Warlord (4 page)

“You bastards,” Cyrus whispered but allowed himself only a moment before his mind moved on, seeking his next target. He found it shortly but hesitated as he stared at the towering creature that stood only a hundred feet down the street.

It was a titan, obviously, clad in the same steel armored breastplate that the rest of them wore. They had helms, they had breast and backplates, but little else, as though they simply ran out of metal before being able to cover themselves in any further protection. This one wore the same dome-like helm as the one he’d just killed, but instead of bearing a weapon in its hands, it seemed to be …

It seemed to be playing with fire.

Flames sprouted from its very skin and shot out to the thatched roof of a building on the south side of the road. A crackling sound of glee came out of the beast as its small effort was rewarded with a burgeoning flame that lit the house ablaze. It moved to the next uninhibited, and Cyrus watched for a sign of a torch, a hint of something other than—

“It’s casting a bloody fire spell,” Vara breathed as the titan’s hands sprung aflame again. “It’s—”

“Yes, I saw,” Cyrus cut her off, a flame of his own growing within, rage mingling with stunned disbelief.

“Titans cannot use magic,” J’anda breathed from next to them. “They cannot—”

“And yet they are,” came Curatio’s quiet voice from out of the night. “Plainly.”

That was the great equalizer
, Cyrus realized as the titan squealed in perverse joy as it lit another home aflame. They may have been the largest creatures in Arkaria other than the dragons, the fiercest warriors, the most frightening—

But they couldn’t use magic
.
That was the only thing holding them back from coming north, from crushing their way through the pass at will, from stomping through the northern lands and
—he looked around at the carnage, the fire streaking its way into the darkened sky. Hints of despair came through, settling on him like they were finding the cracks in his armor and piercing him with a truth that was as thick as the smoke in the air.

Now they know magic.

Now there’s nothing holding them back.

“Strike him down!” Cyrus shouted as the horror passed back to rage, the implications of what they’d seen falling by the wayside as muffled shouts came from out of the house that the titan was lighting ablaze. “Spell casters! Bombard!”

Cyrus charged forward as bursts of ice, fire and lightning heralded his arrival. They struck the titan spell caster, drawing his ire and surprise. The titan whipped his massive frame around as Cyrus charged at the creature’s knees, right at head level for him. The titan’s right sleeve was on fire, and another bolt of lightning drew a scream as it crackled across the metal helm. Cyrus ran past the creature’s leg and buried Praelior into the tendon at the back of the foot as a howl of agony split the night above him.

Vara slid into place behind the other foot only moments after him and struck a mirrored blow. The titan stumbled and fell, and Cyrus blanched as he saw a ranger and a warrior crushed beneath the falling body. Others of Sanctuary’s army swept in upon the head as the creature landed, and Cyrus found himself moving on to the next target, the next battle.

“This is not a fight we have fought before,” Vara cautioned him as they swept down the street at the head of a shouting, clamoring army. Cyrus saw rage on the faces that followed him, and not just from the ones wearing the livery of Luukessia’s three kingdoms. “This is different. These things can harm us more certainly than—”

“I know,” Cyrus said, softening his voice more than he would have for anyone else. “I just watched our own people killed by the fall of that thing.”
In a way, my nightmare was less frightening than this battle that I’ve awoken to …

He was back under control, pacing himself to keep his army with him. The next titan was already waiting for them, having heard the fall of its comrade. It bore an evil smirk beneath hair that hung down under its helm’s steel lip, and a short beard grew out of its potato-skin-like jawline. It swept at them, trying to stomp on Cyrus at the lead. He dodged the massive foot and buried his blade in the calf, drawing a sharp gasp of pain from his foe as he jumped on the leather shoe and struck swiftly again, this time into the gaps in the bones of the ankle.

The titan staggered at the attack, and Cyrus leapt for the knee, driving Praelior into its underside and prompting the titan to howl as it came down, the joint twisting and buckling under the pressure. Cyrus moved well clear, shoving two rangers out of the way, their green cloaks billowing as he elbowed them back to give the titan room to fall.

The beast landed on its haunches, its arse ending up in one of the flaming buildings. It moaned almost pitifully then tried to stand in panic as the fire rose around it. Cyrus drove his blade through its heavy trousers, a coarse cotton that his weapon ripped with ease. He cut a hard X into the gnarled flesh then parted it with a gauntlet as he tore at the edges. It peeled back enough for him to see a red tube running through, and he thrust Praelior home and opened the artery, stepping clear as the titan screamed out in the night.

The titan struck blindly at where Cyrus had been, but Cyrus was already gone, backing away from the doomed creature. He pushed his army back, hectoring them away from the battle that he’d already finished. “Leave it be,” he said, striding around the leg and back to his course down the street. The titan struggled to remove itself from the burning building, but failed, and the smell of burning flesh combined with its shrieks to pierce the night and add to Cyrus’s sickened stomach.

“We need to find the leader of this war party,” Cyrus mumbled, knowing she’d hear him.

“Toward the square!” Vara called from behind him.

He did not ask her if she were sure; he knew that she was. He merely made for the next titan down the street, but before he could reach it, it jerked as though an unseen something had climbed onto its back. Its eyes alighted on Cyrus for only a moment before they went blank, and the creature stood at its full height, almost at attention.

“Hold,” J’anda said, coming alongside Cyrus brandishing that marvelous staff of his. “This one is mine.”

Cyrus stared up into the vacant eyes of the beast. “You sure you can hold it?”

“What an insulting question,” J’anda said. “I’m going to ignore that and pretend you asked something else instead, such as how I am faring in this warm and sweaty night.”

Cyrus dipped his head in acknowledgment as a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. He started down the street but J’anda’s titan broke into a run ahead of him. J’anda’s pet made a break for the next foe, a titan who was leaning over a wagon to pick it up, and slammed a fist into that gawking titan’s jaw upon approach. The sound of large bones breaking echoed in the fire-lit night as Cyrus did his best to keep up with the new warrior in his army.

“Give me a moment,” J’anda said from beside him, almost maintaining Cyrus’s pace. He paused and his arms went akimbo, purple light dancing from the spell spitting forth out of his hands. The spell light flickered and shot into the night, disappearing as a new titan, sprinting toward J’anda’s pet with fearsome rage in his eyes, halted mid-stride and stood, back stiff, eyes dull.

“Now you’ve got two,” Cyrus said, and he started to huff as he tried to navigate around J’anda’s first enchanted titan before it broke into a run again down the street. “Save some for the rest of us, will you?”

“Perhaps,” the enchanter said quietly, breaking into a jog again as Cyrus paused to wait for the rest of his leading element to catch up.
This is new; J’anda is usually at the back of the fight, and now he’s at the fore with me.
I would say nothing good can come of this change, especially given his frailty, but damned if he isn’t holding more than his own.
The two pet titans sprang upon one of their own down the street, catching him by surprise and killing him with a flurry of well-placed blows that culminated in a punch to the temple that sprayed a fountain of dark liquid into the night.

The square was ahead, and the sounds of battle rang out in the night. It was only a few hundred feet in front of Cyrus, but the street between him and the open area was utter chaos. The survivors he’d seen from the hill had thinned, and corpses lay dead in the dust. Cyrus tried not to look down as he nearly tripped over a small body and felt his heart sink when he realized it was a child. “Curatio!” Cyrus called, looking back at the fire-lit faces behind him. “Can we revive these people?”

“I am working on it,” Curatio said, hands glowing red as his spell drained his infinite life. “As best I can, in any case, as we go.” The red persisted, reflected in his eyes. Lines and wrinkles on the healer’s face caught shadows from the dancing fires around them. If he had looked worn before, now he had pallor about him that even the fiery night’s glow could not make warm. The town of Emerald Fields was burning on either side of them. “We need more healers.”

“Like I’ve never heard that one before,” Cyrus muttered, stalking back toward the square. He listened carefully, catching sight of Vara picking her way around bodies as J’anda’s titans brawled with two others just ahead, blocking their view. “It sounds like fighting up there. Actual fighting, not slaughter.” He cast a tense look back at his army, still hurrying to keep up with him, ranks filling in, people breaking off to enter buildings on either side, dashing back out with ash-blackened faces.
Trying to save whoever they can
, Cyrus thought.
Admirable. I didn’t have to order it
.

He caught a glimpse of Andren a row behind him and Vaste off to the side a little, the troll’s usual smirk replaced by an expression of drawn horror. His lower teeth bulged out as always, but his mouth lay slightly open, the shock of what he was seeing uncontrolled in his expression. His white-crystal-tipped staff rested lightly in his hands, and it was at that moment that Cyrus realized the true graveness of the spectacle about them.
If Vaste is stunned into horrified silence …

… then this is an atrocity like nothing we’ve seen before.

This place … it’s home to so many of our number.
His jaw tightened as the rage ran through him again.
Someone will pay for this transgression.

“Sanctuary Army!” Cyrus called, pooling his rage and letting it spill from his lips. “On me! Let us strike down these enormous bastards and make them pray for swift death and mercy they will not find from us!”

A hoarse cry broke through the ashy, smoke-filled air, and Cyrus turned to charge. One of J’anda’s pets was dead in the street, the broken body of its foe atop it. They blocked Cyrus’s view of anything but the tops of titan heads beyond; of J’anda’s surviving pet throttling the life out of another titan, thick fingers wrapped around a neck and squeezing as it bowed the back of its adversary in fury, pressing forward to the death. The dying titan’s mouth was open, and a gagging noise was all that came out, loud as a horse’s whinny. A snapping filled the night as bones broke and sinews ripped, and the hard slaps of the titan’s hands against the bare forearms of its assailant ceased as the corpse fell to the ground with a thud that caused Vara to lose her footing for a moment.

Cyrus, however, followed the surviving titan through the smoke, toward the square … and stopped at the edge, stunned at the sight his eyes beheld there.

It was clear to Cyrus that the titans counted on hardened hands to beat their foes to death with slaps and strikes that could shatter bone and rend asunder the flesh of their smaller prey. Here, in the square, however, they had finally met a foe their equal, and four of the massive creatures were having at it, matched against their lone opponent whose gravelly voice did not hold back any of his obvious fury.

“GRAAAAAAAAAAGH!” The bellow of the rock giant was sharp in Cyrus’s ears. Stony hands struck at the groin of a titan and brought him to his knees, retching, as the rock giant grabbed at an ear and ripped it off. It was hardly an equal battle by size; the rock giant was roughly half the height of the titans, but he seemed to have more than enough fire to take the creatures on. He threw the ear into the face of a titan coming at him from the side as a third grasped hold of his smaller arm in the way an adult might manhandle a misbehaving child in the Reikonos markets. The titan dragged the rock giant for three paces before the rocky creature dug in, dropping low and ripping his arm free, leaving bloody wounds on the titan’s hand where the jutted, stony skin tore great rents in its palm. The titan who had lost his ear came back to his stumbling feet, one hand clutching his grievous wound, and the rock giant found himself encircled once more. Any other, less courageous creature might have fled under the assault of so many obviously superior enemies.

But Fortin the Rapacious is no coward
, Cyrus thought.

Before the titans could spring against him, Fortin bellowed again, giving his opponents pause, and leapt high to land an enraged punch upon the jaw of the titan who had just laid hands upon him. The sound of bone breaking was as loud as the crunch he’d heard earlier when J’anda’s pets had struck down their own with furious punches. The titan’s eyes fluttered and he went limp, toppling over backward into a general store that collapsed under the fall of the beast. Makeshift carpentry went asunder in an instant and the rest of the structure fell in on top of the downed enemy.

“AHHHHH!” Fortin’s yell crackled in the night once again, and he came at the next of his enemies as J’anda’s pet charged forth in front of Cyrus, intercepting one that went to attack the rock giant while his back was turned. J’anda’s titan grabbed his opposite number by the wrist at the apogee of his attack on Fortin; pulling him off balance, J’anda’s pet dragged him to the ground and stomped his throat without mercy as Fortin tackled the knees of his own opponent, breaking bones and pulling his foe to the ground in a screaming, pummeling brawl that saw a rocky hand raised and lowered in fury again and again until it came up glinting with dark blood in the square’s light, the shouts of the titan silenced.