“Aye,” Terian said, after a long, strained pause of minutes. “I was.”
“But you came back to us,” Cyrus said, and turned his attention forward again.
“I did.”
“Why?” Cyrus asked, looking out over the field of the enemy, coming at them like onrushing death, their limitless numbers only broken by the countless corpses left on the ground as the front line retreated.
There was another long pause, and Cyrus prepared to issue the advancing order when the answer came, quiet, subtle. “I told you. Because Alaric asked me to.”
Cyrus shook his head. “All right-let’s go!” He leaned into the next one of the beasts that came at him, moving forward instead of back, taking an offensive posture instead of staying with the line. This time, however, the line moved around him. The second rank stepped up, and others came with him-Curatio, mace in hand, smashing the skull of one of the foes that crossed him. Nyad was in the center of the formation, her staff at the ready, two druids alongside her, ready to blaze fire and create a gap if needed. Aisling was at his side, as was Terian at the other. Martaina and Scuddar had blades in hand and were fighting their way through as well. A few others were along, but it was a tight-knit formation, a seed pod in the midst of roiling winds of chaos, and as Scuddar and Martaina pulled away from the front line it became a contained little bubble only so wide, a circular line of their own, now separated from the ranks of their fellows.
Cyrus saw Longwell down the line of defense that they had just left, his lance skewering two of the scourge while his men covered him. The dragoon looked up and saw Cyrus, and hesitated for only a moment before pulling his lance free and attacking the next enemy that came against the Galbadien army that backed him. He does well at the head of an army of his own; he would make a fine General for Sanctuary. Cyrus looked back and saw Odellan leading a force of men and women to cover Cyrus’s advance, keeping the increasing numbers of scourge from pushing them back, fighting desperately to keep forward, to not surrender an inch of ground. He’ll hold til we get back-another fine General.
They were away from the front rank now by fifty feet, surrounded by the enemy, who came at them two and three deep, crawling over each other trying to attack them. Cyrus’s sword remained in motion, constant, flowing, cutting their foes to ribbons of blood in the snow, blooming black flowers of death on the trampled ground of the battlefield.
“It’s moving,” Martaina said cautiously, her short swords a flurry of motion. “Looks like it’s heading away.”
“How far are we gonna pursue this thing?” Terian asked. “And please don’t say all the way to the depths of the Realm of Death, because we’ve been there, and it’s no party.”
“I don’t know,” Cyrus said, his weapon moving in front of him, where he stood at the head of the attack party. “If it’s going to constantly circle away from us, I don’t see much need to keep going because there’s no way we can chop through these things fast enough to catch it.” He brought his sword aloft for a long, swinging chop across an enemy leaping at him, and he watched Praelior glimmer faintly in the close of day.
“Whoa,” Terian said, “it stopped.”
“Sudden, too,” Aisling added. “It was looking at us and just froze.” She let her hands work in a blur, cutting at the scourge that was coming for her; she caught it across the face with a quick thrust, then spun low and opened its neck.
There was a quiet that fell over them, then Cyrus saw the shadow in the distance that jutted over the heads of the creatures, and it rose higher, at least four times the height of the beasts around it. “Not small,” he breathed.
“It’s looking … right … at us,” Terian said quietly. “I find that very, very unnerving.”
“I don’t blame you,” Aisling said.
Cyrus brought his sword up again and drove Praelior into the skull of a running scourge that came at him. He brought the blade up in the air again and let it descend in a hacking motion, the faint blue glow along the length of the blade gleaming in the early, cloudy twilight.
“Whatever you’re doing,” Aisling said tightly, “is pissing him off. That thing is looking right at us.”
“I’m killing its fellows,” Cyrus said, keeping his weapon light and attacking the beasts that continued to come at him. “This is hardly new.”
“His eyes are right on you,” Terian agreed. “I mean, anchored. It’s watching you, not us.”
“Do you think it senses he’s the General?” Nyad asked.
“Could be,” Aisling answered.
“Fine,” Cyrus said, raising his sword again into a high guard and slashing a leaping scourge into halves in front of him. “Whatever the reason, let him come-”
“It’s your sword,” Aisling said as the ground rumbled beneath them, “that’s what’s catching his attention; and it looks like you get your wish because here he-”
The rumble grew loud now, the shadow in the distance that was as large as a small house was crossing the snowy ground, chewing it up with surprising speed. Where Cyrus would have imagined the creature be ponderously slowly, it was anything but, rumpled skin becoming plain as it closed on them, the same grey of dead flesh covering its massive bones. It really is the size of a dragon with no wings. “Are you sure it’s my sword that’s catching it?”
“Pretty sure,” Aisling said, steadying herself as she parried the attack of another one of the creatures. “Every time you raised it where he could see the flash, he watched closer. Now that he’s gotten a look at it three times, he’s charging us.”
“I can’t argue with her logic,” Terian said, “her judgment in men, but not her logic. It happened exactly as she describes.”
“If that thing hits our line he’s going to trample his way through,” Curatio said as they held there, the beast traveling toward them. “You might want to-”
“Martaina,” Cyrus said warningly, “Nyad-”
Arrows were already in flight before he could finish his thoughts; the spells followed, a flame spell that shot in a small burst. It was hardly enough to compare to the long, flaming lines that had blocked scourge advances, but it was enough to light up the sky, to slow the massive creature as it barreled toward them, legs like tree trunks pounding feet the size of stumps against the ground, leaving tracks as big in diameter as Cyrus’s shoulders. He clutched Praelior close but kept it moving; even with this thing charging them down, the smaller ones keep coming, their onslaught always threatening to overpower our defense.
It grew closer now, a hundred feet away, thundering across the snowy plain like a dead rhino, its eyes different than the others. There was red in them, reminding him of the eye of a white rat he had once looked into when just a boy. There was intelligence burning in there, too, something far beyond the simple ravening hunger of the others, the mass. This one came for him, watched him, not the others. He could see the exhalations of steaming breath as it came forward, jagged teeth as long as his forearm.
“Nyad!” Cyrus called. “Stop him!” Too fast, he’s not slowing enough from the fire and arrows, and if he splits us, we’re dead, damned sure guaranteed to be overrun in seconds-
There was a flash of light, blinding, from behind Cyrus, white in its intensity, and hands yanked him to the side as the thing burst through the center of them, a grey, blurred leg missing him by inches. Cyrus staggered into Aisling, who had pulled him along, and the thing thundered past, stopping just beyond them, snorting into the air as it shook its head. The others, Cyrus realized, had dodged as well, breaking their small formation down the center. They surged back together now, quickly, and a wall of flame burst forth in front of them, in the open, crushed-down snow where the largest of the scourge had charged through, and it half-circled them in a hundred and eighty degrees of protection.
“A little wall,” Nyad said, her voice strained, “to minimize the vectors of attack. I won’t be able to hold it long.”
“He’s pinned between us and our army,” Cyrus said. “CHARG
E!” he called out over the lines. “CHARGE!” There was movement on the line, and Cyrus could see them begin to fight forward, on the Galbadien side and in the middle of the Sanctuary forces. With Nyad’s flames stymieing the advance of the scourge behind them, Cyrus moved back toward the army, slicing his way toward the creature-the General, he thought of it-as it stood, shaking its head as though it were trying to get its senses back. It took faltering steps, crushing some of its own kind underfoot.
“Be wary,” Curatio said, grasping Cyrus’s arm. “That is no ordinary creature. No ordinary soul.”
“What is it?” Cyrus asked, pausing for just a second, unable to take his eyes off the beast, standing as it was almost three times his height, with such a massive torso as he had not seen on a creature since Mortus himself or Purgatory before it.
“I have only suspicions,” Curatio said icily. “Be careful. There is more to this thing than is readily apparent.”
As though it heard them, it turned, red eyes almost aglow. There was another flash of light, and Cyrus realized it was Curatio blinding the creature, which screeched at them in a high bellowing noise of pain and anger, then came at them in a head-down charge that Cyrus only missed by throwing himself aside at the last second. He skidded in the snow and returned to his feet, clearing the ground around him with a sweep of his sword and ending three more of the scourge in the process.
The General of the scourge was now before him again, halted before the wall of fire. The line was close by, now, and Cyrus watched them advance, thinning steadily decreasing numbers in the middle of the battlefield that were pincered between the front rank and Cyrus’s separated group. Less to worry about here, and maybe I can kill this thing before it gets its bearings again. He took off at a slow run, approaching quietly, sword in hand as the beast tried to blink its eyes back to normal once more, heavy, grey lids shuttering over the red pupils, irises and everything else.
As Cyrus reached it, he jumped-a hop to take him to the lower hindquarters of the thing, where he plunged his blade into the muscle of the left rear thigh. He drew a shriek of rage more than pain, and the leg moved abruptly where he had planted his feet upon landing, jarring him and his sword loose. He fell the five feet or so to the ground, hit the snow and rolled backward and to his feet again. He spun the sword in his grasp, back to facing upright, and brought it forward into a slicing attack as the creature turned into him. He narrowly dodged a butt of its head as it lashed back at him in a sideways motion.
Cyrus brought a sword slash across the side of its wrinkled, rotted face and it let out a roar that flooded his senses with the smell of dead things; a rot of bodies that made him gag and taste the return of his bread and water with stomach bile mixed in for good measure. His ears rang with the sound of it.
A leaping attack onto the giant scourge’s back caused it to arch its spine and howl. Aisling landed with her blades buried into the flesh and for a moment it bucked onto its back legs. Cyrus watched the sultry grin of the dark elf vanish as she was flung away. She landed on her feet and slithered quickly back while killing two scourge that blocked her retreat.
There were arrows sticking out of the General’s back and head. Cyrus could not see Martaina on the other side of the thing, but her handiwork was obvious when it exposed its other side to him. It came at him, ignoring all else, mouth open and teeth exposed. Cyrus met it head on, driving the sword into its face as it snapped at him. He missed the eyes but caught the snouted nose, leaving a great gash between the nostrils.
“Thick-skinned!” Terian shouted from somewhere to his right. Cyrus saw Scuddar In’shara attack with his curved blade on the end of the tail. Cyrus started to tell the desert man not to bother but was forced to dodge another snap of the jaws.
“Reminds me of a dragon,” Cyrus shouted back to Terian. “Any chance this is Ashan’agar? He’s dead and was none too happy with me when last we parted.”
“Or Kalam,” Terian replied, now visible in Cyrus’s peripheral vision, fending off the smaller scourge while Cyrus focused on the General. “You did kill him twice, and you sleep on a bed made of his bones.”
“It’s not what you think,” Curatio said, appearing between the two of them. His hand came out, glowed briefly, and Cyrus felt the banal wounds of the fight thus far disappear, minor scrapes knitting themselves shut. He clutched his mace in both hands, holding it ready, and swung it around to crush the skull of one of the scourge, causing it to go dead and fall, twitching, into a pile.
“I think I’ve killed a couple dragons,” Cyrus said, waiting for the beast in front of him to make its next move. It seemed almost overwhelmed, looking at the assault coming at it from all directions-Scuddar had cut off its tail six feet from the tip, Nyad was bombarding it with spells, Martaina had expended a dozen or more arrows around its face. Cyrus watched Terian and Aisling keeping the remaining scourge back while the two druids maintained the wall of flames routing the other scourge away from them and toward the rest of the battle line, which was holding. “This thing looks big enough to be one of them-and it also seems to be carrying one hell of a grudge against me.” Cyrus met the gaze of the thing and it honed in on him again, the red eyes flicked downward, off his, away from all the other distractions and locked on to his hands.
“Don’t you see?” Curatio said, to his right. “It doesn’t care about you at all! It’s your sword-that’s what it cares about-and not that it’s your sword, but that it’s Praelior.”
There was a bellow from the creature at that moment, deafening, at the sound of Curatio’s words. Cyrus blinked and stared at it, holding his blade forward as it stared back at him, ignoring the attacks of all the others that surrounded the dead creature. “Praelior,” Cyrus said, and another bellow was loosed, this one louder, more violent, and the beast turned its head down, ready to charge. “It’s the sword,” Cyrus whispered. “But why?”
“Because,” Curatio said, as the General of the scourge began its charge toward them, “it was HIS once upon a time.”
Cyrus dodged out of the way as though the creature were a bull, but only just. It was fast, fast enough that the grey head skipped off his elbow, causing it to go numb even as he rolled out of the way of the charge. “No …” Cyrus muttered, looking at the creature as it turned around, its red eyes finding him again, finding the blade in his hands, his lifeline. “It can’t be …”
“It is,” Curatio said simply. “You face all that remains of Drettanden-the God of Courage.”
Chapter 85
“Mortus, you bastard,” Cyrus said as the Drettanden-scourge turned to come at him again. “What the hell were you doing with these things?”
“Feeding off of them,” Curatio answered, and Cyrus heard the tension in his voice. “Ten thousand years in the Realm of Death being used like that and I expect you’d be a bit put out as well.”
“God of Courage,” Cyrus said, whipping Praelior in front of him. “Well. I believe I’ve killed gods before.”
“Don’t-”
Curatio’s words were lost as the Drettanden beast charged at him again and Cyrus answered with a bellowing warcry of his own and charged, feeling the strength of Praelior. Fear is weakness, fear is undue caution, fear of pain is deadly …
He vaulted, leaping as the enormous scourge put its head down to ram him, dragging his sword beneath him. This is how I used to fight, when I was fearless. No timidity, no concern, no worries to bog me down. No … He blinked, and thought of Vara. No worries for the future. He whipped the blade around as he landed on the other side of Drettanden, and dragged a cut through the beast’s hindquarters. “Of all the gods I’ve met,” Cyrus said as he came back to his feet and the creature came around with a roar, “you’re actually only the second-most dead.” Cyrus frowned. “Does that mean we’re going to see Mortus dolled up like this?”
“I rather doubt it,” Curatio called from across the field, “since it would appear he was the one trapping the souls that have been loosed here. It would have be
en difficult for him to trap himself, what with being preoccupied with dying and all, especially since these lot were breaking free roundabout that very time.”
“Are there more like you?” Cyrus asked, waving the blade in front of him. “Alaric said that other gods died.” There was a bellow from the Drettanden creature at that, and he came at Cyrus again, faster this time, if it was possible. Cyrus started to throw himself to the side and run his blade out but the head came to meet him, the snout landing hard on the inside of his ribcage. Cyrus felt it hit, sending pain shooting through his side and a sudden numbness in his arm. His blade was at full extension; he had been aiming Praelior for the creature’s eye as he dodged.
The stinging agony of the blow sent a numbness up his arm, and when he felt the beast’s snout come up it jarred his already loosened grip. Praelior went spinning into the air and so did Cyrus, but in the opposite direction. He hit the ground hard, at a bad angle, and heard his shoulder break as he did so, rolling poorly out of it in a way that snapped his neck to the side and left him with a tingling numbness below his waist. That … was not good …
He rolled as best he could; his eyes alighted on Praelior on the other side of Drettanden. It was aglow, shining against the white snow. Cyrus breathed heavily into the mush pressed into his beard and tried to lift himself up, but failed. A healing spell landed upon him and he felt his strength return, the feeling in his legs come back and he was already in motion, clawing back to his feet, making his own charge at the beast, which was distracted, torn between him and the sword. A flare of flame caught it in the face and turned it away from him, toward the blade, as Cyrus slipped between its legs and leapt for it, landing in a desperate roll as his fingers clinched around the hilt.
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