Warlord

by Robert J. Crane

  “Sorry,” Terian said, sweeping into place next to Cyrus. “But it was either take him down or wait for you to do it while the next one behind took a free shot at me.” That very titan swung at Terian and he met it with an overhand chop that split the titan’s hand in half. “Hope that wasn’t his dominant hand, or he’s going to be so irritated at me when he gets back to the barracks and has some alone time—”

  Cyrus lunged forward and plunged his sword into the titan’s exposed abdomen as it clutched at its wounded hand. Blood dripped down, and the smell of disgusting rot, fouler than nearly anything he’d smelled before, told him he’d struck its bowels. He dodged sideways, ripping with Praelior as he moved, and the titan fell on a growing pile atop their last kill. “I don’t think that’s going to cross his mind later, strangely.”

  “Still no sign of healers for these bastards,” Terian said, “not that I’m complaining!” He paused, striking again with his axe against the hip of a titan passing to attack Vara. “Please, please, don’t answer my complaint, fates.”

  “Now you believe in fates,” Cyrus muttered, scrambling back from a particularly aggressive titan attack. “It’s almost as if you lost your faith in the God of Darkness.”

  “Can’t imagine what would have prompted that,” Terian said dryly, laying his axe into the back of the knee of the titan attacking Cyrus. “Maybe it was that I got to know him entirely too well to respect him anymore.”

  “I have a similar problem, I find,” Cyrus said with a muted smirk.

  “I—” Terian began.

  A fearsome bellow from Fortin drew both of their attentions, and Vara’s as well from where she plunged her own blade into the face of a titan coming at her. She came to the ground, breathing heavily, the toll of killing the massive things now obvious. Cyrus looked past her and found Talikartin moving on the rock giant, finally through the crowd and coming to attack.

  “Death is coming for you, foes of Kortran!” Talikartin called, his expression one of rage mingled with joy, some hybrid Cyrus could recall perhaps feeling himself on early battlefields, some strain of vindictive anger crossed with the thirst for bloody revenge and abject excitement as battle played out before him in thrilling spectacle.

  I’m fighting giants and winning. Their blood soaks me. The war roars within me, and the fight goes ever on.

  Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted?

  Fortin screamed again and charged at Talikartin. The rock giant came up to the titan’s waist, planting a craggy fist right into his hip. Talikartin grunted and blanched from the impact, bending slightly at the middle from the force. He brought around a punch of his own in reprisal, however, and Cyrus watched it land against Fortin’s face, knocking the rock giant back a step of his own.

  Rather than let Fortin recover, Talikartin pursued. He hit Fortin again, this time in the chest, and the sound of air rushing out of the rock giant’s lungs was like a bellows being pushed in a smith’s shop. Talikartin struck again and again, raining hard blows down upon the creature that stood so short against him. The power of the strikes was unquestionable, and Cyrus could hear the cracking of rock.

  Fortin staggered, striking out blindly in an attack that hit Talikartin in an undefended thigh. It tore his trousers but did nothing to the skin beneath, and the titan reached down and seized Fortin by his small neck, lifting him into the air. It looked like a labor for Talikartin, but the titan did it, slowly levering the rock giant up until he could grasp him with his other hand, grabbing him around a leg.

  Within his grip, Fortin struggled, but it was a futile effort. The rock giant looked dazed, some of the fight taken out of him by the ruinous blows. “You are strong,” Talikartin said, staring into Fortin’s eyes. “I am stronger,” he said with a rush of hatred, and he lifted Fortin up and brought him back down again, slamming him over his knee—

  Fortin broke cleanly in half at the waist, black fluid pouring out of either side of him as Talikartin tossed the split pieces. One hit the wall of the arena and bounced near Andren, the other came to rest at Talikartin’s feet.

  The titans around them roared in appreciation at the battle they had just witnessed, and Cyrus did not realize that he had been holding his breath until he made to let out a cry of outrage and had no wind with which to do it.

  “Uh oh,” Terian said.

  “We’re a bit screwed, here,” Andren opined.

  “DIE!” Cyrus screamed, and he charged across the dirt arena floor, vaulting over the femur of something massive and using the other end of it to stage a leap at Talikartin, who waited with great satisfaction.

  Cyrus had telegraphed his jump too much, he realized belatedly, rage feeding him poor strategy. Talikartin saw him coming, his trajectory obvious, and there was little Cyrus could do once in the air to alter it. The titan still stood, smirking, waiting, and moved only slightly so that Cyrus would impact upon his breastplate—

  When Cyrus hit the quartal breastplate, he had already prepared himself for the impact. He huddled up and let his right pauldron lead him. It struck, the force of impact transmitted through the armor, through the chain mail beneath, mostly dissipating somewhere between the two. Cyrus hit the padding hard, the nearly immovable wall before him that was Talikartin forced a step back from his impact.

  Cyrus dropped to the ground some ten feet, absorbing the impact again through his knees. He felt the pain and used Praelior to help ignore it, hoping that somewhere down the line he might get a healing spell to fix whatever minor problem he’d just caused himself. Now he was at Talikartin’s feet. The titan had probably meant for him to be here, but also probably intended him to be a bit more stunned. Talikartin himself was stumbling back a step, arms trying to balance his unwieldy frame.

  Now Cyrus found himself in a curious position. Talikartin wore thick metal boots, unlike the rest of the titans, but they only stretched to just below the knee, and Cyrus stood a tiny bit higher than that—

  He rushed in and stabbed Talikartin in the knee like he’d done to so many other titans, not even worrying about simply going deep; he dragged his sword around as he ran in a circle like the titan’s calf and shin were some maypole that he was trying to wrap festively.

  Well, I certainly brought out a different color, he thought as he opened it up.

  Talikartin staggered again, his balance utterly failing before he had a chance to recover it. He went down, falling to the ground on his back, rattling as he landed on something. Cyrus heard the shattering of bone but was under no illusion it was Talikartin’s. He saw plainly a piece of something’s rib cage jutting out from under the titan’s shoulder as he ran up the breastplate to the titan’s stunned face.

  “EVERYBODY DOWN!” Another magically aided voice boomed out over the arena, this time obvious as Curatio’s. Cyrus swept low, jumping off Talikartin’s breastplate, halted by the force of the suggestion. He used the titan as cover as a flash of orange too bright to be the braziers in levels above filled the air.

  Snakes of fire swept over Cyrus’s head, darting less than ten feet above where he crouched at the side of Talikartin. They swept lower as he cowered there, watching magic fiercer than any he’d ever seen before writhing as though it had life of its own above him. The flames coursed with energy, popping and cracking, showering him with something akin to sparks from a flint, and Cyrus needed only sweep his eyes around once to see corpses of titans caught aflame, burning around him as the sky on fire began to recede.

  What the hell was that?

  “AHHHHHH!” Talikartin’s howl prompted Cyrus to move. Cyrus sprang to his feet, stumbling away from the titan, who sat up now that the flames had receded, his face burnt to a crisp and his armor glowing from the heat of the magic that had just been used.

  A flash of blue burst in front of Cyrus as wizard magic sent a teleportation orb to him. It hovered in front of him, winking into existence like some grand joke. Cyrus scanned the arena to find every titan contained therein either on fire and screaming or dead and af
lame. Most of them were not taking it nearly as gracefully as Talikartin, at least those few still alive.

  “Cyrus!” Vara screamed at him, and Cyrus spun around. She stood with Terian and Andren, blue orbs in front of them all, the healer crouched over the portion of Fortin that had landed near him. Cyrus watched as he grabbed the orb of teleportation in front of him and disappeared with half of Fortin’s corpse into the wizard spell.

  Cyrus sent a last look toward the tunnel entrance as he sprinted toward Talikartin’s feet. He caught sight of Curatio there, hunched over, a half dozen defenders still around him. Cyrus waved a hand and saw them start to fall back, a wall of titans just behind them in the tunnel. He blinked and looked closer, and saw J’anda atop the shoulders of one. With a look back at Cyrus, the enchanter saluted, and then disappeared into the light of a spell of his own.

  “I will kill you for this,” Talikartin said, and Cyrus turned his head to look at the titan even as he vaulted over Talikartin’s legs and came to rest on the upper body of Fortin. The rock giant’s red eyes stared up dully, black liquid pooling beneath him and streaming down his lips like magma. “For this insult.”

  “You come at me, I come right back at you,” Cyrus promised, meeting the eyes of Talikartin. They were hazy, slightly burned, but not so badly that they would not heal naturally. It looked to Cyrus as if Talikartin’s scarred skin had spared him the worst of the burns inflicted on the others. “We can do this dance forever—or at least until one of us is dead.”

  “It will be you,” Talikartin mouthed, cracked lips bloody as he forced his way to his knees. He grasped at his own breastplate and the sizzling sound of flesh burning against hot metal filled the air. “I will do whatever it takes to destroy you and yours utterly, completely. This war—is not over,” he said, and with a growl he raised a hand to strike at Cyrus.

  Cyrus caught the glimpse of Vara and Terian disappearing in the flash of teleportation, and he knew that Curatio and the others had already left. For a split second he considered fighting back, on his own, in the arena of war in the middle of Kortran.

  To the death.

  To the end.

  The way I was always meant to.

  But as his eyes met the dead ones of Fortin with a glance, Cyrus stooped and wrapped his arms around the dead rock giant, seizing the blue light of the teleportation spell. He felt the world of war disappear around him, as though burned away by some magic, and found himself hugging tight to half the corpse of a rock giant on the floor of his quarters, and he let himself take a peaceful breath at last.

  “I would say that was a rather successful sortie.” Vara’s voice surprised him, and he pushed up to all fours to find her standing before him in the Tower of the Guildmaster.

  Cyrus just shook his head, looking down at the dead rock giant. I’ll need a healer for him. Need to get the rest of him back to Andren. He sighed, exhausted. “I don’t think I would call it that at all.”

  “We killed Emperor Razeel,” Vara said. Dawn was breaking over the horizon, the sun coming up in the eastern sky, an orb of red setting the world afire. Soon it’ll burn, all right, Cyrus thought.

  “You killed him,” Cyrus agreed, but reluctantly; not for the credit, but for the rest of the thought that followed.

  “Yet you seem … dispirited.” She cocked her head at him, curious at his despondent reaction, surely.

  “We failed,” Cyrus said after a moment’s pause, and let that sink in. “If we’d killed Talikartin, maybe—but we didn’t.” He knocked off his own helm and let it rattle across the floor.

  “What are you saying?” Vara asked, coming a knee next to him. The sweat dripped down her face along with the blood, and he knew if he sought out a mirror, his countenance would be just the same.

  “This isn’t over,” Cyrus said, shaking his head. “Not even close. Not by a long, long ways.”

  41.

  “You went all the way to Kortran and struck at their temple?” Ehrgraz’s voice was harsh and furious, smoke pouring out of his nose. “You are a special sort of fool, Cyrus Davidon, and when I say that, it carries some weight, for my own people are the most complacent group of fools on Arkaria who sit and wait for death to come for them. You are not that sort of fool, no, you are the sort that seeks death out all on his own—”

  “I didn’t wait around for them to come out and meet us,” Cyrus said. It was a few days after the battle, and the hot summer winds still swept around the Plains of Perdamun as Cyrus stood upon the wall looking into the furious yellow eyes of Ehrgraz, who had swept in on the morning wind. Cyrus had a suspicion based on the dragon’s somewhat controlled demeanor early on, that he had already heard of the attack on Kortran, calmed himself and was now becoming enraged once more at the further hearing of it. “I—”

  “You were supposed to draw them out of the front gate,” Ehrgraz spat, sending sparks out from behind a forked tongue.

  “Well, I did that,” Cyrus said, arms folded in front of him. “And you didn’t say not to attack Kortran, I might add.”

  “I assumed you would not be foolish enough to dig your own grave,” Ehrgraz said. “Apparently, I was in error.”

  The warm wind stirred Cyrus’s hair across his forehead, and he glanced around. Vaste was not present this time, thankfully, nor anyone else save for Vara, who stood back at the other end of the parapet, listening but not involved in the conversation. “You got what you wanted. The titans are currently filling the Gradsden Savanna from one side to the other.”

  “Is that so?” Ehrgraz asked, eyes flashing.

  As though you don’t know. “We’ve tried to send scouting parties to the portals in the intervening days.”

  “How many attempts?” Ehrgraz interrupted.

  “Two,” Cyrus said coolly. “They barely made it back alive. The portals are watched. This has been confirmed by the elves of Amti—”

  “Let me also confirm it for you,” Ehrgraz said. “They have increasing garrisons standing guard around every portal in the area, and archers waiting to bring down anyone such as yourselves who can’t fly high enough to avoid their gaze and their arrows.”

  Cyrus did not blink, but only through careful practice holding things in. “I suppose that strikes our next plan, which was to conduct a long-range attack back into Kortran—”

  “Back?” Ehrgraz’s wings spread out in what looked like some combination of shock and outrage, his jaw flapping open. “Why in the name of the demons of old would you go back? Have you not done enough to try to kill yourself?”

  “I figured if we killed Talikartin—”

  “If!” Ehrgraz huffed. “Yes, indeed, if you had! I, for one, am amazed you succeeded in killing Razeel, and it seems that only his own incompetence allowed you to do it.” He shifted his gaze to Vara. “Personally, I would have ripped your head off first, were I him, but I suppose I view you as dangerous rather than dinner.”

  “You know a surprising amount about what happens in Kortran,” Cyrus said carefully.

  “And you know surprisingly little about it considering what you attempted.” The dragon made a low rumbling noise in his throat. “Did you lose anyone in the effort?”

  “A few,” Cyrus admitted. “Probably two dozen, all told, mostly to titan attacks that smeared them into a state where they couldn’t be healed or resurrected.” At this, he felt the plucking of regret within him. “Not as many as we killed of theirs.” He paused, trying to find a clever approach for his next question and giving up when the route was not apparent. “If you know so much about what happened in Kortran, why don’t you know who is teaching them magic?”

  “Why would you assume that I learned what I know about the events in Kortran from the titans?” Ehrgraz asked, looking far too satisfied for Cyrus’s liking.

  “Because the titans were the only other ones there,” Cyrus said, annoyed.

  “And how do I know all I know about you, Cyrus Davidon?” Ehrgraz’s eyes flashed. “You think I get that information from my sp
ies in Kortran? I don’t.”

  Still another person who suggests that we have spies in Sanctuary. It shouldn’t surprise me, given the size of our guild, that there might be a leak or two. He hardened his face. “For all your rustle and rattle about spies and wisdom and foolishness, I have yet to hear a suggestion from you about how best to proceed.”

  “Nor will you,” Ehrgraz said, drawing his wings in close to his body once more, “so long as you continue to consider idiotic plans like launching some foolhardy long raid into Kortran.” He paused. “What would your aim be? What end, other than yours, obviously? You say to kill Talikartin, but you have failed in this task repeatedly. What would be different this time?”

  Cyrus bit back the angry answer that bubbled up from within. “This time … I’d intend to make it so he wouldn’t see us coming.”

  “Ohhh,” Ehrgraz said, seemingly amused. “Now this is a fascinating thing. Do you mean to suggest he was supposed to see you before?”

  “I meant to punch him in the nose before,” Cyrus said, “to bloody him good and have him know it.” He blinked away from those yellow eyes. “Next time … I just want him dead, and I don’t care if he knows it’s coming before or during. He’s too dangerous to live unchecked.”

  “Now we enter interesting territory,” Ehrgraz said, “wherein the Guildmaster of Sanctuary considers assassination a valid option.” He made a sound like a chuckle, but rougher, and his wings spread once more.

  “Do you see a better option?” Cyrus asked, his cheeks burning with a slight shame.

  “You don’t know what I see,” Ehrgraz said with something akin to a shrug of his massive, scaled wings. “But I will say this much—the cause is perhaps not as hopeless now as it was when I arrived, and for that I am heartened.”

  “Because I’m willing to murder this titan, suddenly things are better?” Cyrus asked, frowning at Ehrgraz. “How does that make any kind of sense?”

  “Because perhaps you are not the fool I thought you were when I came here today,” Ehrgraz said, lifting into the air with a powerful sweep of his wings. “I find hope in that, personally.” He looked at Cyrus with careful eyes. “We will speak again ere too long.” And with a sweep of his wings, he flew into the sky and was gone in a matter of seconds.