Warlord (32 page)

“I mean, you got hit by Mortus and Yartraak,” Thad went on, “and it doesn’t even have a ding to show for it.” There was a lively quality to the warrior’s voice, like a child in excitement. “So here’s what I was thinking—”

“That wasn’t it?”

“—is…what happened to your father’s sword?” Thad finished, with a smile on his face. “Hmm?”

The frown deepened on Cyrus’s face. “I don’t …” He tried to reach back in his memory, trying to picture a house. He could see the fire in the hearth, could recall a rug of some animal skin that lay before it. He remembered his father’s rough hands, pushing upon his head, and arms like steel when they wrestled, his father laughing heartily as Cyrus had done everything he could to break the grip. He remembered a man in black armor, clad in it up to the helm—

“Do you remember it?” Thad asked, as though he could read Cyrus’s very thoughts.

“I don’t,” Cyrus said, puckering his lips, twisting them as he tried to think. “I remember—there was a black scabbard?” He tried to picture it, but it was as fleeting as smoke on a strong wind, he could imagine his father in the armor, standing by a wooden door. When he tried to focus harder, his father’s image turned to his own, looking into one of Sanctuary’s mirrors. “I barely remember him in his own armor anymore. My mind keeps replacing him with me. The sword itself…” He tried to picture it, but it was like trying to grasp water with his fingertips.

“Was he tall like you?” Thad asked, sounding a little hopeful.

“I think so, but you’d have to ask Belkan,” Cyrus said, resolving to do much the same the next time he saw the armorer. “On both counts. He was the one who made sure my father’s armor got to me at the Society.”

“When did they give it to you?” Thad asked.

“Not until I was big enough for it,” Cyrus said. “Sixteen? Maybe seventeen? It wasn’t as though I had a place to store it until I left, anyway, so I slept in it.”

“Aye,” Thad said, and now he seemed strangely aloof. “That I recall. I suppose you would have had to.”

“Yeah, I—” Cyrus stopped as a strange, ululating yell came howling down from somewhere above. It was taken up by the watch on the hilltop, and he froze, staring out at the savanna, trying to see the top of the tents. They had been mere shadows against a darker sky before, but now his eyes failed him, and he saw nothing but the orange horizon where the fires still burned. “They must be moving.”

The shouts confirmed it a moment later. “Titans on the march! Titans on the march to the pass!” The call was taken up and carried into the night, and all through the camp, a sleeping army began to awaken.

“I guess this is it,” Thad said sadly.

“This is it,” Cyrus agreed, and instead of the thrill of battle he’d felt in the arena of the titans, he felt a clawing dread. Not fear, and certainly not fear for himself, but rather a tired acknowledgment that battle was coming, and that it would be long and hard. Cyrus drew himself up to his full height and adjusted his armor. “Thad, get the army ready.” And as the red-armored warrior ran off to do as ordered, Cyrus began to marshal himself to do much the same, to prepare for another fight that he was unsure his army would be able to win.

The titans began their assault with a roaring charge toward the gap of the pass in the canyon south of the camp. It was the kind of formation Cyrus relied on, a tight spot in which to fight, barely big enough to bring their armies in walking a few side-by-side.
Like a bridge, it’s a narrowing of the way, and until these idiots figure out how to use Falcon’s Essence to change their whole world, I’ll take their ignorance and use it to my advantage
, Cyrus thought.

The night was lit with thousands of torches. The smoke was not the sweet scent found in the Sanctuary fires, but an oily one. Above, on the cliff faces some three hundred feet up, Cyrus could see the archers in position, Martaina leading them on either side. Cyrus doubted their efficacy in this particular battle, but he could hardly see another use for them, and they were out of danger unless the titans began throwing spells or rocks up at the cliff edges.
Perhaps they’ll distract, perhaps Martaina herself will get a couple kills, but for the most part, archery is flinging toothpicks at these creatures.

The sky had begun to weep in a light trickle, no sounds of thunder. It spattered on Cyrus’s pauldrons and onto his cheeks, where the rough beard growth had taken root over the last few days without a razor or washing water at hand.
Could have had Vara do it with her sword, I suppose.
He looked at her and found himself smiling at the notion. She stood in a line a few down from him, and, sensing his amusement, turned her head to catch him. She cocked her own, giving him a quizzical look. “What?” she asked mildly.

“I’ll tell you later,” he promised.

“Yes, and I’m sure that’ll be so very amusing, should we survive this momentous occasion,” Vaste said, very loudly.

“Oh, Vaste,” Cyrus said, “when will you stop doubting my brilliant leadership and just—”

“Leap foolishly into everything you suggest?” Vaste asked. “Listen. I’m always with you, even in the stupid moments. Like this one. But to think we’ll just drive the titans back without consequence is shockingly naïve, I would say.”

“A rather mild retort for you,” Vara said, staring into the distance. “Usually your insults are … well, insulting.”

“I usually have more to work with,” Vaste said. “Here, I’m fighting against the blinding terror of facing creatures over twice my size at every moment.”

“Stand back,” Cyrus said. “Let me take the punishment for you.”

“That hasn’t worked with Vara,” Vaste said, drawing an irritable look from the paladin, “and I doubt it will work with beings that can step over you and come smash me.”

“One can hope, though,” Cyrus said. “That it would work, I mean. I don’t hope you’ll get smashed.”

“I feel much better now that you cleared that up.”

“Perhaps now would be a moment for one of your inspirational speeches,” Vara said, whispering down the line to him.

“I think not,” Cyrus said. “Vaste always interrupts those until they lose all meaning.” He eyed the troll.

“What, are you not so subtly asking me to shut up?” Vaste asked. “Because I’m not sure that’s physically possible—”

“Vaste,” Vara said sweetly, “dear troll. If you interrupt my beloved’s speech this time, I will regale you with tales of Cyrus’s sexual prowess in exquisite detail from now until the end of my days. If you are fortunate, that will be a short time. I am, however, capable of outliving you, and thus you may have your twilight years to look forward to, interspersed with phrases such as, ‘firm buttocks,’ ‘enormous, python-like—’”

“I will shut up now,” Vaste said. “And possibly forevermore.”

“That was easy,” Cyrus said with a frown. Vara nodded her head at him, and he took a few steps forward before raising his voice. The bulk of the officers stood before him—Curatio, J’anda, Thad, Erith, Andren, Nyad, Vaste and Vara. Longwell remained at the Emerald Fields with a small army of a thousand, while Mendicant and Odellan were maintaining the defense of Sanctuary in addition to running the scouting parties posted at half the portals in southern Arkaria.

“Friends,” Cyrus said, calling out into the night, the rain still spattering his shoulders lightly, “I stand with you now at the southern edge of the wild. Beyond us sits the grimmest threat that Arkaria has known these many years—titans with magic. A warlike people with a fury and now the force of spellcraft to back it. Well, they may be capable, but they are not terribly bright, much like the trolls.” He watched Vaste’s yellow eyes pop open a little wider, and a scowl settled on his face, but he did not speak. “And much like those terrible, dull creatures, we will take the dignity from these beasts as well.

“For they are not a threat to be taken lightly,” Cyrus went on, noting a small vein popping out in Vaste’s forehead.
Probably thinking how wonderful a pun ‘lightly’ would make.
“And we do not take them as such; they are the gravest threat we have seen, and we will hold this pass against their predations, making it understood that they are not welcome here in the north. This is our land, and we, the creatures they would subjugate like rabbits, will not take another helping of their fury. We will return it with more of our own. Their height will not avail them any more than it did the troll menace, and soon enough, we will all be sitting around a fire, talking of the days when we drove these wretches before us.” Cyrus paused and heard a small roar of approbation, before stepping back to the line.

“I don’t feel that was one of your best,” Curatio said, frowning.

“See, I think my added commentary keeps him sharp,” Vaste said. “This was all just one big attempt to link the titans to my people, which is truly stupid, because we all know the titans are dumber than the trolls.”

“Who said you could speak?” Vara asked. “Have I told you about the time that Cyrus—”

“Aghhhhhh!” Vaste shouted, covering his ears.

“—with my lady flower—”

“AIIIIEEEEEEEE!”

The first spell hit a moment later, a blast of ice so poorly aimed it struck the side of the cliff far to Cyrus’s left. It did, however, have the fortunate effect of stopping the back and forth between Vara and Vaste, and for that, Cyrus found himself supremely grateful. Shards of ice sprayed down upon them before cracking and bringing down chunks of the canyon wall only a few moments later. That side of their line moved quickly, pushing forward as the glacier-sized block crashed to the ground.

Cyrus spun about after the ice fall, catching a glimpse of the first ranks through the rain. The initial titan line of attack was only a hundred meters ahead, marching through the rain in a disciplined formation. The next spells came harder, and Nyad threw up a cessation spell around them that dissipated their fury against it like water sloshing off a rock barrier.

“That’s a lovely plan,” Vaste said dryly, “but when they get over here in the next ten seconds or so, I suspect our people will need healing spells.”

“If I didn’t do this now,” the princess of Pharesia said with an aura of annoyance, “our people would be dying under the impact of fire and ice right this minute, no wait required.” She gave him a haughty look. “And if you don’t like it, perhaps I can share some of my sexual exploits with you.”

“Please do,” Vaste said, causing Nyad’s cheeks to flush red and a slight smile to appear on her lips. “We can make an evening of it.”

The first titans came crashing along just then, and Cyrus strained against the ground before remembering that with the cessation spell, there was no Falcon’s Essence to be had. “Nyad!” Cyrus called, and made a slashing motion across his throat.

“Yes, I’m sure you’ll die in no time against these things,” Vaste said.

Nyad, for her part, dropped her hands, the spell light disappearing as she did so. Cyrus looked around for a druid but failed to find one, and his time ran out with the arrival of the first titan boots to come stomping out a few feet ahead of him.

Grimacing in pure irritation, Cyrus moved out to meet them, unwilling to merely stand there and provide a convenient target for the smashing. Now the titans wore plate metal boots, all of them, another development he found annoying.
And likely fatal one to many of our number
.

Cyrus dodged a titan kick and slid past one of them to plant his blade under a kneecap. A howl cut through the rainy atmosphere, and he dragged the sword through the middle of the joint with immense effort. The titan swayed, screaming into the night, and then fell over, his leg nearly cut from his body.

“Plenty more where that came from!” Vaste called. Cyrus spared only a glance back to see Vara performing one of her mighty leaps through the air. She landed on a titan’s chestplate but for a second, plunged her blade into the small indentation where his collarbones met. As he gasped, she thrust a hand right up to his eyeballs and unleashed a force blast spell. He hit the ground back-of-the-head first, his lower body strangely unmoved by the spell magic. He trailed blood as he went, Vara’s sword remaining firmly in her hand as she came in for a landing on his carcass, driving the point into his neck.

Two titans came at Cyrus and he fought back against both of them in a rolling dodge and stick attack. He avoided one’s strike, stabbing into the thigh of the other as he came up. As that one reacted in pain, Cyrus used his Praelior-charged reflexes to come at the other, driving his blade into its hip with a leap. The titan froze in place with the pain of his thrust, the sword wedged between bones and its muscles all contracted. Cyrus dragged the blade ninety degrees along the same axis, chopping into the joint as much as possible before he got out of the titan’s way and let it fall. Then he returned to his original foe and brought it the rest of the way down from its knees with a leaping attack against the side of its neck.

“Cyrus!” Curatio’s voice was a magic-aided bellow in the night. Cyrus turned to see that the Sanctuary line was well and truly infiltrated, the titans stepping over the front rank and into the thick of the army. Screams were coming loudly now, all running into one another, the cry of the titans in furious battle rage, and the screams of the wounded as well. Cyrus’s feet lifted off the ground as a Falcon’s Essence spell took hold on him, and he did not bother to look for the caster, instead running back to his own lines with wildest abandon, the last man out in the middle of the titan advance. Even Vara was back now, driving her blade into the legs of titans that were swarming into the camp, tearing down tents and stomping through the latrines.

Cyrus stabbed through a few necks on his way back to his lines, now high enough to do so with spell aid.
This is the view of a bird, truly
, he thought as he punched a titan right behind the ear, staggering him with the strength of the blow. His enemy pitched over, landing on at least two warriors below, one of whom struggled out from beneath the breastplate with a look of pain upon his face. Before Cyrus had a chance to call for a healing spell for the man, a titan came along and stomped with a metal boot. A splatter of blood squirted out in two directions on the dusty ground, like wine spilled. When the boot came up again, Cyrus knew there was no healer in Arkaria that could repair what had just been done to the soldier.