Chapter 90
Vara
Day 198 of the Siege of Sanctuary
The Council Chambers were quiet, again, the hearth crackling through the silence. Vara sat at her seat at the table, along with Vaste, who wore a black robe this day, Ryin, Erith, Thad-who was present in his capacity as castellan-and Alaric at the head of the table. Grimness was all that was present; even Vaste seemed to be starved of his usual aura of mischief. He leaned back in his chair, staring out the window behind Alaric. There was a smell of defeat in the air, bitter, and it choked Vara, filled her throat with bile and anger.
“Shall we go through it again?” Ryin asked.
“Has something dramatically changed?” Vaste replied, still staring out the window, emotionless.
“We’ve been besieged at our very walls eight times in the last thirty days,” Ryin said.
“Being neither deaf nor stupid, I not only counted when each of those attempts were made,” Vaste said, “but I also heard it moments ago when Thad mentioned that number.” The troll’s arms were folded across his chest. “I remain unimpressed as they have yet to breach the gates and we have four weeks worth of rotting dark elven carcasses piling up outside our walls. The smell of those is the most fearsome of our worries thus far.”
“When will it end?” Ryin asked, and this time no one answered. After he waited a spell, the druid turned around the table. “Can we finally discuss it?”
“If by ‘it,’ you mean the delightful fashions that will be on display in Reikonos when spring rolls around, then yes, and the sooner we start discussing those lovely and cheery frocks, the better,” Vaste answered. “If you mean what I suspect you mean, then no.”
“I have no appetite for discussion of frocks-” Vara began.
“Big surprise, there,” Vaste said.
She looked daggers at him. “But perhaps there is some merit to considering what the druid is suggesting.”
Ryin gave her a wary eye. “I love that you call me ‘the druid’ instead of using my actual name. I do have one, by the way.”
Vara let out a small exhalation. “Very well. Perhaps we should consider what the odious pile of troll dung is suggesting.”
“My defecation is not so preposterous as he,” Vaste said, “and it smells sweeter, too, like freshly baked cinnamon bread.”
“Is it really that difficult,” Ryin said, with barely constrained desperation, “to consider evacuating Sanctuary for neutral territory-”
Alaric’s hand slammed into the table and the whole thing jumped slightly, causing everyone sitting at it to jump in fright-all save for Thad, who merely continued to watch the whole proceeding without blanching. “We will not abandon Sanctuary.”
Vaste looked at the Ghost, his eyebrows raised. “And I thought I was reacting poorly to this entire line of discussion.”
“You are,” Ryin said, wide-eyed, his entire focus on Alaric, “but I believe our esteemed Guildmaster just aced you quite easily.”
“Our walls have held against everything that the dark elves have thrown at us,” Alaric said, his face dark, “and we have yet to lose more than a few unfortunate souls in these assaults. I see no reason to consider discussing alarmist measures.”
“Alarmist?” Ryin asked. “We’re surrounded by the foremost army in the world. They’re battering on our door with increasing frequency, aiming to take our keep and burn it to the ground. I’m not ready to retreat either, but it might be useful to have a contingency plan in place should we need to evacuate-”
“There will be no evacuation,” Alaric said menacingly, and Vara heard a darker edge to his voice than she had ever known before. “We remain secure with our portal closed, and we will continue to turn back any advances. Let them stay out there, rallied around us. That will keep them from mustering any sort of a counterstroke against Reikonos or the elves, and give the others time to perhaps find their courage and begin to take the war to the Sovereign.”
Vara heard him and felt a tingle of despair. She looked to Erith and saw the healer match her own expression. No one is going to rise against the Sovereign; they’ve felt the taste of defeat against him, and it is a heavy sauce to flavor the stew. The dwarves and the gnomes will not intervene, and we will sit here as the years tick by, waiting for the Sovereign to lose interest-which he won’t.
“And when the century rolls past,” Ryin said calmly, “and some of us are dead of old age or from battle-”
“Or from eating conjured bread and water every day for our entire lives,” Vaste interrupted. “And never meeting that special woman who appreciates you for the brilliant, witty, especially handsome green man that you are?” He flicked a look around the table. “That last one is probably just for me.”
“How long, Alaric?” Ryin asked. “Sooner or later, the members will grow sick of being trapped here, without true food to eat, or a life to live. Will we ever discuss it? I would even settle for being promised a discussion ‘in the fullness of time’ at this point. It would be better than thinking we will never-”
“We will not,” Alaric said, “yield. Not Sanctuary.” There was an unmistakable hardness to the Guildmaster’s voice.
“We are all officers here, Alaric,” Ryin said quietly. “It should be put to a vote.”
“Vote, if you must,” Alaric replied, “but I am the Master of Sanctuary. If you wish to flee, you may. Take any who want to go with you. But we will not evacuate entirely; I will not halt our defense. I will not surrender to the dark elves. Not when this place is all that stands … it is the last bastion that holds against them marshaling their forces and striking the head from the Human Confederation from Reikonos. I will remain here, manning the wall, destroying the Sovereign’s every soldier until I can do so no longer.” The Ghost’s eyes blazed with fire, and Vara could hear the forged steel in his tone. “We will not discuss evacuation because it is not a guild matter, it is a matter of individual choice. If someone chooses to leave, that is their business and they may conduct it. But until such time as the wall breaks and the dark elven hordes pour in upon us, there will be no discussion of abandoning our home-my home-to these chaos-bringers so that they may have their way with it and be on about destroying the next unfortunate target on their army’s list.”
There was a long and ringing silence, into which no one spoke before Alaric did again. “You are all you dismissed.” Without another word, he puffed into a light cloud of smoke and dissolved, more abruptly than Vara had seen him do so before.
There was a slow movement toward the door; Vara stood, not wanting to be the first nor the last. She found herself next to Thad-that cursed idiot-and wandered down the stairs awkwardly next to him, trying to speed up just as he did, resulting in an uncomfortable silence between the two of them as they settled into walking down the stairs roughly next to each other. I should make a conversation attempt, I suppose. “You, uh-”
His head snapped up at the sound of her voice, and he looked at her in near-shock. “Yes?”
“Sorry,” she said. “You had mentioned before that you were of the … Swift Swords when you were in the Society of Arms.”
“Indeed I was,” he said with a nod.
“I see,” Vara said. “And was Cyrus … uhm … a Swift Sword with you as well?”
Thad frowned; she cursed herself for asking as his earnest face crumpled, forehead lined and eyes slightly squinted. “No, ma’am.”
“Ah,” she said with a nod to the younger man. “He was an Able Axe, then. I’m certain you faced him in those fabled child slaughter games that they presented you lot with under the guise of practices.”
“No, ma’am, he wasn’t an Able Axe, either,” Thad said, shaking his head. “I didn’t typically face him in the exercises because they always had the older kids band together to fight him when it was called for.”
Vara ran his response through her mind, trying to make sense of it. “I’m sorry. You said he wasn’t a Swift Sword and then you said he wasn’t an Able Axe. But
I remember distinctly being told that every single member of the Society is assigned a Blood Family, for training purposes, for espirit de corps. So if he wasn’t either of those, then … was there a perhaps a third Blood Family I am unaware of?”
“Ah, no,” Thad said with an almost embarrassed shake of the head.
I am dealing with a moron of some sort, as I have always suspected. Perhaps I should speak slowly in order for him to understand me. “Then he was … not a member of the Society of Arms in Reikonos?”
“No, he was,” Thad said. The warrior cocked his head at her. “You don’t know, do you?”
Vara felt the slow, hammering burn of annoyance in her cheeks, the sound of blood rushing into her ears flared and she restrained her hand from doing that familiar thing again, seeking the hilt of her sword. Why must I continue to be like him in this damnable habit? I’m not actually going to strike this fool down, after all, much as it might entice me … “No, I suppose I don’t know what you’re hinting at. Perhaps you’d be so kind as to enlighten me rather than standing there and making me feel like a complete fool.”
Thad’s mouth opened wide and then shut abruptly. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I thought everyone knew by now, with the rumors that went around awhile back.”
Vara felt a surge of impatience. “I seem like the sort who trades in rumors, do I? Do you see me with an abundance of people to keep me informed of the latest tidbits of gossip?”
“No!” A slight look of shock ran over his face. “I don’t mean suggest you’re the disagreeable sort or anything of that nature-”
Vara leaned in closer to the warrior in red, causing him to shut up immediately. “I am … very disagreeable. And I am about to become much more so if the next words out of your mouth aren’t a succinct explanation of that which you clearly realize I do not know regarding Cyrus and the Society of Arms.”
“He was never in a Blood Family,” Thad said. “It happens, rarely, that a recruit for whatever reason isn’t given one, because the instructors want him to be killed off in the training process.”
Vara frowned at him; no difficult feat since her natural state was to be somewhat displeased. “Yet he clearly has survived to this point, so it cannot have been all that bad-”
“He was the first,” Thad said with a gulp. “The first to make it past a year without a Blood Family, the first to graduate without one. The strongest warrior they ever graduated, I think, because he did it all on his own.”
She stared at him through half-lidded eyes. “No family? None?”
He shook his head. “He slept on his own, hid in a different place every night. Took all his meals by himself.” Thad’s jaw moved, but no words came out for a moment. “I don’t … I mean, the instructors would talk to him when they gave him orders, but uh … no one else was allowed to say anything to him. No fraternizing with the enemy, you know, it’s Blood Family law …”
Vara felt a sudden dryness in her mouth, the taste of bitter acrimony faded away. “And he was there from the time he was …”
“Six,” Thad said helpfully. “One of the youngest. He’s legend there, I mean … legend.”
“Yet unable to find a guild when he left,” she said quietly, pondering.
“Oh, that was because of the Guildmaster of the Society,” Thad said. “I mean, League recommendation counts for a lot in most guilds. I doubt he even knew it, but I heard a couple warriors in my last guild talk about it. Cyrus got struck down every guild he applied to-they’d use him for a while, an application period, and then cast him off, him and the other two with him. That’s why they ended up starting their own guild.” Thad blanched. “Don’t tell him I told you that; like I said, I don’t think he knows he was blacklisted by the Society. I’m actually a little surprised that Alaric wouldn’t have checked with the Society Guildmaster before-”
All Thad’s words fell upon a great deafness in Vara’s ears; they came, she heard them vaguely, but they faded in the background, as though he were speaking to her at a distance of miles instead of a foot away. No father. No mother since he was six. Not a friend nor a confidant until age eighteen? A wife who left him, a best friend who died. Goddess, I hate pity. Truly, I hate it. Yet there it is, all the same. Pity and a great swell of … sympathy. She did not acknowledge Thad again, merely started her way back up the stairs. He mouthed some words behind her but she waved him off with one hand and climbed, passing the others who were finally descending, went all the way up to her quarters and lay down on the bed.
And for some reason she could not explain, even when she thought about it at great length, she cried over the thought of Cyrus Davidon’s upbringing for the next several hours, and when she stopped, it was only because she had no tears left to shed.
Chapter 91
Cyrus
The sun rose on trees glazed with ice on the branches. It caught Cyrus riding south, fatigue catching him ahorse, bumping along to the briskness of early morning. The snowstorm he had ridden through in the night had settled into a winter’s mix, and his beard was as frosted as the tree branches, though he had used his fingers to attempt to brush it loose every now and again. At least the rest of me is warm. He tugged on Windrider’s reins; the horse was at no more than a canter now. Looking back, he saw Enrant Monge just barely on the horizon, a boxy shape behind him on a hill.
Enrant Monge is a majestic castle, no doubt. A tremendous place, and one so wrapped up in the glories of Luukessia that I can see why the Brothers are willing to die for it. He felt a tug of regret. And die they shall, if Scylax is any sort of indication. All it would take is for Drettanden-if that’s what that thing truly is-to come charging at the gates and I suspect they would buckle after only a few good hits. Still, he looked back, the majesty of that place is not to be underestimated. Even as a shape on the horizon, the squarish nature of the outside walls, the soaring towers and the meaning behind it all gave him a feeling of sadness. They’re going to lose … everything.
He started to turn again to the road ahead but blinked and looked back, down the barely noticeable track that he knew to be the road. Wagon ruts were the only sign that this was a path, and they were partially covered over from the snowstorms. There were figures coming up behind him, on horses, their hooves struggling through the snow. They were moving faster than he was, and he pondered, just for a moment, pulling Praelior out and readying for them. Then he caught the first sight of deep blue skin under robes, and waited instead, keeping Windrider in place.
“You left without saying goodbye,” J’anda said as his horse trotted along, each step a slight struggle with the snowy road. “If there is one thing I simply cannot abide, it is the thought of a trusted comrade and friend throwing himself into oblivion without so much as a ‘fare thee well’ before doing so.”
Cyrus watched the others who were with him; Aisling was easy enough to pick out, with her sullen eyes, her easy smile long gone, no trace of it left on her face. Martaina, too, though her eyes were hidden by her cowl. “So you came to say goodbye?” Cyrus asked.
“No, fool, we came to go with you.” J’anda waved a hand at him dismissively. “My talents are wasted here, conjuring bread all the day long. But sieging the city by the sea? You may have use for an enchanter’s skill yet.” He said it with a twinkle in his eye.
“And you?” Cyrus asked Martaina.
“I’m here to keep an eye on you,” she said grudgingly, “as I said I would. I expect you’ll be easier to keep an eye on if you remain alive and in close range.”
Cyrus looked to Aisling but didn’t say anything. She smoldered, looking back at him. “I told you,” she said finally, “I’m here to give you what you need, no questions.”
Cyrus looked back at her. “Aisling … I’m s-”
“Don’t.” It was only a little pointed, the way she said it. She didn’t flinch, didn’t react, just took the reins of her horse and urged it forward to lead the way along the snowy road.
“How far is it to Caenalys?”
J’anda asked, starting his horse forward, the smooth landscape a long, rolling plain of white broken only by the snow-wrapped trees, jutting out of it like an ocean of bones.
“A moon’s change, at least,” Martaina replied, coming alongside him. Aisling was ahead of them both now, and Cyrus was only just turning Windrider around to follow.
“A month?” J’anda asked. “With those two in a snit? Hm.” The enchanter shook his head. “Well, that won’t be dreadfully uncomfortable.”
Chapter 92
They caught up with the Army of Actaluere on the following day, and outrode them three days later, packs on their backs and laden with provisions. The sky remained a dreary color for the most part; only the occasional daybreak found beauteous pink in the sky with the dawn. Most mornings it was grey all the way through, and the snowy ground persisted for the first week, the brisk air chilling Cyrus’s nose until they could set the fire every evening.
The flavor of hard cheese was long familiar to them by the second week, coupled with the conjured bread that J’anda could provide, and the smaller servings of salted pork and pickled eggs that helped break the monotony. The snow began to disappear in the second week, becoming patchier and more occasional until one day it yielded to brown earth and bare trees, with leaves still on the ground, uncovered. They rode through deep brown woods that smelled of fresh air, found empty houses and inns along the way that had been stripped of everything edible by the masses of refugees passing down the highway. They began to run across stragglers and slow-moving bands a day later. By the end of the week they traveled on full roads, and every soul they encountered was a beggar, starving for the most part.
The smell was overwhelming, a stink of a people who had not bathed in a month, coupled with horses, manure, and all manner of other things-poor food, muddy roads. The sound of them was incredible, babies and children crying from hunger. J’anda conjured bread from morning until long after the sun had gone down and yet still had not enough to provision the people they encountered. Cyrus watched the faces that came to them, tired, beleaguered, desperate in some cases.
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