Crusader s-4

by Robert J. Crane

  “I’m expanding my horizons,” Vara said.

  “You’re in love with a human,” Isabelle replied. “And you are not even willing to admit it to yourself.”

  “This is all off the table for discussion,” Vara said. “Yes, Cyrus Davidon went on a mission to aid one of our guildmates across the Sea of Carmas. Yes, he’s been gone for several months. I need to know if the Sovereign is moving because he-Cyrus, I mean-is in need of aid in Luukessia and we can’t strip anything from Sanctuary’s defense unless we’re certain that the Sovereign’s armies are fully engaged elsewhere-”

  “They’re not,” Isabelle said quietly. “This front has been quiet for nigh on a month and not from any stinging defeats we’ve dealt to the dark elves, that I can assure you. Our contacts with the Elven Kingdom-on a daily basis, in case you wonder-indicate no serious offensives along the Perda, either, not at Termina or anywhere else. The Sovereign waits and has removed some of his forces from both of these fronts, reshuffling them elsewhere.” She gave a little shrug. “Perhaps he directs them to the east, toward the Riverlands.” Her face darkened in the shadow of the tent. “But I would suspect not.”

  Vara waited, just for a beat, before she asked the question that tore at her. “What do you suspect?”

  “That the vek’tag herds in Saekaj that have supplied the meat that has filled the bellies of the dark elven army are running thin enough that they may not be viable if the herds continue to be killed at this aggressive pace,” Isabelle said, without a trace of care, “and that the mushrooms and roots and other crops that grow in the gardens of those caves are insufficient to feed the war machine that the Sovereign is grinding out at present. That the supply lines run thin and he has turned an eye toward an easy, almost-undefended prize to remedy that problem-and its name is the Plains of Perdamun.” She didn’t smile, exactly, but gave her sister an almost-cringe, as though the knowledge caused her pain. “It is the opinion of the Confederation’s government-and the Elven Kingdom’s as well-that the Sovereign is moving troops into place to take the southern plains, to destroy anything that stands between him and the rich crop lands that could feed his empire and his armies, as we move now closer to the harvest.”

  “And Sanctuary is what stands between him and that resource?” Vara let the air hiss out of her, not really surprised but neither pleased.

  “The fact that he can claim revenge for the action in Termina will be no small bonus,” Isabelle said, “and there are countless dark knights in his army who had allegiance to Mortus, which might motivate them in some measure.”

  Vara tried to think through the swirl of new information filling her mind. “I have not nearly enough available-Sanctuary has not nearly enough available to counter this threat to the Plains. But you-” She took a step toward her sister. “If you and the Human Confederation attacked now, struck back at the Sovereignty’s army here, it would force them to-”

  “A good stratagem,” Isabelle cut her off. “A worthy idea. Were I in charge, I would pursue that strategy, though not just to try and help my sister but to deny the Sovereignty something they need to continue the war.” She drew up short. “However, I am not in charge of the war effort. Indeed, I am not even consulted. My guild remains at the mercy of the Council of Twelve, though,” she drew a short smile, “thanks to other events, that power wanes by the day.”

  Vara felt the air go out of her, all her energy in one giant exhalation. “You tell me the Sovereign is marshalling his forces, pulling them away from the fronts he has pressed since the beginning. Well, they do not go north and they do not go west, nor do they appear to be heading east. My guild is south, is all that remains in the south. What am I to do, Isabelle? They hold the majority of the Plains already, uncontested because we lack the power to project our forces north to drive them back, and because no other army exists that could or would do so. I sit in the middle of the territory that he wants, this Sovereign, this gutless bastard who sits on the throne in Saekaj,” she watched Isabelle’s eye lashes bat a little at that, “and you tell me he’s coming, and what am I to do?”

  “I have seen your guildhall,” Isabelle said carefully and took a step toward Vara, holding herself just slightly out of arm’s reach. “With some ingenuity, with some effort, I believe you could hold out against any magic and any army that the Sovereign might throw at you. Especially with the numbers you describe, you could hold it indefinitely with supplies of conjured bread and water-”

  “And we’ll have nothing to help Cyrus with, and he’ll die across the sea fighting some unholy scourge that will devour his stubborn arse whole and choke on it!” Vara felt the words come rushing out. “Of course it will end up gagging on such a large and ridiculously stupid morsel, but he’ll be dead nonetheless.” She felt it expelled, the hot flush it brought to her cheeks to have said it, and when Isabelle pulled out a chair and slid it invitingly toward her she sat down on it, heavily, and leaned her elbow on the table. Isabelle took the seat next to her, sitting almost knee to knee with her, the incense in the tent reaching an almost overpowering level, even though it had changed not at all since she arrived.

  “So we come to the truth at last,” Isabelle’s steady blue eyes flashed at Vara; they were cooler than her own, more reflective of Isabelle’s deliberative personality. “You worry about the safety of your guild, but you worry more about the fate of your-”

  “Do not say it.” Vara felt her hands come to her face automatically, as though she could hide her shame by covering her cheeks and closing her eyes. “I don’t need to hear it aloud. Again.”

  “You fear for him.” The words were calm and yet infuriating, as though they contained a slap to the face buried within. “You’re afraid he’ll-”

  “Die, yes,” Vara said, and the effusive heat came back, “that he’ll die in that foreign land, that he’ll be ripped apart by these creatures they sent word about, these things that were unleashed from the Realm of Death. I’m afraid that he’ll stay in the fight long past the time when reason should tell him to bow out, because he feels guilty about letting them loose. Because of-oh, dammit! — because of me. Because he saved me, and because I sent him over there, practically drove him over there.” She felt the burning of the words in her mouth. “Well damn it, damn them, damn him, and damn me, too.” She looked up and caught only the faintest glint of amusement in Isabelle’s face. “I don’t wish to discuss this any further.”

  “No, I imagine you wouldn’t.” Isabelle averted her eyes for a moment and looked to the bowl of apples. “It hasn’t been easy, has it? With Father and Mother gone?”

  “I rarely went home,” Vara said. “I barely notice, with all the things going on-”

  “Oh?”

  “Don’t be irritating.” Vara let the words come out seething. “I shouldn’t say I don’t notice. I might phrase it differently. There are many distractions, especially of late. When I think of them, I feel-” Vara rolled her eyes at her own weakness. “Guilty. I feel guilty for not paying homage to their memory. For not weeping in a corner. For feeling more distressed about the departure of some lunkhead warrior who will die in a mere century versus the loss of …” A warm gasp came loose then. “They lived for thousands of years, and to come to such an abrupt-especially for mother-untimely, unexpected-”

  “She fought for Termina,” Isabelle said quietly. “She fought for you.”

  “She died for me,” Vara said, meeting her sister’s gaze. “It’s becoming a pattern, people dying for me, killing for me, and consequences I don’t care for spinning out of these actions. I should like it to end.”

  “There is only one end,” Isabelle said, “and that has some rather definite consequences of its own that I don’t think you’d care for, either. Those dead are passed, and only one of these people remains to be saved, and that is Cyrus Davidon.”

  “I can’t save Cyrus Davidon,” Vara said, and then felt her teeth grit themselves, her jaw tensing. “I can’t send anyone to help Cyrus, not with the S
overeign making his move all around Sanctuary. If it is as you say it is,” she shook her head. “My course is clear. I must defend Sanctuary. It is the higher duty to which I owe my allegiance. More than venturing overseas on some fool’s errand to throw myself into another war.” She straightened up in her chair and heard the creak of her armor plating as she did so. “I have enough war to cope with here in Arkaria.”

  “And if he dies?” Isabelle asked, and her fingers delicately touched the candle that rested on the table, letting the hot wax fall across her finger.

  “Then he dies,” Vara said, and ignored the screaming voice deep within, the one that wanted to throw her body to the ground and rail against it being so. “It will happen sooner or later anyway, there is little I can do to prevent that.”

  “You haven’t asked my opinion,” Isabelle said, rubbing a little wax between her thumb and forefinger, “but my prerogative now as head of the family is that I will give it, and it is thus-”

  “Oh, good,” Vara said under her breath.

  “You should go to Luukessia. You will regret it if something happens to him and you are not there. It will haunt you all the rest of your days. You may not want to admit that your heart goes with the man, but it does, and I know you well enough to say with certainty that this torment will not end, not for you, not truly, if the worst comes to pass. It will only fade in time, perhaps, and become the ghost of a memory, rather than the full-blooded, all-consuming horror that it presently is, asserting itself all over your will.”

  “Your opinion is noted,” Vara said, and stood, controlling herself enough not to knock over the chair with her ascent. “But I’m afraid that I cannot do what you suggest.”

  “Which is the greater fear?” Isabelle asked, and rose to stand as well. “That Sanctuary will fall to defeat and destruction by the dark elves? That Arkaria will fall under the heel of the great menace whose tendrils even now stretch out of the blackness of the caves of Saekaj Sovar and are entangling the rest of the world? Or that you, Vara, not only the last but the stubbornest of all the elves ever born, will lose someone that you value most in a place that you may never even laid eyes on?”

  Vara did not speak, giving both ideas a moment to weigh in her mind, like heavy stones on scales, tipping the balance one way or another. Cyrus or duty, duty or Cyrus? She thought of her mother, and there was reassurance there, in the last words that she had said before she died, when they had talked. “I am elf, and my life is long, my sorrows great. I will hold to my duty because that will see me through all other pain. When all else falters, fails and fades away, my duty will not. I am paladin, the white knight. My life is a crusade, and my sworn duty is all that matters.” She felt her hilt for reassurance, and watched Isabelle’s eyes follow the motion of her hands. “I’m not going to draw a sword on you, it’s merely an action for emphasis.”

  “Oh, good,” Isabelle said dryly, “though with you, it is hard to tell sometimes.” Isabelle ran her hands over the white robes that she wore, still a pure color even here at the front of the battle lines. “Very well, you hold to your duty then, your crusade, as it were. Though I did think most paladins chose a more spiritual crusade, something nobler and more aligned with grandeur and changing the world-like evangelism, or serving the poor, or defending the weak. Something to inspire the soul and fill it with a billowing, all-consuming purpose-”

  “All piffle,” Vara said, and took the two steps to the entry of the tent. “Be as grand as you want in your inspirations, but most paladins fall short because they are all grandeur and nobility and little action on the ground. They say they want to free the slaves or evangelize or other rubbish, but then they do things on a daily basis that have little in common with their overarching goal. No, I glory in the small. Duty is a small thing and yet the largest. Every act on a daily basis that I use to serve my guild is a reward in itself, and leads me on to the biggest of goals-to serve my guild by defending it from harm. My crusade is the simplest, lowest, and yet highest and most manageable of all of them. No bombast, no bold proclamation, just simple service, day in, day out. And it is simple. All I need to do is get up and point my sword in the direction of the nearest threat, or pick up a shovel and begin whatever work need be done.” She knew her eyes flashed but didn’t care. It is all that matters, the littlest things. The big ones can only be attended to after the small.

  “You’ve developed into a very reasonable person,” Isabelle said, but she didn’t smile.

  “I strive for reason in all things,” Vara said, and ducked to exit the tent. “Take care, sister of mine.”

  “I didn’t say that was a good attribute,” Isabelle said, and Vara froze at the flap, her back arched. She almost stood up, but the brush of the canvas ceiling against her hair was already ever-present. “You might try being a bit unreasonable in your thinking from time to time.”

  Vara turned back. “I might have been accused of being unreasonable from time to time, you needn’t worry about that.”

  “Not an unreasonable pain in the backside,” Isabelle said. “Unreasonable in the sense of making a decision with your soft, yet-walled off and vulnerable heart rather than your thickly protected and indestructible head. There is a clear difference between the two.”

  “If there is,” Vara said, and pushed open the flap to let the smell of the army camp outside wash over her, the faint foulness of the cooking and the latrines and all the bodies pushed together in this space, along with the warm evening air, “I can’t afford to discover what the former might be saying and still expect to hold to my duty. And that, really, is the essence of the crusade right there, isn’t it? A simple choice, and one that is already made.”

  “Take care,” Isabelle said, “you and your choice. Take care that you don’t regret that choice later.”

  “I am elf,” Vara said, as she left the tent, and let the flap fall behind her. “My life is long, and my sorrow is great-and what is the weight of one more regret on the top of that pile in the grand scale?” She knew Isabelle heard her, even though there was no answer from within the tent. She ignored the trolls that flanked her on either side as she crossed back over to Ryin, who waited by a fire. She ignored the thought of that weight, too, consciously at first, but by the time the return spell took hold and carried her back to Sanctuary, she had forgotten it entirely.

  Chapter 45

  Martaina

  There was something wrong in the air, something she couldn’t quite narrow down. It was as if the breeze had shifted direction, and it carried with it an ill smell, something far away, something like death. She sniffed again, and it was faint, something dead, some blood, and it was too early and the woods too sparse for the camp to be getting fresh meat tonight. And if we were, odds are better than good that I’d be the one providing it, Martaina thought.

  There was a stir as the expedition returned, Aisling at the fore with Terian, bound and gagged on a horse that she led. Martaina caught sight of Partus, further down the line, untethered, riding a horse of his own. “Before you left,” Martaina called out to Aisling, who looked at her in return, “the dwarf was bound hand and foot, and Terian was loosed upon the world. You return and the dark knight is the one restrained.”

  “Does that make you curious about what happened?” Aisling asked, a sly smile perched on her blue lips.

  Martaina sniffed the air again, trying to tune out the dull, pungent scent of people and focus on what she was scenting from upwind. “Not really.”

  “It’s quite the tale,” Aisling said, handing off her reins to one of the other rangers that Martaina had set to taking care of the animals. Mendicant hopped off his pony and took up the rope that was tied around Terian’s bindings as he started to lead him off. “Filled with adventure and derring-do.”

  Martaina looked at the dark elf as she approached, the usual measure of thistles caught in her white hair. With another sniff, something else became obvious as well, something that was beyond the usual faint hint of cinnamon that Aisl
ing used to freshen her breath, something primal and sweaty on her blue skin, something that wasn’t usually there, in spite of the dark elf’s self-proclaimed reputation. Martaina watched her evenly, not giving her much expression, though she knew that scent, would know it anywhere, as pronounced as it was. “And also,” Martaina said, “filled with much sex with your General, it would seem.”

  Aisling’s face didn’t fall as expected, it almost flushed, near-aglow. “You can tell?”

  “I can smell it,” Martaina said, and went back to her quiver, checking each arrow in turn for splintering on the shaft, and fussing about every fletching.

  “Smell what?” Aisling stared back at her.

  “Him,” Martaina replied, “on you. Every man in this guild has a unique smell when they sweat. His is faint most of the time, but after a long ride and strenuous activity, it gets more pronounced. It took me a minute to sort it out, because it smells like he might have been in a hot springs recently, and that sulphur really covers it over well, but no, it’s there, it’s obvious-oh, and his horse, too. Very different smell than other horses, and it clings to him like that thistle in your hair.” She watched with some minor satisfaction as Aisling’s face purpled about the cheeks, her race’s version of blushing. “Don’t fear; I won’t tell.”

  “Much appreciated,” Aisling said tightly, “I doubt our esteemed general would much like it if this …” She searched for a word but admitted defeat after only a few seconds, “… this were to get out among the guild.”

  “Because his last two relationships were something he actively tried to hide?” Martaina raised an eyebrow at her and watched Aisling flinch away, the fingers of one hand touching her lips almost self-consciously.

  “Ah, good to see you’ve returned,” Odellan said, wandering in from the opposite direction. His smell was straightforward, clean whenever possible, just like him. Not bad looking, either, for one so young, Martaina thought. “Where are the officers?” he asked Aisling.