Crusader s-4

by Robert J. Crane

  “No formal peace, but no formal war either,” Longwell said. “It was basest treachery.”

  The Baroness shrugged. “See it however you like; Milos Tiernan walked away from the conflict with more territory and an army ready for the next war. Your father’s Kingdom limped away just as Syloreas did, with countless young men dead, less territory than when you started, and forced to concede what you’d lost. If the point of war is simply honor and not winning, you’re still doing it wrong. I hear tell your father’s soldiers are just as savage when sacking a town as Briyce Unger’s are.”

  Longwell did not answer, and seemed to slump slightly forward on his horse, his eyes focused ahead. Cyrus watched the dragoon for a long moment, and when it seemed unlikely he would ever speak, he did. “I cannot argue with that.” Longwell rode off a moment later, after the silence had hung in the air. He rode toward the back of the column, ignoring several soldiers who hailed him along the way.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Odellan said, “perhaps I should speak with him-and inspect the column while I am at it.”

  “Certainly,” Cyrus said with a nod. Odellan turned his horse and rode away. Cyrus turned to speak with the Baroness, but she was already gone, ensconced in a conversation with Nyad and Ryin, the three of them riding side by side.

  The next week passed quickly, the flat lands over which they traveled speeding their journey. Longwell seemed to come alive again a few days after the conversation with the Baroness. He had been sulky and withdrawn, causing Cyrus to privately wonder if he had been that depressing to be around when they had first set out on their journey.

  Only a few days later, they came around a bend in the road and something enormous became visible on the horizon. Cyrus was riding at the front of the column as he almost always did, and when the silhouette began to take shape as the sun was starting to set behind them, he wondered if perhaps it was a cloud bank.

  “That is the Castle of Vernadam,” Longwell said, riding to the fore to come alongside Cyrus. “That is my father’s home.”

  “Not yours?” Cyrus asked.

  He caught a glimmer of regret from the dragoon. “Once perhaps. Not anymore.”

  They bedded down for the night in a clearing, and as the campfires lit the sky, Cyrus stared into the distance, where he could still see the faintest shadow of the castle on the horizon. He heard someone move next to him where he stood at the far edge of the army’s camp, and he turned to see the Baroness, clad in her riding outfit but with a blanket wrapped around her to guard against the chill of the early evening.

  “There stands Vernadam,” she said, almost whispering, “a place I never thought I would see, not in my lifetime.”

  “No?” Cyrus looked over to her, saw the wind stir her hair. “The borders of your lands don’t seem too hostile to crossing, if it were for just a person by themselves.”

  She looked over at him, her glazed eyes returning to focus. “Women do not travel alone, and the Baron does not travel this far outside his holdfast.”

  “How long were you married?” Cyrus watched her. She didn’t answer him quickly, as though she were taking her time coming up with the right reply.

  “Only a year or so,” she said. “It was a very quick arrangement, really.”

  “Hm.” Cyrus nodded, looking at the fire. “Less than a year and already happy to leave him behind. He must have been a real monster.”

  “As though you don’t already know.” He could feel her bristle.

  “I know what he did to others,” Cyrus said, reaching for a branch and stirring the embers of the fire with it. “I know how he treated strangers in his land who meant him no harm. So, yes, that gives me some idea of how he might treat his wife.”

  “You have no idea,” she pronounced, and her words were stiff. “Beatings were commonplace. Whippings he saved for occasions of special displeasure, which seemed to happen whenever he was drunkest.”

  “You’re not making me sorry I left him to die,” Cyrus said, holding the branch steady, letting it catch fire. He watched the flames lick at the healthy bough, saw the first black scoring appear upon it.

  “As you said, I’ve been married for a year and I was glad to leave him to die,” she said stiffly. “I never considered myself a cold or vicious person, but perhaps I am.” She looked away and her eyes fixated again on Vernadam’s shadow in the distance. “I certainly was not much of a wife, to hear my husband tell it.”

  “I doubt you gave him any cause for beatings or whippings,” Cyrus said, letting the branch drift through a pile of ashes. “Because there is no cause for such things, not between husband and wife. He did not seem the sort of man whose justification I would accept as anything other than the petty anger of a man denied something.”

  “Denied?” She looked at Cyrus and wore the faintest half-smile. “I denied him nothing. Not my body, at all hours, not his favors, requested day and night. He came to me often in the hours of the morning too early to be measured by any light, and I would give him that which he craved so fervently, no matter how asleep I was. Once, he came to me when I was in a deep grog. I moved too slowly for his liking, so he dragged me by the hair out to the courtyard where he bound me to a post, naked, and had his way with me in front of all of his men and the servants and everyone.” Her lip quivered, but her eyes smoldered like the fire. “So that he could show them-and me-that he ruled his household with a firm and unyielding hand. When he was done, he left me there for a day, without food or water, like a common thief or drunk, and forbade the doctor to see to my injuries.”

  The twigs at the end of Cyrus’s branch caught on fire at last, and he pulled it out of the flame, holding the length above it, the smallest reaches of it burning with a light of their own. “How did you get saddled with him?”

  She looked away again. “My brother gave me to him in marriage, in hopes of gaining his favor.” She looked back at Cyrus. “Since my father is dead, my brother was well within his rights to give me to anyone he wanted to.”

  “And now?” Cyrus watched the slow burn of the twigs spread up the branch. “Now that he’s dead, wouldn’t your brother want to marry you off again, to someone else?”

  “No,” she said simply. “Because now I am damaged, imperfect.”

  Cyrus frowned. “Because you’ve been married before? By that standard, I suppose I’m damaged and imperfect, too.” He raised an eyebrow. “Which I actually am but not because of being married before.”

  “No,” she said. “Because of the scars. Because of the whippings, the beatings … and … other things he’s done to me.” She swallowed hard. “He used to say that he had left his mark on me, that no other man would ever want me, or would ever have me, after what he’d done.”

  “I don’t, uh …” Cyrus looked at her. “I’m sorry, I mean, I’ve seen you in a … somewhat revealing dress … I guess ….I mean, I didn’t see anything.”

  “You wouldn’t.” She shook her head, very slightly and perched on her lips was a rueful smile. “The men and women in the courtyard the night he dragged me out and tied me to the post, they saw. But he kept it … all well below what the rest of the world would see. Women are expected to maintain a certain standard of propriety, after all.” He saw a single tear flow from her left eye, down her cheek, to rest on her defined chin. It was a perfect droplet, just the one, and it lingered there. “The simple loss of my virginity to my husband would not be considered enough to defile me for life, to make me untouchable to other men for marriageable purposes.”

  “Ah,” Cyrus looked at the Baroness again, saw the smoldering anger in her eyes, and felt it touch him. My emotions are muted and best they remain that way. I already feel less remorse for leaving the Baron as I did. Men who dominate and abuse women in such a manner are scum, but I fear my anger with him would have me become a torturer were I to fully loose it upon that wretch. He looked back at her; she was undeniably beautiful, stunning even, to his eyes, which had become somewhat jaded of late, filled to the to
p as they were with the intoxicating beauty of a she-elf who had hurt him so.

  The Baroness is different. She seems … not helpless. Far from it. But wounded. Like me. She possessed an air, a quality of genuine and natural beauty. She seemed to sense his gaze and turned to look at him. “And you?” she asked. “You are not married?”

  “Not anymore.” He sniffed and threw the branch into the fire, smelled the smokiness of the wood filling the crisp air.

  “Is she … gone on?” The Baroness looked at him carefully, probing.

  “She was still quite lively when last I saw her, which was a year or two ago,” he said. “She left me.”

  “Left you?” There was a rising curiosity in the Baroness’s voice. “You allowed this?”

  “Allowed it?” Cyrus suppressed a laugh. “I gave my full consent when she asked for the divorce decree. She didn’t want to be married to a warrior who was always traveling, always gone, always in danger.”

  Cattrine frowned, as though contemplating something impossible. “Is that … does that happen often in your land? A woman leaving a man when she is unsatisfied?” She blushed. “I don’t mean to suggest she was unsatisfied by you. I’m certain you’re very satisfying.” She blushed deeper, a crimson shade in the firelight.

  Cyrus watched her with some amusement before he shrugged. “It happens. More among the elves than the humans, I’m told, but it happens among my people as well.”

  “Fascinating,” the Baroness said, her skin lit by the flickering of the fire. “Your world is ever so much different than my own.”

  “If you think that’s different, you should see Sanctuary,” Cyrus said.

  “Your guild is called Sanctuary, yes?” The Baroness looked at him once more, her hand resting on her leg, her knees pulled up to her chest. “But there is a place called Sanctuary as well?”

  “Our guildhall, yes.”

  “What is it like there?” Her voice carried a combination of awe and wistfulness.

  “It’s in the middle of the Plains of Perdamun, a long, wide stretch of grasslands. When you teleport into the plains, you have to run south through a field of wildflowers to Sanctuary. They’ll be in bloom now, I suppose, all the colors on display … red, blue, purple and orange. It’s like a rainbow growing from the ground, and if you’re with a druid, and they cast the Falcon’s Essence spell, you can run right over them, watch them rock in the wind as you pass, stirring them. The main tower appears first, looming above you like a spire sticking out of the ground, then you see the other towers and the wall … it’s built with a curtain wall like a castle, but it’s like no castle you’ve ever seen.

  “The wall goes around for a mile or more … encloses gardens, stables, an archery range … and in the middle of it all is Sanctuary.” Cyrus smiled at the memory, the thought of the stone blocks that comprised the guildhall, of the stained glass window glowing in all its colors above the main doors. “It’s gorgeous. One of the … warmest places I’ve ever been. It was …” His smile faded. “Home.”

  “You miss it.” Her voice punctuated the quiet against the crackle of the fire against the logs.

  “I suppose.”

  “Were you always in Sanctuary?”

  “No. I was born and raised in Reikonos, the capital of the Human Confederation.”

  “Was that where you learned to fight?” She hugged her knees closer to her chest. “Was that where you got your sword?”

  “I learned to fight there, but I got my sword-this sword,” he tugged at the hilt of Praelior, “later, when I was with Sanctuary.”

  “Did your parents teach you how to fight?” She looked at him with genuine interest, and he felt himself warm, something unrelated to the fire.

  “My father was a great warrior, but he died when I was far too young to learn how to fight. No, I learned in the Society of Arms-where they send all young men and women who wish to learn to master the fighting arts.”

  “Women, too?” Cattrine looked vaguely impressed. “You had women train alongside you?”

  “Yes,” Cyrus said. “Some of the older boys would take it easy on the younger kids, knowing they could crush us without difficulty. Some of my roughest fights were against the girls. They did not yield an inch, regardless of age.”

  “It did not …” She searched for a word, “humiliate you, being defeated by a woman?”

  “Heh,” Cyrus said. “Every defeat was a humiliation, and there was no more shame in being beaten by a girl than by a boy. Sometimes there was less. Some of those girls had a pain threshold that made me look pitiful by comparison.” Cyrus felt his expression change. “I haven’t talked about this in years until a couple months ago. And again now. I don’t talk about these things. How’d you do that?”

  She smiled. “I asked. Doesn’t anyone else ever ask you about yourself?”

  A thought of Aisling flashed through his mind, settling within him, leaving an uneasy feeling. “Not particularly,” Cyrus said.

  They were quiet for a minute then the Baroness spoke. “What is her name?”

  Cyrus blinked, then looked at her, at the orange light casting a warm glow on her face in the soft light. She coaxed him with a hint of a smile. “Who?” he asked.

  “The woman.” She smoothed a wrinkle on the knee of her pants. “The one you think of all the time. The one they say you ran across the bridge to get away from.” She dropped her voice an octave, and he strained to hear her next words. “The one who broke your heart.”

  “Vara,” Cyrus whispered. “Her name is Vara.”

  “She was not your wife, was she?”

  “No,” he said. “She was not.”

  There was a moment’s pause, and he heard the Baroness slide across the ground toward him, heard her inch closer, felt her only a foot away. “What was it about her that drew you so?”

  “I don’t know,” Cyrus said quietly. “She wasn’t kind to me, not from the beginning. But there was something about her … a draw, a pull between us that was unlike anything I’d ever felt.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Sharp of tongue, quick to anger,” Cyrus said, “a terror with a blade, and a wielder of magics that could knock a man flat.” He paused. “A fighter. She’s … a fighter, at least that’s how I remember her.”

  “It makes sense that a man as strong as yourself would be drawn to a woman possessed of great strength,” the Baroness said. Her face spoke of other things though, and held a drawn, harried look. “I suppose that it must be a great attraction, to find a woman so much like yourself.” She seemed to draw back from him, her confidence crumbling. “My life must seem very dull and pitiful to someone who adventures in far away lands and rides the back of a Dragonlord-”

  “No.” Cyrus turned all his attention to her, sweeping away thoughts of Vara. “Not at all. My life is … well … filled to the brimming with madness, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have great respect for the way others live. Besides, it sounds like you’ve been in more peril than I have, living with the Baron.” He paused in thought. “Who told you about the Dragonlord?”

  “Curatio,” she said, looking back to him. “They all tell the most amazing tales of you, of your exploits.”

  “Oh?” Cyrus looked away. “They exaggerate. Most of them weren’t that interesting.”

  “So you and Sir Longwell and your lady elf did not hold a bridge against an army of one hundred thousand for an entire night?” She looked at him with genuineness, and he felt a prick of conscience.

  “No, we did,” Cyrus said. “But that was not the whole story. There were others helping us on that bridge, and we had additional forces on bridges to help guard our flanks.” He shrugged. “There’s just more to it, that’s all.”

  “In all of the stories they tell, you seem so brave,” she said with a voice filled with wistfulness. “So fearless. Are you not concerned with death?”

  He let a ghost of a smile creep across his face. “Death doesn’t concern me.”

  She
cocked her head at him. “No?”

  “No,” he said with a shake of the head. “I killed him two months ago.”

  “What?” She blinked. “Oh, you mean your God of Death. Mordo-”

  “Mortus,” Cyrus said, the vision of the four-legged, eight-armed god flashing through his memory. “His name was Mortus.”

  “They say you have died before,” Cattrine said. “I have heard the tales that western priests hold the power to return life.”

  “Some do.” Cyrus nodded toward Curatio, who sat at the next fire, his back to them, staring into the flames. “He does. But only for an hour after death, and only when the death was caused by battle, or injury-he can’t heal natural illnesses, like fever or sickness.”

  “What does it feel like … to die?”

  “Depends on how you go about it. I’ve never enjoyed the sensation any of the times I’ve died, from what of it I remember. Coming back might be worse but better than the alternative, I suppose. Makes you sick,” he said in answer to her unasked question. “Powerful nausea, an ill feeling that settles in your stomach, and you come back weak, like you’re sitting on the edge of slipping back into death at any moment and a good sneeze will carry you back to the other side.”

  “Is it … does knowing you won’t die … not forever, anyway,” she halted, trying to find her words, “is that where you get your fearlessness?”

  “I’m not fearless,” he said. “Not exactly. I just don’t scare easily. They taught me in the Society of Arms how to bury the fear, how to master it. The natural instinct is to run from that which you fear. That doesn’t work for a warrior, we’re supposed to take the hits without flinching, to commit to battle so hard that our opponents back away knowing they’ll have to stand toe to toe with our fury in order to best us. That doesn’t work when you’re afraid all the time.” He looked away. “So they taught us that any time you fear something, you come at it with all your strength-not stupidly, mind you, but to attack it-and almost always that thing you were afraid of turns out to not be so bad. Because fear’s not tolerated in a warrior, not in the Society of Arms.” He took a deep breath. “Neither is running.”