Warlord

by Robert J. Crane

  “Something like that, I suspect,” Terian said, stepping closer now that he was unarmed. “So … you had a run-in with Ehrgraz, yes?”

  “He came for a visit,” Cyrus said, “and I’m hesitant to trust his word.”

  “Don’t hesitate,” Terian said, shaking his head as he removed Alaric’s helm—his helm—from his head. “Ehrgraz’s word is good. If he offers you counsel or alliance in this, he’s sincere. Ehrgraz is like the lone voice of reason among the dragons.” He put a hand through his hair, which glistened with sweat in the torchlight. “He’s been warning them for centuries that the titans were going to be a threat, but no one wants to listen.”

  “If they haven’t listened to him thus far,” Vara said, “why would they start now?”

  “I’m at a loss to explain that,” Terian said. “I assume he has a plan of some sort.” His eyes fixed on Cyrus. “As do you.”

  “You don’t even have to assume that,” Cyrus observed. “You know.”

  “I know,” Terian said. “When have you ever gotten close to a battle without a plan? I knew the minute I heard about Emerald Fields that you’d be working on something.” He beckoned them toward the throne. “Spill it. What’s the idea?”

  Cyrus hesitated. “Listen … I just need your help with the dragon end of—”

  “So you don’t want my troops?” Terian asked, turning around, lips thin and light blue from pressing together in a straight line as he waited for Cyrus’s answer.

  Cyrus exchanged a look with Vara. “You just came out of a war—”

  “And if the titans decide to come north,” Terian said, looking at him evenly, “we’ll be in another. Emerald Fields is feeding Saekaj and Sovar at the moment. Much like Vaste, if someone attacks our food, we take umbrage.”

  Cyrus peered at him in the dark. “You’re willing to do this? To fight with us?” What’s your game, Terian?

  “Couldn’t pick a better partner, really,” Terian said with a shrug. “I don’t know many in Arkaria who fight like you two.”

  “You trying to make up for your attempt to kill me?” Cyrus asked.

  Terian made another sweeping gesture at his new armor, and there was an unmistakable sadness in his answer. “Just trying to walk the path.”

  Cyrus traded another uneasy glance with Vara, who seemed to be experiencing considerably less doubt than he was. “We don’t even know if we’re going to get involved in this yet—” he started to say.

  “Oh, you will,” Terian said with a quick nod. “And when you do, let me know, because we’ll be right there with you.” He stepped up and took his seat on the left hand throne, and now Cyrus saw him sink a little into the padding of the chair. “We don’t have as much as we did before the war, but we’ve got some spellcasters we can bring to the fight, some warriors and rangers, and …” he reached up and slapped the handle of his axe, “… me, of course.”

  “You?” Cyrus asked, staring at him in surprise. “You’re the Sovereign.”

  “I’m also the foremost paladin in Saekaj and Sovar,” Terian said, smiling just a little smugly.

  It took Cyrus a moment to fully comprehend what he’d said, and when he looked at Vara, he could tell she was getting to the conclusion at the same time he was. “I’m sorry …” she said, speaking first, “… but you meant ‘dark knight,’ right?”

  Terian just smiled and raised a hand at a torch in a sconce some twenty feet away. With a movement of the lips, a small blast of force shot forth from his hand and snuffed the torch, sending it clattering to the ground and decreasing Cyrus’s ability to see by a considerable margin. “I said what I meant, I meant what I said,” the Sovereign’s voice echoed in the hall. “Call on me when you’ve decided to pursue this thing. I’ll be with you, completely.”

  Cyrus stood blinking while he waited for some further signal. It was only when Vara took hold of his arm and began to lead him out that he realized Terian must have departed. “What the hell was that?” he asked when they were nearly out the door of the throne room.

  “A white knight,” she said, sounding considerably more relaxed than he felt, “and we should thank our respective gods for him, because if ever there was a clearer sign than that to indicate Terian has changed, I don’t know what it would be.”

  “If he was wearing a tutu and dancing around the throne room?” Cyrus suggested as the throne room doors were opened by the guards. Cyrus caught a dirty look from one of them and he shrugged. “If this is a sign, I don’t know what exactly it’s a sign of, other than that perhaps some luck has finally broken our way.”

  “At long last,” Vara said, as they were led back through dark and winding corridors to the portal which would take them home.

  25.

  Cyrus sat at the head of the Council Chamber, all of them assembled around him, looking at the uncertain faces before him, and took a deep breath of the sweet, smokeless scent of the torches as night fell out the window behind him. “And so here we are,” he announced, feeling strangely like the previous occupant of the chair.

  “Gods, that’s a bit of the dramatic,” Vaste said. “As though we’ve strolled up to some momentous occasion rather than being blindsided by a raft filled to the brimming with oversized turds.”

  “This is a serious decision,” Cyrus said, watching the assemblage around the table ripple at Vaste’s pronouncement. Cattrine was there, along with all of the officers, their faces lit by the orange glow of the torches. “This will have far-reaching consequences—”

  “Can we just beat the holy hell out of these bastards already?” Longwell asked, his lance leaned up against the table next to him, its large and unwieldy head always maintaining perfect balance where he set it.

  “They’ve called down the thunder,” Andren agreed. “The great big gits deserve a bit of the lightning, too.”

  “They have lightning of their own,” Cyrus said, cautioning them.

  “All our foes have,” J’anda said from his place next to Curatio. His own staff leaned against the table like Longwell’s. “Save for the dead.”

  “This is nothing like facing gods,” Erith agreed, her blue skin looking almost like a piece of cloth had been cut out of night and draped over her. “Is it?”

  “They might be as strong as them,” Cyrus said, looking at each of them in turn.

  “And if your aunt had the appropriate genitals, she’d be your uncle,” Vaste said.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Andren said after a moment’s pause had filled the chamber. “If—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Vaste said, waving him off, “the point is—”

  “Wait, we get interrupted by you in the middle of making points all the time,” Vara said. “It feels as though there should be some level of reciprocity—”

  “I don’t interrupt you all the time—” Vaste started.

  “Oh, it’s all the time,” Curatio said, looking particularly bleary-eyed.

  “All of it,” Ryin said. “Every single—”

  “Well, you, of course, yes,” Vaste said. “But the rest of you—”

  “I can’t get a word in edgewise without you dropping some humorous observation into the mix,” Cyrus said.

  “And possibly you—” Vaste said.

  “And me,” Vara said.

  Vaste looked at her and sighed. “Yes. Okay. Criticism taken to heart; it won’t happen again. Now if I may wend back to my original point without interruption—”

  “Gonna go with ‘nope’ on that,” Erith cut in with a smirk.

  “How have I so wronged you?” Vaste asked, looking near the edge of exasperation.

  “We don’t have time for you to atone for all your snarky interruptions right now, Vaste, we’d be here not only all night, but all the nights from here until the day of Arkaria’s fateful end,” Cyrus said. “This war, this one that you all seem so keen to charge into—it will have repercussions.” He looked at the faces around the table once more. “This is not going to be an easy fight, an
d it may not be one that we can win.”

  “We’ve won every fight ever thrown at us,” Mendicant said with a surprising amount of confidence. “Why should this be any different?”

  “Every one of these creatures is of godlike stature,” Cyrus said, “and though their strength isn’t quite godlike, it’s not far behind. Now, with magic as their ally, we can no longer hide before them as we did before. Their power … it’s increased by a very fair margin.”

  “I’m not afraid of some overgrown, rude beasts that need a lesson in manners,” Nyad huffed.

  “They could likely march from one end of your father’s kingdom to the other and still have plenty enough strength left once there to kill all the remaining trolls,” Cyrus warned. “These creatures are dangerous.”

  “We have allies,” J’anda said.

  “We have Terian,” Cyrus said, “and a handful of elves from Amti.”

  “We have our whole army,” Longwell said, watching Cyrus carefully, his eyes focused on the warrior. “Are you afraid to fight this battle, Guildmaster?”

  “Not for my own sake,” Cyrus said. “I am hesitant because this is the fight which could hurt us beyond any we’ve ever been in.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Longwell said, a little hoarsely.

  “If I may,” Cattrine said, speaking up from her place just past Vara, “I think we all acknowledge that you will face risks, but the greater risk here may be that the titans do exactly what they promised—and bring havoc and destruction all across the north, and here to your very halls.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” Vara said darkly.

  “Then let’s make that the last,” Cyrus said quietly, and every head turned to him. He looked them all over, saw the tentativeness there, the wonder at what their Guildmaster was thinking. “They mean to have a war. Let us give them one that will deprive them of any notion that war is a pastime that they ever want to engage in again.”

  “You mean it, then?” Longwell asked, somewhat skeptical.

  “All in favor?” Cyrus asked. A weak chorus of ayes filled the room. “Any nays?” Silence followed. “The defenses of Sanctuary are as good as we can make them. Now we need to embark on solidifying our strategy.”

  “Which is?” Vaste asked.

  Cyrus took a long breath. “I need to consult with Ehrgraz first before deciding, but … I have an early plan.”

  “So long as your plan is the only thing early about you, perhaps Vara will forgive you,” Vaste said, drawing a look of pure ire from her. “Still, perhaps you might share this idea with us?”

  Cyrus surveyed the table, finding undisguised curiosity all around it. “All right,” he said in resignation, “here it is—to march our entire army across the Gradsden Savanna and storm the front gates of Kortran, killing every single soldier we come across and mangling the bodies beyond resurrection until we cannot handle one more solitary minute of slaughter.” Cyrus watched the faces around the table change from curiosity to dawning unease.

  “But you’ve talking all this time about how tough the titans are going to be,” Vaste said. “If they’re that tough, they’re unlikely to let us just come in the front gate, are they?”

  “They are not,” Cyrus agreed, “and if that’s the case,” he swallowed heavily, “then we’ll need to fight for every single inch of ground until we can get into the heart of Kortran and inflict more punishment than they can possibly weather … because if we don’t,” and now he saw a different look on the faces around him, of horror settling in at the predicament they were now in, “those followers of Bellarum will never, ever let us rest until they’ve killed us all to the last.”

  26.

  Ehrgraz came out of the sky as promised only a day later, and Cyrus was ready on the wall when the great dragon landed and made his approach. Cyrus had let the alarm sound as usual, concerned that if he didn’t, Ehrgraz would take that small concession and see weakness in it. Instead, the entirety of Sanctuary stood ready at the walls with Cyrus as the black and red-scaled dragon made his approach, the ground shaking and dust coming loose of the watch tower to Cyrus’s left.

  “Lovely day, isn’t it?” Cyrus asked as the enormous dragon head came up to rest on the parapet of the curtain wall. The yellow eyes stared at Cyrus and he met them, not looking away, and thinking what he always thought in these situations.

  Ehrgraz made a rough noise of plain disgust. “The weather? Do you take me for some sort of human dotard that cares anything about the conditions of sky, whether it rains or not?”

  “It’s called small talk,” Cyrus said, unflappable. “You might want to look into it.”

  “I call it a waste of precious time,” Ehrgraz said, smoke pouring out of his nostrils as he spoke. “What say you, Cyrus Davidon, Warden of the Southern Plains?”

  “I’ll take your counsel,” Cyrus said, “and you can count on seeing us in the south very soon.”

  The dragon surveyed him, eyes blinking in a way that reminded Cyrus of a lizard he’d once seen crawling the shoots in the swamps of the Bandit Lands. “Very good. What is your plan?”

  “What is your plan?” Cyrus parried.

  “I offer only possibilities,” Ehrgraz said, but Cyrus thought he detected a hint of regret in the dragon’s voice. “But if your strategy is as sound as I suspect it to be, then I will be able to offer more later.”

  “I want to come at Kortran from the front gate,” Cyrus said after a moment’s deliberation. “I want to force my way into the city and destroy it.”

  “Hm,” Ehrgraz said, smoke puffing out of his nose this time. “Very straightforward. Not terrible, as ideas go, but prone to a few problems.”

  “Like twenty-foot-tall, thick-skinned, spell-casting enemies?” Vaste asked.

  Ehrgraz’s yellow eyes alighted on the troll. “Yes. Exactly that sort. And more.”

  “Those aren’t problems,” Cyrus said, “they’re opportunities to convince the titans what a very bad idea it is to continue their war with us.”

  “Well, then you have many opportunities in front of you,” Ehrgraz said, “more than you realize, in fact.” He sighed, and a black cloud belched out of his snout. “I can see this is going to require a bit of … education. Yes, I’m afraid that’s just the thing, no way around it, really …” He sighed again, this time exhaling a white puff of smoke.

  “What the blazes is he talking about?” Vaste asked, again not bothering to lower his voice, his sun-dappled green flesh looking almost yellow in the day’s light.

  “Setting up a school for us?” J’anda asked, shrugging his thin shoulders. “I don’t entirely know.”

  “Shut up,” Cyrus said, turning to look at both of them. “You’re making me look bad in front of the dragon!”

  “Oh, it takes more to irritate me than the petty carping of J’anda Aimant and Vaste the troll,” Ehrgraz said, giving each of them a quite hideous gaze. “You require an education, Cyrus Davidon, and I am the one who must give it to you.”

  “Teach him to spell his name,” Vaste said, apparently taking Ehrgraz’s invitation to offend quite liberally. “I think he still struggles with that.”

  “Come along,” Ehrgraz said, lifting a wing up and placing it atop the curtain wall, like a bridge between him and Cyrus.

  Cyrus eyed the wing then looked to Vara, whose eyes were wide. “You want me to … ride on your back?”

  “I assure you,” Ehrgraz said with an air of impatience, “I am no more pleased about being saddled like one of your—what do they call them, your beasts of burden?”

  “Warriors,” Vaste offered helpfully.

  Ehrgraz made a horrible noise, something like shavings being scraped off of metal, and it took Cyrus a moment to realize it was the sound of laughter. “That one was not bad,” Ehrgraz said once his laughter died down. Then he looked back at Cyrus. “Come along, then. I know this isn’t your first time riding a dragon.”

  Cyrus started to ascend the wing, but Vara’s hand on his sh
oulder stayed him. “Are you out of your mind?” she asked.

  “You’ve often told me as much,” Cyrus said.

  “She’s got the measure of you,” Vaste said.

  “You’re about to climb on the back of that dragon,” Vara said, “with no idea of your destination and no promise as to your safe return.”

  “If he runs into hazard,” Ehrgraz said with a snort, “it won’t be my doing. I shan’t drop him in Kortran, but will return him to a place of safety when our business is concluded.”

  Vara looked at the dragon, and then at Cyrus, and her expression hinted at a mind torn. “Go on, then,” she said at last. “Go learn what he’d have you know.”

  “Yes, you go and fill your empty head with new ideas and dragon secrets,” Vaste said, gesturing him forward. “Come back to us breathing fire and clad in scales, and teach the rest of us how to do the same, or don’t come back at all.”

  “Does that one get a bit tiresome?” Ehrgraz asked as Cyrus slid down the wing onto his back.

  “Constantly,” Cyrus said, “but he has his uses.”

  “I am quite good for the disposal of pie,” Vaste called, “also, the soul.”

  “I feel ready to dispose of my soul quite willingly after just a few minutes in your presence,” Ehrgraz said, taking mighty steps away from the wall, “I can’t imagine how happy I’d be to part with it after years around you, Vaste. I imagine I’d give it up just for a chance at devouring you completely.”

  “I’m also tasty, I’m sure!”

  “I am tempted to test that assumption,” Ehrgraz said, spreading his wings as he moved out of range of the wall and the conversations being held upon it. “The dragons are a taciturn lot, and yours are constantly chattering group. I always thought our ways were foolish, but I begin to appreciate the silence after a short time here.” He flapped his wings once, and Cyrus felt the world go unsteady around him as Ehrgraz took them into the air. Another flap of the wings and they were moving forward, wind rushing around Cyrus’s ears so that he could not have heard himself even if he’d even been of a mind to reply. Atop the back of a dragon, he found himself soaring into the sky, and his looks back at Sanctuary showed his home receding smaller and smaller until it faded into the distance.