Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (20 page)

“She’s lost her mind,” Isabelle murmured, pressing her back against Cyrus’s as warriors of Amarath’s Raiders began to press toward them. Cyrus could see the wicked grins of humans, dark elves, trolls—massive, hulking creatures, even the humans and dark elves—advancing with malice in their eyes, clearly keen on the opportunity to take down both a heretic and a warrior of Cyrus’s reputation.

Every one of them was equipped with a mystical steel weapon, though perhaps not with the boosting power of speed and strength that even the modest chain and morningstar gave him. He considered that fortunate as he parried the first strike and jabbed his blade into the very slight gap above a gorget. A dark elven warrior made a
gurking
noise as nearly black blood squirted down his horsehead surcoat and darkened his livery beyond recognition. He pitched forward and Cyrus moved to the side to let him, knocking away two other attacks, including one pointed past him at Isabelle.

“Here!” Cyrus said and kicked the fallen warrior’s blade back to Isabelle. He counted himself fortunate that they were not surrounded yet, and that he could keep himself between his sister-in-law and the horde of mercenary adventurers who were coming at them with murder in their eyes.

“Thank you,” Isabelle said, scooping up the blade and holding it expertly before her. A warrior came charging at her from Cyrus’s side and she met him with a perfectly timed counter blow that opened his neck as she sidestepped the foolishly aggressive attack. Cyrus gave her a curious look and she shrugged as her foe sank to death, doomed by the very cessation spell that was pinning them in place. “You don’t live as long as I do nor climb as high as I have without taking some secret swordsmanship lessons at some point.”

The rest of the masses were taking their time now, trying to close in around Cyrus and Isabelle. From his height, he could see Vara pummeling Archenous Derregnault with unceasing fury, driving him away from his forces faster than his own warriors could catch up to stab Vara in the back. Derregnault looked rattled, even from this distance, but he continued to fall back from Vara’s furious assault.

“Do you think she’ll be back any time today?” Isabelle asked. A wizard and a dozen warriors were trotting off behind Vara, scrambling to keep after her as she drove Derregnault farther and farther away from them. “Scratch that. She’ll run him right into the Sea of Carmas before she lets up.”

“Yep,” Cyrus agreed as two spears came at him simultaneously. It was almost clever, what these two warriors had done, but it wasn’t quite sufficient to the task. They both thrust at exactly where he was standing, and so he moved, pushing Isabelle back easily. Their blades clashed in the space that Cyrus had occupied only a moment earlier, and he smacked the hafts of both spears, letting momentum drive them down into the dirt. It had little effect other than to halt the warriors while they paused to pull their spears out of the black ground, but it gave Cyrus another moment to step back as a few arrows began to rain toward him. “This has not been the best year of my life.”

“Don’t let your new bride hear you say that,” Isabelle fired back, hiding easily in his shadow as arrows spanged off his armor. He lowered his head and let his helm protect his face. There were only five rangers, and fortunately none of them were as good a shot as Martaina.
They won’t miss forever, though
, Cyrus thought, as an arrow snapped against his shoulder and a splinter stung him in the cheek. “Even after all this, the year of your marriage should indeed be the happiest ever.”

“It will be if she kills Derregnault,” Cyrus said, driving his new blade against a mystical steel weapon thrust at him by a leering troll. He knocked the troll’s enormous blade aside and jabbed his own up under the troll’s breastplate as steaming, stinking breath wafted on him from above. The troll moaned in pain as Cyrus gutted the bastard and took his revenge by slamming a fist upon Cyrus’s helm.

Cyrus felt as though someone had tried to hammer him into the ground as a farmer might drive a post to fence a field. The blow dulled his senses and slowed his reaction. He ripped his blade free of rancid troll guts, the smell of feces from shredded bowels overwhelming him, and he staggered back. Isabelle caught him, only barely, giving him a moment to recover before she started to collapse under his immense weight.

Cyrus blinked. The world had grown rather fuzzy around him, and eight swords were driving toward him now. He threw his own blade up and swept across, hard, knocking every one of them off course. His vision cleared, and suddenly he realized that he’d only hit four swords, that he’d been seeing double, and that he’d thrown his defense in a very awkward way that had tipped his numerous foes to his temporary weakness.

They were all charging at him now, or at least it seemed that way. There were grins of triumph, hot breath that stunk of old meat, and they were all piling in on him on both sides and in front. Cyrus staggered back under the assault, trying to swing his sword to block them, but knowing there was no chance that he would manage to fend off all of them before one managed to strike the lucky blow that would kill him.

A half dozen blades clanged against Cyrus’s armor as he blocked at least four others, finding himself at the center of a vigorous pincushioning attempt to impale him. Isabelle grunted behind him, trying to block her own particularly vicious attacker, a human in full armor with a faceplate down to hide his features.

The smell of battle was thick now with the scent of death and rot, and Cyrus was hard-pressed to tell which kill had tainted the mountain air the most. The sky was barely lit around them, red highlights over the mountains to the west shedding their last light on the scene of the fight. Cyrus was a good hundred feet from the portal now, driven back by the unceasing efforts of some twenty warriors and five or so rangers that were dedicating their lives to ending his. Thus far they were at least doing a fair job of it, though he knew they were closer to killing him than they probably realized.

All they need to do is score one good attack on my face, slip one arrow in an eye, one sword into the cheek, and I’ll stop for a second, stunned, and they’ll plunge five more in, and that will be the end of it.
He’d lost track of Vara by now, his attention focused on the fight before him. Isabelle’s sword was clanging as she labored against her lone attacker, one man who’d swept past Cyrus on the side to try and flank them both.
She’s good
, he conceded.
Better than any healer, forbidden by the Leagues to even use weapons, has any right to be …

But how long can she hold out against a professional warrior, whose job is the wielding of sword and steel against his foes?

The answer seemed evident, but the sound of the pitched battle between the two of them behind him gave no sign of flagging, even as he struck hard at the shoulder joint of an attacking elf in grey armor. He pushed his blade through the chainmail below and a scream pierced the night, the elf hurling himself backward, off the tip of the sword, to avoid any follow-up by Cyrus.

That suited Cyrus just fine; had he committed his sword to finishing the elf, it wouldn’t have been available to block the next three attacks, which came immediately after his blade cleared the elf’s wounded shoulder. Thick, black liquid ran down the silvery sword like oil and spattered off as he clashed his weapon against the next weapons.

“Cyrus!” Isabelle called, and he spared a glance to see her continuing to fall back, driven farther from him by the need to avoid the armored warrior’s unceasing offensive. She looked strained, beads of sweat running down her face, her cheeks red with exertion.

Shit
, Cyrus thought.
If I turn my back on these to save her, they’ll pounce and I won’t achieve much of anything.
Turn my back on her to save my own arse, and that bastard will finish her off and then come at my back with impunity.

Damned if I do.

Damned if I don’t.

Cyrus drew a long breath, prepared to turn and sprint, hoping to catch the warrior on Isabelle with his back turned, when he heard a hard rumble tear through the air behind him. Metal rattled, armor clanked, men screamed, and the earth itself shook.

Cyrus, for his part, did not dare turn around and look, in spite of greatest temptation. He suspected he knew what had happened, but he had one singular task at hand, and he threw himself into it with reckless abandon.

He caught the warrior attacking Isabelle as the man’s head was turning to see what had caused the rumbling. Cyrus drove the point of his blade under the massive helm, up under the point where the man’s jawbone rose to meet his ear. One the blade was driven in, Cyrus yanked hard upon the hilt, pushing it forward while leaving the blade anchored.

Blood rushed down from beneath the helm and a choking noise spurted from behind the mask. Cyrus kicked the man in the chest and ripped his sword free, reaching under Isabelle’s defenses and pulling her close to him in very much the same manner he regularly did to her sister.

Isabelle’s eyes went wide with surprise as she landed against his side, but Cyrus was already turning. Vara was charging up the field toward them, her force blast spell having cut a wide canyon through the group of Amarath’s Raiders who had been attacking him. His eyes flicked into the distance and he saw Archenous Derregnault stumbling after her, blood running down his breastplate and a retinue of warriors in his wake. The wizard who had been following along with him, however, was not anywhere in the group, and Cyrus knew instantly what his wife had done. She’d drawn them away from the wizards maintaining the cessation spell around him and Isabelle, somehow killed the one tasked to keeping her from using magic, and then hammered the bulk of the Amarath’s Raiders party from outside the range of the remaining wizards’ cessation fields.

She scrambled toward them now, eyes wide, her gambit clearly having paid off. “Go! Go!” she called and a twinkle of light appeared at her fingers.

Cyrus did not hesitate. The damage done by her blast was already dissipating, ashen soil drifting down upon them where it was stirred by her attack. The warriors who had been so keen to attack Cyrus were picking themselves up, and somewhere, presumably, so were the wizards who had trapped them here. Cyrus thrust his hand up, Isabelle tight to his side, and mirrored his wife’s spell, casting a return spell and letting it carry the two of them away from the site of the ambush.

Cyrus shoved his sword roughly back into the scabbard. A thousand little aches settled over him as the thrill of combat faded. He took a breath of the familiar air in the Tower of the Guildmaster and sighed as Isabelle pulled herself from him and Vara sparkled into view as the magic faded.

“That was a very near thing,” Isabelle said, beads of sweat dripping from her chin. She wiped her face with a heavy sleeve, and Cyrus noted that the white fabric was stained with wetness where it had caught some blood from her first attacker. “I didn’t realize quite the peril you were in.”

“What did you think happened to heretics?” Vara said with a familiar dash of contempt as she slung her own blade back into its scabbard with excessive violence, the sword rattling within the confines. “Did you expect them to receive perhaps a good wining and a four-course repast in the presence of the kings and ministers throughout the land? We’re
heretics
. They hate us and want us dead.”

“Well, I hadn’t heard anything about
you
being a heretic,” Isabelle said, taking her sister’s insults as though she were well used to them by now. She nodded at Cyrus. “Only him.”

Cyrus glanced at Vara. “Maybe they’re holding off on declaring you because you’re the shelas’akur.”

“That doesn’t explain why they wouldn’t have declared the rest of the Council,” Vara huffed, her arms crossed before her and her face sullen.

“Still, we made it out of the jaws of that particular death,” Isabelle said.

“Barely,” Vara said.

“But we did make it out,” Cyrus said and caught a withering glare from her that prompted him to look at Isabelle.

Isabelle’s full lips quivered, trying to hold back a smile. “My dear sister, are you perhaps reacting to what just happened?” Vara narrowed her eyes at Isabelle, but the healer went on. “Something akin to … a memory, perhaps? Like a not-so-gentle reminder of your retreat from Termina?”

Vara stiffened, her eyes blazing as her sister drove the blade to the heart of the matter. “I nearly watched my sister, my last surviving blood, and my new husband murdered in front of me. Indeed, you both would have died had I not had the presence of mind to divide the fools so I could break them.”

“I think you mean ‘so that you could give in to endless rage and remember yourself just in time to save us,’” Isabelle said. Cyrus, for his part, cringed, anticipating a response worthy of Vara’s attack on Archenous.

“But I did come,” Vara said, and her reply was tempered like steel, cooled and stripped of some of the anger, and Cyrus knew that Isabelle had spoken true. “And in time to save you.”

“You did well,” Cyrus said softly. “I just thought perhaps in addition to losing your head at the sight of Archenous, you were of a mind to settle our question for Isabelle without having to ask it.”

Isabelle frowned. “What was this question?”

“How would Amarath’s Raiders fare if we were to kill Archenous Derregnault?” Vara let the question out almost loathingly, as though reliving the events at the portal as a personal failure.

“Not well,” Isabelle said after giving it a moment’s thought, “but not as poorly as they would before they scooped several of our officers. Not dunces, any of them, and perfectly capable of stepping in should Archenous fall.” She frowned. “If they’ve cast their lot in on hunting you, they must be getting something for it …” Understanding dawned. “Of course. That’s why they’ve been allowed to return to their old guildhall in Reikonos.”

“Same with Goliath?” Cyrus asked, drawing a furrowed brow from Isabelle. “Because they seemed to be somewhat paired up, at least when they came at me the first time.”