Crusader s-4

by Robert J. Crane

  Ryin started to speak, then stopped. “I don’t know. He was in something of a hurry to go meet with the army and prepare them to move. I’m certain it slipped his mind.”

  “It slipped his mind to send a dangerous prisoner who wants him dead back to a place where he could be held with some modicum of security in our dungeons?” Vara asked, incredulous. “I shouldn’t be surprised, his head as full of pudding as it is, but here we are, nonetheless …”

  Erith’s eyes narrowed. “It doesn’t sound as though Cyrus is functioning at a terribly high level to have overlooked something so elementary as that, even after a few months away. And to remain out of contact for as long as he has with all this going on …” She shook her head. “He’s under duress, I’m sure.”

  “Vara,” Alaric said, “if you could speak with your sister, that would be helpful to us in planning our next move.”

  “Yes,” she said, “very well,” and stood up. Ryin matched her across the table. “Do warn the army guarding the foyer that we will return, likely in the middle of the night at this point, and so if they could be generous and give us a moment’s hesitation before trying to impale us, it would be appreciated.”

  “You’re not capable of anything so mild as appreciation,” Vaste said, “only lesser stages of ire and woe.”

  “You know nothing of my lesser stages of ire and woe, not being a recipient of anything but the higher stages yourself.”

  “Once they get past a certain point,” Vaste said with a shrug, “they’re more like fury and misery, but really, who’s keeping track?”

  “You are, you green-”

  “Enough already!” Alaric said and brought his fist down upon the table with a clatter that sent the empty metal cup sitting in front of him over and sideways, spilling the little remaining liquid therein on the old finish of the Council table. “Our guildmates are in danger, we are under siege, we have unleashed a plague upon another land and lack the resources to help them effectively. Yet still the four of you that remain argue like small children over who got the greater portion of the sweetroll. Well, let me say this, children-” He whipped his head around to favor each of them with a glare from where he stood now, looking down at them, “there is little sweet about our current predicament. If you want to bicker and whine, resign your position as officers, leave Sanctuary for a safe place, like Fertiss, and pick at each other for the better part of every day while the world continues to descend into chaos safely out of your sight.”

  Alaric stiffened in his battered armor, the dark green tinge to it looking almost black in the cloudy light filtering in from behind him. “But if you mean to make a difference and live up to the mission of this guild, put your humor aside and let us work to end this siege, so we can make good on repairing the consequences of our error in killing Mortus.” With that, Alaric grabbed his helm and put it on his head, straightening it so that the slits where his eyes were visible were shadowed and Vara could see only the hint that he was behind them. “The time for light-hearted fun is over; these are dark times, perhaps darker than we can safely bear. This is a time for adults, for the things of grown-ups, for battles, a time to leave the simpering humor behind as we struggle with our burdens. The hour grows late, and for the young, it is past your bedtime. Leave us, if you want no part of serious things. But for those who remain … go to work.”

  With that, he became insubstantial, a fog that rolled toward the doors behind him and out of the balcony, disappearing over the edge in a fine mist, as though the air outside were reabsorbing him.

  “So …” Vaste said, as the four of them stared out the window at the exit of their Guildmaster. “Who put the caltrops in Alaric’s chair today?”

  Vara turned from the table, casting a look at Ryin, who nodded and followed her to the space in front of the door. “Perhaps it was something you said,” she told Vaste, who remained in his chair with a look of quiet unconcern. “Or perhaps it was everything you say.” The winds began to pick up around them, stirring the stuffy air in the Council Chambers. Vaste said nothing as the maelstrom of the teleportation spell caused the walls to dissolve around her, and the last thing of Sanctuary she saw was the troll’s green face, a second’s hesitation showing in the puckered brow and downturned lips as the whirlwind carried her far, far away from him.

  Chapter 44

  Reikonos was a town astir, the streets quiet and yet frenzied, the long stretches of thatched-roof homes canceled out by the bigger buildings with wooden beams making up their construction. It was a hodgepodge of old and new, of stone buildings and wood shacks, and the streets were both calm and chaotic in alternating segments. Vara walked along with Ryin trailing a few steps behind her as they headed toward the southern central gate through the city’s walls. The sun seemed to be higher in the sky here than it had been at Sanctuary, and there were few enough clouds that the late afternoon warmth was still present and cooked her in her armor as she moved through the quiet then the chaos.

  “Lines,” Ryin said, “for the communal ovens.” The druid was right, though she didn’t want to acknowledge it. There were clusters of people, women mostly, around the places where there were ovens for public use. Not everyone has their own, after all, as this is not Termina. A rueful thought occurred. Even Termina is unlikely to have those things, now. “In time of war, meat must surely be limited, so daily bread is likely the cornerstone of their diet at this point.”

  “If they’re just getting to the ovens at this time of day, it’s going to be a late supper,” she said.

  “True enough.” He came alongside her, trying to match her pace. “But I suspect that the grain shipments put them at the mercy of whichever merchant has some that day-there’s likely a line for that as well. Rationing, shortages, all that.”

  “What fun,” was all she said and tightly at that.

  The street vendors who were normally set up on this, the busiest thoroughfare in the city, were noticeably absent this day, giving the streets an even more abandoned feel, quieter than she had seen even in the years she had lived in the city. Cyrus would not like this, not at all, came the thought, as unbidden as it was frustrating. She increased her speed, pumping her legs to a faster walk, as though she could somehow leave that line of thinking behind if she were to just walk fast enough to outpace it.

  Ryin kept up, his superior height his only saving grace. The walk was long, and the walls of the city came into sight after a while, tall, grey stone that rose up in a curtain wall around the buildings nestled within. It was nowhere near as high as the one built around the elven capital of Pharesia, but it still stuck a hundred and fifty feet in the air and circled for miles in either direction, a monumental effort of stonework that gave the city a washed, sandstone look that was out of place in the more northern environs where one expected darker stone-for some reason she couldn’t define.

  The southern gate was open, enormous, wide enough for fifty men to walk astride through it and even for a few elephants to be carted out simultaneously on each other’s shoulders, as Vara had seen once in a magic circus when she was younger. There was little enough traffic on the road by this point; the ovens were all well back in the city, and the houses closest to the gate became more of the ramshackle variety and less of the carefully orchestrated stone, the roofs declining in average height precipitously and the woodwork growing older and older as they went. Who lives here? she wondered. The guards that man the walls, likely, if they’re not housed in barracks. Farmers who work just outside the gates, perhaps? Working people, not merchants, who would be near the markets and shops. Not quite the poor, but not the wealthy or aristocratic.

  They passed beneath the gates and under the wall, which stretched almost a hundred feet from entry to exit. She stared up into the faces of guards who looked down on them, bows at the ready in case some trick was attempted, some effort at siege tried. Guards milled about in the passage under the gate as well, picking at the wagons and people trying to pass through. She and Ayend, on th
eir way out, garnered nothing but a few suspicious looks from the men in armor and pointed helms, their spears and swords aimed at those trying to gain entry into the city and unconcerned with those attempting exit.

  The horizon was darkening in blue as they emerged from under the portcullis and the whole world opened up around them. There had been shanty houses creeping toward the outer walls for some time, but some enterprising soul-probably that bastard Pretnam Urides and his laughable Council of Twelve-had had them burned, and all that remained was twisted wreckage, scorched wood and little else, a graveyard of destroyed hovels for hundreds of yards around the walls of the city. They followed the dirt path onward, the vegetation sparse in this well-trodden area, with all the trees and grass that had grown nearby charred by the flames.

  The walk was over an hour, and the road grew more congested toward the end. There were tents about, plenty of them, old, billowing, lined neatly along the rolling hills of the city outskirts. There were farmhouses, too, older ones that had been commandeered by the army, and troops marched in formations up and down the road. Vara stopped and asked the captain of one of them about the guild Endeavor and was pointed down the road. “Another mile, perhaps two. They’re toward the front, but there’s several miles between us and the enemy positions,” the captain said, weeks of beard growth on his tanned face. “Been like that for a few months, staring across at them, but they’re not moving right now.”

  “Thank you,” Vara said simply and went on, Ryin in tow. When they passed the last ranks of horsemen and began to see the armor take on a fancier sheen and the weapons carry the glow of mystical power, she knew they were close. The tents were less weathered and between the combatants being better attired and the presence of attendants whose sole purpose appeared to be serving the fighters rather than engaging in any sort of battle themselves, she veered from the road and asked only one skeptical warrior for direction before she was pointed to the largest tent in view, one with a flag out front on a pike.

  Vara approached with a slow, steady walk, eyeing the troll guards as they stared back at her, assessing. “My name is Vara,” she said, holding her position a good twenty feet from the front flap entry of the tent. The tent was enormous, at least fifteen feet high at the center, circular, and large enough to house thirty men under it. “I am here to speak with Isabelle of Endeavor.”

  The troll on her left grunted, his armor a poor fit for his oversized bulk. He was close to twice her height, and his grunt brought with it a foul odor, even at the distance she had maintained. She curled her nose and held a hand in front of it. Trolls. I forget sometimes how civilized Vaste is compared to some of their number.

  “No see,” said the troll on her right, marginally shorter than the other, but with eyes that burned with slightly more intelligence. “Miss Isabelle not to be disturbed.”

  “I can see from your grasp of the human language that we’re about to reach a tragic impasse in this discussion,” Vara said, narrowly avoiding folding her arms in front of her, instead keeping her hand at a little distance from the hilt of her sword where it rested on her belt. “Let me state this again, for those of us in this conversation whose brains are not quite the equal of their bulk-I am here to see Isabelle. Is she inside?”

  The troll on the left reached for his sword and had it drawn quicker than she thought would be possible, though his feet had yet to move into any sort of offensive posture. The one on the right made no such move, did not change expression, but held his ground. “She no see you-”

  “I’ll see her,” came a voice as the tent flap was raised. A blond elf emerged into the daylight with a blinking countenance marking her otherwise smooth and timeless features. Her robes were flawless white, she was perfectly groomed and would not have been at all out of place in a ballroom. Even here, on the battlefield, Isabelle has an unflappable air about her, as though she weren’t presently standing on ground trodden by soldiers and surrounded by armies but instead was far away, at a society party. She even wears a tiara, Vara thought, looking at the simple golden circlet atop her sister’s blond locks, rubies and sapphires crowning it. “Come in, dear sister,” Isabelle said, holding the flap, “and your guest too, if he’d like.”

  “Wait here,” Vara said to Ryin without looking back at him. She made her way between the towering trolls, who both moved aside, their dull, steel-plated armor catching the glint of the sun’s light as she passed. She grasped the tent flap herself and indicated to Isabelle to step back inside with a simple hand gesture. Isabelle smiled in amusement and did so without any comment, as Vara followed her in and let the flap fall behind her.

  “You pick an interesting time to visit,” Isabelle said, making her way into the open area at the center of the tent. “But then, you always did have a sense for timing.”

  “Good or ill?” Vara asked, letting the smell of the tent overwhelm her. It carried a whiff of incense; not too heavy, but present, enough to overwhelm the smells of the encampment around them and all the waste that came with it. A simple bed lay in the corner, a mattress with heavy pillows on it, all in good order. A table was deployed in the middle of the tent with folding chairs around it. A few stands littered the perimeter of the tent, and a blanket lined the floor, clean and neat, and padded enough to take the hardness out of each step. Vara felt the impact softened within her armored boots and tried to brush off the irritation at her sister’s accomodations. I can’t recall ever traveling in quite this high a style, not even when I was an officer in Amarath’s Raiders.

  “Good timing,” Isabelle said, reaching toward a bowl of apples set upon the center table. “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t approve of my accouterments,” Isabelle said, and that damnable amusement was still there, the faint tug at the corners of her mouth and the sparkle in her eye. “The little luxuries I’m afforded as an officer of Endeavor.”

  “Oh, yes, you live in grand style for someone at the front line of the greatest war Arkaria has seen in centuries,” Vara said, brusque. “Very fine, indeed.”

  “This bothers you … why?” If Isabelle was annoyed by her sister’s attitude, she showed it little or none, and Vara was quite used to the subtlety of her older sister’s emotions. Glacier-cool, she is. Which is why she is so annoying.

  “I care not at all how you live while at war,” Vara said, “only that you continue to do so.”

  “Concern, sister dear?” Isabelle picked the apple off the top of the pile and took a bite, a long, satisfying crunch. “Has the loss of our parents mellowed you at last?”

  Vara bristled. “I have always cared for my family.”

  “And always been exceptionally poor at showing it,” Isabelle said around a mouthful of apple. “Not that I haven’t appreciated the years of scorn through my attempts to cultivate a relationship with you.”

  Well, I’m here now, you spotted cow, Vara thought, but did not say. Instead, she said, “I appreciate your forbearance during my more difficult periods of interaction.”

  “That would be your whole life, dear,” Isabelle said gently, “but nevermind that, I suppose. What brings you to me now? Not a sense of familial loneliness, I suspect.”

  “The war,” Vara said.

  “Of course.” There was a flicker in Isabelle’s eyes, tired, and the smile faded as she held the apple in her hand then gave it a look as though it had lost its appeal. “This war consumes everything, and the attention of all. So what of it? What do you need?”

  “News more than anything,” Vara said and let herself take a step closer to Isabelle. “How goes the front here? Is the Sovereign pushing his troops forward?”

  Isabelle surveyed her sister with a demeanor almost more stoic than Vara herself could manage. “No. Not at present. Why do you ask?”

  Vara considered for just the briefest space of time lying. To say something other than the truth might be preferable to letting Isabelle know, after all. But for Isabelle, it mattered little because-she always knew an
yway. “We’ve been besieged. They surrounded our walls and threw an army at us-”

  “The one that sacked Aloakna,” Isabelle said wisely. All two-hundred-plus years of her sister’s sageness were on display now, and Vara felt more than a rush of irritation. “Yes, that makes sense, revenge for Termina.”

  “Thank you for your insightful analysis,” Vara said. “We broke them, of course-”

  “Of course,” Isabelle said with the trace of a smile.

  “Oh, stop going on about it as though it were some sort of foregone conclusion,” Vara said. “There were some fifty thousand of them, and our number is much reduced of late-”

  “Why?” Isabelle asked, and took a walk sideways, eyes facing on a perpendicular line, as though she didn’t even care to look at Vara. “Why are your numbers reduced while your star is on the rise? Even here, the talk is of Sanctuary, and your slaughter of Mortus. Killing a god?” She cocked her head at Vara, and smiled slyly. “No one even thought it was possible, let alone that you would be strong enough to attempt it and crazy enough to try.”

  “This is irrelevant,” Vara said, stubborn irritation clawing at her. “Yes, our recruiting numbers were up, until the blockade a week ago, and yes, people had been streaming to us in record number for protection and to join us, but-”

  “But Cyrus Davidon left,” Isabelle said, stopping at a fold in the tent and pulling aside the fabric to look out, “taking an army with him, and vanishing over the Endless Bridge with both a strong corps of your best veterans and possibly your heart, should such an object exist.”

  There was a quiet in the tent, a silence and chill unadmitted by the opening of the side to the air. “You bitch,” Vara said.

  Isabelle let the fabric fold back on itself and fall free of her hands, letting the side of the tent close. “You have a quite the grasp of the human language, sister. There was a time when you were content to swear at me in elvish.”