There was a shrug from the figure in the shadows. “I assure you it is not as ominous as you make it sound; it actually is quite banal. But to the earlier point, about being alone … well, you are correct, after a fashion. There are friends here, companions, those who guard our gates against the outside world, who watch each others’ backs, find friendly company herein, and more perhaps-love, laughter, all these things. Yet when we leave this world, we do so alone. When we wander through it, much as we might make of having companions there, many of us do not share the load, shoulder the burdens of others. Then again, this should be no great mystery to you … since you have chosen to do so all the days I have known you.”
“I was betrayed,” she said quietly. “It takes a bit of time after that to-”
“I realize.” He was unflinching, she heard it in his tone. “But once you did move past it, you let your fear take hold of you, you acted on it without consideration-”
She laughed, a high, empty sound that was no more real than Alaric when he was transformed into mist. “It feels peculiar that you should lecture me about this.”
There was a quiet in the darkness. “I don’t mean to lecture.” Alaric leaned forward, suddenly, his chin visible through the gap at the jaw of his helm, and he was urgent now. “I only mean to tell you that however long you think your life is, if you go through it alone, it will drag. It will crush you, the weight of it, like a wagon filled to the top with no wheels to carry it on, pulled by a team of old horses. Those things you attribute to others-love, friendship, companionship-these are the wheels that make your passage go easy. True, there are ruts in the road that you would not experience had your wagon no wheels, but that is only because the day-to-day passage of the hours is all rut, all scrape, no smoothness.” The light in the room shifted and illuminated the holes where his eyes were, and she saw they were wild. “You made choices in fear because of what you lost. You threw away everything you had left, and like a fool I said nothing, too wrapped up in my own problems to acknowledge or intervene. But the day has come where you regret what you have done, where you know it was foolish, and yet I know you-and I know pride-and you are the second most prideful and stubborn invidual I have ever met in my long life. I warn you now-cast it aside. Be done with it. Your pride, your fear, is keeping you from the life you might have, is dividing you from all you could want.” He seemed to recede then, pull back in his chair, leaving only his hand stretched out across the table, as though he were reaching out to her.
She sat stiffly upright in the chair, his chair, her head pressed against the wood behind her. Her eyes burned from holding them open, so she let them close, and the darkness was little more than what she had already been looking at. The weight of her armor was more pronounced now that she was settled in the chair, and there was a gaping sound in her ears, a silence; even her breathing was not audible. “I hear your words,” she said. “But it occurs to me, Alaric, in all the years I have been here, that I have never seen you try to do what you encourage me to do now, that you have never moved beyond Raifa-”
“And I tell you this,” Alaric said in a hiss, “so as to steer you around my mistakes. Just as I always have in other areas, now I want to-need to-attend to this last concern.” He waved a hand and the torches flared to life, the hearth came roaring back to fire, and Vara’s eyes snapped open at the glow of orange. “Life does not last forever, unimpeded,” he said, and she saw the blaze in his eyes through the holes of his helm, as though the torches were reflected in them. “Not yours, not mine, not his. You have talked to others of regrets, of the ones you feared should he die first, and I tell you now, as someone who has felt it-I would not have given her up, not cast out her memory or done away with it had I a chance. I embrace the pain for the rest of my days in spite of it and would not wish to be rid of it if the alternative was to have never had it happen at all.” He flinched at his own words. “She was everything to me, Vara, and her loss has haunted me all these years. You say it seems strange to come from me because I live now as though I were dead inside, never moved beyond her. This is true; when she died, a part of me died with her, a part that will never come back to life. But if I had it to do all over, I would do it exactly the same, even if it meant experiencing the pain once more, because the alternative …” he swallowed heavily, “… would be to never have lived at all, truly.” He looked back up at her. “Consider what I have said.” She started to speak, and he waved her off. “Consider it.” With that, his eyes closed, and he began to fade, becoming smoke and mist, which drifted, slowly, out the crack under the door behind her.
The hearth flickered, and so did the torches at the last great rush of air as he left her behind, his presence departing and changing the currents in the room as he did so. She sat there for quite some time, wondering at his words, wondering at his change, and for some time after that … wondering what had prompted such musings on the finite lives of mortals.
Chapter 83
Cyrus
The battles were long, the snow was deep and the cold was bitter. Cyrus had come off the front line after just under twenty-four hours; he had fought through the night, slaughtering more of the scourge than he could count. It was midday now, the snows had stopped but the wind blew, causing it to drift, blowing sideways over the flat lands upon which they battled. His nose was cold, frigid enough to feel like it was frozen stiff, but he sat in front of a warm fire now, a mile behind the battle, and heard the sound of the war in the distance.
“This is a peculiar way to fight,” J’anda said in the midday gloom. The clouds hanging over them were meager cover, casting a shroud of grey over everything. The enchanter had bread in his hand, nibbling at it. “I have never been part of a battle so large that it rages while you can leave it behind, take a break, use the latrines, then come back to find it still going.”
“It’s not exactly like anything I’ve ever done before, either,” Cyrus said, Aisling next to him, chewing on the nub of bread she held in her hands. “Can you imagine taking a breather like this in the midst of fighting the Dragonlord? Or the goblins in the depths of Enterra? Or on the bridge in Termina?” He shook his head and sipped from a skin of water that had been filled by Nyad with a touch and a word as he passed, dragging himself off the front line of battle.
“These things are utter madness,” J’anda said, looking to Curatio, who sat next to him, unspeaking, and Terian, who sat idly, not saying anything but staring at his gauntlets. “They throw countless numbers at us, watch them get ground up and die, but throw more yet. I was not exaggerating when I said that I could not determine how they think. There is no guessing, not from what I saw inside the mind of the one I tried to commune with. If our soldier was right, that there is a General of some sort out there, that may be the key.” He looked to Cyrus. “My view was somewhat obstructed, sitting in the back of the lines and of very little use for the first time in my life. Did you see it while you were up there?”
Cyrus thought about it for a minute then shook his head. “I saw something out there, big, but far in the distance. It never got close enough for me to catch much more than a shadow, even in the best light today.”
“I saw it,” Aisling said.
“Me too.” Terian did not look up from his gauntlets.
“Must be nice to have such fine eyesight,” Cyrus said. “What did it look like?”
“Like one of them,” Terian said, waving his hand in the direction of the battle, “but writ large; four legs, walking around like a dragon without wings. It kept low, though, lower than I think it normally would have, like it knew we had archers and it wanted to be low profile. It was out on the edge of sight, and it stayed there during most of the fight.”
“Most?” Cyrus asked.
“It came closer once,” Aisling took over for Terian. “Not much, but a little. At the beginning of the fight, when we got to the front of the line. That’s when I noticed it, when I felt its presence. After that it receded, like it didn’t want to be see
n.”
Cyrus chewed that one over for a minute. “You think this thing is the mastermind? The brain of the operation?”
Terian chuckled. “If this operation has any brains other than the ones it eats on the field of battle, yes.”
“What if we made a direct assault at it?” Cyrus asked.
“Sounds like a fine way to lose your body,” Curatio murmured. “Have you seen what happens when these things start to lose any ground? They throw more at you, more of their numbers. Failing that, they hit you on either side, drive back the lines around you so you end up bulged, in a little pocket, sticking out like an arm, Then they winnow it, chopping into the sides at your weakest point until they can surround you; then it is over.” He slapped his hands together and the echoing noise was loud enough to startle Martaina, who had been sleeping nearby, into jumping to her feet, bow drawn and arrow already nocked. “Sorry,” Curatio breathed, and the ranger nodded, replaced the arrow and bow across her chest, and lay back down.
“You don’t think it’s possible to stage an assault on that thing without getting swallowed by the scourge army and destroyed?” Cyrus asked, chewing on a stubbornly hard piece of bread. The grains cracked in his teeth and the yeasty flavor lingered on his tongue. He stook a swig out of the water skin to wash it out.
“I think that you’re talking about trying to storm something alive as though it’s a fortification,” Curatio said carefully. “It moves, Cyrus. Let us assume you managed to cut your way across the field of battle towards it: what’s to stop it from retreating once it realizes what you’re up to? Soon enough you’re on a chase to wherever it leads, which, by the way, is halfway to perdition and with the whole of its army surrounding you.” He angled his head. “Unless you have some idea of how to escape that, which I am unaware of.”
Cyrus ran a hand over his chin, brushing the crumbs out of his beard. He let the faintest hint of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth, and stared straight ahead as the others gradually stopped what they were doing and looked at him, at the curious hint of something long gone, now appearing upon his face. A smile? How long has it been …
“Well, you know … I actually do have an idea …”
Chapter 84
The battle raged on; it came evenfall and darkness, and they returned to the front as the line worked its way back to them. The smell of the latrines had grown strong in the hours Cyrus waited with the others-resting, most of them did, lying in their bedrolls. He and Aisling had burned off nervous energy, as always, but he had not joined her in sleep. Also as always, of late. He lay awake in the clouded afternoon light and felt the snowy ground beneath him. The cold seeped, but not too badly; it seemed warmer today than it had the day before for whatever reason, even in spite of the lack of sun. The lingering taste of the water and bread was little enough for sustenance, but he had eaten plenty. Sleep would not come, however, not with the calls of battle growing ever nearer, and the snoring of Terian just across the fire. The thought of his plan rustled around in his mind like a cat trapped in a sack, twisting every way possible to get loose of what held it.
Soon enough it was time to go again, and someone shook his shoulder, waking him out of a sleep he didn’t even realize he had fallen into. It was Aisling, already dressed. She leaned down and kissed him, and for a moment the smell of her sweat from battle and their lovemaking overpowered everything else in the camp. When she broke free of him he sat up and began to put on his armor. She did not help, having already moved on, heading over the hill in the direction of the latrines.
The lines were almost upon them now, Cyrus realized, the sound of fighting coming from only a few hundred feet away. This will be a long and yet short few days, and then we shall be backed against Enrant Monge, forced into the walls of the keep for safety if we cannot turn them back. Then what? They can breach the walls, surely, as they did at Scylax, and then we will find ourselves surrounded. He thought of the stableboy, of what he had said, and of the refugees that filled the keep, of their slow, dragging procession out of the gates and toward the south. This will go ill for them if we cannot hold back the tide of these things; they will run out of places to go.
He waited once his armor was on; the others lingered as well, as though afraid somehow to be on about the day. The line of battle came ever closer, and when they could ignore it no more, Cyrus pulled to his feet, drew his blade and stepped toward the fight. He heard the others with him, and cast a look back to see some stewards and young boys gathering up the things they had left behind, throwing them in the backs of wagons that waited across the camp, horses snorting into the cold air. The wagons began to move as Cyrus reached the back line of the fight, and he wondered how far away they would retreat, and how long it would be before he went back to rest again-or at least try.
He took long, crunching steps through the lines until he reached the front. He began to use his blade to fend off the scourge as they made their way forward, inexorably, open mouths ravenous to take life, to bleed it out on the snow in great red stains. He hacked the head from one, tore limbs from another, then made a move at yet another still that charged him before a perfectly aimed arrow took its eye and caused it to fall still as it slid across the snow to his feet.
The battle turns to a slog, he thought, nothing more than a steady expectation that we will retreat, that there is no momentum to be had. What madness is this that we fight a battle with no expectation to win? Praelior gleamed with its soft glow, and the blood he spilled did not remain on it.
“So are we going forward with this blatant ploy to have ourselves all declared mad?” Terian was close beside him. “Because otherwise I’m quite content to remain here, gradually retreating.”
“The problem with gradually giving ground,” Cyrus said as he slammed his blade home in one of the creature’s ribs, “is that sooner or later, no matter how gradually you’re doing it, you run out of ground to give.” Three sprang at him like dogs and he sliced them out of the air with little thought and only instinct to guide him. “We move now.”
“Oh, good,” Terian said lightly, “I didn’t really want to go on living anyway. Dull existence, you know, drinking, whoring, eating nice foods in pleasant places …”
“You’ve been locked in chains for months when you haven’t been eating conjured bread and water and fighting these things,” Aisling said from Cyrus’s left as her daggers danced while she spun aside to let a charging scourge brush past her. Her daggers hit it four times as it went by and it collapsed, knocking down a warrior behind her as it slid to a stop. “And if you’ve had any woman in that time, I’d be shocked-”
“Fine,” Terian said, and Cyrus could hear the scowl in the way he said it. “I really don’t care if I go on living since I’ve been deprived of all those things anyway, but it would have been nice to have a last meal-not insubstantial bread-before we went forward with this idiocy.”
“Now, Terian,” Cyrus said, “if we’d had a so-called last meal for that purpose, where would your motivation be to fight your way back after what we’re about to do? Nowhere, that’s where; you’d have peaked in your life, and with nothing before you but the dim, boringness of being a soulless mercenary, you’d probably just lie down and let them eat you right there.”
“Wow.” Terian’s answer sounded slightly shocked and partially amused. “I think I miss the dour and sour Cyrus Davidon, the one who didn’t know what to do with a woman in his bedroll. I thought you were truly heading toward the path to desperation and I was eager to see what you did when you got there.” He waved a hand vaguely at Aisling as he brought his sword down in the middle of a scourge’s head. “Other than her, I mean.”
“I think I’m just coming back to myself now,” Cyrus said with a slash that sent a scourge screeching away from him missing a limb. “I want to live. At least long enough to get some hard drink, like Reikonosian whiskey, and throw down a toast to the ones we lost without even knowing it.”
There was a pause then Terian spok
e again. “You’re beginning to sound more and more like a mercenary every day, Davidon; loose women, hard drink, strong battle, reckless chances-why soon enough, you’ll ask for money in exchange for fighting something.” Terian paused and let that hang in the air. “Not that I’m knocking it, because as you can tell, the mercenary’s life seems to have pretty much everything I want.”
“Then why didn’t you go do that after you left Sanctuary?” Cyrus asked, turning his hips to level a scourge with a sideways slash. Cyrus got busy afterwards as three more of the grey-pallored scourge jumped at him, one going low at his legs, one coming at him from the side and another head-on in a jump. He swiped the two in front of him and turned to deal with the other when Terian’s sword sliced it in two in midair, sending the pieces tumbling past Cyrus, who stepped adroitly out of the way to avoid them.
“Because …” Terian said, and Cyrus saw a hollowness in his eyes that matched what he saw in the pits of eyes that the scourge possessed, “… Alaric asked me to return.”
“What about before that?” Cyrus didn’t let up, cutting apart a scourge then turning back to Terian. “You were gone six months. Six months you walked the face of Arkaria, could have done anything you wanted. Been anything you wanted. So what was it, Terian? You walked the path of your father in those days, didn’t you? Found out how it was, truly was, to stand in his shadow for a good long while, to see all it entailed?”
The dark elf flinched at Cyrus’s words. “Who told you?”
“No one ‘told’ me, at least not in as many words,” Cyrus said, and with a shake of his head was back at the battle, sword in motion. “The Gatekeeper told me, when he stunned you to silence with a subtle accusation. Partus told me, when he said the word Aurastra and you reacted-as though rumors of that one hadn’t percolated around. That was enough, really, to put it together. You said you were in the Sovereignty before you came back to Sanctuary, that you knew the Sovereign had returned because of it. You were working with your father then. You were doing his bidding.”
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