“I’m here to watch your back,” she said, the slight tension evident in her voice as she threw the body back at its fellows, bowling over another one of them.
“And what a fantastic view that must be,” Cyrus said as he waded back into the fight.
“I’ve seen considerably better, even lately,” she said, fending off three of the scourge at the same time.
“I’ll try not to be insulted by that.”
“Nothing personal, sir.”
Cyrus waved at the Sanctuary line, motioning for several of the warriors toward the back to move to them, which they began to do, filtering in. “How long do you think we can keep this up?”
“When we hit the village, we’ll fold,” she said. “We don’t possess the ability to continue falling back the way we are, especially not with that stream and all those houses providing obstacles.” He didn’t say anything, and she continued after a pause in which she dispatched three enemies with her blades. “The obstacles don’t work to our advantage because we have to dodge around them, but it makes holes in our lines that they can exploit, because I think they can jump onto the roof of the houses in town and use it to leap over our lines. We of Sanctuary might be able to pull that sort of a retreat off, but the Syloreans are going to break. When they do, it’s going to be near-impossible for us to form a survivable order of battle with all the enemies crushing in on us from our right.”
Cyrus gave it a moment’s thought. “Fair assessment.” He let that seep over him as he dealt the deathblow to three enemies in rapid succession. “So, it’s time to retreat, is it?”
He caught the motion of a shrug from her. “You could try and reform south of Filsharron, but I doubt the men of Actaluere are going to go for that, and I even more seriously doubt you could get the Syloreans to pull it off.” She puffed as she struck again and again. “We’ve been fighting for a day; the Syloreans have lost half their number. We need more men to be able to beat them.” There was skepticism from her now. “If we can.”
“We retreat, they’ll come after us,” Cyrus said. “They’ll keep coming, too, unless we can outrun them. Any suggestions on that?”
“Plan for it ahead of the battle next time?” Martaina asked, still fighting. “Falcon’s Essence. If you can get a couple of the druids to spread it around the entire army, we can not only fly high enough to avoid them but it also gives you the ability to run faster. Couple it with a few wizards dropping some flame spells as we go, and you can pull off an orderly retreat.”
“Not bad,” Cyrus said. He looked back at the village. “Now seems the moment.” He raised his voice, loud enough to overcome the battle and the crashing of the fight. “RETREAT! RETREAT!” He heard others take up the call, but he knew his own voice was heard in the back of the Sanctuary line, and that was all that mattered.
Like a flame moving across spilled kerosene, the fire spread across the ground in front of them. It stitched a line before the front rank of the army, a wall as tall as two men, and it lit the night with a flickering orange glow that reminded him of a night spent around a campfire. There was no smoke, only the smell of the fire at work on the grasses, and then on flesh as a few howls cut through the night, the bellows of their enemy as the flames licked at the grey rot. Cyrus watched a pair of black eyes through the wall of fire; they stared back at him, glaring, leering, jagged teeth held at bay by the flame.
The gentle sweep of magic ran across him, and he felt himself float off the ground. He turned to look at Martaina, and saw the Syloreans already moving behind her, well into the retreat, each of them floating, flying, and moving faster at a run than would normally be possible.
“You already had it planned, didn’t you?” she asked, watching him warily.
“Of course,” Cyrus said, and nodded his head as he sheathed Praelior and ran for the back of the lines, where he saw the horses all saddled and waiting. “Do you think me so arrogant that I wouldn’t consider the possibility of retreat?”
She raised an eyebrow at him, and he caught it out of the corner of his eye as he ran. “Normally, no. In your current state, however, I have seen you make one or two errors of judgment, in my estimation.”
“Touche.”
He climbed onto Windrider, who ran out to meet him at his approach. The flames were burning behind him, a steady wall of fire that kept the enemy at bay. “Our wizards will give us about a five-minute head start,” Cyrus said. “After that, I’ve got them riding in groups to cover the retreat, taking turns protecting us and burning them back.”
“That may keep them off of us,” Martaina said with a tight jaw as she brought her horse alongside, “but you know that won’t stop them. There are villages along the way, and if we’re not going to fight, and we’re going to retreat, they’ll be caught in the path of-”
“I know,” Cyrus said. “We’ll warn them, get them to flee, but …” He shook his head. “You know they won’t all listen. They won’t all be able to run.” He felt the tightness in his own jaw, the slight swell of emotion. “They’ll be overrun. Just like Termina.”
“We won’t stand and fight for them?” Odellan rode up and joined them, now, then Curatio and J’anda. “You know what these things will do to the land, what they’ll do to the people as they come down across the plains.”
“I do,” Cyrus said. “But we just threw everything we presently have at them and they chewed it up and spat it back at us.” The Sanctuary army was already in formation and moving, Cyrus saw. Actaluere’s was in motion also, even faster than Sanctuary’s, and they were on the march south. It was the Syloreans who were the slowest to move, some of them still looking back through the fire at the demons on the other side that were pacing there, waiting to get through. “We could make a stand like this on every bit of open ground between here and Enrant Monge and we’d only succeed in slowly bleeding ourselves dry. We need to stage a slow retreat. We need to trade land for time.”
“Time for what?” Odellan asked; Cyrus could see the ripple of emotions on the elf’s young-looking face. “You just said there’s no hope to beat them with what we have, and I can’t see where you’re far wrong about that. What could we possibly do with more time other than throw more of these men’s lives down their jaws?” He gestured at the armies of Actaluere and Syloreas in turn, a sliding wave of the hand that came down in disgust.
“Simple enough,” Cyrus said, grimly, as he urged Windrider forward, following the last rank of the Sanctuary army. The wizards and druids were riding at the rear, ready to hold the retreat against the overwhelming numbers of the scourge that waited just beyond the wall of fire, their black eyes shining with orange firelight as they paced, their number growing, crawling and scrabbling over each other now, waiting for the fire to subside. Cyrus watched them, stared back at them, at death, at fear itself, so overwhelming in its scope that it could eat whole armies and never even taste them, ready to devour them whole. The maw of death, he thought. “There’s only one thing we can do, now.
“We get a bigger army.”
Chapter 65
Vara
Day 35 of the Siege of Sanctuary
The dark elven wizard had appeared in a flash, in the middle of the night and had brought with him over a hundred dark elves, right into the foyer. The sounds of blades clanging against one another made for dreadful noise, but the fighting had spilled out onto the front steps this time, bodies fallen here, there and everywhere as battle raged on. Vara was in the midst of it, on the threshold of the entrance to Sanctuary, and there was war all about. There was no noise from beyond the wall, at least-not this time, thankfully. Her weapon was at a high guard, and it landed squarely between the eyes of a dark elf with all the armor one might expect from a well-trained and equipped warrior.
The smell of smoke was in the air, smoke and sweat, as she moved her sword in a defensive position. They had come in fast and the stairs were packed, the guard force that had been stationed in the foyer was there, prepared to attack and catch them a
s they teleported in, but the dark elves were too many to dispatch in a quick moment of frenzied attack.
“How are there this many?” Vara whispered under her breath as she parried the attack of another dark elf, capturing his blade under her arm and twisting to yank it free of his hand as she kicked his legs from beneath him. She plunged her sword into the weak spot where his armor met his gorget, heard the satisfying gurgling that ensued, and turned to attack the next.
She felt the dozen cuts she had picked up dispersed as the healing spell ran over her, a light glowing on her flesh. “They’re elites,” Erith said from behind her. “The Sovereign has sent his best in an effort to get that portcullis up so his troops can come running in.”
“A clever strategem.” Ryin fired off a blast of ice that frosted three dark elves who were at a dead run across the yard, having broken free of the melee at the door and were trying for the wall. “But he can’t possibly believe that a mere hundred or so could break our defenses.”
Vara frowned and ran through another soldier with her blade. “No, he surely wouldn’t think that after the last time.” She raised her weapon to take on the next comer, but a sound filled the air, a rushing of energy and magic, and she could feel the tingle of power on her skin as the light formed in the foyer, filling the gaps between the combatants with bursts of energy coalescing into figures who flashed into being, another wave of dark elven enemies. “SECOND WAVE!” she cried out and launched herself into a flying leap, coming down with her metal boots on the back of one dark elf while slashing her sword across two more, sending them spinning to the ground in a wash of blood.
The foyer was packed, flooding into the lounge, out the doors, as more shoving was taking place than blades being swung. She saw the wizard, the one who had brought this flood of enemies, and she leapt for him, dodging a half-dozen strikes from enemies as she passed overhead, but he winked out existence into a blotting of light as she landed, accidentally downing a Sanctuary ranger who had been standing almost on top of the wizard.
“One more cycle of this and he’ll be delivering the next wave to stand on our shoulders,” Andren said as he stepped out of the shadows under the stairs to the balcony, catching a dark elf by surprise with a dagger, dragging it across the warrior’s throat as he spoke. The dark elf looked immensely shocked, hands clawing at his own neck. Andren, for his part, shoved his foe to the ground where the man bled and twitched.
Vara kept a wary eye on the healer as she swiped hard, using the space created by the wizard’s escape to bring her sword around. She killed and maimed five dark elves in five seconds and then yanked a Sanctuary warrior out of the way to spear a sixth with her blade. “There won’t be another cycle,” she said, “he knows he’s being targeted now. If he comes back, he’ll be the first to die. The element of surprise is lost, and only a fool would continue to pack bodies into this room, knowing that we have reinforcements flooding down even now that will break them before they have a chance to open our gates.”
“To hear you tell it, there’s nothing but fools in this world, so I find it hard to believe you write off the assumption they wouldn’t do something foolish without giving it a moment’s pause.” Andren stayed behind her, well back as she began to work her way through the mess of dark elves in front of her. They’d begun to pivot to her now that there was space to move again.
“You make a surprisingly cogent point for a drunkard,” she said.
“I’m just going to pretend I only heard the complimentary part of that,” Andren said, and she saw him tip his flask up to his lips as she pirouetted to strike another foe. “It could take a while, clearing this room.”
She didn’t have to labor to hear him over the sounds of battle. “We’re surrounded on all sides by our enemies. We have nothing but time to fill-no expeditions, no operations, no tourism-and speaking only for myself, I rather enjoy turning aside every attempt by the Sovereign to break us down.” She gritted her teeth as a dark elf with an axe rained down a blow that rattled her arm and she replied with a spell that sent the man flying across the room and into the fireplace, where he screamed and struggled to get out.
“I can see that,” Andren said. “Working out a little of that unstated tension you’ve been feeling for the last few months?”
“I have no reason to be tense,” she said, gritting her teeth again and burying her sword into another dark elf’s shoulder. The man screamed and she promptly finished him off by grasping his hair, whirling him around, and running her blade in a sawing motion over his neck. “Unless you’re referring to our present situation.”
“Oh, yeah,” Andren said, and she heard the click of the flask opening again. “That’s what I was referring to, certainly.”
“I can almost hear your eyes rolling.”
“Would you like to try and convince me that what I’m thinking isn’t true?” He leaned against the wall now, safely under the stairs, using her still as protection from the dark elves bearing down on her in twos and threes. “That you’re not a little out of sorts because of Cy-”
“I wouldn’t presume to believe you’re actually doing any thinking,” she said and her sword took on a life of its own, cutting through a rank of dark elves with maddening speed. “After all, your wine-sodden assumptions are worth less than the rotgut you fill your mouth and your days with.” She raised an elbow as a dark elf closed on her. She rammed her armored joint into the side of his head, twice; the first blow knocked his helm asunder and the second caved the side of his head in. He fell to the ground, bleeding from the ear and skull and she went on, impaling the next one to cross her weapon.
“That’d be denial I hear,” Andren said.
“You’d know the sound of that better than I, I rather suspect.”
“Why would I deny what I am?” She caught a flash of him again out of the corner of her eye; two dark elves had stormed her and she was pressed against them, they were pushing her back and one was raising his mace to bring it down on her. “I’m a drunk, true enough, but that doesn’t mean I let a good drink get in the way of what I do. You, on the other hand-” The mace descended and she batted it aside, freeing her arm from where her armor had locked against one of the dark elves. The ball of the weapon landed on her shoulder, unspeakable pain followed as the force of the blow ran through the metal, then the padding, and she felt her shoulder break. Her sword fell from her hand and the other dark elf pushed her back.
The mace came up again and she tried to raise her hand to block it but her arm would not respond. She dove low, at the legs of the two dark elves assaulting her, and felt their knees buckle even as she cried out in pain from the resulting blow to her shoulder as it struck an armored thigh. The dark elves were knocked off their feet and she felt them land heavily on her back. She rolled, already kicking them off her and got to her feet, reaching under her armor and sliding loose the extra blade she kept under her backplate.
“See, now that right there,” Andren said, now in front of her after her move to counter the two dark elves, “that weapon you’re carrying looks very familiar and the place you’re carrying it looks familiar as well-I’m fair certain that Cyrus does just that exact thing, keeping an extra blade in just such a place in case he gets his sword stripped away from him.”
She lunged at the first dark elf and buried the curved blade up to the hilt in his throat. She ignored his surprise and spun it loose, plunging it into the second one’s gullet, up through the jaw. She followed him to the floor and grasped the blade of her sword and picked it up, turning back to the melee ongoing in the foyer. “Perhaps he acquired the idea from me, did you ever consider that?”
Andren’s hand reached out, and she felt the soothing balm of his healing spell as the bones in her shoulder knitted together. “Perhaps, but I think it would be nothing but small recompense compared to that broken heart he acquired from you.”
She stood, frozen, watching the fight going on for a few seconds as the tide shifted in favor of the Sanctuary forc
es and no one seemed to pay her any mind. She let out a howl of fury and leapt forward at the nearest dark elf, using both blades in tandem to hack the startled warrior to death with swift, sure strokes, then the next, then the next.
To finish the battle took less than thirty minutes, and when it was done she was soaked, disgusting, her own sweat and dark elven blood dripping all over her, the smell of steel and gore heavy in the air. She wiped her face and found it wet, slick from the work she’d done.
“I believe there are some that would say you look like a bride of Bellarum right now, drenched as you are in the blood of your enemies.” Andren’s voice held a sarcastic edge and she turned on him to find him still there, malingering beneath the staircase, shadowed in the gloom with his beard and flask, the lecherous-
“Who would say that, exactly?” she asked, taking steps toward him in a raw fury. “Who would say that to my face right now, would think it of interest, would dare to mention it to me?” She cast aside her secondary blade to the floor with a throw that caused it to lodge in a body. She watched Andren’s eyes widen as she reached out a bloody hand and grasped his white healer’s robes, leaving red on them, and dragged him forward and down to look her in the eye. “Are you a follower of Bellarum yourself?”
“Nope,” Andren said, and took a long pull from his flask, even though his face was only inches from hers. He did not fight her grip, and the smell of strong gin came off him in waves. “But, you see, I know a fella who is. And he had this … all-consuming love for a girl much like yourself. Scary love, really, too scary to even admit to anyone, maybe even himself for the longest time, but it was there. It kept him away from others who might have wanted him, kept him isolated, alone … for years. When he finally went for her and got cut down … I think it hit him harder than anything, harder than losing his wife,” she blanched as he said it, “than losing his best friend. Yeah, I think that pretty much did it for him. But hey,” he took another swig, “what do I know?” Her grip on him slackened, and he pulled gradually away from her. “It’s been a few months now. He’s probably right as rain at this point. Moved along.” Andred shrugged, and uncrumpled the stained cloth of his robe where her hands had clutched him. “After all, it’s not like he spent years pining after that lady.”
Crusader s-4 Page 59
