Warlord

by Robert J. Crane

  Cyrus stood there, Vara and Mendicant behind him, his hand feeling like it was a mile from the salvation of Praelior on his belt, sure that death was well at hand, and he waited for the command that would spell his certain end.

  71.

  “Your hospitality sucks,” Cyrus pronounced, his fingers eager to dance toward Praelior, but his mind sure that to make even a motion in that direction would spell the end of all of them. “And I’m not just talking about your lack of feast on this occasion.”

  King Danay sat in his seat at some considerable distance, elevated steps above the floor where Cyrus and his compatriots stood, but his dark countenance was easily visible, and he seemed to be radiating fury. “You come to tell me of the death of my youngest daughter.”

  “If I’d known you’d be such a prick about it,” Cyrus said, eyeing the archers above, “I would have sent a druid to hand a note to your troops before casting a spell for a quick getaway. Apparently personal condolences don’t rate very high for you.”

  “You led my heir into death,” Danay said with rising anger.

  “Oh, come now,” Cyrus said, feeling as caustic as Weck’arerr, “you disinherited her with all the ease of a butcher taking the head off a goat not four years ago, practically an eye blink to your people. You’ve probably had bowel movements that lasted longer.”

  “You come into my hall and insult me now?” Danay said, cold fury seeping into his tone, layering over the earlier hot rage.

  “I figure I’m not going to make it out of here alive no matter how polite I talk at this point,” Cyrus said. “You didn’t plan this ambush in the name of theatrics, you mean to kill me.” His eyes settled on Danay’s, and he found he had more than a little anger to answer that which he saw in the King. “You know there will be consequences for this, and you’ve decided to do it anyway. Well, I hope you’re ready for war, because it’s coming your way after this.”

  Danay laughed. “You think this will end in war?” His eyes sparkled. “I don’t. Your people are already at war, as are mine. We are natural allies, Sanctuary and the kingdom, fearful of the same great enemy. I will return your wizard to your guild, intact and well, and the shelas’akur will, of course, live—”

  “Of course,” Cyrus said acidly.

  “Do you think I’ll keep my mouth shut at what you plan to do?” Vara asked, incredulous. “If so, you are even more dim than I ever gave you credit for. If you kill him, you had best kill me as well, for I will lead the bloody war myself and take your throne for my bloody own, leaving your head on a pike atop the gate as an example to the last generation of the elves of what happens to a monarch whose head swells entirely too much for his crown.”

  Cyrus blanched at her words then closed his eyes. “She doesn’t mean it—”

  “Of course she does,” Danay said icily. “She means every word of it.” His voice tilted toward sadness. “Which is a shame, but let us face it … the shelas’akur is nothing more than a symbol, and if she must die to prevent a war … so be it.”

  “You are out of your gods-damned mind,” Vara said. “You didn’t even care for your daughter that much—”

  “You don’t know what I cared for,” Danay snapped. “You don’t know anything, you’re a child—”

  “Here’s what I know,” a shadowed figure said, barely visible, voice low and harsh, appearing at Danay’s throat with an ornate dagger clutched in the blue-skinned hand of a dark elf, pale, barely visible fingers small enough to indicate that beneath the cowl was the face of a woman. “If you kill them, there will be no finding your head.” The woman disappeared in an instant, and a scarlet line appeared on Danay’s neck before she reappeared at his other side, pulling him roughly against the back of the chair. “And you will be at war with the Sovereignty. Again.”

  Danay’s face broke into a furious grimace. “I did not summon you, Ambassador.”

  “The Sovereign bade me come,” she said, leaning in close to his ear but speaking loudly enough in the human tongue that all could hear her. “And should your men decide to throw a few well-placed arrows my way—” She disappeared again, and now the blade stretched over the top of the throne, perched to stab directly into the top of the king’s head, his crown knocked asunder. “You will get the point.”

  “Your Sovereign does not want war with me,” Danay said, but there was a hint of uncertainty in the way he said it.

  “My Sovereign anticipated you would say exactly that,” the woman said, appearing once more at his side, her motions quicker than Cyrus had seen even from Alaric when he turned to mist and disappeared. But there was no mist with her, merely the appearance that one moment she was in one place, and the next, another. Almost as though she moves with the aid of a godly weapon … but who the hell …? That voice is … Something is muffling it. “He bade me tell you that as of this morning, we have some ten thousand troops stationed as relief for our allies in the Emerald Fields, anticipating that perhaps you might perhaps think striking down that settlement before committing an act of war on Sanctuary might be a sound defensive move.”

  She flashed again behind him, appearing at the other side, blade poking into his ornate raiment and tearing it just slightly. He flinched visibly. “We have an agreement with Administrator Tiernan, who is rather fond of Sanctuary and this one,” the woman waved faintly at Cyrus, “for some reason. The portal will remain open to us, allowing us to deliver our troops directly onto your shores.” There was a hint of malice as she spoke. “How do you reckon a war will go with dark elves and the Army of Sanctuary able to march straight to your capital, furious at the loss of their General? How will it go with your own people once word spreads that you killed the shelas’akur?”

  Danay’s face was pure fury, suffused anger threatening to boil out. “It will not bring them back.”

  “It won’t bring you back, either,” she said, slapping him lightly on the cheek with the flat edge of the blade and making him flinch. “Cyrus, Vara, Mendicant … be dears and approach the king, will you?” She turned her voice toward the archers in the balcony. “Loose a single arrow and your king will sit headless upon this throne as the dark elves and the largest guild in Arkaria march across your land with the shelas’akur at their head.” Her voice echoed, deep and dramatic, and … damned familiar. “Choose your path—kill your king, kill Cyrus Davidon, kill the shelas’akur … and watch the heirs in waiting fight over the throne.” She dropped her voice conversationally. “How many are there again, below Nyad? Some five hundred, I believe? I hope there’s no acrimony between them, no division. Surely they’d line up behind one of their own and not divide into segments, along with your whole kingdom—your legacy.” She sounded amused.

  Cyrus had taken the woman’s instruction and was advancing slowly. The steward who had led them into the throne room moved aside, hurrying to flatten himself against the nearest wall, well out of the way.

  Cyrus peered at the cowled figure as he reached the steps to the massive throne. The pale blue hand beckoned him forward, and he rose on the steps, one at a time, drawing fearful breaths of perfume-clouded air, Vara and Mendicant only a step behind him.

  He saw the crimson dripping down Danay’s front and staining his royal rainbow attire. It was not a small wound that the dark elven ambassador had inflicted, and the first hints of worry were fighting to appear on Danay’s face even now. He kept his hands clutched on his throne, but his knuckles were white with the effort.

  “Thank you,” Cyrus said to the dark elven figure behind the throne. “For … this.”

  “I owed you one,” she said, nervousness fighting through the distorted sound of her voice. “But I suggest we leave quickly, before some of the archers above grow weary of holding their bows nocked.”

  “Wise sentiment from the …” Vara was frowning, “… whoever you are.”

  “Your daughter died bravely,” Cyrus said, staring right into King Danay’s face. “She fought to the end to try and bring all the help she could to you
r kingdom, and her death was tragedy of the highest order … and exactly the sort we face in battle and war.”

  “She should not have been with you,” Danay said gravely, the fury returned beneath his worry.

  “That’s an argument you should have had with her,” Cyrus said, nodding once at the figure behind the throne. “Not me. Though I didn’t hear you complaining when her being with us resulted in Termina being defended by Sanctuary, or the Heia Pass getting our efforts.” Cyrus’s face went grave. “Our assistance to you ends now. Sanctuary’s aid is to the Emerald Fields, and if you ever so much as make a feint at them with an army, you will have me—and Sanctuary—”

  “And me,” Vara said harshly.

  “And the Sovereign of Saekaj and Sovar,” the lady in the cloak said.

  “—to contend with,” Cyrus finished. “We can find more soldiers.” He drew himself up to his full height, and the difference between him and the sitting monarch was imposing. “Can you?”

  “Get out of here, damn you,” Danay said after a moment of silence. “You’ll have your peace.”

  “Your pragmatism is appreciated,” Cyrus said. He let his hand drop to Praelior as he signaled to Mendicant. The world slowed immediately, the trickle of blood down the king’s neck down to individual beads rolling slowly over pale skin, the almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth obvious to Cyrus now.

  A teleportation orb sprang into existence before Cyrus, the easy transit back to his point of soul binding, but as he started to reach for it, he looked up at the dark elven ambassador. Where before her form had been shaded and dark, as though she were under some cloud, now she was as obvious to his eyes as any of the countless other times he had looked upon her.

  “What. The. Hell?” Cyrus asked, staring at her in undisguised awe.

  He could now see her white hair beneath the cowl as if someone shone a light into the darkness, could see her face, proud and unabashed even though she was hiding under means of darkness that he could not define other than—

  He saw the dagger, clearly, and saw the glow from the weapon. It was a faint one but clear to him, now that Praelior was in his hand, one godly weapon shedding light on another.

  “I told you that I owe you,” Aisling Nightwind said, and then she reached out for the orb in front of her. But she said it with a hint of sadness, and even though her motion was telegraphed to give them plenty of time, Cyrus still had to scramble to take hold of his orb before she grasped hers—but not until he’d seen the flashes behind him from Vara and Mendicant. “Take care, Cyrus,” she said and took hold of the spell magic that whisked her away.

  Cyrus clutched at the magical orb and let it sweep him along as well, dragging him through space, and back to the Tower of the Guildmaster, unsure if he was more disturbed by the King who had threatened him with death and war … or the former lover and assassin who had just spared him from both.

  72.

  The funeral for Andren, Odellan, Nyad, Thad and the six rangers was less like a funeral than any Cyrus could ever recall seeing—with the exception of the ones that he had been forced to preside over of late. Without benefit of bodies, there was no need for graves. There was some talk about digging them anyway, but of late the cemetery in the back corner of the Sanctuary wall had grown full, and so a new tradition had begun after the siege two years prior, based on some of the customs of the human Northlands.

  The entire guild stood, after a long procession, upon the banks of the River Perda south of Sanctuary. There was silence in the air, the skies were grey as was fitting for the early onset of autumn in the Plains of Perdamun, and Cyrus stood at the fore in his black armor as they set adrift ten small wooden boats upon the river, pushing them out and letting the current catch them, tugging them inexorably toward the mouth of the river at its entry to the Bay of Lost Souls.

  The silence was an immovable thing; Cyrus stood basking in it in the absence of the rays of the sun. His officers were a step behind, but he did not look to them for comfort, not even to Vara, who was only a half-pace behind him. I am the leader. I must bear this burden in silence. I am the example. I cannot appear to be lost, no matter how much so I may feel.

  And so he held his head high, watching the first flaming arrow strike the lead boat, the one prepared for Thad with his original red armor painted up freshly, lying within the wooden beams like a body. The tinder around it caught quickly, and the flames leapt high as the fire arrows landed upon the second boat, then the third in line, until all ten were properly burning, pyres making their way down the river.

  The boats drifted aflame, giving light to the grey day but not nearly enough heat to reach them on the banks. Cyrus wanted to feel the fire, to hear its crackle on flesh. Did they feel it? he wondered, numb, but not from the cold. Did it burn and course over them, consume them while they yet lived, breathing in the flame, letting it incinerate them outside and in?

  He pictured it blackening flesh, watching Andren disappear under the inferno, imagined it slow rather than so quick it almost defied notice; as if he could have turned his head and never even known that his oldest friend had passed from this world.

  Cyrus turned his head slightly to see Martaina standing stonefaced, bow in hand, a lit torch next to her, performing her duty—her last duty—to both husband and lover, her thoughts shrouded behind a black veil that apparently did nothing to impair her aim.

  With quiet solemnity, a voice in the audience reached up with a chorus of song in a tongue Cyrus did not quite understand, something that vaguely bordered his knowledge of the human language, but was rooted in some dialect with words that eclipsed his knowing. With a start, he recognized the honey-smooth voice as that of Menlos Irontooth, singing in the manner of his people when they performed this very ceremony.

  Other voices took up the song, until Cyrus realized that Vara was adding her own, low and harmonious, and he realized that he had never even known she could sing.

  The grey clouds rolled over the afternoon sky as the song broke the silence, repeated twice more, more voices joining in on each chorus as the simplicity of the words washed over the crowd of mourners like a river running over its banks. Cyrus had contemplated a speech, had delivered these sorts of eulogies before, the last only a week or so earlier. Something needed to be said, but he had only a few thoughts on his mind as the chorus closed its song and silence reigned over the river once more, the pyres drifted nearly out of sight by this point.

  “We could tell tales all afternoon of these ten brave souls,” Cyrus said, his voice strong and clear and ringing. “And I expect we will—later, in the warmth of the fire, ales in hand, toasting them and their sacrifice until the small hours of the morning. We are a company that goes to battle, that goes to war, but that loses few. This a fact we are immensely proud of, but when we do suffer that loss, it is all the more keenly painful for its rarity, in the same way that gold is precious for its scarcity.

  “These people were friends, brothers, sisters, lovers, husbands, wives—they were many things to the many of us,” Cyrus continued, turning to face the crowd, letting his eyes dance over the officers one by one. Someone was missing, he thought, but he did not stop to consider who; with all the recent loss, he might simply have miscounted. “We knew who they were, their names, their dreams, their ambitions, their secrets,” he lowered his voice. “They lived among us, they were us, warriors, rangers, wizard, healer. Members, officers—all of Sanctuary, and true.

  “Their loss is a blow,” he went on, hearing a sob choked off in the back of the crowd, and his eyes settled on Terian, who stood near the front, solemn, with some of his own procession in attendance behind him. His eyes were downcast, his armor drawing stares from the members of Sanctuary around him. “To lose any of our number is painful; to lose so many so quickly is … almost unthinkable.”

  Cyrus drew a breath and let it out. “I could spend the whole day telling you all I know of our dear lost, and not even ripple the surface of that particular
pond. That leaves off all that I did not know, for many of our dead I would have been have been hard-pressed to name were I to run into them in the halls. I consider that a tragedy, for I know their names now, and have heard many stories about each of them, enough to convince me that we are greatly poorer for their passing. They were our guildmates, and they were exemplars of courage, which is the tie that binds our membership. We take none but the brave,” Cyrus went on, “and they were brave, and true, and stood their ground to the last, every one of them.” His eyes flitted over Cora, who stood off to one side with Gareth and Mirasa as well as one of their druids flanking her, paying their condolences. I wonder how they heard?

  “They fought and died for their brethren here,” Cyrus said, trying to thread his speech to a close, “as I expect any of you would. For that is the strength of Sanctuary—we are no mean mercenary company that merely goes where the gold compels us; we are called to higher purpose,” he felt an ashen sensation within just saying it, as though their attack on the dragons put the lie to the thought, “and they fought for that purpose, giving everything they had to the cause.” He straightened. “Speaking only for myself … we all die at some point in our walk through this world, and I can only hope, when my day comes, that it should be to such high purpose as fighting to end such a war as we are in—as it did for these brave souls.”

  The applause was light, polite, and then grew stronger. But even as it raged while emotions poured out of those before him, there was another thought that was stirred by what he had just said, about all of them dying eventually, and he realized at last which officer was absent from the funeral rites.

  Curatio.