Crusader s-4

by Robert J. Crane

  “Your lover,” the King said, matching the fire in Cyrus’s voice. “The Baroness Cattrine Hoygraf. He wants her returned immediately, to satisfy his honor.”

  “His honor?” Cyrus spat. “I took her rightly from a man I bested and killed, a man who tortured and abused her. What claim does he think he has to her?”

  “No claim at all if you come to it,” Genner said. “You are correct, you took her fairly from a vanquished foe, and by all the standards of Luukessia, he has no right to ask for her back. But nonetheless, he does ask-and if you do not return her, he will invade our western reaches.”

  “And I’ll ride out to meet him, kill his army, cut off his head, and leave a smoking ruin of his Kingdom,” Cyrus said, a feral savagery overriding his senses, anger hot in his veins. He felt himself shake, such was the fury that poured through him. “By what right does he imagine he can do this thing? What gives him the right to try and take her away?”

  The King exchanged a look with Genner, who looked back at Cyrus. “By honor and blood, sir, does he demand her return. And it is honor that drives him, make no mistake. Your taking of the Baroness does make him look weak, a fool, and her return after a threat of war will soothe his pride, balm his wounded reputation.” Genner let out a small smile, though the King returned to sit on his throne, hands resting on the arms of it. “After all,” Genner said, “would you do any less if someone took your own blood?”

  “Own blood?” Cyrus said, feeling as though the ground had dropped from beneath him. “Whose blood?”

  The King leaned forward in his seat, his thin fingers caressing the arms of the throne. One of his hands darted up to stay Genner, who had begun to answer. “You don’t know, then?” The King seemed to relish the thought, as though he were gaining sustenance from Cyrus’s unknowing. “Your lover, Baroness Cattrine-before she was the Baroness Hoygraf of Green Hill, was someone else entirely. I suppose she never told you her maiden name?”

  Cyrus waited, his jaw clenched, as the King savored his moment of triumph.

  “Oh, yes,” the King proclaimed, “she didn’t. What a snakelike creature a woman is, how like a viper to envenom you, and without even an exchange of the proper truths. I see how it is. Very well, then.” He smiled. “Before your lady Cattrine was Baroness Hoygraf, she was Cattrine Tiernan, the Contessa of Caenalys, the capital of all Actaluere, born to the title by blood.

  “Because, you see, she is Milos Tiernan’s own dear sister.”

  Chapter 23

  “You’re not going to hurt her, are you?” Martaina broke the silence between them on the walk back to Cyrus’s quarters. The steady noise of his boots smacking against the marble with each step drummed a rhythm of fury, the walls seemed to blur as he passed. At Martaina’s words his head snapped around at her.

  “What?” He nearly recoiled away from her. “No, I’m not going to hurt her. What kind of a question is that?”

  “A valid one,” the ranger said, trying to keep pace with Cyrus’s long footsteps as they chewed up the ground between him and his quarters. The meeting had ended shortly after the King had made his revelation-Cyrus thought of it as twisting the dagger, the King had seemed to enjoy his pain so-and Cyrus had left the chamber, not hearing anything else that had been said save for that the royal convoy would begin the month-long journey to Enrant Monge on the morrow. “You’ve been told something that augers badly for a woman you were-dare I say-beginning to fall in-”

  “I was not,” Cyrus snapped. “I trusted her, that’s all. I invited her into my bed. I … started to … barely allow myself … I had become comfortable with her,” he finally allowed. “But she has lied to me. Everything about her approach to me from the start to now has been based on that lie.”

  “She never lied to you,” Martaina said, breaking into a jog to keep alongside him. “Can you blame her for not wanting you to know that she was the sister of the King of Actaluere, being as they were the ones whose envoy had captured and harmed our people?”

  “Yes, I can blame her,” Cyrus said. “Very easily, in fact. If I wasn’t shaken from taking her along with us by the fact that her husband kidnapped and raped some of my people, I likely wouldn’t have been dissuaded had I known her brother was a royal prick who sold her into slavery to the baron. But she didn’t give me the opportunity. She lied.” He heard the words, and they sounded foreign to him, burned in his gullet.

  “Be cautious, sir,” Martaina warned him. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret later-”

  “I won’t regret a bit of it,” Cyrus said, the words stinging his lips with a fire of their own. “What’s with this sudden concern? Do you honestly think I’m going to … what? Slap her around? I don’t care how furious I am, I don’t hit women.” He paused. “When I’m not in combat. I mean, some lady brandishes a sword at me, my gentlemanly ways tend to go right out the window-”

  “Just …” Martaina stopped, tugging on Cyrus’s arm. “You’re angry, sir. Understandable. But you may make of things differently later. You may want to go easy.”

  “I don’t expect I’m going to be seeing this betrayal differently in the evening’s light,” Cyrus said. “Nor in the light of the moon, nor tomorrow’s, nor the next moon’s, nor any day from here going forward til the end of all days. She … lied to me. She betrayed me.” He felt the emotions play across his face, felt it contort, the rage coloring the inflection of his words. “You think I’m likely to forget that? She’s the sister of someone who’s a declared enemy of ours. Whose servant did things-”

  “She’s the wife of said servant, and you got over that enough to pleasure yourself with her,” Martaina replied, unfazed. “You took your armor off with her, sir-and that’s not something you tend to do. You may be wearing it now, but she’s already through it. You’re stinging right now. Tread easy.” Martaina withdrew, seeming to fade as she began to step backward. “Lest you find out how much more it can hurt.”

  Cyrus looked back at her, unflinching. “I’m a warrior. Taking pain is what I do. Gather the officers together, tell them I’ll met with them in the dining hall in fifteen minutes.” He straightened. “Truly fifteen minutes, this time. Let them know.” He turned away, trying to keep an even pace on his journey through the halls until he reached his room. His urge was to throw the door open and storm in, but he restrained it, shutting it near-silently. He heard something stir in the bedroom, and Cattrine’s head peeked around the doorframe, followed by the rest of her, shyly displaying her nude skin, the scars obvious and plentiful. She had done much the same for the last thirty days, and every time it enticed him, drew him in, the sight of her this way.

  Now he saw only the scars, jagged, angry, marring the perfect skin, interrupting the smoothness of her flesh, things he barely noticed yesterday, but were now glaringly obvious, standing out, filling his vision. They were all he could see. “Get dressed,” he said. “Your brother threatens war on Galbadien.”

  Cyrus watched her confidence crumple, the smooth, seductive look evaporating from her face like a mirage when one draws too close. One of her hands wrapped around her breasts while the other sank lower, as though she could cover herself with them. “He what? I’m sorry?”

  “He threatens war. On Galbadien, for harboring the Sanctuary army.” Cyrus’s gaze was cold, unmerciful, and he could feel Cattrine wilt before it. “The King and his advisors seem to believe it’s his way of salving his wounded honor, because he’s embarrassed that a foreign army marched through his realm, slapped down one of his barons, and stole away his own flesh and blood without challenge.”

  “That … does sound like him,” she said. “But it’s just the rattle of the sword, surely he can’t mean to-”

  “They think he does,” Cyrus said. “They think he knows they’re weak on the border and that he won’t hesitate to exploit that to save himself some rich embarrassment.”

  Her eyes flicked down, even as she stood away from the doorframe, exposed, in the middle of the room. Her hands hovered near u
selessly around her body, and she seemed to shiver, though the room felt warm to Cyrus’s skin.

  “I didn’t mean … I’m sorry,” she said, still not meeting his eyes, “for not telling you.”

  “Yes,” Cyrus said. “I’m sorry, too. Would it really have been that bad? I already took you on knowing what your husband was. Did you think having an ass of a brother would have stopped me?”

  “I was afraid,” she said, as her body jerked from an unseen chill, “that you might think something like this could happen, and you would change your mind. I thought that perhaps it would be dangerous to tell you, that you weren’t as honorable or decent as you appeared to be. I had reasons,” she said, finally looking up at him. “Very good ones, every single one, or at least they sounded so in my head.”

  “I trusted you.” Cyrus stared at her, and she flinched away. “In a way I haven’t … with anyone … in a long time. I understand your reasons, but as of about thirty days ago … when you knew who I was and what I stood for … they should have been null and you should have told me the truth.”

  “I’m sorry.” She still did not look up, focusing instead on the floor, the marble, anything but him. “I’m sorry, Cyrus …”

  “Yeah.” He heard the scrape of his boots on the floor as he turned back to the door. “I have to go meet with my officers. King Longwell is leaving tomorrow; they’ve been summoned to Enrant Monge by Briyce Unger.”

  “Will we be going as well?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Cyrus said.

  He heard her move across the floor, taking tentative steps, her feet making a slight sucking noise as they pulled from the marble floor with each step. “Will you hand me back over to my brother? As though I were a piece of property?”

  Cyrus felt the answer within him, steeped in the rage he felt inside at her betrayal. Yes! I’ll hand you over to him, let him have you, be done with you and your lies, your deceits, with your … He nearly choked at the memory of her fingers tracing lines down his skin. “You should get dressed,” he said simply, and walked out the door, careful to open it no more than was necessary to slip out, so as not to expose her to anyone who might be walking down the hall.

  As he walked away from the closed door, he stopped, halted by some unseen feeling, something that ran through him, a ripple of strong emotion, and he tried to quiet it. She lied. She betrayed you. Just like Vara. Just like Imina. He felt his fist clench. Felt his mask of emotionlessness deteriorate, and he placed his hand on the stone wall of the hallway, as though he could draw some unseen strength from it. He imagined pebbles falling within him, into the giant void, the roiling maelstrom in his chest, the storm that threatened to break loose out of him and cause him to shed tears, something he had not done since … He remembered, and then pushed it down, back into the depths, along with the storm, along with everything else.

  One foot in front of another. Keep walking. I need to meet with the officers. I need to decide what we’re going to do next. He took a breath, then another, slow, as though he could excise the venom within simply by breathing it out. He imagined the stones falling inside him again, rocks, boulders, dropping into his center, weighing down his heart, so that he couldn’t feel the emotion within. He imagined ice, cold, frigid blocks of it, stacked all around his pain, cooling him, building a wall that it couldn’t escape. He let it contain the emotion, bury it, push it far out of sight, behind the wall, where he could no longer taste the bitterness of it in his mouth, and the blood rushing through his ears subsided.

  One foot in front of another, he told himself again, pulling his hand from the wall, letting his own strength hold him upright again. He stood up, trying to straighten his spine, as though standing as tall as possible could help somehow, disguise his weakness, put it to the back of him, where he wouldn’t feel it and no one would see it. He resisted the urge to let his knees buckle, fought it, let the ice hold his emotions in check. One foot in front of another. Keep walking.

  He took a step, then another, and the pace became quicker and quicker as his feet carried him away from the door, away from the handle he wanted to turn, the words he wanted to say, away from the feel of her skin against his-and back to his duty.

  Chapter 24

  “Did you know?” It was Ryin who asked the question, after Cyrus had laid out everything that King Longwell had told him. Reactions had ranged from shocked horror (Nyad, who had her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wider than usual) to calm acceptance (Curatio and J’anda, each of whom let only a single raised eyebrow appear on their faces-Curatio, the left and J’anda the right, the contrast of their light and dark skin and facial reactions making them appear as bizarre mirror images) to unflinching, uncaring emptiness (Terian). Only Ryin spoke, though Samwen Longwell had a question of sorts on his face.

  “Of course he didn’t,” Nyad said, turning to slap Ryin across the arm with a backhand, drawing an annoyed look from the druid as he rubbed his shoulder. She turned back to Cyrus, and her expression changed to perplexed. “Wait, did you?”

  “He didn’t,” Curatio said, studying Cyrus. “This is not the sort of thing our gGeneral would have hidden from us.”

  “I’d like to hear him say it,” Ryin spoke up again, still massaging the place where Nyad had struck him. He looked at the faces around him, Curatio, J’anda and Nyad in particular, showing some irritation with him. “It’s not as though it’s the first time he’s played games with the truth to get something he wanted. I just want to hear him say he didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t know,” Cyrus said, his voice devoid of any emotion. “But now we have consequences to deal with.”

  “Actaluere’s declaration of war isn’t as problematic as one might think,” Longwell said, drawing the officers’ attention to him. “They’ll have received a summons to Enrant Monge as well, and they’ll be obligated to attend. We’ll have a chance to smooth this over with Milos Tiernan himself.”

  “What if our esteemed General doesn’t want to smooth it over?” Ryin asked. “I mean, we are talking about handing over his lover-”

  “She’s my nothing,” Cyrus said, drawing a gasp from Nyad. “She is nothing to me, now.” He didn’t wait for the officers to react before plunging ahead. “She is, however, under the protection of Sanctuary, granted asylum because of the barbaric treatment of women in this land.”

  “Asylum she gained from you under false pretense,” Ryin said. “She didn’t mention she was the sister of the monarch, did she? That seems like material information that could have influenced our decision to allow her to come along.”

  “It wasn’t ‘our’ decision,” Cyrus said dully. “It was mine.”

  “Great,” Ryin said sarcastically. “Because your stubborn decisions never lead us into war.”

  “Calm yourself,” Curatio said to Ryin. “We do have a reputation to consider. Once we grant someone protection, do we lift it and throw her back to the same brother who willingly wedded her to that monster the moment it becomes inconvenient? That doesn’t seem to be the Sanctuary way.”

  “And starting another war for Galbadien to contend with?” Ryin Ayend looked around the other officers. “Is that the Sanctuary way?”

  “It is if we start and finish the war for them,” Terian growled. “I’m no fan of the Baroness, but I could stand to have another few battles before we head home.” He smiled coldly. “After all, we have troops that need seasoning. It’d be a shame if they marched all the way out here to take part in only one good fight before we turn around and go back to Sanctuary.”

  “Cyrus?” J’anda’s cool voice seemed to demand a level of quiet from the others in the room. “What do you intend to do?”

  “We go to Enrant Monge,” Cyrus said. “We’ll travel along with the Galbadien court, and I’ll speak with Milos Tiernan, outline our position, and we’ll see where we go from there. Maybe there’ll be a war with them …” He let his voice trail off before it returned, only slightly above a whisper, “… and maybe th
ere won’t.”

  “What position will you be outlining to him?” J’anda asked, looking around at the other officers.

  Cyrus did not move, did not blink, and gave no hint of any emotion when he answered. “I don’t know yet. But I’ve got a little less than a month to figure it out.”

  Chapter 25

  They left the next day in a long procession, wending down the hillside from Vernadam, Cyrus, the officers and the other guests he had brought following the King’s court. King Longwell was carried down on a litter to a horse-drawn carriage below. Unlike other carriages Cyrus had seen, this one was massive, almost a full living quarters in and of itself. When they reached the bottom of the hill, Cyrus saw his troops assembled for the first time in a month, though he knew Odellan had taken them through regular exercises.

  “This looks like a fat and happy lot,” Terian said as they rode along the length of the column of Sanctuary’s army. “I’d gather that thirty days of rest has been good to them.” A harlot in red exposed herself from a balcony above them, then gestured to Terian with a come-hither finger. “A little too good, maybe,” the dark elf said. “Perhaps I should ask around and see if our boys have been behaving themselves.”

  “I don’t care what you do,” Cyrus said grimly, “so long as you’re with us at Enrant Monge when we get there.”

  “Maybe you should come on this inspection tour with me,” Terian said, slowing his horse. “It seems you have frustrations of your own to work out.”

  “I’ve worked out plenty of frustrations in the last month,” Cyrus said, tense. “It seems to have left me with even more than when I started.”

  “Perhaps you’re being too formal about things,” the dark knight suggested as Cyrus brought his horse to a halt, watching as the column began to get underway, marching slowly, in time, toward the west road out of the village. “You’re putting too much emphasis on feelings, and trust, and emotion and all these other ugly things that have no place in a bed.”