Cyrus looked up, down the table, lined with these old friends. “I want vengeance, yes. I could lie and say I didn’t, but you all know me, and know me well enough to realize I’d be lying, even if some of you hadn’t heard my earlier diatribe.”
“Yes,” Vaste said, “there was much talk of deity disembowelment and flaying before cooler heads prevailed, at least temporarily.”
“Cyrus,” Terian said, staring down the table at him, clearly trying to meet his eye, “you are a sworn brother to me, and I have offered you my unreserved support in times past. After the Avatar of the God of War, I told you they would come for you, and that I would be at your side.” The Sovereign of Saekaj and Sovar took a sharp breath. “I, personally, will still stand by you now. But I cannot commit the Sovereignty’s troops in some sort of war against the gods—”
“I understand.” Cyrus nodded sharply.
“Do you?” Vaste asked, his voice barely rising above a whisper.
Cyrus gave him a daggered look. “Yes, Vaste. I understand not wanting to lead your people into a fight with gods, having tried my hardest not to lead our people into such fights.”
“You didn’t try very hard, though,” Mendicant said, “since we ended up going against Yartraak after Mortus, and then the Avatar of Bellarum after that … unless that was you trying your best, in which case …” He looked up toward the ceiling, clearly deep in thought and reasoning aloud to himself, “… you’re very terrible at this.” He blinked, his eyes widened, and the goblin looked straight at Cyrus. “I’m sorry, Lord Davidon—”
“For what?” Cyrus asked, feeling a dark ripple of amusement. “For speaking the truth? I can hardly fault you for that, Mendicant.”
“I don’t mean to be the wet blanket,” Cattrine said, “but if this is a council bent on leading a war of some sort against the gods, I’m afraid that I, too, must bow out on behalf of my people. Emerald Fields cannot afford such a conflict at this point.” She looked to Cyrus. “I hope you don’t find me disloyal for that—”
“I find you wise,” Cyrus said. “When the titans attacked your people, I felt certain you’d seen the worst of war. But if you entered into this, there is no doubt it would be considerably worse for you and yours.”
“There is still, perhaps, help I could offer,” Cattrine said. “Trade goods and … assistance rebuilding—”
“There’s nothing left to rebuild,” Cyrus said. “Sanctuary is a hole in the earth, and even before this attack, we were down to a pittance of strength, barely enough to complete the Trials of Purgatory in reasonable order.” He straightened in his seat, suddenly aware he was listing badly to the right. He looked at Quinneria, who was still sitting silently, looking at him out of the corners of her eyes. “Well. You wanted to counsel me on revenge. Do you have a plan you’d care to share with the rest of the group?”
“I have the barest essence of one,” Quinneria said, “but I feel compelled to warn you that anyone who even partakes in listening to this plan will likely bear the enmity of the gods if we move forward.” She took a long breath in the silence. “In fact, any of our old allies may be considered complicit without being involved. Perhaps you’ve not noticed, but the gods are a very touchy group.”
“I did notice that, yes,” Vaste said. “As our home collapsed around our ears.”
“So what I am saying is …” Quinneria went on, “… perhaps we should have this meeting somewhere else, and on an occasion when those who are not interested in making this war or taking part in this fight can recuse themselves and thus save themselves from involvement and implication.”
Cyrus waited a moment. “Terian, perhaps she’s right. Perhaps we should leav—”
“Davidon,” Terian said, wearing as sour an expression as sour as any he could recall from the dark elf, ever, “we’re buried deep in the earth, surrounded by my soldiers without a portal anywhere nearby, sentries with magic at their disposal to detect invisible intruders … if there’s a safer place in Arkaria to speak these words aloud, it’s either so far up in the air that the Dragonlord would have had a hard time reaching it or else beneath the waves to such a depth we would feel the pressing of the water down to our very souls—”
“Nowhere is safe from the gods,” came another voice, sudden, unexpected, from the middle of the table. There was a stir of surprise, shock rippling through the room. Samwen Longwell leapt to his feet, spear in hand. The speaker had appeared in the chair one down from him, just beyond Mendicant’s seat. The goblin had both hands pointed at the new arrival, who was lounging back, feet upon the table. The man in question had mischief aplenty, eyes darting playfully around the table, resting on each of the people who were now staring at him in varying states of alarm. Grinnd Urnocht was on his feet as well, weapons at the ready, staring over dangerously lidded eyes at the interloper, who bore the appearance of a dark elf.
“Oh, calm yourselves,” Aisling said, waving away concern. “He does that.”
“Appears in the middle of a secure council meeting?” Terian asked, eyebrow pointed nearly skyward.
“I appear anywhere I need to go,” the man said, grinning broadly.
Cyrus stared back at him as the man slowly moved his gaze to Cyrus. “Of course he does,” Cyrus said sourly. “He might even drag you out of a battle to give you a lecture.”
“One time I do that, to spare your life, and this is the thanks I get,” the man said, looking wounded. “Oof.”
“He’s having trouble being grateful for his life at the moment,” Vaste said, taking the arrival with the most aplomb of anyone, save for perhaps Aisling, who was studying her fingernails. “And …” Vaste asked, “… you are?”
“This,” Cyrus said, beating the man to his own introduction, “is Terrgenden.” He puckered his lips as he surveyed the new arrival with no small amount of disdain. Indeed, he was barely keeping himself from leaping out of his chair to kill the bastard by association. “You know … the God of Mischief.”
6.
Alaric
We left Enrant Monge before the sunlight had risen over the trees on the next day. I remember distinctly the ride out of the northern gate, my head held high and full of plans about how I would turn this army into my own. I imagined them marching north with my father’s banners and coming south again carrying my own. Conquest was just over the horizon, and I’d hardly slept the night before we left. The dreams of a juvenile mind that valued strength and nothing else mesmerized me as I rode through the foggy wood, watching the mist dissipate under the first light. We met the army on an open field as the morning sky turned blue.
“This journey will be murder on my hindquarters,” Olivier confided to me as we looked over the army from the backs of our horses, Stepan Thomason following close behind us at every turn. I had a feeling he would dog my steps the entire journey, though I doubted my father was clever enough to think he might have cause to doubt my intentions. I was sure he sent Stepan to shadow me out of worry for my safety, not out of any belief I would turn an army against him. That made him twice the fool, in my mind.
“There’s always the wagons, if your arse grows weary of the ride,” I said to Olivier with dark amusement. I had no intention of ever conceding and taking up a post in one of the carriage wagons. They were meant for supplies, and I felt sure riding in one would make me look weak.
By the third day, I was spending at least half my time riding in the wagons, for my tenderfoot arse had never before been on an extended ride. Olivier was right there next to me, lips in an uncomfortable rictus from his pain. “I wish I had not come,” he said, the closest he had tread thus far to outright dissent. I, for my part, said nothing, silently stewing in my hatred for my father, and afraid that any outburst might make its way to the soldiers whose favor I was looking to find.
We rattled north through forests and over rugged roads and paths. We passed through countless small villages, and after many days of travel over rough steppes, we found the horizon to the north giving w
ay to foothills, and then high mountains. Here, as we went into the rugged passes of Syloreas, a new problem presented itself: staying in the back of the wagons on those curving roads led to nausea. So now we were afflicted with twin troubles: motion sickness if we stayed in the wagons, or saddle soreness from riding.
I chose the latter most of the time, and Olivier chose the former. His piggy face had lost considerable pudginess by the time we reached the mountain villages at the heights of the Sylorean territories. We navigated our way through strongholds at the head of our army. I saw more people than I could safely count, all of them looking for me, I could tell by the way they spoke in whispers about the banner of my father’s house. I wore the surcoat myself, the insignia on it a stupid thing—a bird with a branch in his claws. Not a predatory bird, either, but one of the pointless ones that just flapped and made noise, waiting for a larger, stronger bird to make a meal of it.
They turned out for us in the villages, people filling the dirt avenues, jockeying to see the successor to the throne. I had my words prepared for each occasion, but we rarely stopped. I found out later that Stepan had carried a message from my father that I was not to be presented with occasion to address the people. He probably feared I would say what was in my heart at the time, and rightly so.
To travel north to our objective was a journey of months. One day, when the dawn came, the general in charge of the army, who had treated me with considerable curtness on every occasion I’d tried to address him, informed his troops that our destination, a village called Pinradeonage, was less than a day’s travel away. Its name was a mouthful of the sort I’d come to expect from the thrice-damned Syloreans and their plague-speaking ancestors. It had been so blessed hard to get them to speak like the rest of the kingdom, with their desire to continue talking in their backwood mountain languages.
We went forward until shortly before nightfall, crossing a pass into a green and summery valley, verdant with pines and heavy with the smell of those trees. There were still hints of snow on the tall peaks in the distance, but the air was warm, just a hint of coolness as evening drew near. I could feel it through my silken doublet, which by now was growing quite dirty. I’d always had servants to tend to my laundry before, but now I found myself in the unique position of having to do what the rest of the army was doing and wash my clothing in the streams and rivers we ran across. It was a filthy and unsatisfying business, but after a couple months I had grown used to it.
I looked down on the village of Pinradeonage, unimpressed. It was a collection of half a dozen dirt hovels of the sort we’d seen in the countryside. They were built directly against the sides of hills, with thatched roofs that I suspected provided little protection from the winters in this country, which were certain to be long.
“This is the place, then?” Olivier asked once we were settled in for the night. He was looking out over the dusky valley with me. Once again, we’d stopped short of a village, denying me any opportunity to meet the people. At the time I thought little of it; my focus was entirely on swaying the army, after all. I didn’t need common villagers on my side; I needed men of power, soldiers. Villagers were just stupid peasants who would go in whatever direction a strong force pushed them to.
“This is the place,” I said, looking down at the little village with contempt. The campfires burned around us, men laughed and celebrated the end of their long march. Relief was in the air like the smell of good meat on the fire.
“Should we not be wary?” Olivier asked nervously, huddled close to our little fire. The night had started to grow colder as the darkness fell. It was a terrible sensation I had yet to grow used to, so accustomed to my hearth fires burning to keep the cold at bay in winter and summer, attendants to ensure it was stoked all hours. “Were we not sent to investigate some army moving around up here?”
I yawned. “Probably some idiot mistaking a Sylorean goat herder and his flock for an army.” The journey had been long, and in addition to the movement sickness, the saddle-soreness, and the ordinary fatigue of travel, I had experienced another sort of debilitating sickness from eating camp food for the first time in my life. I expected I could have coped with it for the first few days without much trouble, but being absent the rich delicacies prepared by the castle chefs and forced to subsist on pickled eggs, hard tack bread, aged cheese, jerky … my stomach had not taken any of it well. I’d experienced my fair share of vomiting in the early days on the winding mountain roads, but for most of the trip I’d been afflicted with the other end of the stomach malady, and though I hadn’t looked in a mirror, since there were none, Stepan had stopped looking at me with pure contempt and started leavening his glares with a spoonful of concern.
I still viewed him with scorn, of course, probably because I hadn’t seen my own face at the time.
“But we’re safe, aren’t we?” Olivier asked, teeth chattering slightly from cold or fear. I felt too weary and was too hard of heart to care which.
“We camp in the middle of the largest army in the north,” Stepan said, drifting out of the darkness toward our fire. He did that sometimes, and it annoyed me on every occasion. He certainly had the prerogative to insert his pointed nose into my conversations, but he also knew I found it grating. I doubted he cared; he had to know that when my father died, he was to be out of a job—or worse. “We’re as safe as can be.” He shot Olivier a fleeting smile laced with his customary smugness.
“As he said.” I nodded toward Stepan, trying to offer a little reassurance to Olivier, who was plainly not enjoying the march any more than I was. “Even a village of Syloreans angry about—taxes or goat skin diseases or whatever it is that enrages them up here—would surely see the folly of attacking such an army as this.”
“It would be terrible death for them, yes,” Stepan said, a little stiffly, as he meandered closer to where Olivier and I sat around the fire.
I stared hard at Stepan, willing him not to sit down. I had no more desire to share a fire and talk with him than I did with my own father. I could not recall the last time I had had a civilized conversation with father. We still shared the occasional meal, but they were always tense events, with more than one degenerating into an opportunity for me to vent my spleen about all his failings.
Stepan either failed to see or ignored my glare and settled himself on the thick layer of pine needles that covered the mountain ground. He shuffled a few times, adjusting himself to get comfortable, then leaned on his elbow. He was wearing an outfit similar to my own, suited more for court than a march. Of course, I had the best leather armor that our people could make for that time, but it was in the back of one of the wagons. I still had my steel sword on my belt, though, tilted against the earth where I sat.
“What do you suppose it is we’re looking for?” Olivier asked Stepan, which irked me further. It wasn’t as though Stepan was some expert on the ways of the world outside of Enrant Monge. He was a courtier, a weak dandy like my father, a man dedicated to the idea of peace through constant accommodation of the Grand Dukes of Luukessia.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Stepan said, shrugging as he stretched out, putting his weathered boots close to the fire. I, too, was feeling the chill air on my toes. “There isn’t much north of here, after all, at least not in terms of villages. The winters get too bitter for men to survive them, and they last too long to grow much.”
“Hm,” I said, before Olivier could reply. “I don’t expect we’re not going to find much of anything.” I swept my gaze over the fires burning all around us. I hadn’t made any inroads into the army yet, and we were surely at the halfway point of our journey. I expected we’d turn back toward Enrant Monge in less than a week, and that was a problem. It was a problem because when I tried to approach the watch fires of the men, I was met with courtesy but couldn’t seem to find a way to converse with them in anything other than the most awkward fashion. It was nothing like talking with people at court; the soldiers were guarded, shutting their mouths immediately
like the oyster shells I’d once heard tell of from an Actaluerean seaman.
“Something caused the alarm in this area,” Stepan said mildly, which I was sure he was doing to provoke a response from me.
“These people would panic at a hard snowfall, I expect,” I said, turning toward the fire again. I held out my hands, feeling the warmth radiate across my palms.
“You take a dim view of your subjects,” Stepan observed, irritating me further.
“I take a dim view of the dim ones.” I smirked nastily at him.
“These people have simple lives, it’s true,” Stepan said, taking hold of a branch and stirring the fire with it. It wasn’t even his fire; he was sharing it with us, and now he’d started to stir it. “Not everyone can live in a castle and have their own kingdom, after all. Someone has to tend the fields, fish the seas, herd the cattle and goats, hunt the game—”
“And it’s wonderful that they do so, and even better that they know their place,” I said.
“But for an accident of birth, that might have been your place,” Stepan said, glancing sidelong at me. I got the feeling he was watching for my reaction.
“But for strength, I would not stay there,” I said with a confidence born of youthful idiocy. “Royalty is meant to rise. Some are simply better than others.” His expression froze, and sensing the weakness of his argument, I struck what I considered the deciding blow. “A few were simply made to be ruler, and most others to be ruled.”
“And I suppose you’re the one to rule, are you?” Stepan replied with calm.
“That is my lot in life,” I said.
“I have my doubts about that,” Stepan said, looking down at the ground, stick still clutched in his hand.
“You may doubt all you like, but you’ll never be more than a servant to men more powerful than you,” I said, driving the knife deep, “so what care I what you think?”
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