Master (Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “You’ll have a hell of a time with that!” Vara shouted. “This is a holding action, General, and we are barely holding.”

  Cyrus blinked. They were still coming, that constant horde, that forever and swarming army of the enemy. “Need to break them somehow.” He looked out ahead. “Spells, maybe.” He stared over the full battle, unfolding before him. I’m the leader, he thought. I need to lead us through this.

  The way Alaric would have.

  He felt a sound building in his throat, a cry of rage and pain that had little to do with his wound. He raised his sword high and put one foot before the other. He pushed his way through the line in front of him and waded into the enemy fray, whipping Praelior around. He sent heads and swords and arms hurtling away, clearing a circle with his swing. He swung again and again, slashing his way through the dark elven army as though they were some foul undergrowth, something that sprung up from the ground in the wretched Realm of Life gone wild. He contained his motion to avoid twisting himself but swept as wildly as he could, catching a dark elf that came low under his swipe with a boot that sent him twenty feet through the air in a low arc.

  Enemies. Foes. The death of Arkaria if left unchecked. He swung and felt blood spatter across his face from the strength of his attacks. His armor was dripping with the signs of his fight, and he felt his lip curl with fury. I cannot let them win. I cannot let us fail. He thought of Vara’s words, spoken before the battle, of how all Arkaria’s fate rested on this battle, and he swung his blade unyielding, splitting armor and helm, sword and shield, driving back his foes.

  The way Alaric did on the bridge.

  His legs felt heavy but he pushed on. Every breath came as a struggle, every swing of his sword felt like he wielded a lead weight. Dark elves fell before him like wheat before the thresher and he watched them fall with little emotion. There was no joy, no feeling, just the bare will to push on through a fatigue that was threatening to wrap him up and carry him off. It was unlike anything he’d felt in battle before. The skies were darkening, and he wondered if sunset was at hand.

  “Cyrus!” the shout came from far, far behind him. He turned his head to look back and saw that he had carved his path out of the lines a little too well; they were well behind him now, a small bulge in his army that had surged out to follow him was being chipped away, only three warriors in leather armor at his back now, the dark elves closing in. He watched two more fall in the space of seconds, and he was left with one at his back.

  “What’s your name?” Cyrus asked as the warrior placed their back to his. He kept his blade on its task automatically, slashing down the next wave of attackers before him.

  “Grenene Eridas, sir.” the voice was a little higher than he expected, and it took a moment for him to realize that behind the armor was a woman. She kept her sword hard at work, fending off three dark elves but failing to kill any of them. Her blade was plain, dark steel, the sword of a line warrior without anything mystical to it.

  The same sword the chaff in front of me carries. Cyrus widened his arc of interest as much as he could, trying to cover her flanks as well as his own, but he faltered on his left. His killing strokes turned more defensive. “We need to work our way back to the line, Grenene. I need you to begin walking back while I cover you, all right?”

  He heard a choked sound and turned to see her holding her throat, blood slivering down over a leather gorget. He watched four different blades pierce her chest piece, the overzealous enemy finishing her before his eyes, and he swung ’round in a wide sweep that not only killed three of the four of them but neatly cut the remains of Grenene Eridas in half in the process. He would have perhaps felt regret had she not already been truly dead, with her killers already moving into position to finish him.

  Cyrus felt the first blade sink into him at the knee, piercing the chain mail between the joints of his armor. It was a sting, an asp laying a single tooth into him, but it made him jerk away in response, twisting his back and torso in reply.

  The fiery tendrils of pain did not hesitate, screaming through his back and dropping him as though the blade had run all the way through his leg and out the other side. He lashed out blindly and had the satisfaction of seeing his attacker catch a sword across the mask; it split the leather and he caught sight of blue flesh flushed the color of sky, with white eyes as blind as an old human beggar’s meeting his from beneath the remains of the mask. Teeth showed in a terrible rictus, lips cut wide open in some sort of horrible scarring that exposed tooth and jaw. For a moment, Cyrus wondered if he had punched his blade through and opened up the dark elf’s face, but he had no time to wonder at it because the enemy attacked again.

  Cyrus felt this attack at his hip, a sword driven low, breaking the chainmail and causing him to fold left. This drew a scream of pain, another flail of defense, and he took the leg from his attacker. His foe dropped to the ground, light blue flesh with white bone beneath. Cyrus imagined he saw maggots crawling out of the earth to devour his enemy, and he felt his breaths draw low.

  Is this it? he wondered. The world slowed around him, as though dipped in water. He felt it around his ears, the feeling of being drowned again, submerged, fighting against a current too strong for him by half. The pain was a constant, it was there and yet distant, as though it stretched from him out unto the whole world. It encompassed all, the pain, and there on his knees there was no escaping it, no matter how many times he railed against it with sword and armor.

  Death comes for us all.

  Just like it came for Alaric.

  Cyrus stared at the endless hordes of dark elves before him. He could distantly remember Vara’s prophecy about the fall of Arkaria, could almost see it happening. He felt aware of the world, of everything. There was a single blade of grass in the burned and upturned dirt of the battlefield, and it looked like a sword planted in the soil. He wondered if it would grow more blades, blades enough to impale his enemies upon.

  They were all around him now, moving like they were underwater, hampered by the flow of the currents against them. This is the end, he thought, and it was well that it was. His hand grew heavy on the hilt of his sword, and he wondered how much longer he could hold to it.

  A single dark elf broke from the crowd surrounding him, deep blue armor spiked upon every surface. It was fitting, Cyrus thought, that death should come in this form, for the dark knight did look more like death than almost anyone Cyrus had ever seen.

  “Terian,” he whispered, and looked upon the dark elf’s face, grim, his helm’s faceplate up so that he could look Cyrus in the eye.

  “Cyrus,” Terian said, and he hefted the axe—didn’t he have a red sword, Cyrus wondered?—high above his head. It was a blued steel and looked fearsome to Cyrus’s eyes, the weapon that would surely kill him.

  Cyrus watched as it descended and could not seem to do so much as lift his sword to see it stopped. It came fast, like—

  Chapter 61

  “Today, Terian?” Cyrus managed to get out as the axe fell.

  The axe stopped mid-descent, whipping sideways with a shocking speed, splitting the head from an unwitting dark elven soldier as Terian whirled into a spinning attack. “Gods damn you, Cyrus Davidon!” he said, whirling into his own formation with a speed that made Cyrus’s eyes struggle to keep up. “No, not today.”

  “I’m not sure … there’ll be another,” Cyrus managed to get out. His head was woozy, spinning, and the pain—

  Oh, the pain.

  The dark knight spun, countering attacks and splitting limbs from bodies with stunning alacrity. “Why did you have to get yourself beaten in battle for the first time ever today, of all days?”

  “Aisling …” Cyrus said, trying to struggle back to his feet. He could see the dark elves surging in around him and whipped his blade around, a sword clanging off his back armor with enough force to send a shock of pain through him. “She … got me.”

  “She was the spy,” Terian said as he swept low with his weapon, c
hopping several foes off at the knees. “Son of a bitch. I should have seen it.”

  “She was the … traitor,” Cyrus said. His lids were heavy, and he coughed, drawing more pain, blood bubbling down his chin. He tried to rise but failed. A heavy thud hit the earth behind him. He could not turn to see his death coming.

  “You bloody fool,” Vara’s voice split the air around him. “What did she do to you?”

  He could see her, armor glinting, moving behind him, but he could not turn. Cyrus had a palm down against the earth, sinking in, trying to hold himself upright but losing the battle. “Knife … black lace.” He coughed harder and watched dark strings of liquid splatter on the ground, crimson highlights on the blood-stained soil. “You can say … you told me so … both of you.” He looked up to see Terian driving his axe through the helm of a dark elf, exposing a bloodless skull that grinned at him.

  “I told you so,” Vara and Terian chorused. Cyrus caught the shared look between the two of them, the fury on Vara’s end and amusement twisting Terian’s lips in the gap of his helm. They did not pause for more than a half-second; they moved again in a whirl.

  “We’re going to get overwhelmed,” Terian said, calling over the clangor of battle. “Cyrus, on your feet!”

  Cyrus tried to rise and failed. “Can’t.” He looked at Terian and coughed again. His mouth was all blood. “Just … go.”

  “Idiot,” Vara said.

  “He is rather a dunce, isn’t he?” Terian followed. “Any chance of help?”

  Vara paused. “Perhaps some,” she said, and then Cyrus heard the thunder, felt the shake of the ground through his palm and knees.

  He turned his head and saw the wrath coming. It was as though a battering ram were slewing its way from the Sanctuary lines on his right, carving a path unchallenged through the dark elves as cleanly as if an elephant were leading the charge. It was no elephant, though, he knew as he saw the red eyes, and it stopped only inches from him, the near-purple blood of dark elves smeared across the craggy, rock-hewn legs.

  “Fortin, get him out of here,” Vara said crisply. “He’s been poisoned by that dark elven slattern.”

  “Poison is a coward’s weapon,” Fortin pronounced and brought a hand down upon a charging dark elf so hard that it crushed his head and upper torso as though it were a melon. “I should like to show these cowards what I think of them.”

  Cyrus started to reply to that, but he saw movement against the ground. A dark elven body was lying there, where Terian had chopped its head cleanly off. It stirred, hands moving in some sort of bizarre puppetry. It rose to its knees, then to its feet, a weapon still clutched in its hands. Another rose beside it, a torso cloven in half, ribs exposed. Cyrus could see others rising, a few corpses here and there, sprinkled throughout the field of battle, and it made him feel oddly colder than he had even a moment before.

  “Shit,” Terian said. “We need to get out of here.”

  “Get the General behind the lines,” Vara ordered, and Cyrus felt a strong, rocky hand lift him from the ground, cradling him under an arm. It was an odd perspective, and he had a firsthand view of Fortin’s other hand smash one of the rising dead into pieces with a backhanded thrust. It looked like he’d thrown a clod of dirt that disintegrated into smaller pieces midair, and Cyrus watched them in awe. “We need to pull in tighter.”

  “You don’t understand,” Terian said, “you need to withdraw the Sanctuary Army now. You cannot handle the numbers Malpravus has without a strong front line and a more organized spell caster front. You—we’ve already lost.”

  “A convenient thing for someone in the opposing army to say,” Vara snapped at him.

  “It is,” Terian agreed, “but no less true. Have you not noticed what you’ve been facing all along? Have you not seen what is hidden behind the armor of the dark elven troops?”

  “Dark elves,” Fortin said, and a swipe of his hand wiped out a line of advance.

  “Dead dark elves,” Terian said, smashing a few opponents of his own. “And not the sort Malpravus is raising now, either. You face a limitless army of the dead, raised from every soldier the dark elves have lost in battle whose corpses they were able to recover.”

  Cyrus’s eyes flitted back to Vara, whom he could now see from his perspective under Fortin’s arm. She swung her sword, clean and smooth, lightly taking the mask from a dark elf without killing him. The leather fell away to reveal that same light-blue skin, strangely bloodless, a deep rot already set in upon the cheek, maggots festering in a wound and running down the face—

  With horror she struck its head, then turned her blade on the next one in line, impaling it through its mask. She threw it off and the mask remained on her weapon until she flung it down. The dark elf fell to a knee, gaping wound in its cheek from where she’d struck it, but it did not bleed. Instead a cascade of white maggots ran out of the wound where the blood should have been, the white eyes as lifeless as any corpse Cyrus had ever seen, but more focused. The dark elf started to rise, and she ended it with a decapitation.

  Cyrus watched as the horror hit home for her, ran across her face and the battle fury deteriorated. He saw her gaze quickly at the horizon, trying to count. “Retreat,” she whispered then said it louder. “RETREAT!”

  “This battle is not lost,” Cyrus said, but he could barely hear his own voice. There were many of them, that much he could see. The world was darkening, though, darkening with dark elves.

  “RETREAT!” The call was taken up, and Cyrus felt Fortin spring into motion, sprinting back toward a line of Sanctuary’s army in the distance. He caught sight of Terian following behind, swinging his axe and giving a solid run for his efforts.

  “No …” It was only a whisper, but Cyrus managed it. It was a sound of drifting words in the chaos of the storm. He saw bodies on the ground as the rock giant ran him past. Sanctuary bodies. Corpses of his people, fallen in battle, some still speaking, whispering into the storm at him with bloody lips as he flew by overhead, born of a strength that was not his own.

  Cyrus thought of the fallen cavalry somewhere out there, of Longwell’s spear making its way through the army, and he wondered where it—he—was now. How many had died?

  The pain was a seeping darkness of its own. The skies had turned black, and Cyrus felt every jolting step the rock giant took. He had only the presence of mind to take Praelior, still faintly clutched in his fingers, and thrust it back into his scabbard. His fingers lingered on the hilt for a moment more, feeling the symbolism of what he’d just done.

  I just surrendered. Gave up the battle.

  Alaric would never have done this.

  He took his fingers off the hilt as he saw a light flash before him. It was a warm, green glow, like sunlight on summer grass, and it offset the chill he felt spreading from his fingers. He embraced it, hoping it would lead him somewhere better—home, perhaps—as he drifted into the dark as the light faded around him.

  Chapter 62

  He awoke in pain, the sort that had followed him through his dreams and nightmares to bring him back to this place. White curtains wafted in sunlight, a gentle breeze swelled around him, and Cyrus could feel a slight chill around his shoulders even though his body was warm. He came back to himself in light, a powerful light that made him wonder if he was in the middle of a sunlit day. The smell of home, of a hearth burning, was heavy in the air. When he opened his eyes he could see beams of wood running out of a central radius. It looked familiar, like he’d seen it before, and he realized he was in his quarters atop the central tower of Sanctuary.

  “Welcome back to us,” came Curatio’s voice from his bedside. He turned to look and felt the pain in his back as he did so. Cyrus gritted his teeth together; his head felt clear save for the searing spikes of anguish that his motion had triggered. He turned his eyes instead to find the healer seated by his bedside. “It would be best if you did not move just yet. I consulted with our friend Arydni in treating your wound—which I was unable to fully hea
l even after spreading rotweed into it, since the time had nearly passed before I could address it.” He leaned forward on his chair, eyes hard. “What you did was incredibly foolish. You nearly died.”

  “I was … trying to lead,” Cyrus said, but it came out as a whisper. He coughed lightly, and Curatio brought a skin of water to his lips, drops of refreshment running into his dry mouth like life returning to a desert parched by heat.

  “I cannot fault you for your intentions,” Curatio said once he had withdrawn the skin. Cyrus watched hungrily as drops of water ran down the dried bladder, catching the sunlight coming in from the open balconies. “Obviously, the Sovereign has been planning a rather comprehensive response to deal with us, something a bit more treacherous than we were expecting.”

  “Then we lost?” Cyrus asked, watching the healer as he turned to set the bladder down.

  “Completely,” Curatio said, turning back to look at him, not one ounce of hesitancy. “We lost thousands unresurrected in the retreat, mostly our front-line warriors and rangers, as well as several hundred cavalry and their soldiers.”

  “Longwell?” Cyrus asked, coming up with the only name he could think of.

  Curatio smiled faintly but only for a second. “He made it back to our lines before the escape. We are unlikely to get a full tally of the dead, and it is entirely possible that some still living were left behind in the retreat. Though you would not ask, Martaina managed to save your horse from being left behind.”

  Cyrus frowned. He had forgotten about Windrider completely. “A curious decision, fighting to spare my horse. Was she not in the battle on the right flank with the other archers?”