Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (84 page)

“I think the land has given us all it has and then added the entirety of the Torrid Sea for good effect,” Erith said. No one found cause to disagree with her.

“I can only control so much,” Ryin spoke louder, his voice cut off in the middle by another crack of booming thunder; Vara’s sensitive ears echoed yet still she heard every bit of it. “To try and stop a light summer shower is very doable for a druid of my power. To stop a normal thunderstorm is straining it a bit. To try and put the cease to this tempest?” The druid shrugged, and the water ran off the shoulders of his overcoat in drenching sluices.

“I would not allow you to do so in any case,” Vara shouted to make herself heard, and she drew confused looks. “This weather is murder on convoys, and the roads are nothing but long stretches of mud that will bog them down. For the next day we’ll be able to ambush a number of them simply by riding up on them in the night where they remain stuck.”

“Yes,” Vaste agreed, “but we have to be able to see them, else it becomes a fine opportunity for us to stumble into a fight that we’re not prepared for.”

A shadow appeared in front of them, lit by a flash of lightning; Vara saw it for only a second as the sky illuminated the ground, but it was a wagon, and other shapes were around it, and suddenly an arrow flew past her ear.

“See?” Vaste called. “Like that.”

Vara urged her horse forward, sword in hand, and when the next flash lit the world around, she brought her blade down upon the dark elf she saw before her. By the time of the thunderclap he was already falling, bleeding on his way to the ground. The next flash of lightning followed shortly thereafter, and before her was a field in motion, more soldiers than she’d seen before around a convoy;
there have to be near five hundred, she
thought as she rode on toward a thick cluster of them, and let out her hand, following it with a spell that shot forth into the dark night.

It made a light of its own as it left her palm, and she watched it make contact with three dark elven soldiers, flinging them into the air. A bolt of lightning came from behind her, not above, and she felt the air blister with electricity as it passed. It hit five of the enemy and she could see their shadows jerk with the surge of power, dancing in the oddest fashion before they fell still in the mud.

She rode forward and felt something solid hit her horse, a jarring feel that caused the animal to jerk then start to fall.
Oh, dear,
was all that had a chance to make it through her mind before she was thrown. Her shoulder hit the mud and all her weight came down on it and then her head, driving her helm and her armor into her soft skin. She heard a crunch upon the impact, and for just a second it felt as though her legs were dangling in the air above her before momentum carried them forward and she felt her back and lower body hit the ground with unmerciful hardness. There was a splash that barely registered, and then shooting pains started from her hips and buttocks, but none worse than the one that raged along her shoulder and neck.

Sweet Goddess of Life.
Her lips anchored closed against the cry she felt rising from within.
They stabbed my horse with a spear or lance, surely. Damn them. Bloody damn them all to the hells of legend.
She tried to move but the pain was suffocating. There was movement all around her, too much to track, and her anguish necessitated she squeeze her eyes closed even as she raised a hand, chanting words under her breath that were as familiar to her as her own name, that had been drilled into her so often that they were rote memory by now, called upon in time of trouble.

The healing spell was minor, at best, compared to the power of the one a healer could call upon. Still, she felt some of the pain subside, the fire in her shoulder was reduced, and she moved it without a scream of agony. She stirred, bringing her sword across the nearest shape to her, a leg in the darkness. She heard a howl of pain when it struck true, and a dark figure began to fall toward her. She rolled left, knocking the legs from underneath the dark elves around her, causing them to teeter. She brought her sword around and made them fall, limbs gushing blood that was not visible in the dark. She pushed them off and got to her feet, looking about as the lightning flashed and the thunder drowned out all the sound of battle that was raging around her.

She stabbed into another dark elf, whose surprise was obvious as his mouth dropped open and exposed the blackness in the gaping back of his mouth. She drew her sword out of him and hit the next, then sensed, rather than saw, someone coming at her from behind. She twirled her open hand and fired the spell that was closer to memory than the healing incantation. It flashed, separate from the lightning, and she watched a surprised face carried through the air where it became pained after the body it was attached to broke upon contact with a wagon.

Vara crouched down then leapt straight up as four enemies came at her all at once. She watched them crash into each other, swords gone awry and striking their own fellows. She landed with both boots hard on the back of two of the survivors’ necks then used her sword to make certain none of them lived. The dark elven escort was visible in flashes, as though someone were taking a candle and holding thick parchment over it, pulling it back and forth rapidly, lighting and unlighting the world.

There was not much to be heard other than the screams, the wet sopping smell of the mud on her armor, the blood already washed away. She leaned into the fight, throwing all her power into each thrust of the sword. She could feel her allies at work somewhere behind her, but for now, she knew, she was on her own and surrounded by enemies. She smiled as she let an attack carry her through.
What a marvelous way to spend such an evening. I suppose the God of War would be pleased.

That thought did not chill her near as much as the rain, and with every flash of lightning she took another dark elf’s life, or two or more, and though the tempest raged until long after the last of her enemies was dead, in truth it never stopped, not within her, and she wondered if it ever would.

Cyrus

The dining hall was cleared out, the servants all urged out the door by Odau Genner, who finally lost his temper at the last of them as they stood staring at the body of Aron Longwell, slumped in his seat. “OUT!” Genner shouted, and threw his napkin at the man for good measure. The swinging door closed behind him.

“This is quite a mess you’ve thrust us into,” Ewen Ranson said from his place at the table, still sitting at the right hand of the corpse, his head bowed and his hands resting atop his head, fingers pinching tufts of greying hair between them as though the Count were preparing to yank them out. He looked down and to his left, to where Samwen Longwell knelt in front of his father’s seat, his gauntlets gone and his hands on his father’s legs, looking up at the slack face with no expression on his own.

“He’s thrust us into?” Genner said from the kitchen door. “He bloody well killed the King!” Genner’s voice was a furious whisper, muted enough to not be heard, but near apoplectic with the red blood filling his face, giving him the look of a tomato with a mustache. “And there’s not one of THEM—” he waved a hand at the door of the kitchen, “that doesn’t know it, even if they didn’t see the dagger and the blood!”

“He killed the King?” Nyad stood up from her place near the end of the table, a look of flush horror upon her cheeks. “Oh, Samwen … what did you do?”

“Killed his father,” Aisling said without any sort of concern, daintily cutting away at the duck breast she had purloined from Genner’s plate next to her. “What did you think we were here to do?”

“Speaking for myself,” J’anda said, wide-eyed, “I thought we were here to persuade them to enter the war—you know, to save their homeland. Call it enlightened self-interest, that idea that they may want to get involved.”

“You heard him,” Martaina said from her place across the table from Genner’s empty seat. “He wanted no part of it. The old King was mad. He’d watch his Kingdom eaten alive by the scourge sooner than he’d order his troops to ally with his enemies. There was no other road but this one.”

“But you don’t know where this road leads yet,” Count Ranson said, raising his head, hands now clenching the side of his face. “What do you expect will happen now?” He threw an accusing hand toward Samwen. “The boy—excuse me, I still think of him as such—he killed the rightful King of Galbadien.” Ranson’s eyes darted from the Longwells to Cyrus. “I don’t know how you conduct things in Arkaria, but here, that sort of action is treason, murder, and all who would be party to it are conspirators worthy of being hanged.” He closed his eyes and slumped in his seat again. “To kill one’s own kin is the worst sort of murder.” His hands proceeded to his eyes, and covered them, muffling his next words. “The most horrid part is, I’m not even certain he was wrong to do what he did.”

There hung a stark silence. “Do you know what is coming?” Cyrus asked, but Ranson did not stir. He looked then to Genner, who seemed deflated. “Do you know what is happening in the north right now?” He waited a pause. “What do you believe—”

“I believe we are about to face the single greatest threat to the land of Luukessia that has ever been seen,” Ranson’s head came up and there was a light in his eyes, a fire, “that what comes down those northern plains is the worst doom to ever visit itself upon this land, worse than the breaking of the Kingdoms. I believe that it slides upon us like the death he described,” a finger pointed to Samwen again, “and that if we do nothing, we are not only damned in the eyes of our ancestors for doing nothing, but twice damned because we will see our people blotted out by it and thrice damned as our own eyes are eaten out of our very heads by those things.”

“Then would you have stood by and let your liege drop your Kingdom right into the waiting mouths of the scourge?” Cyrus looked at Ranson. Ranson looked back at him accusingly. A sidelong glance at Genner revealed only nervousness, nerves and sadness, expressed on his rounded face through a slightly open mouth as he licked his lips. “Would you?”

“We had not … decided the course to take, yet,” Ranson answered for both of them. Genner was in the background now, Cyrus realized, almost useless, for his part in things.

“Yet you know—you saw!—that these things are a blight across the very surface of the land,” Cyrus said. “They will come whether you act or not, and every day you hesitated in making your decision was another day in which they had free reign to whittle down the numbers of men left to fight them. The time is now, gentlemen.” He looked from Ranson to Genner. “Acknowledge Samwen as the new King, and let us be on about the business of saving your Kingdom from utter ruination.”

“I’m not certain I want the crown,” Samwen said at last, still huddled by the body of his father.

“Then this was perhaps a poor course of action to pick,” J’anda said.

“No,” Longwell said, rising, his cheeks streaked with tears. “My duty was to save Galbadien. If I had to die to do so, then so be it, I would pay that price and more, willingly. I know full well,” he gestured at Ranson, “that my father’s successors, regardless of whether it was me or not, would do what is necessary and rally us for war. I could not sit by and allow my realm to fall to the scourge, and yet my father would do exactly that. My course, then, became obvious, when I realized he would die before acting—”

“I can get well past the decision,” Ranson said in a whisper. “Aron Longwell is hardly the first King of Galbadien to be displaced by their own blood in such a way—though we do not condone it! But we must not speak of this any longer, we must keep it confined to this room, let it die here with Aron Longwell.”

“You think you could hide the truth of this?” Cyrus exchanged a look with Aisling, whose eyes flickered amusement. “Good luck. Word is likely already spreading.”

“To seat a King who slew the last, and openly no less,” Genner croaked. “These are dark days indeed.”

“I care not how dark the days grow,” Samwen Longwell said turning to look at Odau Genner, “so long as Galbadien survives to see the dawn.”

“We’ll arrange it,” Ranson said quickly and tossed a look at Genner. “A quick coronation before we ride north.” Ranson seemed to be thinking it all through quickly, as though it was a plan he had been holding in, waiting to execute. “Where do we go?”

“Enrant Monge,” Cyrus said. “We rally there; Actaluere is sending for the rest of their armies, and Syloreas is evacuating everything they have south. Enrant Monge will be the site of the battle, and we’ll have to break them there.”

“How do you know these creatures will come there?” Genner said, softly, almost like a child asking a plaintive question of a parent.

“They seem to follow life as a moth follows the fire,” Longwell said. “The Syloreans are running their entire population there, as many of them as can move from the east, from the north. Some of them in the west are moving south, but other than that, they’re rallying there, every able-bodied man.”

“That’s a poor place to keep their civilians,” Ranson said, thinking it over. “What if you should fail—if
we
should fail? They’ll need to be moved, south, ahead of the horde.”

“These people are refugees,” J’anda said, “they’ll be hungry, starving. They aren’t an army, yet they march on their stomachs. We have spellcasters that can conjure food and drink for them, at least enough to be getting on with. But any evacuation will be slow, and will need to be covered by the army we have.”

“I don’t mean to suggest we’ll fail,” Ranson said, “as I’m confident we’ll succeed, but—”

“Only a fool doesn’t have a fallback plan,” Cyrus said. “Agreed. We’ll need to work on it. But we’ll have a month’s ride to get to Enrant Monge. Hopefully the armies can hold back the tide of the enemy for that long.” He stared at Ranson. “When can you send for your armies, start assembling them?”

Ranson looked up at him, and a slight smile creased his face. “I sent the orders almost two weeks ago, when it was clear you were coming here. The barons have already begun to assemble west of here at a crossroads town called Callis. We’ll be ready to march for Enrant Monge in three days.”