Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (52 page)

“What would you suggest?” Cyrus asked. “Draw them onto the plains and have a bloody free-for-all there?”

“It may come to that,” Unger said, “if they decide Scylax is too tightly buttoned up to bother with, and they’re truly hungry for blood, they ought to head south. If we can come at them with the three armies—Galbadien, Actaluere and Syloreas, we can probably match them, put them down, and all the while you take your army another couple weeks north through the passes and into that valley, and put the crushing blow on their reinforcements.” Unger nodded. “That’d sort them out on our end, leave us to mop up whatever they had left over here, but they wouldn’t be getting that constant stream of endless numbers like they apparently can now.” Unger had a strange light in his eyes. “I’d fight like all hell, too, way past the close if I had an army of raging souls behind me who had no fear of death and no care for numbers.”

“There’s something we’re missing here,” Cyrus said. “If they’re more than beasts, then there has to be more to them than just a simple hunger. There’s something driving them besides rage if they’re coordinating their attacks. J’anda, did you sense any sort of leadership structure to these things?”

“Just because I didn’t sense it doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” J’anda cautioned. “I got the picture of the creature’s mind, but it was not like reading a map or even like absorbing the thought of a normal person—not that there necessarily is such a thing as normal. But this is how it is—humans think a certain way, as do dark elves, elves, gnomes, dwarves and so on. Within every species is a certain way of thought, and I understand all of them—except trolls. Well, with the exception of Vaste. Within each species there are also variations of their manner of thinking, some radical, some bizarre, but none as different as the jump between species. The point is, I understand all of them, can read all of them, can know all of them. This creature … I could not know given a year or two or ten in its mind. It is angrier by far than a troll, more guarded than a dark elf and more bizarre than any mind I have ever seen into. I get flashes, enough to understand the origin, but only pieces of the whole. I could read a man’s mind and feel confident in telling you everything of the man,” he blushed and looked away from Cyrus as he said it. “This thing, I would not feel confident telling you I know anything of it but the facts I outlined. They are … bizarrre. Truly bizarre. They could well have a leadership and a hierarchy driving them and I would not know it.”

“Marvelous,” Cyrus said, running his hands over his eyes and then through his hair, brushing it over his shoulders. “We have an enemy that appears countless in number, unknowable in intent—other than that they want blood and death—we have no way of judging their movements, their desire, how far they will take this, and even though we now know their origin, we don’t know if they have a leader of any sort or if there is any motivation for them to be doing what they’re doing. We’re completely blind, facing a numberless enemy.” He sighed. “At least we have a plan.”

“And our plan involves slipping behind the lines of this enemy and trying to cut off their entry point to this realm,” J’anda said. “This doesn’t sound like our best plan ever, if I may say so.”

“When have you ever hesitated to say so?” Cyrus asked, holding his head. “But you’re right. This … will not be pretty.”

Unger smiled, an unsettling one. Ranson and the envoy from Actaluere had left moments earlier. “The fight ahead or the moot?”

“Either one,” Cyrus said. “I wonder if King Aron has at the least soothed Milos Tiernan over the Baroness Cattrine?”

“I doubt it,” Unger said. “It’s not Tiernan who’s truly upset by that anyhow; my spies say he’s most displeased with what Grand Duke Hoygraf has done to his sister. It’s Hoygraf himself who is driving that issue. Milos Tiernan would just as soon have his sister away from Hoygraf forever, but Hoygraf holds too many favors in his Kingdom, too many strings of powerful people.”

“How?” Cyrus asked. “The man’s a sadist.”

“Aye,” Unger said, “but sadism can have its uses when you run a Kingdom. And the man was a dog of war, until you perforated his belly. Now he’s unlikely to walk straight upright ever again, but he has allies in Actaluere. He controls easily a third of their armies, and King Tiernan’s a clever bastard. He knows it, he knows Hoygraf knows it, and he’s playing it entirely cool in order to keep Hoygraf from acting on it.”

“I crushed Hoygraf’s army,” Cyrus said, waving off Unger. “I broke his keep, killed his men. What the hell else has he got?”

“You did not break his army,” Unger said. “His army was two days march behind you when you hit Green Hill. You killed his attendants, you killed many of his close advisors, but not his army. He intended to delay you until they could crush you, and it would have been a rather clever stratagem if he’d been facing traditional forces. Unfortunately for him, you were more magical and somewhat cleverer than he might have given you credit for.” Unger chuckled and shook his head. “Still, bedding his wife before the man was dead? I admit, I have no respect for Hoygraf and his woman-beating ways, but cuckolding the man after you opened his belly and left him to die? The Grand Duke will be upset with you for the rest of his life, shortened though it might be by the grievous wounding you gave him.”

“I don’t give a damn about Grand Duke Hoygraf,” Cyrus said. “I can handle him if the time comes.”

“Oh, the time will come,” Unger said. “I mean, did you not think that word would get out about your escapades in the Garden of Serenity before we left?”

Cyrus froze, and caught the look of confusion from both Curatio and J’anda. “You heard about that?” Cyrus asked Unger.

“Oh, yes,” Unger said with a laugh. “That was all the talk of the moot the night before we left. You have a set of brass ones, Cyrus Davidon. Everyone knew about that.”

“I didn’t hear about that,” J’anda said, slightly miffed.

“Everyone who was of the three Kingdoms,” Unger amended. “The Garden of Serenity is not exactly a holy place, but it’s as near as we get in Luukessia. My goodness, lad … taking the wife of a man whose grievance was that you had taken his wife, and doing it there? Sort of defeats the idea of suing for peace, doesn’t it? I mean, you’re adding fresh grievances by the bucketload. You’re quite fortunate you didn’t speak with King Longwell before you left, I’m certain he would have given you an earful for that last insult.”

Cyrus looked to Samwen Longwell, whose face was drawn. “Yes, that’s something of an insult,” Longwell said. “And yes, it likely made my father’s negotiations after we left somewhat more protracted, if you did in fact do …” he coughed, “what he said you did.”

“I did,” Cyrus said, unrepentant. “Twice.”

Longwell was overcome by a fit of coughing. “Ahem … uh … the Baroness would have known how great an insult this would be. I’m surprised she still … ah … acceded to your … charms.” The dragoon looked uncomfortable at every word, and when done, settled into a silence in which he would not meet Cyrus’s eyes.

“She was the one who started it,” Cyrus said, drawing another coughing fit from Longwell, a wide grin from Unger, tired disinterest from J’anda and practiced neutrality from Curatio. “I didn’t start it, she did. So if she knew what she was doing was insulting, she did it on purpose.”

“Aye,” Unger said, “I can’t imagine why she would choose that moment to insult the man who beat her. If the man were one of my barons, I’d have him flogged in the streets of Scylax for pulling even a tenth of what that bloke has. What a load of goat dung he is.”

“We seem to have wandered afield from our original topic of discussion,” Curatio said with a weak smile. “We have a meeting—or moot, I should say—tomorrow, yes?”

“Yes,” Unger said. “It may already be in progress when we arrive. If so, they’ll move directly to our topic, and Ranson and what’s-his-name from Actaluere will have their moment to speak, but nothing will be decided until after the Kings have a chance to talk with their men in private. We’ll go to any other business then adjourn. Should be a short session.”

“Thus was said about every long meeting I have ever attended,” Curatio said dryly, “and I’ve attended one or two very long meetings in my life.”

“So, we have a war to begin,” Cyrus said, “a land to unite,” he nodded at Briyce Unger, who nodded back, “a guild to inform, troops to rally, reinforcements to summon …” Cyrus folded his arms, and settled his eyes on Longwell, Curatio, J’anda, and finally on the darkness beyond the campfires where he knew, in the distance, Enrant Monge lay just ahead on the horizon, beyond the black skies, “… and I don’t know which of those things will be hardest to do. I really don’t.”

He left them, then, without word, deep in his own thoughts, and paced through the campfires, looking for Aisling.
She’s never around when I have need of her, not immediately, anyway.
He went beyond the last fire, and edged into the woods.
Yet when I go far enough away …
he heard a rustling in the bushes.

He felt her hand around his shoulders, felt her tongue in his ear, gentle, caressing, smelled the cinnamon on her breath. “Productive meeting?” she whispered.

“Not really,” he said, and turned to her, backing her against a tree. “What about you?”

“Been waiting for you,” she said as she let her fingers brush through his hair, then kissed him again, and he felt his head swirl as he lifted her gently off the ground and pinned her against the tree as their passion consumed them.

“Put me down,” she said after they were done, and he did, leaning against the tree for support, his weight resting heavily on his left arm. “I’ll see you back at the camp.” He heard her words, sensed her pull her breeches back up, then heard her footsteps disappear, as they always did, quiet to the point where he couldn’t hear them, and he was left alone, again, in the woods, in the dark, and he stayed there for quite some time.

It was midafternoon when they rode into Enrant Monge through the northern gate of the Syloreans. After the second gate, the stewards of the Brotherhood of the Broken Blade greeted them and quietly informed them that there was a session underway at present in the Garden of Serenity. They would be expected within the half-hour, then the debate would shift to hear their reports. Briyce Unger nodded and was on about his business, heading toward the tower nearby, while the Actaluere envoy headed west through a keeping gate and Cyrus and the others followed Ranson to the eastern bailey.

The sun was still high in the sky as Cyrus made his way out of the tower set aside for the Galbadien delegation a half-hour later. The stewards had shown him to the communal bath, and he’d washed the dirt of travel from him, felt the cool water rinsing the dust and grime of long days of travel from his skin, along with something else which was becoming familiar, the smell of Aisling, her sweat and the tangy aroma of cinnamon. He caught a peculiar look from one of the stewards, who thereafter tried to avoid making eye contact with him. When he looked in the mirror, he realized his neck was covered with bruises from bites; not small ones, either, but ones that were obvious and exposed above his armor. Fiddling with his collar was of no assistance; they stood out against the green of his robe. With a sigh, he left, joining Curatio, J’anda, Longwell and Ranson in the courtyard before the Garden of Serenity. Aisling and the others had gone to rejoin the Sanctuary army, still encamped in the eastern woods outside the castle.

They were called into the garden, the walls bathed in orange by the light of noon. Clouds were on the horizon, but as yet the breeze was soft, the sun was unobscured, and the weather pleasant enough, if a little hot. They were not announced, not this time, save for Briyce Unger, who went first and with little fanfare. Cyrus watched from the tunnel as Unger strode out to take his place in the amphitheater, and Cyrus and his delegation were ushered out moments later, as a quiet settled upon the proceedings, and he took a place on an empty bench, conspicuously far to the back of the Galbadien delegation. Count Ranson went forward, invited to a place of honor nearer to Aron Longwell, though not as near as it had been before the expedition; Ranson took a seat in the third row rather than the first.

Cyrus scanned the audience until he found Ryin Ayend and Nyad, sitting a few rows closer and upon the aisle opposite the one Cyrus had entered by. The soft breeze stirred Nyad’s hair as he looked upon her, and Ayend next to her looked especially drab in the dull green robes provided by the Brotherhood of the Broken Blade. Seated to the left of the two of them was Cattrine, her dark hair shining, her face less so, reserved, and focused on him but for a few seconds before she broke eye contact, impassive, hesitant, almost fearful.

The greenery around them almost faded into the backdrop as the meeting began. The assemblage was quiet, and there was a sense of restlessness in the audience made all the worse by the breeze, stirring as it was every few moments. Cyrus could feel it in the air, a desire to move, to run, and as he looked down at Cattrine he felt it grow stronger. He longed for touch, for hers or Aisling’s, and wished desperately he were elsewhere, though he could not define why.

“I offer a welcome to our brothers who have returned from the north,” Grenwald Ivess looked somewhat haggard, a little pallid, and the lighting helped not a whit. “Would that you had come at a more auspicious time, when we had more … pleasing news to report.” Cyrus looked to Unger, who sat isolated in the front row of the Sylorean bench by himself, and watched the King look to the men behind him, his brow furrowed.
Why is the King sitting alone? What is going on here?

“I take it there was little progress whilst we were away?” Unger asked, drawing his attention back to the assembly. “No forward momentum on making amends between our august Kingdoms?” The King of Syloreas was loud, restless, and his hair moved as he turned to look back once more at the row of men behind him, none of whom would look him in the eye. Cyrus watched as he slapped one of them on the knee, enough to jar the man to attention but not to compel him to look at his King for more than a few seconds before lapsing back to staring at his feet.