Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (104 page)

He glanced upward and nodded his head, a flat expression of surprise on his lower face. “That is … not bad, actually. I was aiming more for a visual representation of the idea that you never know what lies beneath the surface of a body of water until you’ve been in it, but I did not wish to walk all the way around to the pond.”

She let a small laugh escape. “So it was merely a lesson in being vague and mysterious and keeping people at a distance in order to keep them from seeing you bend and break.”

He nodded with a slight smile of his own. “Close enough. I have endeavored in the last years to get you to soften that edge you keep about you, the one that holds others at a distance. I told you before in your dealings with Cyrus that your protective instincts would drive him away. I have no desire to keep harping on what I perceive as your attempts to sabotage your own happiness, especially as you are aware of them. The lesson closest to what I want to tell you is this—” He stepped closer to her and placed both hands on her shoulders, looked her in the eyes with the cool grey of his, and took a deep breath. “If you allow no one to stand close to you, no one will know when you are straining, when you are close to breaking, or the reason why. While I thought once, perhaps, this was a fine posture for a leader to maintain, I now doubt its efficacy, both as a leadership method and as a fulfilling way to live one’s life.” He glanced past her to the tree. “Also, it seems somewhat dangerous in its illustrative purposes. That branch could have hit someone, after all.”

She chuckled again. “You jest. You couch your lessons in jests. Truly, this is rare indeed. You stumble between morbidity and a clarity of thought that I can scarcely fathom and then go right back to humor, all in the space of seconds.”

He smiled. “I only wish to convey to you the mistakes I have made.”

“You’ve been a very good Guildmaster,” she said.

“I have made errors,” he said gravely, and she felt the squeeze of his hands as they clinked on her pauldrons. “Grave ones. Foolish ones. Almost all preventable, almost all brought about by my failure to trust my guildmates with things I should have told them. I have believed in you as well, all of you, that you were better than me. I felt my role here was to be secret-keeper, to mete and dole the things I had learned and acquired in their own time, fearing these secrets might be too much for anyone else to bear, that they might break you all or cause you to be under the same duress as myself. All it has done is isolate me, to put me off to the side, and make me shoulder every ounce of the burden. Indeed, now I am left to wonder if any of the things I held back ever had any real purpose at all, if it would not have been better for me to say plainly everything I knew and let the officers at least react with their own best judgment.” He sagged. “But that is a discussion that is entirely esoteric at this point; we are too far down the road now for anything less.”

“If you have no one to speak to about these things,” she said, “I would listen, as you have for me all these years.”

“I have rarely done that for you, my friend,” Alaric said with a smile. “And I am not totally bereft of those with which to speak some of my mind.” The smile disappeared. “Though I do miss Curatio at moments such as this. His wisdom was as great as his discretion, and there were things I could talk about with him that I dare not with anyone else.” There was a slight twinkle in his eye at her. “Well, almost.”

They lapsed into quiet, and Alaric withdrew his hands from her shoulders. She thought on what he had said as the rain continued to fall around them.
Isolated. Alone. Filled with regret. Yet still there is something he won’t say, things he won’t talk about.
She cast a sidelong glance at him, wondering. “Alaric?” she asked. “For all these you have said, the things you have told us will come to us ‘in the fullness of time’? Will we ever actually hear the answers?”

His face darkened, and he stared at the tree as the rains washed over it. The air was clear now and fresh, the smell of all else washed away and replaced with the scent of good mud and earth. There was a flash of lightning on the horizon, and then a solid crack of thunder followed a few seconds later. She did not have to strain to hear him but only just. “Perhaps,” he said, his voice fading as he spoke. “Perhaps you will indeed. But the day may come when you do … that you wish you had not.” He was stoic, still, and looking at the wall before them and all that it held back, the army on the other side. “For not all secrets are prizes to be revealed, celebrated and reveled in. Some are dark, and dangerous, and when the door is open to them,” he pointed to the gate in the wall, sealed against the predations of the dark elves, “they wreak nothing but destruction on everyone—everyone—that they touch.”

Cyrus

It was a slaughter, Cyrus knew, as night fell. The dragoons had filled the air with the smell of horses, of manure, so thick that he could scarcely breathe it without thinking of stables and wet hay. The sky had been clear, and when the sun set, the first fires to the east had been easy to see, the sight of spellcasters burning ground to slow the scourge’s advance and cover a rally. They had come an hour or so after that, the army on a march. He had seen them from a distance, faint heads and bodies blending into the outlines that were illuminated by the fires behind them, but the number was few enough.
It was an army of thousands, and now it is half or less what it was when last I saw it. Actaluere, Galbadien, Syloreas and Sanctuary combined.
It was hard to see detail, silhouettes against the only light source; when the moon came up the picture became clearer—but no less disheartening.

The sound of the horses was heavy too, hoofbeats, rallying, the soldiers burning off nervous energy as they waited. The trouble was coming, it was close at hand. The dragoons formed up, and the horses snorted in the still, warm night, the first Cyrus could recall in what seemed like years.
How many have we lost of Sanctuary? How many have we left?
He felt the pull of worry at his innards.
How many have I lost? They are mine to command, after all, even if I have abdicated that responsibility a great deal of late.
The touch of the warm night air on his skin was palpable, a reminder that winter had subsided and spring was roaring through with intent to carry summer with it.

When the armies drew closer, it was near to midnight, and the full moon gave them a clearer idea still. “Were there so many missing when last you saw them?” Cyrus asked Longwell, who was alongside him on his horse.

“Aye,” Longwell said. “The flanking action was terrible, and the Actaluereans were caught on the march by the scourge when they swept through from the west. They were separated from us and the Sanctuary army by too wide a distance; they had to flee without fire spells to cover them and lost three-quarters of their men before they met up with us.” He shook his head. “Your Baron Hoygraf’s ambitions cost a great many lives, it seems.”

My failure to kill him, you mean.
But Cyrus did not voice the thought, true as it was.
What good can I do here when all I seem to be able to achieve are failures that embolden the enemy and turn every silly mistake of mine into another thousand or hundred thousand dead? How many must die before I stop giving these things more room to kill us?

There was movement at the back line of the retreating army, the leading edge of a few wagons and men carrying the supplies. They came out of the darkness, speaking little to the dragoons as they passed, trying to edge around the army on horseback. He saw tired faces, downturned, going about their labor. Some seemed more familiar than others, and he knew they had been part of the wagon train at Enrant Monge and perhaps earlier, at Filsharron. One of them came out of the dark on a pony and approached him, face cracking into a smile. It was a young man who looked vaguely familiar. “It’s you,” the lad said. “I knew you’d be back.”

“Oh?” Cyrus looked at him until something clicked in his mind. “You tended the horses at Enrant Monge.”

“Aye, I did,” the young man said. “Been doing it for the army since, taking care of the ones that haul the wagons. The Brothers had me leave before the castle fell.” He shook his head. “Never thought it would happen. They’ve taken it all, haven’t they? The whole land?”

“Aye,” Cyrus said with greatest reluctance, “they have.”

The boy seemed to absorb that. “It’s all right. You’ll save us.”

There was such a moment of absurd intensity that Cyrus felt almost compelled to laugh. “I haven’t exactly done a bang-up job of that so far, kid.”

The boy shrugged as if to say
no matter
. “I believe in you. You’re him, after all. You’re him, returned, like me mum used to talk about.”

Cyrus quelled a deep sigh. “Kid, I’m not your ‘Baron Darrick,’ or whatever his name is.”

“Lord Garrick?” Longwell said from next to Cyrus, raising an eyebrow at the warrior. “You speak of the legend of Garrick’s return?”

“Aye,” the boy said with a hint of pride. “It’s him, I tell you. He’s the one. He’ll save us.”

Longwell gave Cyrus a pitying look of understanding then a nod of surrender. “If ever there was a man who could find a way where there was no way, this would be the man.”

Cyrus frowned. “You cannot be serious.”

Longwell shrugged. “No, I believe it. You’ve done impossible things in the past. You’re a human man who brought down the Dragonlord—”

“Through luck,” Cyrus said.

“—you led a nearly untested army into the Trials of Purgatory and came out a victor—”

“Through some good fortune and the skill of my comrades.”

“—you broke the Goblin Imperium and threw one of the most prestigious guilds in Arkaria into shame—”

“Thanks to a sword forged by a god.”

Longwell shrugged. “Held a bridge against an army of a hundred thousand.”

“With your help. And … Vara’s.”

“Killed a god,” Longwell said. “Something that hasn’t been done in living memory.” He paused. “Except Curatio’s.”

“Because of Alaric,” Cyrus said, annoyed. “And also the cause of all our current problems.”

Longwell locked eyes with the stableboy, ignoring Cyrus. “You’ve got a good eye, lad. If ever there was a man born today who embodied Garrick’s dauntlessness, his fighting ability, his indomitable spirit, this is the one.”

“Aye, Your Majesty,” the stableboy said, and bowed so low he nearly fell off his horse.

“Run along now,” Longwell said. “Take care of yourself, and stay clear of the fighting. You get to that bridge and stay well out in front of everyone else, do you hear?”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the boy said again, and started his horse forward, looking back with awstruck eyes at Cyrus and Longwell.

Cyrus waited until he was out of earshot before turning on the King of Galbadien. “You didn’t have to feed his delusion.”

Longwell let out a mirthless guffaw. “Delusion, nothing. All I did was recount a piece of your legend.” He waved in the direction of the stableboy’s retreating back. “Tell me what harm it does to give that lad a hope in a land that has nearly had it struck out of it. We’re about to surrender our last foothold here. I would have him believe as we do so that we’re not retreating just so we can die on the other side of the sea. I would have him believe he can have a future free of these things. I would rather surrender our last square of land here a thousand times over, to feel the pain of that loss, than surrender our hope. Hope is a powerful thing. Belief is a powerful thing, too. It hurts him little to believe that you are the legend of Lord Garrick returned to us.” Longwell’s face darkened. “And it certainly is our darkest hour, when it was said he would return. We all could use a little hope right now.”

Cyrus took a long glance at Longwell, the King. “As you wish,” he said simply. The last of the suppliers had passed now, and it was down to the army, clumped ahead of them, lines of fire on either side.”

“Would you like to argue it further?” Longwell said with an impish smile as he started his horse forward.

Cyrus drew Praelior as he watched Longwell heft his lance. “Not at present,” Cyrus said. “But I expect you’ll be whistling quite a different tune when we’re on the other side of the sea.”

“I dearly hope not,” Longwell said as the army before them opened ranks to channel the horses through as they fell back. Cyrus rode past the Actaluerean army, through its midst, three short rows before he hit the scourge, coming forward in the darkness, advancing into the last hundred miles of Luukessia that was left.

“Well, that was effective,” Terian said beside the fire as the sun was rising nearby. Martaina was there, as well as Curatio and Nyad, who was sacked out already. Calene Raverle and Scuddar In’shara shared the fire with them, the desert man strangely quiet—
though not strangely for him,
Cyrus reflected. The battle had lasted most of the night. “I’ve never seen that many scourge die so quickly.”

“Yet, we still find ourselves a mile back from where we started the night,” Curatio said, studying a book draped across his lap. “Tens of thousands of the enemy dead but ultimately irrelevant. Even with the effectiveness of the dragoons, we’ll be seeing the Endless Bridge inside of a week.”

Cyrus sat staring at the fire in front of them. “That means we’ll see the end of the bridge in a week or so after that. And after that …” He let his words trail off. “There’s no holding them back at that point. They can flank us in the jungle and we’ll have a hell of a time doing much other than forming a line on the beach and fighting with our backs to the waves.” A thought occurred to him. “Actually … we might try that here, on the shores of Luukessia.”

“Not a bad idea,” came a voice from behind him, and Longwell trudged up, lance in hand, his helm under the other arm. He threw down his weapon, careful not to hit anyone. The smell of activity came with him, the strong scent of sweat. Cyrus knew it well, having smelled it on himself earlier, but it had faded away now, blended into the background behind the smell of the logs burning. The crack and pop of them owned the air while they waited for Longwell to speak again. “A last stand against the shores of the sea might just produce some killing results.”