Master (Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  He sprang forward, only a hair faster than others down the line. Cyrus felt a note of surprise; by this point in the battle he expected his forces would be wearying, but there seemed to be a fresh enthusiasm driving them forward. Arrows whistled overhead and he saw Goliath’s front line begin to bend, the smaller humans and elves falling from the bombardment of the arrows. No Goliath arrows reached the Sanctuary army; they were simply too far forward of the Goliath line at this point for accuracy.

  The clanking of his armor and the pounding of his feet formed a steady drumbeat that pushed him forward. Cyrus took care not to out-advance his army, as Praelior would have given him license to do. He moderated his pace and kept with them, eyeing Vara and realizing she was doing the same. United in a firm line we pose a much greater threat. Though this doesn’t feel as much like leading from the front.

  He angled toward the troll in yellow even as the troll swerved toward him. Cyrus had known Yei back in the days in which Sanctuary and Goliath had been allies. He’s no pushover, but neither is he one of the great tacticians of our time. He’s a brawler, and he knows how to use his strength to his advantage. Cyrus felt the smile come on. Let’s see what he does against someone with more speed, strength and dexterity than him.

  The troll warrior’s steps thundered against the ground, rattling Cyrus’s teeth. Yei was easily three heads taller than he was, wider than most of the other trolls they had faced, and armored from top to bottom in a way that the trollish soldiers had not been. The yellow paint on the metal plate mail was smeared and cracked from battle, and Cyrus’s eyes scoured the surface for the weakest points as he closed the last ten feet to the troll.

  A bellow from Yei split the air, a deafening roar that reminded Cyrus of the time he’d heard an elephant from the south make a trumpeting noise while in the square at Reikonos, but louder. Cyrus focused in on the troll’s eyes, saw a flaring red iris through the slit in the helm, and shot back an icy stare of his own. Then he smiled as he closed the gap between them.

  Yei’s sword was massive, taller almost than Cyrus himself, with a blade as wide as Cyrus’s thigh. The troll brought it down in a sloppy, overhand diagonal motion as they approached each other. Cyrus guessed if he stayed on his present trajectory, the blade would cleave him in half the way he’d done to countless enemies over the years. The attack was quicker than Cyrus expected.

  But not quick enough.

  Cyrus slid into the dirt, back armor skidding as he went low. His strength carried him into the slide, momentum pushing him forward under the troll’s massive slash. The blade missed the top of Cyrus’s helm by less than an inch as he slid between the troll’s legs and jabbed up. He plunged Praelior into the gap at Yei’s knee.

  The blade slid into the chainmail beneath the plate armor, and the sound of links breaking reached Cyrus’s ears. Something between a grunt and a scream made its way from between Yei’s lips, and Cyrus saw a mighty leg begin to buckle. Cyrus slashed hard, and dark green blood squirted from the wound he’d made, sliding down Praelior’s slightly glowing edge.

  Yei began to fall, tilting to the side as Cyrus watched the lines of Goliath warriors following behind closing in on him. He could see them moving slowly, as though trapped in the slide of tree sap down a trunk. They were moving at normal speed, though, he knew that much from experience. It was only his perception in which they were slowed.

  Cyrus tore his blade free from Yei’s knee joint as the troll began to fall. Cyrus had felt his sword cut through the tendons, shredding the troll’s limb. He rolled to his right as Yei fell to his left, and the echoing power of the warrior’s heavy landing reverberated through the ground and into Cyrus’s armor.

  Cyrus fended off three warriors in mismatched armor as he saw motion down the line. The Goliath trolls were moving toward him in a stream, eddying the currents of battle like boulders immune to the tide. They swept through the lines of the fight scarcely deigning to notice their own warriors as they pushed through, nor those of their Sanctuary foes as mailed fists and blades of steel were thrown to cast all opposition aside.

  They’re coming for me, Cyrus thought with a little smile. They must have been told to charge me if Yei failed. Cyrus thrust his blade into one of the long eyeholes of Yei’s helm, then twisted as a geyser of green blood fountained up for only a second before it fell back down. He stabbed down again into the gap between gorget and helm in the troll’s armor and was rewarded with a lesser spurt this time, blood so dark that Cyrus could tell it was green only thanks to the spell augmenting his vision.

  Cyrus pulled free his blade and drew back. Goliath warriors swarmed at him, lesser creatures that stood heads and shoulders shorter than the trolls charging at his position. He quickly counted five of the mammoth beings, their size the only thing that told him what they were. Every square inch of their flesh was covered by the hardened metal that protected them from most—most!—of even Praelior’s blows. He studied them all with a glancing eye as they came. They would arrive one by one, and he would have to face them as such to avoid being overwhelmed by their sheer numbers.

  Cyrus raked his sword across the neck of a Goliath warrior charging at him and watched with satisfaction as the head flew from the neck. Strength of numbers indeed. The lesser were still coming, warriors numbering more than his ability to count them, and all of them seeming to flow toward him like a flood across a dry riverbed.

  His sword moved out of habit, severing limbs and heads as quickly as he could move it. The next troll came at him within seconds by his measure. It felt to him like ten minutes. This one carried an axe and swung low at him in a roar that even Cyrus had to concede was a worthy war cry.

  It did not even make him hesitate, however.

  Cyrus brought Praelior up with furious strength, catching the axe mid-blade. He had seen the dullness of the thing, the lack of glint in the light, and knew it was mere steel and overwhelming strength that this troll carried into battle. Probably splits his foes’ skulls and bodies well enough just with the force of his muscle and ability.

  Cyrus smiled. In the contest between steel and quartal, there was always a clear winner and a clear loser. And it was never a contest.

  The axe blade was split jaggedly down the middle with a sound of tearing metal as loud as the most fearsome scream that had ever reached Cyrus’s ears. Even before he shredded through the last of the axe’s blade, he had used his own strength to push it back. The opposite side of the blade skipped off the troll’s breastplate and up, burying itself just below the troll’s gorget.

  There was a gurgling noise and the green, viscous liquid poured down like dark ale spilled over a washboard. The troll hit his knees and his hands fell from the axe’s handle. Cyrus mounted a hard kick, using his superior, Praelior-supplied strength to slam his boot into the edge of the blade that was still bared to him. It caught on the bottom of his foot, his armor held, and all his strength rushed through it and into the axe.

  The axe flew free, pushing through the trifling bone and tissue that had kept it lodged in the troll’s neck. Cyrus watched it fly into the rank behind the troll, blade-first, and it wiped out some several poor bastards all in a line before it became lodged in two of them and stopped fast, causing them to keel over. There were screams and more screams. Cyrus could not differentiate the voices of those in whom the axe was stuck from those of every other voice on the battlefield.

  Cyrus recovered his fighting stance as a long, faint shadow fell over him from his right. He looked up and saw a darkened face, a darkened body, stretching up and blotting out the bare twilight purple above him. He began to whip his blade around to defend but felt other motion behind him.

  Long years of training had taught him to face the threat he knew was there rather than the phantasm of one that only might be. He threw up a blocking motion against the troll only feet from landing a blow on him, and he saw the shadow grow longer and taller, something stretching above it, lengthening the silhouette.

  A glint of met
al above the top of its head gave him pause and he realized what he was looking at. Vara landed her blow against the back of the troll’s neck a moment later, and another green head tumbled free in a slow, vertical spin. It landed at Cyrus’s feet, and Vara clanked to the ground a moment later, missing him by only inches.

  He stared into her blue eyes, visible on either side around the nosepiece of her helm. Her eyes were wide, drops of dark blood spattering her pale cheeks as her lips were right there, only inches from his—

  “Duck, you fool!” she said, and he felt her hard elbow reach up to knock him aside. He was already moving when her elbow hit him. His reflexes allowed him to roll with it, and he moved as she directed, sliding to the side.

  He caught a vision of her blade arcing through the empty space that had been occupied by his body only seconds earlier. Her sword sparked in contact with the weapon of troll, driving it back even as her feet skidded backward from the impact. It was a contest of strength against strength; the only advantage for the troll was the lack of grip Vara’s boots provided.

  The troll was smaller than Yei. As though that says anything. He was still larger than the majority of the trollish troops had been in the start of the battle, and Cyrus watched as Vara held firm, her stance tightening as they were both pushed back. She recovered in inches, the troll in a foot or two. He brought his weapon up again, and the stink of filthy troll breath flared to where even Cyrus could smell it a few feet away from their clash.

  Cyrus saw the lines of Goliath closing on Vara from the other side. There were at least five warriors all in a row, on a charge, their weapons at the ready. Her hands were occupied keeping the troll from bisecting her with his weapon, and Cyrus could still see the heads of the other trolls moving toward them through the fight, only seconds away. Those … I might be able to stop. Even as many as they are. The thought was futile, though, and nearly died as he pondered the second threat.

  The greater threat.

  Because for the Goliath warriors coming for her—now only a blade’s breadth from her side—the seconds he had left would not be nearly enough to save her.

  Chapter 34

  A bevy of arrows peppered the faces of the Goliath line, so fast that even with his senses enhanced by Praelior, each arrow appeared to Cyrus to land mere heartbeats after the last. They were perfectly aimed, perfectly timed, and took down all five Goliath warriors on the charge a second before they could strike down Vara.

  For her part, the blond elf pushed hard against the troll that she was locked against, knocking him off balance to duck under his weapon and bury her blade in his guts. Her hand moved with lightning quickness, repeated stabs that caused the troll to shudder before he fell to his knees. Vara dodged out of the way just before his upper body keeled forward. He lay on the ground for a moment before a low flood of dark green blood began to pool out from underneath him.

  “I suppose my purpose of sending shafts of wood through the air doesn’t seem quite so frivolous now, does it?” Martaina spoke from behind them, and Cyrus turned to see her with her bow in hand, green cloak billowing behind her.

  Vara glanced at her, nodded, and said nothing. Which, for Vara, is roughly the equivalent of a sloppy kiss of thanks. Well, almost.

  “Martaina,” Cyrus said as he alighted his eyes back to the trolls coming toward them. “Signal the cavalry.”

  He heard her sigh audibly behind him as he stepped up to stand next to Vara. The blond elf glanced at him then turned her eyes back to the trolls coming at them, only seconds away now—

  A flaming arrow sailed overhead in a low arc, clearly not meant to do any harm to anyone. It landed in the chest of an elven warrior of Goliath, putting the lie to Cyrus’s passing thought about that. “Yeesh,” he said. “You see a flaming arrow coming, you’d think you’d move.”

  “You would move,” Vara said, “and I would move, but the vast majority of these poor soldiers lack the speed to avoid such a thing.”

  “Perhaps a shield,” Cyrus said as the trolls closed on them. There were few enough of them now, just three, and they had surged into the gap in the wake left by the Goliath warriors that Martaina had killed. “You could carry one of those and hold it aloft—”

  “That sounds exhausting,” Vara said, as though they had no other concerns but their conversation.

  “Yeah, I was never much for a shield either,” Cyrus said, and the nearest troll was finally close enough for him to see the missing teeth, the jutting lower jaw, the yellow eyes. He sniffed a hint of the foul breath, like dead things inhabited the places where his missing teeth had once stood. And he’s not even close enough to really breathe on me yet.

  Vara broke right as Cyrus took the troll on the left. He saw her move out of the corner of his eye, saw her lift her hand and smite the troll with her sword, cleaving a leg off at the knee. She struck it while it was down, twisting her blade to rip the limb free.

  The troll lashed out with an uncontrolled kick that she barely dodged, but it also flailed its arms and knocked over the third troll coming at them. “Nice move,” he said to her as he tilted toward his foe to strike with a low slash to the gap in the hip armor.

  “Mind your own battle, dimwit,” she said.

  There was a clear circle around them now, the Goliath army giving them wide berth and funneling around Cyrus and Vara’s battle as though there were some invisible curtain wall routing them left and right. Cyrus knew it was merely smart movement on the part of the Goliath attackers—after all, who wanted to be hit by a flailing troll?

  The troll Cyrus was facing brought a hand down hard and Cyrus blocked it with his blade, forcing the troll’s arm back. He struck for the hip again and was rewarded with another grunt from the troll. The gap-toothed grimace and yellow eyes were pointed toward him and a bellow filled the air, followed by curdled breath that nearly caused Cyrus to blanch. Worse than being stabbed, almost.

  He kept from gagging only barely and drove Praelior home to the hip one more time, this time opening up the already nasty slash fully and driving the blade all the way through. He felt the tip of Praelior exit the troll’s buttock and he brought it down with all his force. The troll staggered and Cyrus tugged his weapon free. The troll wobbled for just a beat before the leg tore loose completely and the beast hit the ground with a scream. Blood squirted from the green monster’s exposed pelvis, and Cyrus shook his head and grimaced. Not a fun way to go down.

  “You lollygagger,” Vara said, and he turned his head to see her shaking hers at him. She stood waiting, eyes thinly slitted, watching him. Her shining silver armor was completely green from the waist down, and he saw the trolls she’d faced lying finished on the ground. The rest of the Goliath army was still surging around them, though now Cyrus suspected it had more to do with the fact that the two of them had massacred every troll thrown their way.

  In his ears hung a near-silence. Certainly, there was still the buzz of the battlefield and the cries of war and clashes of metal that came with it. But near to them there was a pocket of quiet, as even the Goliath warriors that charged round their small, peaceful space on the field kept their voices subdued. They made no war cry, just ran into the Sanctuary lines with eyes darting toward Cyrus and Vara. They ran headlong into spears and swords waiting for them, awestruck and frightened.

  He saw this all in seconds, saw more than one of the Goliath warriors continue on in spite of the obvious reservations on their faces. What horror would await them if they failed to charge? he wondered.

  This thought was interrupted by the long, low, blowing of a horn. It was followed again by another, then another. Cyrus felt the smile creep across his lips as it echoed through the air, and the area around him remained peaceful, free of any Goliath warriors.

  The thundering of hooves was the next sound to break over the battle. Even knowing it was coming, he was not prepared. It started low and grew louder, coming to a crescendo as the horses drew in sight to Cyrus’s left. They swept along like the tide running u
p on the beach. The army of Goliath was driven before them like the grains of sand under the waves, hit sidelong and utterly unprepared. Few of them had spears; even fewer of them managed to turn them to make use of them.

  The line of Goliath’s assault broke, their charge began to crumble. Warriors ran away from the coming cavalry, away from the heart of the battle, trying to find some escape.

  The Luukessian cavalry had reached the area in front of Cyrus. Their swords and spears and axes rose and fell as they galloped across the field of battle. Blood filled the air in a haze, clouds of red and angry splashes of violence running along the length of the entire Luukessian column. The charge went on for long minutes, and Cyrus watched the whole time, Vara at his side.

  Malpravus was visible, here and there, through the horses. He and Terian both were, though the dark knight less so. The dark elven army behind them—the last of the Sovereign’s force to throw into the battle—was already folding and running, their retreat obvious even through the charging line of horsemen that was even now snaking back around to pursue. This Cyrus knew because it had been his orders.

  “Think they’ll catch him?” Cyrus asked, still watching Malpravus through the line of battle.

  “Not a chance,” Vara said, oddly still. “He’ll run. Terian, too.” As if to emphasize her point, Cyrus saw a sparkle of light through the cavalry, and Malpravus was gone. “It would appear the day is won, General.”

  Cyrus glanced at her—just out of the corner of his eye, almost afraid to look at her straight on. Her cheeks were flushed from battle and possibly more. “Indeed,” he said. “Looks like we’re almost done here.”