Cyrus looked at the poor ranger for a moment, and then shifted his gaze to Aisling. She was watching him cannily, and then he looked back to Calene. “I believe in the people around me. I believe that when it comes to impossible tasks, they’ll find a way. That they’ll stand up of their own initiative and realize that it doesn’t matter how it gets done, only that we do it.” He laid a hand on Calene’s shoulder. “Do you understand?”
“I—uhm, I—” Calene said, her head still bowed. “Well, I’ll, uh—I’ll certainly give it my best shot, even though those eye holes are … well, they’re awfully tiny …”
Aisling nodded once. “All that matters is getting the job done, Calene.”
“Then I guess I’ll, uh … see to it,” she said, but Cyrus could hear the fear in her voice. He didn’t feel it one bit, though. We’re coming for you, Bellarum, he thought. And he knew that somehow, this job, like every other that Sanctuary had taken on, would get done.
86.
Alaric
My little army took to the skies and watched, buffeted by the winds of the gathering storm, catching sight of the first herd of humans being shepherded along the roads only a few blocks north of the depot. Their destination was obvious, snaking the slow course southeast toward the Coliseum. I watched and took slow breaths of the cool night air, readying myself for what I knew was the first fight of many this night.
“Five guards,” Curatio said, “a hundred or so humans.” He stood beside me, looking down. “This should be … perhaps not an easy fight, but exceedingly winnable. A fine start.”
“And we have to start somewhere, I suppose.” I drew another sharp breath.
Curatio eyed me carefully. “If I may offer some humble advice?”
I gave him a worried glance of my own. I could feel bile rising in my throat. My army was parked behind us, torn between watching me and the guards below. “What’s that?”
“Be not afraid,” Curatio said. He reached into his cloak, his hand emerging with a small flask, flat and smithed with a lid that twisted off. He offered it to me and I took it, sipping deeply. Whatever it was, it burned on the way down and I coughed. “Your fear,” he said quietly, “is showing.”
“It always shows before a battle,” I said under my breath, assured that with his hearing, he was perfectly aware of what I was saying, even under the rumble of thunder that crackled through the sky. “I … haven’t been in that many, and it clutches at me every time, as though I’ve trapped an animal in my belly and it hungers to get out.”
“Your men watch you,” Curatio said carefully, giving a significant look backwards. “They look to you. I tell you, ‘Be not afraid,’ for if you show it, it will spread to them.”
“How do you just … stop being afraid?” I asked, hanging on for his answer, hoping it would give me peace.
“Believe in what you’re doing,” Curatio said. “Enough that you’d be willing to die for it. That’s the simplest way, and other thoughts are not worthy of contemplation. Do you believe in what you’re doing?”
“Yes,” I said, and felt the little fire of conviction in my heart burn through me as I looked down again at the humans being marched below us. They were dead if we did not act.
“Then let us be about this business,” Curatio said, and he nodded at the flask in my hand. “And you might as well take another drink to speed things along, perhaps a slightly heavier dose this time, just to be sure.” I took another drink, and by his advice made it a whole mouthful. It burned and I nearly snorted, choking as I hurried to get it down my gullet. It burned like flames had been lit down my chest, sinking slowly toward my belly where it warmed me.
Varren chuckled as he moved up next to me. “I suppose they serve the smooth table wine in Enrant Monge, not the stuff that catches fire down your throat.”
“Aye,” I said, once I recovered a bit. “I’m not used to … that.” I felt it warm me all the way through, and I hoped it would aid the courage that flagged in me as I stood on the precipice of action.
“Here’s some news that’ll cheer you,” Varren said. “You remember that salty little dandy that opposed you at every turn?”
I thought about it for a second before the answer came. “Olivier?”
“Yeah, him,” Varren said. “Well, he got picked up by another house around about the time we got moved. House Urides, has their home outside the city somewhere,” he waved a hand to the south. “Their master came and got him, gave him a new nickname when he picked him up.” Varren chuckled, obviously trying to restrain his laughter for the punchline. “You know what he called him? Pretnam!” At this, Varren dissolved into laughter, slapping his own knee. He looked up at me, waiting for me to get it. “You know what ‘pretnam’ means in Protanian, right?”
“It means ‘lower than dung,’” I said, feeling a swell of pity for my friend Olivier—Pretnam Urides now, apparently. “I don’t expect he’ll have an easy life.” For that moment, I felt truly sorry that I had dragged him into this.
“We go when they execute a turn on that corner,” I said, pointing down at the herd of slaves in their march. They were nearing a crossroads, and it seemed a perfect time to attack their flank, when the guards at the fore would be out of sight of the guards at the rear. With luck, we would take them before half their number even realized what was happening.
“A sound idea,” Curatio said, nodding, as he took back the flask and sipped from it himself.
I looked around, and saw Jena off to the side, a little distance away from my men. She had her cloak wrapped tightly around her, bundled against the chill air at these heights. “I’ll be back in a moment; call the attack if I don’t get back in time to do so myself, all right?” I waited for Curatio’s nod, then turned and strode off through the empty air to Jena.
She took note of my approach when I was only a few feet away, and graced me with a weary smile. “Hello.”
“Hello,” I replied, rather lamely, and halted when I was but a few inches from her. I could feel her warmth, but she looked tired, like she was holding herself up through sheer will alone. “How do you fare?”
“Weary, but ready, my blood up for what comes,” she said, though she suppressed a yawn. “This will be a long fight. A long night.”
“Aye,” I said, nodding. I caught her eyes and looked away shyly. “I need to … before we do this I … I haven’t told you how I truly feel about you.”
“And you need not,” she said, cutting over me, “at least not now.” I looked up in surprise. “There is much to be done,” she said, "and we have so little time.” She leaned forward, putting her forehead against my chin. “Tell me all you wish—after. For now, though … concentrate on freeing these slaves.” She pulled back, and I saw a faint light of hope mingled with regret in her eyes. “You are the one who will redeem what we have done all these long years. This empire … even the ones who seek to undo our wrongs have lost their way, lost their minds. Avarice clouds them, and you must provide the clarity until they can see again.” She put a hand on my chest, running it along my new armor. “You have to save your people, and save us—save us all from what we’ve done, what is being done …”
“The attack is now!” Curatio shouted, and I looked at him, raising his mace high, and dropping it before he commenced his run, down to the column below.
“Go,” Jena said, giving me a gentle shove. “Go, let us finish this thing, and we will talk later.”
I looked into her tired eyes and could not argue. I simply obeyed, hurrying after Curatio, joining him at the fore of the fight as we swooped down out of the skies above Sennshann for what would prove to be the first of so many fights to free the slaves.
87.
Cyrus
The ragged plains outside the wall of Reikonos were filled; men and women and horses and all the other machinery of battle stretching as far as Cyrus’s eye could see. He hovered slightly above it all, examining his army in a detached manner, not really thinking of it as his but as a sort of
tableau heretofore unseen. The signs of the siege of Reikonos were visible in the still-upturned earth, even three years later, but the assemblage of armies covered over most of it, leaving Cyrus to wonder what sign his army would leave upon the place they were traveling to conquer.
Total devastation, I hope.
“This is the largest army ever assembled,” Quinneria said with a quiet breath, standing at his side. She’d snuck up on him when he was paying no attention, not that he minded.
Cyrus looked into the distance again, surveying all before him. She was right, of course, as mothers were wont to be. He could see the Luukessian cavalry on the flank, their horses milling, their lines unprepared. The Reikonos Guard was assembled as well, their cheap armor and helms catching the glare of the midday sun. The rest of the Confederation’s armies were assembled beyond them. Cyrus harbored no illusions about the effectiveness of guards over professional soldiers, but he was glad to have them nonetheless.
The elves were lined up beyond, their glistening helms and flawless breastplates spurring something like a dull ache as his eye slid over them quickly. The elves of Amti were there, too, a little ways off from their brethren, the divide between them obvious and unsurprising given all that had come between them. The gnomes were just beyond them, in a tightly packed cluster that took up considerably less space than the other armies.
“I’m surprised the dwarves came,” Quinneria said.
“Maybe they just didn’t want to be left out,” Cyrus said, his gaze flitting over the dwarven army in their fine armor, dark steel not shining nearly as much as others. They stood in the shadow of the trolls, who numbered roughly half as many as the gnomes and probably took up eight times the space. The dark elven armies were assembled just beyond, an uncomfortable line between the forces of the Sovereignty and those of the trolls. I suppose last time they fought together it didn’t end very amicably …
“Mendicant appears to have delivered on your request,” she said, and at this he nodded once more. The goblins were here, their new spellcasters marked by their robes while the goblin warriors wore armor and carried weapons. So unlike how they were when we invaded Enterra, Cyrus thought, remembering the feeling of claws sinking into his flesh.
“Not everyone has shown up,” Cyrus said somberly, tearing his eyes from the massive assemblage stretching across the fields. Endeavor and Burnt Offerings were nearest to him, at the vanguard, their experienced armies ready to lead the charge.
“Yet,” she said. “They may yet arrive, or join us there.”
“They may,” Cyrus said with a nod. The heat was permeating through his armor. Fall might have arrived according to the calendar, but he did not feel its breath in the air, nor as much as a hint of the winter that would follow behind it. “But we can’t wait to see. The hour is at hand.” He raised his voice, casting a spell on his throat to magnify it across the armies before him. “We depart in five minutes. Make ready.”
There was a shuffle of movement, and he saw them lining up, straightening into their formations. He felt a dull pang of worry; he’d never coordinated a battle of this size, nor did he intend to now. He had his plans, but each army had its own general. He looked at the last infantry of his own, the small remainder of the Sanctuary army. He knew others who had left had found their way into the ranks of those before him; he’d spoken to a few of them who had stepped forth to offer condolences and apologies for leaving in Sanctuary’s hour of need. He’d taken them as graciously as he could, but with little feeling to offer of his own. His stomach was not the tense knot it might have been only a month earlier if he’d prepared to wage a battle of this size.
Because one way or another … this ends today.
“This is the last moment, then,” Quinneria said, and Cyrus looked over at her with a hint of surprise. “Before we begin.”
“Aye,” Cyrus said.
“Then there is something I should tell you,” Quinneria said. “A matter of little consequence, but … something you should know nonetheless.”
Cyrus felt a faint stiffening in his muscles. “No last-minute pre-battle confessions, please, Mother.”
She gave him a weary, motherly look. “I am far too old, and have seen too many battles, not to acknowledge mortality when I go running toward death. I want to tell you of your familial history.” She looked down below, where Zarnn stood stiffly, Rodanthar in his hand, ready for the fight. “I want to tell you how your father came to possess that sword.”
“All right,” Cyrus said, resigning himself in the face of an argument he had not the strength to fight.
“Your father’s father,” she began, “was a storied warrior in his time, though Rusyl never knew how long your grandfather lived. I was forced to look back, to crawl through the historical records, in order to research the name of Davidon. I came across a most curious series of accounts that placed your father’s father—Varren Davidon—at battles several thousand years before he should have been born. He was a humble man but a great warrior, and he made his mark upon those fights, and made it well, his sword drawn into sketches done by historians, descriptions included in their tales. At some point I realized that Varren Davidon disappeared into the past, and the stories recounted another hero—Varren Perdamun, who looked almost exactly the same by account, and who carried the same sword—all the way back to the days of the War of the Gods.” She smiled, wistful. “He was one of the members of Requiem who fought by Alaric’s side to save the humans who went on to found the Confederation.”
Cyrus felt strangely lightheaded. “Did … did you ever meet him?”
“I did,” she said, nodding. “Though I did not discover these details about him until after he died. He never told us his age; Rusyl never had cause to ask, for his father aged like a normal man after he gave up his sword to his son.” She pointed to Praelior. “Those weapons you carry … they may have powers that you cannot predict.”
Cyrus pulled Ferocis out of his belt and looked over the wide blade with a steady eye. The dark metal glinted in the sunlight. “Immortality?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “More likely they slow the effects of aging on the body, the spell-magic imbued in the blade granting a resurgence of vitality that acts as a bulwark against the ravages of time. Age and death can certainly come for one carrying a weapon given that boon, it just comes more slowly.”
He looked at the sword, and then at his mother. “Why do you tell me this?”
“Because I know,” she whispered, “I know that you intend to end yourself one way or another, and I tell you … you need not. You can live … so long … after all this.”
“I don’t know why I’d want to,” he said.
She started to answer, her lips parting, a great fear in her eyes, but Mendicant arrived before she could say what was on her mind, the goblin at the vanguard of the others, rising into the air above to join him before their departure.
“I have done as you asked, Lord Davidon,” Mendicant said, his hand holding tight to Terrenus, a swagger in his step that Cyrus had never seen from the wizard before.
“Indeed you have,” Cyrus said, feeling a clutching thread of emotion in his throat that he ignored, blinking away from his mother’s gaze; he saw the tears in her eyes and did not want to speak to them. “I expected nothing less from you.”
“I hope you expected less from me,” Terian said, rising up to join them with the others. “I would hate to have you think that I was going to somehow over deliver going into what is sure to become a mad melee of slaughter.”
“I’ve come to count on you entirely too much, I think,” Cyrus said, looking away from the Sovereign of Saekaj. “You’ve almost become like a bro—”
“Stop right there,” Terian said. “I won’t have you mark me out for special death right before we teleport into the Realm of War.” He snorted. “Telling me how you feel about me, hmph! Is there any surer way to get me killed than that?”
Cyrus froze. Any one of them could die, and there’
s nothing I can do about it. “I won’t say it, then.” He looked around the small circle that had formed; Ryin was there, his new scepter in hand, flames jumping from the tip. He was biting his lower lip and looked somewhat anxious. “My affection is for all of you, and Bellarum knows it. He could reach out his hand for anyone, at any time.” Cyrus took a deep breath, and saw J’anda lingering with his staff, Rasnareke, close at hand, staring down at the troops below. “If we’re very lucky,” Cyrus went on, “perhaps he’ll just reach out his hand for me and leave the rest of you to fight the battle.”
“You against the God of War alone,” Vaste said quietly. “That hasn’t gone very well the last few times you’ve attempted it.”
“I guess I’ll have to try something different this time,” Cyrus said with a wan smile. “You all know your tasks. Whatever lies beyond this next spell, let us attack relentlessly until we cannot safely do so, then let us defend each other with all our strength. The God of War is no amateur tactician, and he won’t suffer stupid generals, so it’s time to take everything we’ve learned, all that we’ve done in these last eight years …” Cyrus swallowed heavily, “… and teach the God of War how it’s waged.”
“This is it, then,” Calene said. The ranger’s breath came quickly, almost out of control.
“This is it,” Scuddar agreed and put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at his eyes, and her breathing slowed.
“If anyone else has anything to say,” Longwell said, “now’s the time to say it.”
“I have one thing to say,” came a quiet, familiar voice from behind Cyrus. He turned and was surprised to see Cattrine Tiernan standing there, her brown hair whipping in the wind, green eyes flashing. She looked at each of them and said, “Win this last battle, please. For all of us who cannot fight … please. Win.”
“If this doesn’t go well … see that the dark elves take care of my horse for me,” Cyrus said to her, and then gave the nod to Quinneria, who started to cast the spell. He cast a spell of his own to raise his voice, and shouted, “Together we go!” across the largest army ever seen in Arkaria. He did not spare a look back as the spell magic flashed around him, dragging him away from the lands he protected and into the greatest—and possibly last—battle of his life.
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