Warlord

by Robert J. Crane

  Cyrus opened his mouth to argue, to balance the scales with their failures in Luukessia and elsewhere, but shut his mouth just as quickly. Why debate? It’s pointless. Let him have his illusions, let him believe that we are some great good instead of a force that occasionally and unwittingly causes harm in the process of doing good. “It’s good to have respect for the traditions, I guess,” he said instead.

  “These were men and women of integrity,” Mendicant said, possibly not even hearing Cyrus at this point, so deep was he in his lionization of the past, “with singular vision. To even meet Lady Cora was such an honor as I cannot describe.”

  Cyrus felt a twinge in his eyelid. “Yes, she’s quite something, that one. And I can see why she and Alaric got on so famously as to start a guild together.”

  “I sense sometimes there are things missing from the record,” Mendicant went on, “as though there is a gap in the meetings—”

  Cyrus frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “There are references to people that are scrawled over in the journals,” Mendicant said, making a popping noise in the back of his throat. “Covered with smudges of ink too dense to read, but that fail to bleed through onto the back of the pages.”

  “Sounds like magic,” Cyrus said with an ironic smirk.

  “Perhaps,” Mendicant said, though he sounded unsure. “Magic is certainly an element I felt I understood well before I arrived here. But since seeing Lord Soulmender’s efforts—”

  “Who?” Cyrus asked.

  “Oh, uh,” Mendicant said, looking greatly abashed, “Lord Soulmender. You know …”

  Cyrus blinked, searching his memory for that name, which did sound vaguely familiar. “I … uh …”

  “Curatio,” Mendicant whispered under his breath.

  “Right,” Cyrus said, squeezing his eyes tight. “I sometimes forget that he had adopted a surname, he uses it so little.”

  “Since seeing his magic at work, so expansive,” the goblin said hungrily, “so different from what even we wizards, the most powerful offensive spellcasters, can achieve … it has redefined everything for me. I am afraid I must confess to some feelings of guilt in the wake of his departure …”

  “Lot of that going around,” Cyrus said. “But why do you feel guilty?”

  “I hounded him,” Mendicant said, head bowed. “I asked him many, many questions about the nature of magic, most of which he declined to say anything about save for, ‘I cannot answer that,’ but a few which expanded my knowledge in other directions. For every answer he gave or did not give, I felt ten more questions spring up, and thus …” He paused, and his voice fell, “… I feel I may have led to his departure.”

  “Pfft,” Cyrus said so dismissively that Mendicant’s head snapped up in surprise. “You were no more guilty of driving off Curatio with questions than you are of teaching me a fire spell simply because you mouthed the words in front of me.” Mendicant blanched and Cyrus waved a hand to absolve him. “There were other things going on with Curatio, things in his mind and arguments he had with me that weighed on him, I think. Do you recall last year when he resigned as acting Guildmaster, that fit of temper he had in Council?”

  “I … was not an officer then,” Mendicant said.

  “Right. I forget these things,” Cyrus said. “He had a full-on blaze of emotion come burning out of him like a gout of flame off one of you wizards. And he’s looked wearier and wearier over the last few months.” Cyrus shook his head. “You ask me, he hit his limit, either with the matters of we child races, or simply with my failure to listen to his good advice.” Cyrus felt the burn of shame on his cheeks. “Either way, the fault is not yours, I don’t think. There are far too many other more likely culprits.”

  “You are kind to say so,” Mendicant said, bowing. There was a pause before next he spoke. “What are you doing here in the dark, if I might ask, Lord Davidon?”

  Cyrus looked around the room, the torches not yet lit, only the hearth’s faint glow for light. “I think I’m brooding.”

  “… You think you are? Do you not know?”

  “I’m afraid to call it such,” Cyrus said. “I don’t know why; perhaps it’s my upbringing in the Society, where they eschewed the idea of pensive reflection entirely in favor of seeking out and killing all that vexes you in the name of Bellarum. Alaric was good at brooding, though, sitting quietly in a dark room and mentally attacking even the impossible problems. Yes, I think I’m brooding,” he finished.

  “If Lord Garaunt embraced this as a strategy of life,” Mendicant said, rather delicately, “then why do you hesitate to embrace it for yourself?”

  “Because I’m not Alaric,” Cyrus said, and with the words came a weight off of him, a most curious one at that. “I’m not as good as him,” he went on, finding each additional statement carried its own relief, “I’m not as virtuous, or honorable—which is why I’m not a paladin, I suppose, leaving aside the lack of magic—I don’t lead nearly as well or wisely, and I contemplate darker solutions to these wars and enemies than Alaric ever would have considered.” He stared at the door behind Mendicant as the hearth crackled. “I’m somewhere between where I started and where Alaric would have me, I suspect; too dark to be truly virtuous, too held down by virtue to be a great warrior—or warlord at this point, I suppose is what the doctrine of war would call a man of my position. Too dirty to be called clean, too clean to be properly dirty. It’s a vexing thing, being a man in the middle. Even Terian is now more assured of his place than I am.”

  Mendicant’s face was a confused frown, lips all askew. “It is a bad thing to be open to good change?”

  Cyrus laughed. “I don’t … I don’t know, actually. I suppose I’m torn because I look at the problems facing Sanctuary and … even if I were as noble and virtuous as Alaric, I don’t see an answer to our current dilemmas down his path, at least not one that wouldn’t result in so many dead as to defy the counting.”

  “And what do you see down the other path?” Mendicant asked. “Down the path of the warlord?”

  “Death,” Cyrus said grimly. “Abundant death and war … but I also see, perhaps, an end somewhere down there.”

  “It would be … easy, I think,” Mendicant said, “to tell you that an end down that road is a mirage, for perhaps it is not.”

  “It’s not,” Cyrus said darkly. “Wiping out your enemies to the last man is a fairly definitive end, at least to that conflict.”

  “Those are deeds that would blacken the soul, though, are they not?” Mendicant asked.

  “They are,” Cyrus said. “Deeds worthy of a warlord, and not a paladin.” Which I am not in any case.

  “I am but a simple goblin,” Mendicant said, and Cyrus detected no falseness in the modesty he presented, “and I come from a place of … well, you knew Enterra. Low brutality and repressive means … the Imperium was all darkness, and not just from being underground. When I grew up there, I saw those examples presented—the guards with their unending violence, unwilling to take so much as an ounce of disrespect without answering it with furious reprisal. It gave me an example, which was what they wanted, but of exactly what I did not want to be.” His eyes flicked up. “It seems to me, Lord Davidon, there is no shame in leaving behind your raising to embrace what you want to be rather than who you were taught to be.”

  “There’s no victory there,” Cyrus said quietly. “Not down that road.” His road.

  “Is the other victory—the one down the path of the warlord, the one wherein you slaughter every titan to the last woman and child … is this a victory you want?” Mendicant asked. “Because if so … then I would say your answer is already evident, and your path … is most assuredly set.” He shuddered, his green, scaly skin catching the orange reflection from the hearth. “But I do not think it is a path that even your army would follow willingly … or that you would, if I may say.”

  “I certainly had the seeds planted in me,” Cyrus said, thinking of moments in the Societ
y when he was told to kill, forced to harm, cheered to it, without guilt or remorse.

  “Perhaps, when you were a child,” Mendicant said, and now he was easing toward the door to the archive. “But now are you are a man, and have the ability to choose what grows within you—what seeds to plant, as it were.” He bowed his head in respect. “Good evening, Lord Davidon.” And he went to open the door.

  “I think some of that wisdom of the founders might be rubbing off on you, Mendicant,” Cyrus called after him.

  “I can think of no better reason to immerse myself in these texts, then,” Mendicant said and shut the door to do exactly that, leaving Cyrus with slightly lighter thoughts than he’d had when the goblin came in.

  78.

  Vara found Cyrus in the Tower of the Guildmaster later that night. There was a look of exhaustion upon her face as she came in, already unfastening her armor before the door was closed. She made a face as she slipped out of her boots, and they clanked as they fell over on the stairs, and she did not bother to pick them up.

  “Long day?” Cyrus asked.

  “As long as any other, I suppose, though it felt longer,” she said, dropping her breastplate and backplate on the ground. He eyed her tight-clinging shirt, damp with sweat. “I just marched to Prehorta and back without benefit of a horse.”

  Cyrus frowned. “I didn’t know you were going on a march. I would have accompanied you.”

  “I was not intending to,” she said, slipping out of her greaves, the chainmail she wore beneath her armor already hanging around her waist, ready to fall to the ground. “But I got a bit caught up in talking with members of a patrol heading out on a routine trip to outlying villages from the next portal north. Soon enough, I found myself marching with them.”

  “You? Conversing like a normal person?” Cyrus asked. “Did you cast offensive spells at any of them?”

  “No, nor even any offensive words,” she said, her voice light despite her obvious fatigue. “I did, however, listen to them—their worries, their complaints, their hopes for the future.”

  Cyrus just stared at her. “I’m waiting for the other boot to drop.” He looked past her. “Not yours, not literally, as both of those have clearly toppled over, but figuratively …”

  “I’m doing my best,” she said earnestly, the chainmail clattering as it fell around her ankles and she stepped out of it, making her way to the room in the corner where the toiletry was kept, and turning the faucet to unleash a spattering flow of water just out of Cyrus’s sight.

  “I know you are,” Cyrus said, still a little amazed. “Did you learn anything of note?”

  “Most of our guildmates are concerned about the lack of expeditions and how it will affect their purses in the long run,” Vara called from just inside the door as her soiled shirt flew out and landed on the floor outside. Her pants followed with her next statement. “But the Luukessians, of course, are concerned about the security of Emerald Fields, and most of the Arkarians are tied enough to our brethren from across the sea to be worried as well. All want a solution to this southern conflict, though, be they goblin, elf, human or dark elf.”

  “Of course,” Cyrus muttered as he heard her step under the running water. She let out a sharp intake of breath at the temperature, and he could hear the subtle change in sound as it began to land on her skin rather than on the stone floor.

  He waited quietly for her in his chair, probing at the padding atop the arms, wondering if Alaric had been the one to buy this particular furnishing or if it was too stylish to have been his decision. Vara came out of the door a few minutes later, her hair wrung out and snaking over her shoulder, faint hints of moisture still hanging about her fair skin where the towel had missed its mark. “I was left with quite a bit of time to think on this journey, of course,” she said, stark naked.

  “And what did you think about?” Cyrus asked, not wanting to move his eyes.

  “Us,” she said, walking across the floor somewhat daintily for her. She circumnavigated around the bed and knelt before him, which surprised him more than a little as she placed her elbows on his knees and stared up at him from between his legs. “The future.”

  He blinked. “And what did you think about, vis-à-vis this future of ours?”

  She steadied her gaze, and took a breath. “I think we should marry.”

  Cyrus could not help but blink again. Then once more. And yet again. “This is an odd thing.”

  “That I have just proposed marriage?” she asked, cocking her own eyebrow at him.

  “Well, you’ve certainly chosen an interesting way to go about it,” he said, glancing once, surreptitiously, down at her nakedness. “Effective, too, I would think—”

  “Don’t be an arse,” she teased.

  “I’m sorry,” Cyrus said, drumming fingers nervously along the arm of the chair where the wood met padding, “the timing feels strange. I know it’s been over half a year, but it feels like just yesterday we had rather a lot of funerals.”

  “That’s actually what got me thinking about it,” she said, lowering her gaze to somewhere in the vicinity of his breastplate. “We have no family but ourselves, really—”

  Cyrus felt the frown crease his forehead again. “You have a sister.”

  Vara blew out an exasperated breath. “Right. Yes. Well, of course we could invite her as well, but my point, if I might make it, is that you and I, on a day to day basis, are somewhat alone outside of the members of this guild as our family.”

  “True,” Cyrus said. He had been feeling that exact sensation most acutely since the death of Andren, something he felt keenly in moments of quiet like he’d had on this night. On every day since it happened, really.

  “I feel like we have circled each other for long enough,” Vara said, and he could tell she had very specific points in mind that she had perhaps practiced rehearsing for this very moment. “For years. Enough to know each other well—as well as can be expected, especially over these last months, when we found that truly, we are quite compatible—”

  “I love you, too.”

  She gave him a faux dangerous look at the interruption. “Do you want to marry me or not?”

  “Since you asked so nicely,” Cyrus said with a smirk that dared the danger even further. He took a breath and let it out. “Of course I want to marry you.” She relaxed slightly in clear relief and slid a little further up. “You didn’t think I was going to say no, did you?”

  “Well, you could have been a little less dramatic about it,” she said accusingly as she sat on his leg and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “Said the woman who crouched naked between my legs and proposed marriage. Not very subtle, dear—”

  A thundering knock came at the door, and both of them stiffened in surprise. Vara slid from his grasp easily and he watched her go, sliding into the bed and covering herself before he allowed himself to shout, “Enter!”

  The door opened and shut quickly, and the sound of leather boots on the steps was short as the messenger climbed the stairs and presented herself in mere seconds.

  “Cora?” Cyrus asked, standing, small droplets of water that Vara had left behind on his armor showering off at his quick motion. “What are you doin—”

  “There is no time,” Cora said, breathless from the climb, holding her side. She looked directly at Cyrus, and the urgency in her voice told him what had happened even before she finished speaking. “The titans. They’re coming.

  “Now.”

  79.

  The alarm was sounding, ringing through the towers and halls as Cyrus descended with Cora at his side, his call taken up by already vigilant listeners at every level who had perhaps seen Cora tear by on her way to get him. Vara was surely not far behind, but he had left her to dress in order to get the jump on this crisis. He silenced Cora as she began to explain, allowing her to tell him nothing until the officers were assembled. They surged into the Council Chambers and waited, the doors open, and Cyrus called out to each of
ficer as they passed on the stairwell, the room slowly filling up as they came in.

  “Sit there,” Cyrus told Cora, pointing her to Andren’s seat without thought. He cringed as she took it, irritated at himself for his thoughtless direction.

  “Where are the titans now?” Vara asked as she breezed in with Erith and Vaste, the last of the officers that they had been waiting for. Her wet hair was laid over her shoulder, water still dripping down her breastplate. The torches flickered at her speedy entry, striding to her place at Cyrus’s left, none of the coyness she had exhibited to him only five minutes earlier present anywhere in her bearing. She was paladin now and officer, not lover or would-be wife, and he smiled faintly at the beautiful contradiction he saw there.

  “They are approaching Amti in force,” Cora said, her usual calm clearly disrupted. “One of our small groups of hunters went missing on a ranging. They have been gone for days.”

  “The titans got them, then,” Vaste said.

  “They have been coming deeper into the jungle all the time,” Cora said, “since their failure at the pass.”

  “So nothing from the dragons, then?” Erith asked, utterly crestfallen.

  “No,” Cora said, shaking her head. “The titans are still fully attending to their northern interests, presumably building up their supply lines for a northern push … and I would imagine having Amti at their backs, able to strike at their stores, is something of a slight inconvenience.”