Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (48 page)

J’anda raised an eyebrow. “She’s going to play with him like an ice princess with a dark knight scum-thing’?”

Fortin nodded. “Very good.” He looked back at Vara, who, along with Archenous, was watching the proceedings rather spellbound, and nodded. “You may go about your play, ice princess.”

“Thank you for that, I think,” she said. Her shoulders tensed beneath her armor and she assumed a defensive stance as she closed on Archenous, intent on battle.

Archenous thrust out a hand and nothing happened. His face twitched, and then he smiled. “Worth a try,” he said by way of explanation.

“Worthy of you, more like,” she said and came at him without further ado.

Her sword clashed against his. He blocked her, but barely. He threw his broad blade up in a cross block in front of his face, but it was weak and she pushed it back to hit his breastplate at the collarbone. He’d taken a few steps away from the doors to the middle of the bailey, which was fortunate for him, for he had to dance to the side to avoid being pinned against the tower. The strain of the blow showed on Archenous’s face, his cruel eyes furious and casting about for escape.

Vara came at him again and again, and he parried and blocked, losing ground slightly each time, the worry beginning to show on his face. She came at him like a woman possessed—and possessed of a singular mind to cut him to pieces. Cyrus saw no clear strategy in Archenous save to dodge the next blow and the next, and the dark knight seemed to suffer for it as the panic clearly rose within him.

“Even if I—” he said as she struck a blow so hard that the rattle of the swords against one another jarred Cyrus in his very teeth, “—manage to survive, your friends are going to cut me to pieces anyway!”

“No,” Fortin rumbled. “Because unlike you, we are not lacking in honor.” He sidled over to Cyrus and lowered his voice. “If she dies, I will rip his limbs off and remove his tongue while you resurrect the ice princess to deliver the final blow.”

“A kind offer, Fortin,” Cyrus said, straining, his leg still aching, his back uncomfortable against the weapon rack behind him, “but I don’t think she’s likely to lose this particular contest.”

“Never underestimate the power of treachery,” Fortin said.

“I doubt I can any longer, after what we’ve been through these last months,” Cyrus said.

Vara did not let up in her withering assault, and it pained Cyrus’s arms to watch her attack him with seemingly limitless strength while Archenous was battered about like a leaf in a gale. He tried to mount an offense but was forced away from it at every turn, Vara never once letting up in her attacks long enough for him to do anything but block in an increasingly ineffectual manner. It was like watching her pour out years and years of rage through the strength of her arms, beating him down by inches at a time.

“You—you can’t win!” Archenous screamed. He sounded to Cyrus like the desperate voice of a man trying to convince himself and perhaps his foe in the bargain.

She struck a nasty blow overhead that he could not adequately defend against, and it once more forced his sword down from the sheer power. This time, though, the tip of her blade found his forehead and scored him from brow to cheek, a long jagged cut. Blood ran down his face and into his left eye. “I disagree,” she said. She struck again, this time sideways, and he blocked her barely in time.

“You were never good enough!” he shouted, backing up as quickly as he could, stumbling, trying to blot the blood from his eye. “That’s why I couldn’t—couldn’t stand to be with you—”

“You were never good enough, either,” she said, knocking aside his next clumsy parry. “And I was always loathe to tell you, but you were endowed like that old cat they kept at the Holy Brethren in Reikonos, the poor, smallish thing. I truly did love you, to put up with all else plus that. It’s a shame you weren’t man enough to—”

Archenous’s eyes flared, and he dodged to the side and saw his opening. “When I’m done with you, I’m going to find that damned cat and kill it, so just know—” He spun with a high slash, aiming for Vara’s neck—

But failed to see that she’d goaded him and was waiting for him to open himself up. She dodged his clumsy, too-forceful attack and he spun past her, his blade catching naught but air. She had hers at the ready, though, and struck forward with a solid stab—

And caught him right in the throat.

Her blade ripped through the front of his neck, leaving it half on, half off; she slid it out like she was carving meat from a succulent pig at dinnertime and was rewarded with a geyser of blood. His jaw worked up and down ineffectually, words trying to come out with no breath—

Fortin slammed a hand against the wall. “HA HA!” He looked down at Cyrus. “First she takes his pride, insults his manhood, and then she rips his throat out! This is why I like the ice princess the best of all of you.”

“You know we can hear you, yes?” J’anda called, looking somewhat nonplussed at the rock giant.

“Go destroy some terrible foe’s manhood, and then perhaps I will like you best,” Fortin replied.

“Give my regards to Trayance, won’t you?” Vara asked, staring coldly into Archenous’s eyes as he bled, falling to his knees, still gripping his sword weakly as his other hand fumbled for his gushing throat. “On second thought, you are unlikely to end up in the same place, so never mind that.” She stared at his hands. “You have had my sword for entirely too long. Allow me to return yours.”

With that, she spun and caught him in the back of the neck with a powerful slash that took his head from his shoulders, sending it into the air. Before it even came to rest, she twirled her sword around and drove it, tip first, into the gaping hole where his head had rested only a moment earlier, all the way up to the hilt. “Oh, and another thing—” she said, and Cyrus saw the glow run down her blade and through the crossguard—

Archenous Derregnault exploded, his armor blasting in six different directions. A boot hit the wall to Cyrus’s left as he turned his face away from the spectacle. His breastplate landed in the mud a few feet away and stuck there, like a tombstone planted in the ground. Other pieces clanged off the walls of the bailey, and when the air cleared—

Vara stood there, still drenched from top to bottom in gore and blood, but with the ghost of a smile on her lips.

“On second thought,” Fortin said into the still quiet of Isselhelm Keep, “
that
is why I like the ice princess best of all of you. That … was a perfect poem of vicious excellence.” He wandered forward into the middle of the mess, the bloody mud, and stooped to pick up Vara’s former sword from where it lay. “Are you done with this?” he asked her with greatest deference.

“I am,” she said and picked up Archenous Derregnault’s ornately carved sword, which appeared to be exactly the same size as the one she’d just returned to him, sliding it easily into her scabbard. “But what use will you have for it? It’s a bit small for you to wield, isn’t it?”

The blade was practically swallowed up in Fortin’s mighty hands. “It is,” he agreed, and raised it up to push the blade into his mouth. A scraping sound caused Cyrus to cringe, and he caught Terian and J’anda doing the same only a few feet away, the high pitched screech akin to running a grater over stone. Fortin pulled the sword out of his gaping mouth and examined it; there was a chunk of something at the tip. “But it will make an excellent toothpick.”

“Well … that was truly marvelous,” Cyrus grunted, the pain in his leg coming back to him now. He cast the healing spell under his breath as he felt the bones in his leg twist and knit back together. He groaned under his breath, and then stumbled to his feet, bracing against the weapons rack, which rattled as he slid up. “Now … we need to find Governor Frost and get out of here before anyone else shows up to fight us.”

“Do we?” Ryin Ayend croaked from against the keep’s wall, blood dried upon his skull, Larana kneeling next to him, her hands glowing still from spell-light. “And what interest do we have in saving the Governor of a Confederation allied against us, I ask?”

“Interesting timing,” Cyrus said, hobbling from the phantom pain in his leg, “I wonder why you didn’t ask before, when we were stampeding through the streets toward inevitable—”

“And glorious,” Fortin added.

“—battle,” Cyrus finished.

“Perhaps our own troll pitching me over the battlements jarred the question loose,” the druid croaked, mopping up the blood with his sleeve.

“Well, see if you can hold it in a little longer, and perhaps I’ll be able to answer your question more fully in Council later tonight,” Cyrus said, trying to communicate more with his look than he did with his words. Ryin peered at him suspiciously, but said nothing more. “Now we need to find Frost and—”

“I’m here,” came a voice as the gates to the keep cracked open. Guards pushed them ajar and Allyn Frost came marching out, flanked by the same toadies with whom he had surrounded Cyrus at their last meeting. They didn’t wear the same sneers this time, though; now they seemed appropriately cowed, clutching their spears very delicately, and pointing them behind them, slung on their shoulders, as if to avoid offending the army within their very gates.

“Good to see you didn’t meet your end at the tender mercies of Pretnam Urides’s mercenary army,” Cyrus said, nodding to the troll corpses and the chunks of Archenous Derregnault that littered the bailey.

“No,” Frost said, surveying the mess with a vaguely disgusted look. “We heard them coming through the streets and closed the gates. It would have been impossible to miss them, the savages—”

“Urides sent them,” Cyrus said, cutting him off with but a word, “and he’s bound to send more when he finds out he’s failed.” Cyrus took a deep breath. “You need to come with us. Right now.”

Frost looked at the assorted forces in his courtyard, frowning. “Well—but—I can take my guard, can’t I?”

“No,” Cyrus said, peering at him through nearly shut eyes. “I can’t take a chance that any of them is a traitor that will turn on my people while I’m off settling this. You’ll be under my protection, hidden behind the impregnable walls of Sanctuary if you come with us. You’re on your own if not. Make a decision quickly.”

Frost opened his mouth, but the indecision went from sputtering to rage to acceptance in a blink as the man calculated his odds and fiddled with the light furs on his back. “Yes, fine,” he spat, “I’m much better off with you than without, even that much is apparent to me. But how long will it be until—”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Cyrus said, crossing over to him and taking hold of the man. “Council—we have a meeting when we return. Mendicant—get our people out of here. We can’t stay, lest Urides send Goliath or his own people are drawn after us like lightning to a tall tree.” The goblin nodded, and began to cast a spell. He turned to Terian. “Might want to orchestrate your own retreat.”

“Way ahead of you there,” Terian said with a grin. “We’ll make sure the Luukessians get home as well.” He whipped a hand through the air at his troops that stood in the bailey behind him. “Come on, you lot, let’s clean up this mess.” With that, he walked back out through the shattered drawbridge, and Cyrus could see solid ice frozen over the filthy moat.

“Come along, Governor Frost,” Cyrus said with a smirk and cast the return spell.

“What?” Frost blinked as Cyrus grabbed him. “What are y—”

But the rest was lost to the energies of magic, as they were swept back to the Tower of the Guildmaster in the crackling frenzy of the spell.

Cyrus and Allyn Frost reappeared in the Tower of the Guildmaster, followed a moment later by Vara, still coated from boot to helm in vile liquids that Cyrus could no longer differentiate. There was crimson, yellow, dark blue, and many others, smearing her all the way to the exposed hanks of her hair that stuck out the sides of her helm.

“You look like you jumped in the trash dump outside Reikonos,” Cyrus mumbled after looking her over.

“I don’t bloody well care,” she said, smiling as she pushed her hand down on the hilt of her sword, touching it in the way he remembered grasping Praelior when he’d first gotten it. “That … was worth every bit of it.”

“Indeed?” Allyn Frost asked her with arched eyebrows. “I am glad we could oblige you with your vengeance, whatever your disagreement with that fellow in my bailey, but I find myself somewhat worried about—”

“Stow your worries under your hat,” Cyrus said a little nastily, causing Frost to flush and grab for the fur-covered monstrosity that hid his baldness. He clutched at it then yanked his hands away the moment he realized what he was doing, and Cyrus grinned at him. “Come along; we need to talk with our Council.”

Cyrus led the way, down the stairs and out of the door. Just as Vara had started to shut it behind her, with Frost between the two of them, the sound of a spell just inside the door gave them pause.

“Is that …?” Cyrus asked, frowning past Frost to look at Vara.

“Just us,” Terian said, grabbing the door and pulling it open to reveal Kahlee standing there next to him. “I heard you say ‘council meeting,’ so of course I came running …”

“I meant the other council,” Cyrus said, frowning, “but I suppose this involves you, too, so you might as well come.” He looked straight at the Sovereign of Saekaj. “I think the moment has come to combine our efforts.”

“Tired of secrecy, eh?” Terian asked with a smirk as they all headed down the stairs. The sound of movement below, in the officer quarters, preceded them, and when they reached that floor Cyrus saw Menlos and Calene threading their way down the steps to the Council Chamber and followed them, reaching it a few seconds after they did.

When he came through the doors, the hearths were lit and the room was near-full, with all but Mendicant and Scuddar in their normal places or about to take them.

“Calene,” Cyrus said just as the ranger was about to pull out her seat, “I have need of both Reynard Coulton and Karrin Waterman, both of whom should be here in Sanctuary somewhere.”

Calene froze, half bent to sit. “Uhrm … are they anywhere in particular, or do you need me to search the entire place, from tower to foyer?”