“I’ll go as well,” Fredaula said, standing up and brushing her dirty hands over her grime-encrusted clothes. “We’re close to a new vein in the mines, and I have work to do.”
“You’d get along well with some dwarves of my acquaintance,” Cyrus mused as Fredaula gave him a slight scowl. “Miners. They work the land around Rockridge.”
“Sound like cowards, working so far from danger,” Fredaula said, the scowl tightening the lines around her eyes.
“They saved the lives of hundreds of people during the titan attack by sheltering them in their dwarf-carved caves,” Cyrus said. “One of them, Keearyn, made eighteen trips back down the ridge to find more survivors.”
Fredaula blinked first. “Not cowards after all then, perhaps.”
“I would say not.”
Mirasa disappeared through the door without another word, and Fredaula followed sulkily behind. Gareth hesitated another moment before catching a look from Cora. “Perhaps I’ll … see to things as well,” he said, excusing himself. He turned away, and for the first time Cyrus noticed a fur pelt hidden under his cloak, wrapping around his chest. It was silvery-white, like wolf fur from the Northlands. He caught Cyrus looking and shut the door quietly without expression.
“I apologize for all this,” Cora said, quiet and reserved. “Change is a frightening thing, even when one is hung over a blade.”
“You stay where you are, you’re going to fall upon it sooner or later,” Cyrus said.
“I agree,” Cora said, “having been in a similar situation more than a few times myself, which is why I can safely say that your plan can make things no worse in the long term. Those new to this sort of dilemma, well, let’s just say it causes them to focus on the immediate at the expense of the long term. Everything feels like a risk, and you start to believe the end is inevitable.”
“I don’t intend to hasten your end,” Cyrus said, “and I mean to move the blade from underneath you.”
“That’s quite the undertaking,” Cora said in a whisper. “How do you mean to do it?”
“I don’t … entirely know yet,” Cyrus said, taking a long breath, “I just know that this is the first step.”
“Then make it a good one,” Cora said as the door opened once more and a short woman walked in, clad in a green cloak with druid vestments covered in dirt draped over her shoulders. “Ah, Iana. Would you be so good as to take Guildmaster Davidon back to his guildhall in the Plains of Perdamun, and then remain there as their guest until he has his plans firmly in mind and is ready for us?” The short woman nodded once, and Cyrus stepped closer to her.
“I’m not in the habit of quitting a thing once I’ve begun it,” Cyrus said, giving Cora a last look. “When we embark on this … I won’t stop until I’ve finished it, or until I’m dead.”
“I have heard that said about you,” Cora said, still in a whisper, smiling slightly, a little mysteriously.
“What?” Cyrus asked.
Cora shook her head, the smile clinging stubbornly to her lips. “You reminded me of a memory. I had a child once in my care who fixated upon things in much the way you describe. Once his mind was made up, even at the peril of discipline, no threat could turn him away from what he’d decided to do.” Her smile grew faint. “I hope you won’t go at this as stubbornly as a child, intractable in the face of any consequence.”
“I’m not a kid,” Cyrus said, as the winds of a druid spell started to pick up around him, swirling, “but I’ll see it through all the way to whatever end comes to it.” And the room vanished around him, Cora’s worried smile frozen in his memory as she disappeared into the howl of the spell magic.
29.
“So this is your plan?” Vaste asked, standing with his hand twitching nervously next to the table in the Council Chambers, the parchment map rolled in front of him. “Dear gods, you don’t lack for boldness.”
“This seems … I’ll just say foolish,” Nyad said, looking at Cyrus in wonderment. “Is this not perhaps … too much …?”
“We face disciples of the God of War,” Cyrus said, the sweet scent of the hearth burning filling the air, the crackles and pops of the fire putting him at ease as the light in the chamber fought against the night outside the windows. “They believe that battle is the greatest thing above all, and that to face it—to face your foes—is the supreme purpose of life itself.”
“But you don’t believe that anymore, do you?” Erith asked nervously. “Because it seems to me, then, sending an army into a crazy, hopeless battle would be like … worship for you.”
Cyrus gave her a look of slight disbelief. “Have I ever thrown you headlong into insane battle that you had no chance of coming out of?”
“There was that time with the Dragonlord,” Andren said.
“The Realm of Purgatory, that first time,” Mendicant said.
“That was nerve-wracking,” J’anda said, “but not perhaps so much as the invasion of Enterra.”
“Let’s not forget the bridge,” Samwen Longwell said with a measured tiredness.
“Which?” Curatio asked, looking more than a little weary himself, hand propping up his head, all energy gone from the man. “Termina or the Endless Bridge?”
“Well, both, now that you mention it—”
“There was also the God of Death,” Ryin said with a raised eyebrow.
“And the God of Darkness,” Nyad said.
“That was eerily chronological,” Vaste said, peering at the whole table. “But I think I have you all beat, for once upon a time, Cyrus and I faced the Avatar of the God of Death in a temple in the Bandit Lands—”
“Did you not hear me?” Ryin asked. “We killed the actual God of Death, not some avatar that was simply a holding place for his essence while on Arkaria—”
“I think we know by now that I never truly listen to you,” Vaste said, “and my story was better, because it was just Cyrus and I, running like mad from Mortus’s little shadow, because it was back in the days long before we knew gods were even able to be killed.”
“None of those were unwinnable scenarios,” Cyrus said, more than a little annoyed. “Merely challenging ones. As this is.” He pointed down at the map. “If we do this in half measure, it will provoke a terrible response. If we succeed, however—”
“It will provoke a terrible response,” Longwell said, nudging his spear. “But if we do nothing, odds are good based on what you’ve seen, eventually a terrible response will wend our way. I say we make our terrible response first.”
“Well, it certainly looks terrible,” Vaste said, and Cyrus gave him a look. “Not impossible, just terrible. If there are as many as you say—”
“A thousand in the fortress,” Cyrus said. “According to Ehrgraz. Based on my brief flyover, I’d say he’s close.”
“Oh my,” Curatio said, languidly moving to stare at the map. “Well, so long as we don’t retreat, this will certainly not be a half of a measure, not even in titan terms.”
Cyrus looked at Vara, seated next to him, deep in thought, and the only one who had not weighed in thus far. “If there are no objections, I’m going to send the messengers to Amti and Saekaj immediately and start getting our forces together for this.” He looked around the table. “Anyone?” He stared pointedly at Ryin, who shook his head. “All right, then. We go tomorrow.”
“Yay for possible death!” Vaste said with faux enthusiasm. “I always sleep well on nights like this.”
“Really?” Andren asked. “Because it’s nights like this I miss the drink.”
The meeting broke and they began to file out, surprisingly quiet save for Vaste and Andren. Cyrus caught a few hopeful looks from the others, save for Curatio, who merely seemed tired, and Longwell, whose rage appeared to bubble just beneath the surface.
When the doors shut, Cyrus found he was left in the Council Chambers with Vara alone. She stared at the hearth, the flame within, and her expression was inscrutable. “How is it,” Cyrus said, jarring her into loo
king at him, “that the only person who didn’t weigh in on my plan of attack was you?”
“I’m certain it’s a perfectly wonderful plan,” she said, answering a little too quickly for his taste.
“You’d know if you had looked at it or studied it like the others did,” Cyrus said. “Vaste called me mad, I think.”
“I’m sure he’s right as well,” she said, still strangely neutral, then she shook her head. “The soundness of your plan does not concern me.”
“But something does,” Cyrus said, easing into his seat next to her. “What is it?”
“I worry about you,” she said, but this answer did not come quickly. “You seem … more conflicted of late than you were before. You are not the man you once were.”
“The man I was before,” Cyrus said slowly, “did not have half as much responsibility as the one sitting before you now.”
“I don’t think it’s just that,” she said. “I think it’s that the man I met in the caves of the Dragonlord’s prison all those years ago had less to lose than the one sitting before me now.”
Cyrus felt a pained expression cross his face. “I had many discussions like this with Terian for the year I was in Luukessia. He accused me of not believing as I once had—”
“I’m not questioning your conviction,” Vara said and she reached out, brushing long fingers against his face. “Or your courage. You have both in as great a supply as your sex drive—that last of which I could do with slightly less of, I might add. I am merely suggesting,” she said, lowering her voice even further, “that now, unlike the days when you lived in a barn, you have friends … You have an entire guild … and perhaps even me to worry about it.” She looked up hesitantly as she spoke.
“‘Perhaps’ I have you?”
“Perhaps you worry about me,” Vara said. “Perhaps you worry about losing me. About losing the others.”
Cyrus found himself looking down, stiffening his neck. “I certainly wouldn’t care to contemplate that loss too deeply, but I assure you I am still more than willing to commit to the battles before me with everything I have.”
“Because now you’re the stalwart defender with something to fight for?”
“Look,” Cyrus said, cringing slightly as his thoughts made their way out, “this man you’re talking about—the old me, let’s call him—he’s not so much older. I’ve only been here some five years. I would argue that these worries you attribute to me, these things that hang about me—they’re more the work of responsibility and change than fear.”
“How do you mean?” she asked, staring into his eyes.
“In the space of five years I’ve gone from member of Sanctuary to officer and General to Guildmaster.” He smiled tightly. “You and I have gone from enemies to rivals to … well, lovers, in that time.” He felt the slight buoying within sag as the last came on him. “We’ve lost friends. We lost … Alaric.”
“It is rather a lot in a short time,” she conceded.
“Sometimes,” Cyrus said, shaking his head, “things move so fast I don’t even feel like I know who I am anymore. I wake up in the Tower of the Guildmaster with you next to me and wonder for a moment what happened.”
“And do you count yourself fortunate in those moments?” she asked, looking slyly at him.
“Absolutely,” he said, keeping the smile off his face expertly, “because that tower is just the most comfortable quarters—”
“Oh, you—” she smacked him on the backplate and the clang of metal rang out in the Council Chambers along with their laughter. “I only worry about you because … of late, you have not seemed like you at all, truly. Since the Emerald Fields, I mean.” She brushed a short, stray hair back behind his ear. “You seem a little different is all. The old Cyrus—the one of five years ago—would not have pondered this war so long before committing.”
“That Cyrus didn’t know war,” he said, drawing a solemn breath. “Not really. He just knew battle. This Cyrus,” he clinked his gauntlet against his breastplate, “has known too much of it..”
She leaned in close to him, her breath sweeping across his ear. “You once quoted to me some adept of your Society that said you should embrace war with all the ardor of wooing a lover.” She pulled back slightly to look him in the eyes. “I hope you don’t lose your fervor for me the way you seem to have lost your love of war.”
“Well, with you the destruction is slightly less than—”
“Oh, you are an arse—”
They collapsed into laughter once more, the soft, genuine snickering that seemed to be all that they could manage at this point. He looked into her eyes and pulled a sweaty hand out of a gauntlet, pausing to wipe it upon his sleeve before brushing the back of his hand against her cheek. “I don’t want things to change any more.”
“Because you’re afraid of what you’ll lose?” Her blue eyes glistened.
“Because I’ve already got everything I want,” Cyrus said and leaned in to kiss her. The silence of the Council Chamber held fast around them. For Cyrus the world receded as he continued to kiss those most lovely lips, and all else faded away.
30.
They teleported into the darkness of the Gradsden Savanna once night had fallen using druid spells, which gave off no light that might alert the watching titans to their arrival. It took longer to bring the army in this way, but Cyrus favored it, having everyone keep a low profile, well below the grass, as they moved in under cover of night.
“Those of you who can’t keep an invisibility spell about you, don’t stray from this space,” Cyrus said. Nods greeted him. The army was a well-prepared machine ready to execute his plan. “And maintain quiet at all times; this savanna is near-silent at night, and voices carry even with the grass.” He held up a lone finger as indication of silence.
“Yet you talk,” Vaste said, brushing past him to move into his own formation.
“And I can scarcely stop you,” Cyrus said, “better to have the others minimize it, like shifting weight from one side of the scale to the other.”
“Mine’s a big weight,” Vaste said.
“And a big mouth,” Cyrus said, turning his back on the troll. He paused and cast a look back. “Vaste … take care.”
“Oh, gods, I’m going to die, aren’t I?” Vaste swelled in size. “You put me in the group that’s fated for death, didn’t you?” He raised a hand over his mouth. “Well, I hope you’ll be happy when I haunt your sorry, muscular arse for all the rest of your days. I won’t be one of those calm, placid spirits, either, I’ll be the kind that issues one of those deathly screams right when you’re most intimate with Vara—”
“I might not hear you over my own screaming,” Cyrus volleyed back.
Vaste paused. “Ick. Icky. Ick ick ick.”
“You’ll be fine,” Cyrus assured him, and then moved on. The space in which the portal stood was a clearing in which the tall grasses of the savanna did not grow for some reason. Cyrus had long ago stopped pondering the mysteries of magic and its effects, instead focusing on watching the ceaseless motion of the army groups as they were teleported in and then shuffled back behind the portal and out of the zone where the spells carried the newly arrived.
He slowed as he walked past Andren and Martaina, whose heads were close together, Martaina’s chainmail coif hanging loose between her shoulder blades. He realized with surprise that he had not seen her wear that piece of armor in quite some time, and as Andren brought a hand around to hold the back of her head, she moved slightly and he heard the links rattle just a little. That’s why, he thought. The noise.
Cyrus walked past Thad almost without noticing him, save for his head was turned in a different direction than the rest of his own army, which was waiting quietly in formation before the red-armored warrior. Thad was looking across at Martaina and Andren with something that looked very much like longing. “You all right, soldier?” Cyrus asked, pausing, and speaking so low that Thad’s army couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Thad jumped as though he’d been caught committing a crime. “I—no—nothing—uh, sorry sir.”
“Thad,” Cyrus said, low and reassuring. He traced the warrior’s former sightline and repeated his inquiry. “You going to be okay?”
“I’m fine,” Thad said, swallowing his emotions in an instant. He puffed up slightly. “I’m, uh—” He swallowed again.
“I’ve been where you are,” Cyrus said quietly, lowering his voice so that no one else could hear them. “It gets easier.”
“I’d heard that about you,” Thad said, low and gruff, but with a very slight intonation of wonder. “About your—your wife.”
“First wife, I hope,” Cyrus said, looking around until he found a shining silver helm with blond hair leaking out of it in a golden ponytail.
“Gets easier, does it?” Thad asked, casting his eyes sideways.
“Not at first,” Cyrus said, “but yes. It’ll burn for a bit, but eventually it’ll get easier.” He looked at Andren and Martaina, now locked at the lips. “Mostly.”
“What happened to your—your first wife, sir?” Thad asked.
Cyrus paused as he felt something lurch within him. “I hear she survived the sack of Reikonos and is back to running her stand in the markets, selling flowers to any who would buy them.”
“Have you seen her, then?” Thad asked.
“No,” Cyrus said, and he smiled, though there was no joy in it. “I don’t have the heart to see her.” He placed a hand on Thad’s shoulder. “Just hang in there and hold fast to your duty until your heart lightens.” He gave a glance at the small army waiting on Thad. “You’ve got a lot to worry about today, but I know you’re up to the challenge.” And he started away.
“Uh … what if it never does, sir?” Thad asked, sounding still worried, though perhaps a touch calmer than he’d started out. “If it never lightens, I mean?”
“We’ll talk about it after you get some titan blood on you,” Cyrus said in a low whisper, motioning his small, precursor army into formation behind him. He watched Andren and Martaina break free of each other and fall in, but Thad was already focused ahead with his own small army on the march, heading slightly left of where Cyrus’s was going. That’s the way to do it.
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