum. The world had slowed around him.

  The nearest troll was in front of him, jaws wide, eyes fixed. The blood lust was visible in his eyes, the yell of a war cry on his lips. Cyrus matched it with one of his own, and he saw the subtle blanch from the troll, the moment’s hesitation. The fear.

  You are mine, Cyrus thought. The smoky air reverberated with the voices of a thousand angry men and women rushing into war. This army is mine, my weapon, my instrument, and I will use it like I use my sword to strike you down. He kept his gaze fixed on that first troll. The frontrunner. First to fall. He had marked him as such.

  The ground between them drew to nothing, and they were nearly upon each other. Cyrus could still smell the hesitation, as obvious as the smoke on the wind. It was the stink of fear, and it permeated the battlefield. I would have expected more of a troll army.

  They were nearly face-to-face now, though Cyrus was only as tall as the troll’s chest. He stared at the eyes, though—those yellow eyes, wide to the whites. I am the master of fear, the master of death in this place, Cyrus thought. And you will bow to me—willingly or not.

  With the last cry of appeal to the God of War, Cyrus brought Praelior down in a strike that severed his trollish foe’s leg, sending him to the ground on his remaining knee. The scream of fear, of pain, of terror, echoed in his ears—and it was only the first of many.

  Chapter 31

  “General!” The shout reached Cyrus’s ears from the thick of the battle. He sliced Praelior through the thick leg of another troll, sending the beast toppling to the ground. He was surrounded by piles of green bodies taller even than he was. I’m used to looking down on my foes in battle; this is a dramatic change for me.

  “What?” Cyrus impaled another and quickly swung his blade around through the thickest part of the troll’s body to catch another on a diagonal slash that cut its massive body in half from waist to shoulder. He spared only a glance to see that Odellan was trying to catch his attention, fighting alongside three other warriors to bring down a troll that had gotten past him.

  “They are sending a flanking column on our right side, sir!” Odellan called as a massive troll fist came crashing down on one of his compatriots. Odellan landed a spearing blow with his fine blade, stabbing into the troll’s chest. A roar was followed by a massive green fist that Odellan blocked with his shield. Cyrus heard the joint-rattling impact even over the chaos of the battle. “It is a schiltron of shielded dark elves, sir!”

  “Martaina!” Cyrus called as he swept to the left. He moved almost five feet, cutting the leg from underneath another troll before he realized that it made little difference if he moved; she could surely hear him.

  “Sir?” The elf appeared just behind him as he fended off another troll, dodging a heavy-bladed attack and cleaving the troll’s wrist as a price for the audacity of striking at him. The sun was now down, the battlefield shrouded in twilight’s coming darkness, the orange skies behind the advancing trolls shedding the only light save for the lamps of the army still mostly lined up behind him and the keep that lay far back behind the moat in the rear of their lines.

  “The dark elves are trying to send a schiltron up my arse,” Cyrus said, gritting his teeth as he hooked Praelior around and leapt, taking the head of the troll whose hand he had just severed. He landed and avoided the falling body. The ground was thick with green corpses, the stacks of them growing in size as the Sanctuary army felled them by the hundreds.

  “I’d think they’d pick a target less ripe,” Martaina said, and it took Cyrus a moment to catch her sly tone. “By ripe, I mean in terms of smell, not opportunity—”

  “Yes, I got that,” Cyrus said, pausing to watch Longwell impale a troll so hard the beast was thrown back on its haunches. The dragoon barely held onto his lance as the troll fell, clutching its chest and making a grunting, wailing noise. Their foes were so enormous that Cyrus could not see over the first two ranks of them; for all he knew, they stretched clear back to the horizon. “Would you mind?”

  “So you want me to cross the battle,” Martaina said, “and break open the shiltron by firing arrows into the gaps in their formation’s shields so that our other, less skilled rangers can help pick them apart before they hit our right flank, which,” she paused, and he knew she was using her sharp eyes to survey the situation, “have yet to make contact with any enemy forces?”

  “That’s it exactly,” Cyrus said, and he blocked a troll blade with Praelior before throwing it back in his attacker’s face so hard that the beast cleaved his own skull. “You’ve got it.”

  “Uh huh,” Martaina said, near-tonelessly. “Do you realize how well-nigh-impossible it is for an archer to break a schiltron? They have shields all around their formation. It’s like a turtle crawling its way across the battlefield. A steel turtle.”

  “Yes, I realize how nearly impossible it is for an archer to do it,” Cyrus said, gritting his teeth as two more trolls came at him. He dodged low and spun to cut both of their knees from beneath them. “Which is why I’m asking you to do it and not some new ranger who just picked up a bow three weeks ago. Are you not capable of this?” Cyrus asked, feeling a note of uncertainty.

  “Of course I can do it,” Martaina said, and he spared a glance to see her knowing look. “I just wanted to make certain you knew how difficult it was.” Without another word, she dashed off, disappearing behind the formation of rangers on the right flank that had retreated closer to the lines of warriors on the right.

  “The schiltron, sir,” Odellan called to him.

  “It’s handled,” Cyrus said, turning his attention back to the trolls coming at him. They seemed thinner now, their ranks lessened. He felled another, then another, and realized that there were dark elves behind them, peeking from behind the trolls’ trunk-like legs. “Is it my imagination or are we coming to the end of the trolls?”

  “It’s just your imagination!” Vaste called from somewhere behind him. “You’ll never see the end of all the trolls, for I will be there to torment you until your dying day!”

  “For some reason, I don’t doubt that,” Cyrus said beneath his breath.

  “Imagine how boring your life would be without Vaste to offer retort and commentary on all the questionable choices you make,” Vara said, and Cyrus looked to his right to see her there.

  “I’m sure you’d take up his slack with greatest glee,” Cyrus said.

  “I am uncertain that I have time for such an endeavor,” she replied, raking her sword across an uncovered green throat. Pea-green blood showered down and she narrowly dodged it. “For there are so very, very many.”

  “Says the madwoman.” Cyrus spoke under his breath, but he caught her gaze for a moment in the midst of the fight and held it. “All right, I’ll admit it—you’re not mad. Perhaps, anyway. But I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  “Are you still on about that?” Vara’s voice took a tightness as she answered him back. “I thought you weren’t running for Guildmaster.”

  “I remain undecided,” Cyrus said. “But I don’t believe he’s coming back. He said something to me before he left—that he wouldn’t be here when I got back from Luukessia.”

  “Do you believe he is dead?” Vara said, and she unleashed a blast of force from her palm that sent three trolls toppling into a line of dark elves that had been squeezing their way forward.

  Cyrus thought about it long and hard. “Yes. I think he’s dead.” He paused for just a second, and when she did not answer, he buried Praelior in the neck of a dark elf in leather armor and continued. “Whatever he experienced toward the end—dark thoughts, fits of rage, mysterious ramblings—he knew what he was doing, walking onto that bridge. He knew he was leaving us, which is why he handed me the amulet and destroyed the bridge under himself. He could have done it farther down the line; he chose to destroy it from underneath us because—for whatever reason—he want
ed to die.” Cyrus lowered his voice. “He wanted to die, Vara. He had reached his end.”

  A thunderous blast of force rocked the battlefield and swept a path thirty feet wide down the remains of the muddied road that had once led to their lines. Vara’s spell swept the dirt from the path and sprayed it over the remaining forces on either side. Bodies were flung limp through the air and came raining down on their compatriots. There was a pause as silence fell over the battle for almost a second in the wake of the spell.

  Vara stood with her hand extended, a cone of empty, shredded ground covering the three hundred feet in front of her. Cyrus could see her chest rise and fall under the silver armor with each breath as she stood there, sword in one hand and palm extended from the other.

  “Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Cyrus said, eyeing her as the roar of battle surged again around them, and dark elven soldiers in boiled leather began to flood back into the empty space left by her spell.

  Vara swept her blade back up, both hands on the hilt, and held it in position next to her face. “You are perpetually on my bad side, Cyrus Davidon. You have made camp there, you live there, and I think you exalt in doing so, all the while innocently protesting that you want to be anywhere else.”

  “Sir, the enemy schiltron is folding!” Odellan’s voice reached Cyrus before he could reply to Vara.

  There were dark elves swarming them now, and Cyrus dealt a deathblow to four with a long sword swipe that toppled heads from bodies. There was a rank odor in the air, something heavy and rotten that lingered like death blown on a hard wind. “What the hell is that?” Cyrus asked.

  “A schiltron is a formation of shielded dark elves,” Vaste said from a few paces behind him. Cyrus shot him another annoyed look before realizing it would have little effect. “You should know, you just ordered its destruction not five minutes ago.”

  “I was talking about that awful smell,” Cyrus said, “but I didn’t realize you were haunting my steps with such vigor. Clearly it’s just you.”