Martaina killed a cutthroat who crept into their camp in the dead of night with a sword. A few nights later a haggard man had tried to corner Aisling when she had gone off into the woods on her own, and when she returned she casually mentioned that someone had tried to “force his way with her.” After an alarmed query from Cyrus, she led them to the place where the body lay, already stripped of its belongings. Though he cast a sidelong glance at her, Cyrus did not bother to ask her whether the man had any possessions of note before he had died.
Aisling had not forgiven Cyrus in the truest sense of the word, he could tell. She had not, however, withheld her favors from him, not even for a night after rejoining him. She did, however, become less charitable and-he noted one morning while feeling the shape of a bruise on his neck-more vengeful. He did not complain, continuing to lie with her at night.
By the third week of their journey, the ground had returned to a somewhat green state, albeit a darkened one. Some of the trees retained their leaves, and the roads became choked with refugees. Cyrus watched one day as J’anda’s spells to conjure bread turned from their usual white aura to a reddish one and he shook the enchanter by the shoulder. “Stop,” Cyrus said.
“I can’t,” the dark elf said, his lower lip quivering, “these people are starving.”
“You won’t do them any good if you kill yourself trying to feed them.” Cyrus watched the enchanter carefully for the rest of the trip and warned Martaina to do the same. He rode in silence, for the most part, the perpetual glimmer gone from his eyes, staring ahead in silence. He conjured bread at every occasion, and water too when necessary, for anyone he could as they passed.
On the fourth week, the sun came out and the land turned flatter, the road less winding. “We’ll have entered the lands around Caenalys by now,” Martaina said, studying a hand-drawn map that had guided them thus far. “There is a signpost ahead just a bit farther, and it will put us upon the last leg of the way.” She let her jaw tighten. “After that, we’ll be at the gates soon enough.”
“Are you certain about this?” Aisling asked, flicking her eyes to him in the barest hint of impatience.
Cyrus paused. “Certain as I can be. The people of this city deserve a chance to flee, to survive, and the Baroness …” he felt his throat constrict. “I owe her a debt.”
“Is that all?” Aisling asked.
Cyrus looked down. “It’s all I’ve got for now. If that army has to besiege the city, she dies. She suffered a lot to make sure I lived. I owe her.”
“She wasn’t the only one who helped bring you back to life,” Aisling said quietly. “Don’t forget that.”
He looked at her evenly. “I haven’t.”
That night she was particularly vicious, more frenzied than before, and he felt the pain of it in the following morning’s ride, with scabbed-over nail marks along his back. He felt them pulse and sear with each step of the horse, each bump in the road.
The land was green now, green with spring, grasses gone dormant for the winter returning to life. “This is canal country,” Martaina said to him as they rode along, “we are likely no more than two days’ ride from the city.”
“And an army,” Cyrus said.
“I haven’t forgotten them, I assure you,” Martaina said with a roll of the eyes.
The flat lands and coastal swamps gave them a day of blessed warmth at the next dawn. The sun shone down and Cyrus felt the heat upon his armor at midday, and realized that he felt warm for the first time outside the presence of a fire in months.
“I could become used to this,” J’anda said, turning his face to the sun, closing his eyes and letting his horse meander down the path.”
“What can we expect when we get there?” Aisling asked.
“We should be outside the city gates in a few hours,” Cyrus said, though he saw no sign of any city on the flat horizon. There were few enough travelers and refugees here, most having turned southeast at the previous crossroads. There were scarcely any travelers at all, and their number grew sparser as the day went on.
“It’s a fishing town, a seaport,” Martaina said, repeating the same information that Milos Tiernan had given them before they departed the army. “But the port is closed, I suppose, and the gates under watch.”
“If King Hoygraf can’t hold the city voluntarily,” Cyrus said, “he’ll squeeze it to death by force.”
J’anda looked at Cyrus accusingly. “When you pick an enemy, you don’t do it in half measures, do you?”
“My only regret is only half-killing him,” Cyrus said.
Martaina cast him a cocked eyebrow. “That’s your only regret? Not-” She stopped and looked to Aisling, who glanced at her sideways without turning her head. “Never mind.”
Night fell, the skies darkened, and soon enough the swaying of the trees was only visible by moonlight. They rode on, quietly. The gates of the city grew larger in the distance, braziers lit all around the perimeter of the wall to give the city an imposing feel. It was wide, huge.
“Any bets on them seeing this coming?” J’anda said.
“I’m not much of a gambler these days,” Martaina replied, tense.
The walls were wide and flat, and reached a hundred feet up. There was nothing visible behind them save for a few lanterns hung in high towers. We should have come in the daylight. It would have been more glorious to see this city the way Cattrine described it to me.
The thundering hooves of the horses around Cyrus lulled him into the quiet as they went. “Are you sure you’ve got this, J’anda?”
“Fear not,” the enchanter said. “You have never looked more unthreatening than you do right now.”
“Glorious,” Cyrus said, “my life’s ambition, fulfilled.”
“Look at me,” Martaina said, “I’m no different than I was.”
“I am,” Aisling said, holding out a tanned, browned hand. “Human is not a good look for me.” She swiveled to look at Cyrus. “Is it?”
He favored her with a once-over. “I don’t mind it. You look good.”
She gave him a slow nod. “Maybe I’ll keep it on. For later. Variety, you know.”
There was a silence around them, broken only by the sound of the horses’ hooves hitting the road. “What a fabulously misplaced use for my beautiful magics,” J’anda said mournfully.
“Try and pretend you haven’t used them for the same purposes or worse,” Aisling snapped at him. The enchanter shrugged with a slight smile of mystery.
The flat, dark colors of the stone wall were rising at them. The gates were open-thank the gods-as they came along the last few hundred feet. Guards were in the shadows, Cyrus could sense them, and they stepped out upon the approach of the party on horseback. Cyrus stared at them.
“What have we got here?” the head guard asked, utterly disinterested.
“I’m escorting a party of holy women into the Temple of Our Forebearers,” J’anda said. “You know, helpers to prepare the dead for their departure.”
One of the guards shot his partner a look. “You know the city is closed to exit? Once you go in, you don’t come out until it reopens.”
“I’m quite fine with that,” J’anda’s human face smiled. “Once I’ve dropped the ladies off, there are a few locations I’m keen to visit. Traveling with holy women … you understand. It provides little enough comfort.”
The guard guffawed. “All right, then. In you go. It’s after dark, and martial law is in force, so be quick to your destination. No loitering about in the streets, or you’ll be arrested.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward J’anda. “If it’s female companionship you’re looking for, try the Scalded Dog out near the seaport. Very fine wenches there and reasonable as well.”
“Oh, I’ve heard good things,” J’anda said. “But as I believe your sailors say, ‘any old port in a storm,’ yes?”
The guards shared a laugh at that one. “Too right. Be on your way, then. Don’t dawdle.”
“Oh, I shan’
t,” J’anda said, spurring his horse forward to lead the way. “I’m in too much of a hurry to get where I’m going to linger for long.”
Another laugh filled the night as they went on, crossing through the torchlit dark under the portcullis. There were murder holes above, Cyrus saw, archers with arrows pointed down at them as they passed. Cyrus kept his mouth shut, waiting for the tension to subside.
There was a definite quiet as they went, and when the tunnel underpass for the wall opened up, they found themselves on a wide avenue. Small buildings lined either side of it, most of them three stories, set back off a dirt path in the center that was deeply rutted with wagon tracks. It had turned to mud, Cyrus realized, from spring rains.
Ahead was clearly the palace, and palatial it was, with columns and a dome that reached into the sky. There was a bridge ahead, one that dipped over a canal running through the city. There are dozens of them, allowing the citizens to navigate on water as easily as they do on the streets.
There was a commotion behind them, something atop the wall, and Cyrus turned to listen. He saw Martaina freeze, her face hidden behind a conjured mask that covered her features save for her eyes. That was plenty enough to give Cyrus the impression that something was desperately wrong. Just behind them, the clanking of the portcullis as it began to descend and the shouts of “ALARUM!” rang over the wall.
“What is it?” Cyrus asked, grasping at Martaina’s shoulder. “What’s wrong? Is the Army of Actaluere here already?”
“No,” she said with a shake of the head. “Worse.”
There was scurrying atop the walls, and screams, shouts that were undistinguishable to Cyrus’s ears. Bells began to ring in the streets, and suddenly an aroma hit him, overpowering, with the wind that rushed through the rapidly closing portcullis-death, rot … fear. In the blackness beyond the lowering gate he could see nothing but the tingle ran over his flesh nonetheless and his mouth filled with a bitter, acrid flavor as the blood pumped through his veins. He watched as the gates began to close behind that latticed portcullis, as it clanged to the ground and reverberated through the tunnel. A single word bubbled to his lips, and he knew by all that happened around him that he was right, even before Martaina confirmed it.
“Scourge.”
Chapter 93
Vara
Day 209 of the Siege of Sanctuary
The rattle of the remaining siege engines rolling away from the wall was loud, but not overpowering. Vara stood on the heights, smelling the fetid waste in the no man’s land below her, watched the last few surviving siege towers limping away across the muddied plain and breathed a sigh that came out of her slowly, as though she could scarcely believe it was through. Another done. Another repelled.
“That’s right!” A voice cried to her left. She turned to see Thad, standing there in his red armor, waving his sword over the wall at the backs of the retreating dark elven army. “Remember this! This is what happens when you mess with the best!”
“Or in your case,” Vara said acidly, “the barely competent.” She tasted the burning on her lips of the words, as though they were real, as though they were vile in truth as well as content, and she shrugged involuntarily. She leaned heavily against the tooth of the battlement before her and felt her whole weight lean with her, armor and all. It felt heavy, in spite of the enchantments. It’s not the weight of the armor, it’s the weight of the burden. The defense of this place is dragging me down, it becomes all I’ve ever lived and all I’m living for. She ran a hand across her face and flipped up the nose guard on her helm, removing the little line from her vision where it sat to protect her face from harm. It is almost as though I can remember nothing before this.
“Nasty bit of business, isn’t it?” She turned her gaze to the side, where she caught Partus looking at her with a gap-toothed grin. “They keep coming, we keep slaying them. The Sovereign has to have thrown away fifteen, twenty thousand lives here thus far, and all on these half-arsed attacks we keep turning back. You’d think he’d make a concerted push sooner or later.”
“I don’t think I wish to see your definition of a concerted push.”
“It’d involve throwing more and more men at the gate,” Partus said, “taking up where their brethren fell, grabbing the battering ram when the men who hold it drop it-”
“Would you want to grab that?” she pointed to the gate where the last battering ram the dark elves had used was lying. It was long, about thirty feet, a felled tree with the ends sawed off, a massive log. The men who carried it lay dead around it, all of them in flames, as was the ram.
“Not as it is, no,” the dwarf said with a shrug. “But you put a wizard and a druid close up by it, they use a water spell to extinguish it, you throw another forty men under it and keep hammering until the gates give.”
“Our gates do not give,” she said simply, but her eyes remained on the flaming ram, where it burned on the once clearly defined dirt road that led to the Sanctuary gates. It had become indistinguishable from the fields around it, however, because of attacks during rainy times, and the entire verdant plain for several hundred feet around the Sanctuary walls had become nothing but a slick mudscape, a messy pit of dead bodies, discarded armor and weapons, and only a few stubborn patches of grass that had not yet been wiped out.
“Every gate gives if you hammer it hard enough and long enough,” Partus said, still looking at her and not the battlefield. “Take you, for instance-” She gave him a disgusted, scathing look and he held up his hands before him in surrender, with amusement. “Now, now. We’ve known each other a good long time, Vara, since the days of Alliance yore. I’ve always respected you-”
“You’ve rarely seen me, since I attended few enough Alliance functions and never went to the meetings.”
“Not after a time,” Partus said with a grin, “but at first you did, when you were new and sweetly innocent to the way things ran.” He ignored her searing look at the remark. “Anyhow, you’ve always had such a charming personality, I just can’t tell you how amazed I was when I heard that the one who finally broke down your gates was that blockhead Davidon-”
“Stop talking,” she said. This time there was no menace to her voice, only a whisper that sounded like thunder to her ears.
“Ooooh,” Partus said, hands still up in front of him. He wiggled his fingers and made an amused sound. “So it’s true, is it? I had always wondered if you’d ever melt for a man, but Davidon? Really? What is it about him that has women throwing themselves at his feet? The Princess of Actaluere, that smutty little rogue dark elf, and you-”
“Stop what you’re saying right now,” Vara raised her hand at him, “or I’ll-”
“Now, now,” Partus replied, waving his own hand, which was still pointed at her, “let’s not be hostile about things. Assuming you could fire off a blast before I did, which is a bit iffy because I’ve seen you work your magic and you’re just not that fast-but assuming you did, I don’t think it would end out well for you, my dear, because you know I wouldn’t go far, and I’d be back in mere moments to slaughter you-”
There was the sound of an explosive blast, and Partus was launched to the side, smashing into the battlement wall. Vara heard the crack of his bones as his leg and hip hit the stone and broke. His upper body was carried by the force of the spell into a flip, his hip the center of gravity. He tipped upside down and was flung, end over end, off the wall. Vara leaned over to look and saw the dwarf fall in a spiral from his momentum, and when he landed with a crack, he did not stir, eyes wide, staring up at the battlements, dead.
“You wished to leave Sanctuary, Partus,” came Alaric’s voice, to Vara’s right. She turned and saw him there, his hand still extended, even as he spoke to the empty space where the dwarf had stood only a moment before. “Now I have granted your wish.” Without bothering to look over the battlement at the fallen dwarf, the Ghost turned, walking back to the tower nearest them, and disappeared into the darkness without another word.
&n
bsp; Chapter 94
Cyrus
The sound of troops filled the street, guards shouting, men marching in armor. The clatter of the gates shutting was complete, and the smells of death were cut off abruptly, replaced with the city scents-old baked bread from communal ovens, torch oil, and latrines. Cyrus whipped his head around, and saw more soldiers running toward them, toward the walls, the gates, and felt the padding of his armor brush against him as he tried to decide what to do next. “The palace,” Cyrus said. “If the scourge is coming now, they’ll be pulling defenses. We need to go.”
“No time like the present,” J’anda said as the first wave of guards began to pass them. He waved his hand, and Cyrus saw the enchanter’s appearance change from a human man in robes to an armored guard wearing the livery of Grand Duke Hoygraf’s Green Hill guard. Cyrus looked down and saw his armor masked in the same way. Martaina and Aisling were now absent, but beside him on horseback were two others, similarly clad.
“Let’s go,” Cyrus said, and urged Windrider forward, holding as close to the side of the street as possible. The soldiers made way for them as they passed, the hooves of their horses splattering in the muddy street. The steady clang of armored men on the march echoed off the houses to either side, and Cyrus watched as the lines of infantry maintained their formations, holding to their discipline as they headed for the gates. “That’ll be important for them,” he said out loud, “especially as those things come over the walls.”
“This is not going to end pretty,” Martaina said, glancing back nervously, her Actaluerean helm sitting atop a blond man’s head. That her soft voice came through in a husky whisper was even stranger to Cyrus, who had to think about it for a moment to remember it was, in fact, her.
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