“I need you to cast the cessation spell, Mendicant,” Cyrus said. “I need to talk to Terian.”
“Of course, sir,” Mendicant said, and shut his eyes, letting his hand rise as though to cast the power of his spell in the direction he was pointed. His eyes rolled under the thick, scaly lids as Cyrus heard the faintest mumblings under the goblin’s breath. When his eyes opened, Cyrus saw a faint movement around his hands, the barest hint of the air rippling like water, not with the strength of a paladin’s spell but enough to create a disturbance around them, causing the nature of the world to blur within the bounds of the spell in a way Cyrus had never noticed before.
Cyrus squatted down to where Terian sat, legs in front of him. No one had bothered to strip the dark elf of his armor and so he still wore parts of it, dark-tinged metal protection from battle. Normally it was spiked in a way that Cyrus had never seen in armor. Terian’s pauldrons were gone, though, the most lethal piece of pointed armor he possessed, as was the helm, and the jagged additions to his elbows and knees, as well as the dark elf’s boots. He wore a motley assortment of armor and leather, his footcovers now worn, holes in them from all the walking.
Cyrus tugged the gag out of Terian’s mouth, and the dark elf spat out the rock, though not with any particular violence. Cyrus had been ready for him to launch it, but he didn’t. He stared at Cyrus, and Cyrus stared back, but the hostility was all one sided. “I’m leaving,” Cyrus said at last, wondering if Terian would speak at all.
“How nice.” Terian’s tone was cold and flat, and he lifted his hands, still bound. “Finally decided to get out while you can?”
“I’m going to Vernadam to try and involve Galbadien in this war,” Cyrus said, and watched Terian’s expression change not a whit. “I’m taking Longwell and a few others, and I’m going to see if we can tip the scales, because if we don’t it’s going to end very badly. You saw the battle?”
“I saw,” Terian said at last, almost reluctant. “Looks like you’re overmatched.”
“Indeed,” Cyrus said. “This whole land is overmatched by those things.”
Terian shrugged his shoulders; without the spiked pauldrons he was much less intimidating and shorter than Cyrus had noticed before. “They’re all going to die, one town at a time, until this whole damned land is wiped clean. And you get to live with the knowledge that you’re responsible, Cyrus.” Terian broke into a hollow smile. “How’s that feel?”
“I don’t know, Terian,” Cyrus said with more calm than he was feeling, “how does it feel? Because I believe you were right there with me when we killed Mortus.”
“I didn’t make the choice,” Terian snarled back. “I didn’t lunge in front of the God of Death as he was about to strike down a willing sacrifice. I damned sure didn’t cut him or finish striking him down when it was all said and done. I didn’t do it, you did. So, the consequences are yours. Just like my father. I know you didn’t know what it was going to cause you, but the consequences for that are yours, too.” The dark knight let a bitter smile curl his lips. “And aren’t they a real bitch, too?”
“I didn’t know he was your father, you’re right,” Cyrus said, feeling the pressure on his knees as he squatted there next to Terian, “but I would have killed him even if I had.” He watched Terian stiffen. “He was going to kill me, for sure. I know that doesn’t bother you, but I don’t just lie down and die when someone means to have at me.”
“Really?” Terian asked, and it was a cold fury grimace that he wore. “Because I heard you did just that, and Vara had to save you.”
“Maybe she did,” Cyrus said, “but I wasn’t going to let her fall, not at the hands of your father, not at the hands of the God of Death, not by anyone, not then.”
“I dunno, Cyrus,” Terian said, still wearing his smile, “your elf-bitch sounds like more trouble than she’s worth. She seems to have landed you in all manner of shit. You’re in deep now, old friend, near to over your head, if you’re not already.”
“She’s not mine,” Cyrus said. “Not anymore, if she ever was.”
There was a silence for a beat, only the sound of Mendicant’s continued incantation behind them. “You realize, of course,” Terian said, “that if you’d only let my father kill her, none of this would have happened. Not any of the deaths here in Luukessia, not you and I-”
“Somehow, I think if you’d been there on the bridge, you might have seen it differently,” Cyrus said. “Your father, a man you talk about when you’re drunk as though he’s the second coming of Yartraak-” Cyrus watched Terian blanch, “-and yet when he’s dead you lionize him. You’re willing to throw away your entire life to for a man who you couldn’t stand while he was alive. Would you have let Vara die, standing on that bridge? Do you have so little regard for your guildmates that you would have switched sides right there, shifted your allegiance to the Sovereignty without care for the words you swore to Alaric, to the loyalties you pledged to me, to our fellows?” Cyrus gave a wide sweep of the arm to take in all of the people around them. “Or would you have just … abandoned your duty? Let him hammer her down with a sword until she died, let him go through the rest of us one by one until he’d killed us all and taken Termina for the Sovereign?” Cyrus watched Terian with cool loathing, saw the doubt buried deep in the dark elf. “Did you love him? Was his path the one you envied, or did you have prickle of conscience somewhere inside that was as quiet as an ember snuffed out of a dead fire? Which was it, Terian? Did you leave him or did he cast you out? Was he the one you wanted to be? Or was he everything you hated about yourself?”
Cyrus stood, and looked down on the dark elf, who kept his head low, his lips a thin, drawn line, near-purple. “If you’re the sort who would abandon your loyalties the moment any trouble came your way, then I will send you with Mendicant right now, today, when he goes to ask Alaric for more aid. He can decide what’s to be done with you-but as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather see you exiled from Sanctuary if that’s the sort of loyalty you carry.”
“I’m … no … traitor,” Terian said, and he bent his face upward toward Cyrus, contorted in fury. “I would have had my revenge on you and been done with it and quietly, so no one would ever have to know.”
“Well then, it seems you’re in a state of dissonance, Terian,” Cyrus said, and stared down at him, “because you want to maintain loyal ties to Sanctuary and all that entails, but you want to kill a man who upheld the ideals you at least pretend you hold to. Faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty-these aren’t just things we pay lip service to-”
“I … never … just paid lip service to what we do,” Terian said. “I was there in the Mountains of Nartanis, in Enterra, remember? I’ve been there, in the places where we’ve spilled blood, and I never took the craven’s way out, not once. You can call me a lot of things, Cyrus, and I am a lot of things, but I’m not a-”
“Coward?” Cyrus said. “You’re not an … Orion, only in it for yourself?”
A look of loathing came over the dark knight’s features and he leaned forward. “Say that again … and give me another reason to want to kill you.”
“Why wouldn’t I say it? You were there when he betrayed me, tried to kill me-like you did.” Terian struggled against the bonds that held him as though he could break the chains. After a moment, the rattling stopped, the sound of him fighting against the inevitable. “But I tell you what. I’ll give you a chance to prove yourself a loyal guildmate and not a treacherous killer.”
“Oh, this should be good.” The rage broke over Terian’s features and he shook his head. “What would you have of me? To run suicidally into the open jaws of those beasts?”
“I would have you stand at the front of our army and help to lead them, help to hold the line, like you said you would when Alaric allowed you back to our guild,” Cyrus said. “I’m leaving to summon help. We need more of it here. Make a choice, Terian. You can either go back to Sanctuary with Mendicant when he goes to request aid and go wherever the w
ind and your will takes you after that, or you can stay here, help the Sanctuary army, and try to prove that you still do have some honor-some loyalty-left. That you’re not just some shadow of your father’s, trying to strike a last blow out of an empty sense of revenge that will cost you all that you have left.”
There was a shuffle to Cyrus’s left, and he saw Aisling not far away. She made just enough noise that he knew it was intentional, trying to gather his interest. “Think it over, Terian,” Cyrus said. “Either way, once I’m gone, you’ll be on your way-either back to Sanctuary or turned loose here. Decide what you want to be, dark knight. A defender of those who need it or the avenger of someone who you loathed so much in life that you couldn’t bring yourself to be anything like him or even serve the same master as he.”
“And what are you?” Terian said, and Cyrus heard the clinking of chains as Terian willed himself up, dragged himself to his feet with perfect balance and hard effort. “Some champion of the downtrodden, ready to fight your way to the death to impress a woman who doesn’t want you? Do you think she’ll still be yours if you die here trying to save these people? Do you think it’ll undo all the damage you did, if you just fight for them a little harder? What do you believe in, Cyrus? Protecting people? Rushing headlong into things, hoping to do good? Because it seems like your best intentions are doing more harm than good of late. Maybe you should stop trying to help people.”
“Go back to Sanctuary,” Cyrus said with a wave, and began to walk away. “Go back to them and listen while Mendicant tells them what a coward you were, if Ryin hasn’t already. Be on your way, dark knight. For all your talk, you don’t believe in anything but petty, shallow revenge-”
“You don’t know a damned thing, Cyrus Davidon!” Terian’s roar was loud, and he came at Cyrus in a charge, shoulder tucked low. Cyrus parried and kicked Terian’s legs from underneath him, and the dark knight fell to his face in the dirt, the long grass sticking up all around him like towers hanging over him, the little lines of their shadows stretching across his dark armor as they waved in the breeze. “Of course you wouldn’t, you don’t even know what it’s like to have a father-”
Cyrus landed a kick on Terian’s ribs without even realizing he was going to do it, the white-hot blinding flash of rage subsiding after he heard the grunt of pain from the dark elf. “Now who’s talking about something they know nothing of?” Cyrus asked, taking long, slow breaths. “Make your choice, Terian. I don’t care which it is, but figure out who you want to be.”
“I’ll stay,” Terian said, looking up from the dirt, cradling his arm against his side where Cyrus kicked him. “I’ll help. I’ll help protect the people. But I want you to know-”
“We’re not done,” Cyrus said. “I’m well aware that you’ve still got your axe to grind-though I suppose it’s a sword, now.” He turned to face Mendicant. “Pass the word that when I’m gone later tonight, he can be freed. Until then …” Cyrus knelt down and grabbed the stone off the ground along with the gag, “… back to blessed silence.” Terian glared at him but opened his mouth, accepting the stone, and then Cyrus tied off the gag behind him. The eyes watched Cyrus, though, the hatred burned, and he felt it, it coursed through his veins like a poison as he stared into the eyes of his friend-and gagged him so tightly he couldn’t make a sound.
Chapter 68
“That was awkward,” Aisling said as he slipped past her, not bothering to conceal his motions. The sun was creeping lower in the sky, now afternoon, and the wind was steady out of the north, not intermittent as it had been. “Are you sure letting him loose is the best of ideas? What if he follows you?”
“You know we’re going, right?” He watched her, taking long steps over a sleeping body to stand beside her. She nodded, and he realized he was standing closer to her now than he had ever before in camp. “He’ll be of use to them. Let him have his chance to redeem himself.”
“And if he doesn’t?” She played with her hair as he watched, twisting it around her finger, the white blending with the dark blue, a bright contrast, as though both were painted, so different from his own skin and hair. “If he tracks you, and kills you?”
“That’s why I’m taking you with me,” Cyrus said with an easy smile that he felt not at all. He was getting better at it, he realized with only a slight discomfort. “This way, you’ll be there to watch my back. If you’re not too busy with my front, that is …” He leaned toward her, let his armor rest against her, and then took a long, slow kiss, right there in front of the entire camp.
She pulled away from him leisurely, opening her eyes slowly after the kiss. “You realize you just did that in front of …”
“Everyone, yes,” Cyrus said and kissed her again. “I don’t care who knows, who sees. I’ve seen some of them do it as well, the soldiers. They crawl into their bedrolls together at night and everyone pretends to give them the illusion of privacy, like a silent law we all follow. Well, I want it too, to stop hiding, to stop worrying about it, to have you when I want you instead of always worrying I’ll be found out.” His hand slipped around her hip and pulled her waist close to him. “I don’t want to hide anymore. I just want to have you whenever I want.”
She watched him cannily, with a slight smile. “That might prove awkward in the midst of a battle.”
“Try to pretend you wouldn’t find it incredibly arousing.”
She took a moment of slow inhale to pretend as though she were thinking about it. “Perhaps. But as we are not presently in a battle, there’s no need to consider it. If you want to have me as a soldier has his lover, you need only lay out a bedroll and crawl in it with me and let the rest take its course. There’s no danger but the idea that others will see their General having an immensely good time.”
He let himself smile again, fake but with a foundation in the grim reality that he wanted to unburden himself, to claim that relief she gave him. “Well, there is another danger,” he said, as he slid a hand around her waist to lead her off to where his pack lay, near his saddle, across the camp, “… after all, you do tend to bite when you’re overly excited …”
She slapped him in mock offense as he led her away, and they put down the bedroll on the ground and climbed into it. Everyone saw, but no one watched, and they remained beneath it until they were both well and truly sated.
Chapter 69
Vara
Day 47 of the Siege of Sanctuary
The dark elven army held its distance, she knew, though she rarely went to the wall to see for herself. It was a quiet night, all things considered, after another long day of riding the Plains of Perdamun looking for caravans to raid. This morning they had caught a fat one, killing almost two hundred dark elven soldiers in the process. In the afternoon they’d managed to spring a trap on another, sending some hundred and fifty more soldiers to their deaths and securing almost twenty wagons laden with goods and riches. Vara stared at her hand, which clutched an inlaid silver bracelet with a soft clasp that snapped gently when she pushed it closed. There was a light circle of the precious metal that parted, a decent-sized ruby encrusted within. Not the possession of a noble, she knew, not locked up as it was in one of the caravans. It was something owned by a farmer, given to his wife after a particularly good harvest. It lacked polish, but the ruby still shone, and she wondered which poor sod had lost his valuables in addition to his crop. And likely his life as well and the life of his family, knowing how these dark elves operate.
The lounge was muted around her. Ever since the guard had taken up in the foyer every hour of every day, fewer and fewer people seemed to enjoy conversations, exchanges, and ale within the bounds of the lounge. I suppose it’s rather difficult to make merry when there’s a visible reminder that we’re under siege only a few feet away. Perhaps I’d be happier in my room as well, were I one of them. She had a book across her lap, but it lay unopened. The Champion and the Crusader, something she’d read dozens of times, the words as familiar to her now as any expression her moth
er had ever used. It was usually a good distraction. Usually.
Without warning, or even a clear idea of what she was doing, she stood and let her feet carry her. In times of peace I’d wear cloth and leather. Now we live in times of war, and I go nowhere without my armor and my sword. She let her fingers touch the hilt and guard and then mentally slapped herself for again acting like Cyrus.
The front doors of Sanctuary swung wide from her effort; they were not nearly as heavy as they appeared, which prompted her to wonder for the thousandth time if they had an enchantment on them. She had always meant to ask Alaric, but whenever she came into his presence there were always more consequential matters to discuss. The crickets were chirping in the warm night air, and she took each step slowly, drawing her pace so slow that she could feel the resonance of her every step clacking on the stone of the Sanctuary steps, each sound ringing out like the noise of the catapult’s firing through the glass window atop the foyer. She glanced back; it had been repaired, oddly enough, and quickly.
When she reached the dirt path, she stepped off it, letting her feet sink into the soft grass. Even though she couldn’t feel it, she drew some odd reassurance from the green, springy vegetation. It was the nearest sort of affirmation she could find, something that harkened her back to her childhood lessons in the Temple of Life, where the Priestesses of Vidara spoke to her for hours about the Goddess and all Her wonders. She chooses the lengths of all the grasses, they said, and the seasons of their growth, and all that they become. She chooses the ones that live, and the ones that die as seedlings, and all the trees of the forest. She took one step after another, letting her feet settle in the grass, while overhead the stars gleamed down at her, an endless field of them.
Does he see them, where he is? Is he under the stars tonight? Or staying in some great castle, or a quiet wayside inn? Is he at peace or war right now? Did he find a way to best this scourge that plagues those lands or … She left that thought unfinished by the words in her mind; the unspoken unease that it reflected was not similarly dismissed so easily.
Crusader s-4 Page 61