Warlord (42 page)

“He is not dead,” Curatio said from somewhere below. Cyrus’s eyes found him with the healers, standing short next to Vaste’s immense bulk. At the mere statement, however, Vaste started forward in determination, long strides eating up the distance to the dragon’s head, where he drove his staff through the dragon’s almost unnoticeable ear, with its trickle of purple blood, slamming through the canal and burying it almost up to the crystal at the tip. The troll then stirred the staff around like a brew in a cauldron, his muscles straining and the effort showing on his face as he flushed a deeper green before he ripped the staff back out of the canal, covered entirely in purple gook.

“Now he is dead,” Curatio pronounced somewhat flatly.

“Martaina!” Andren’s shout drew Cyrus’s attention back to where the rangers had been attacked. He stalked over to where the healer already crouched over the fallen body of Martaina, who clutched at her hip, which was bleeding profusely.

“I’ll be fine,” Martaina said, face tightly suffused with pain.

“Of course you will,” Andren said soothingly. “You’re so tough—”

“I mean I’ll be fine once you heal me!” Martaina spat. “What are you waiting for?” She writhed and grimaced, blood spurting from between her fingers.

“Oh, right,” Andren said and thrust his hand aloft, spell light flickering from it. Within a few seconds, Martaina had ceased her writhing, soothed and settled, and then she went stiff, her eyes flickering around the area where she had fallen.

“How many did we lose?” Cyrus asked, low, taking the last few steps to stand by where she lay.

“I count six,” Calene said, coming out from behind a boulder. She nodded with her head to where armor and cloaks lay, remains so obviously destroyed by the dragon’s breath spread before them among a few other wounded.

“Damn, that could have been you,” Andren said under his breath.

“But it wasn’t,” Martaina said stiffly, and Cyrus could hear the familiar guilt of a surviving commander in the way she said it.

“Martaina!” Thad’s voice echoed as he pushed through the crowd thickening into a line around the site of the ranger fallen. “Oh, thank the gods.” His hand fell to his chestplate, where the red had been scraped from his armor.

“Should we even bother to have an officer meeting about this?” Vaste asked in Cyrus’s ear, whisper-quiet. Cyrus had not even heard the troll’s approach.

“To what purpose?” Cyrus asked coolly.

“I don’t know,” Vaste said sarcastically, “maybe to discuss the sheer number of people we’ve lost today? To consider, for perhaps sixty seconds before charging foolishly ahead, whether the price we are paying is going to be even close to worth it? Or we could just have a talk about other ideas that could have become inspired by these losses, alternatives to this mess we find ourselves charging headlong into?”

“Do you have any ideas?” Cyrus asked, and waited for the troll to shake his head. “Anything to stop the advance of the titans?”

“There is no titan advance, Cyrus,” Vaste said, the anger in his voice threatening to burst out of a whisper. “Perhaps we should reconsider and come back when there is.”

“It’ll be too late,” Cyrus said, shaking his head. “Once they figure it out, the north is done.”

“If we keep going, we may be done,” Vaste said.

“We’re not done,” Cyrus said quietly.

The troll waited for just a moment before replying. “Well, maybe we should be.” And with his bit said, he walked away, slapping his staff into the eye of Groz’anarr as he did so, as futile—and as understandable—a gesture as Cyrus could imagine.

The next dragon lay up the stairs, on the top level of the temple. It took the battered Army of Sanctuary almost an hour to make their way up to that dragon’s chambers, Cyrus carefully following the instructions given by Ehrgraz. He knew what rested behind the door before he came to it, but held out his hand for a quiet regroup a few hundred meters from that door, not willing to face it without a break first.

“What are we up against next?” Vara asked, settling next to Cyrus on the hard stone floor. It was flat and surprisingly cold to the touch, when Cyrus took his gauntlet off to wipe the accumulating perspiration from his palm.

“Weck’arerr,” Cyrus said. “A poison dragon.”

Vara frowned. “Poison? How poisonous is this thing?”

“Corrosive, supposedly,” Cyrus said. “The way Ehrgraz explained it, his breath can burn through flesh in much the same way as fire, but slower.”

“That sounds like a wicked sort of alchemy,” she said, shaking her head. “I have heard of similar solutions created by potion, but to imagine a dragon with that sort of substance at his command defies my imagination.”

“We face creatures several times our size,” Cyrus said with a sad smile, “dragons that live in cities and shrines, even gnomes and goblins and trolls, things that are so much different. Hells, you and I are a human and an elf, and while we mostly look alike save for our ears—”

“And I am much prettier than you.”

“—and that, of course, but there are differences.” He still smiled at her wistfully. “Even the closest related of our races is dramatically different. Our world is a … peculiar place, I would say, filled with wondrous and horrid creatures.”

“That was quite the little speech,” Vara said, eyeing him.

“Well, I didn’t get to give a motivational one before we came here, so I suppose the need to fill the air with my words leaked out in the form of dull introspection instead.”

She leaned against his arm and held still for a moment before she asked her question. “Do you want to talk about the deaths?”

“Not now, no,” Cyrus said, meeting her gaze and finding earnest concern in those blue eyes, bright as a sky he had not seen in a week. “But later, I’m sure I will.”

She nodded once, then stood, shuffling past Scuddar In’shara, who sat only ten feet away, his robes gathered around him, Calene Raverle sitting across from him, the two of them saying not a word, but looking at each other intensely. “Stop it, you two,” Cyrus said, drawing the attention of both of them, “your staring contest is quite disturbing to those of us watching.”

“It’s a tradition of the desert,” Calene said with youthful jubilance that did not match Cyrus’s current mood. “Staring into the eyes of your battlefield compatriots before a fight. Builds trust.”

“If you don’t trust him yet,” Samwen Longwell said, plinking the end of his lance into the rock next to where Cyrus sat, “I don’t think staring into his sun-yellow eyes for a space is going to do much more other than perhaps blind you when you look away.” He paused, looking down at Cyrus. “How are you doing, Guildmaster?”

Cyrus glanced away from Calene and Scuddar to return Longwell’s eye contact. “Hanging in there. And you?”

Longwell squatted down, his armor squealing as he did so, dropping the grip on the haft of his spear to its base. Cyrus watched the tip waver, but it did not once threaten to fall even once. “Better than you, I’d wager.”

Cyrus smiled wanly. “And why should I not be in finest form, Samwen? Am I not a warrior, bred for combat, here in the middle of most inspiring battle?”

“I was wrong in what I said to you when last we spoke.” Longwell lifted the lance up a half-inch and tapped it back down again. “It was unfair, and it was unkind.”

“It was inconvenient,” Cyrus said, looking away, “as most truthful things are. Your people have suffered—”

“My people volunteered to join Sanctuary,” Longwell said, looking straight ahead, “to earn their keep. And Sanctuary has paid them well, seen them through, helped give us a home. For me to complain about the sacrifice war entails was foolish, minimizing the sacrifice that the dead have made. It was a willing one, and for me to say what I said cheapens it, as if those men didn’t have a will of their own to do what they did.” He turned his head. “Nyad had a will of her own. The rangers in that room back there, they had wills of their own as well. We all do, and we’re here.”

“You’re here because I’ve led you here,” Cyrus said darkly. “I use your trust in me to compel that will to action. That’s leadership.”

“But we embrace it,” Longwell said. “We choose to follow.”

“And I choose to lead,” Cyrus said, “but I don’t choose to lead you into death; death happens in spite of my best intentions, or maybe even because of them.” He turned his head to look at Longwell as he spoke. “We face dragons and titans, and they can kill us in a way that we don’t normally face on the battlefield—”

“Begging your pardon, sir,” Longwell said, “but we faced an army at Leaugarden, and they killed more people than anything I’ve seen since the scourge killed almost all my people.” His lips remained a tight line until he spoke again. “War is an uncertain thing. Leadership is an uncertain thing as well. You do the best you can. Better than most, I’d say.”

“What if my best isn’t good enough?” Cyrus asked, letting a question slip out that he might not have dared let anyone else hear. It rang with uncertainty and with pure honesty as he stared into the eyes of a man who should have been a king.

“Well, then I guess we’re all up shit creek,” Longwell said with a muted smile as he stood, “because there damned sure isn’t anyone else who could do any better, I assure you.” He tipped his helm to Cyrus and went on his way, walking with a confidence that he had not shown only a few days earlier.

Weck’arerr was sleeping, his snores as loud as the shouts of a rock giant going into battle. As he entered the chamber, Cyrus froze at the sound, afraid the dragon was already alert and ready to attack. The attack did not come; instead Weck’arerr simply extended a wing momentarily up from the nest in the corner, stretching in his sleep. Cyrus did not relax, but rather crept on quietly.

The floors were smooth and flat, but in the corner, over the sound of Weck’arerr’s prodigious snoring was a low bubbling, like lava. Cyrus saw it as he grew closer, a pit of acidic green sludge that bubbled as though it were at a low boil. He drew closer, stepping up to the dragon, only twenty feet away now, feet off the ground as he came in closer, moving not quite silently as he—

Weck’arerr snorted in his sleep and turned again onto his side, his light green belly not as dark as his scaled back. He lifted another wing straight into the air, revealing the soft tissue strung between the bones. They were covered in the pungent acidic mixture that filled the poison dragon’s nest, dripping down onto the body and sizzling as they hit scale and rolled off like beads of water. It had a harsh, metallic smell, and it made Cyrus want to plug his nose with whatever he could find.

Cyrus made his way to where the dragon’s head was tucked under his front shoulder. His nose was slightly submerged, the solution bubbling even more where his head was planted, air burbling from beneath the dragon’s lips. Cyrus pondered his course of action, deciding where to strike first. The back of the neck seemed a ripe target, with the possibility for an instant end to the fight. Taking the eyes would also similarly put things on an uneven footing, though not as surely as the strike to the spine.

He ultimately decided on the quickest, most expedient path, and positioned himself just above the nape of the dragon’s neck. He raised his sword silently, and brought it down—

Just as Weck’arerr rolled to the side.

Cyrus planted Praelior squarely in the side of the dragon’s neck, trying to adjust to the unexpected movement but failing. He struck off some half-dozen scales in the process, but missed the artery that he had aimed for. Some blood was drawn, yellowish like Scuddar’s eyes. Weck’arerr’s own eyes sprang open and his head lifted in fury. Cyrus struck again, running a jagged cut along the side of the dragon’s face, skipping along the jawbone and ripping another ten or so green scales off the beast.

Weck’arerr roared in pain and outrage, taking in the whole army and Cyrus in one glance. Cyrus could read the emotion on the dragon’s face, transfusing into anger as he opened his mouth to belch forth toxicity. Weck’arerr wavered between Cyrus and the army beyond, and instinctively, Cyrus leapt in front of the bastard’s mouth, stabbing him in the discolored, light green gums and cutting a tooth clean out of its mouth as the dragon roared and sprayed him with green liquid.

It covered Cyrus’s face and armor, blinding him instantly. His skin burned, nerve endings screaming in pain. Cyrus held onto his sword, clenching it tightly as the corrosive spray ate into his face and eyes, and he struck blindly at where he knew the dragon had been only a moment earlier, not ignoring his pain but channeling it into a rage of his own. His reward was a scream, the hint of resistance that told him Praelior had hit scale or tooth or bone, and he stabbed back once his strike was through, ignoring the sensation of his very flesh peeling off his face.

A healing spell brought warmth and feeling back to Cyrus’s face, and his sight was restored long enough for him to catch a glance of blood and skin and a toxic green hissing on his breastplate and below. His armor looked as though it had been dipped in Weck’arerr’s bed, but he felt nothing beneath it to concern him, just the sense of residual burning from where the healing spell had left him phantom pain.

Weck’arerr stood before him, jagged cuts on his lip and nose, and Cyrus struck at him again as the dragon spat another burst of bile directly at him, a spray large enough to cover him completely. Cyrus’s vision once again vanished. The pain followed a moment later, as though someone had taken a torch and thrust it into his helm’s open face, rubbing it into his eyes, against his forehead and nose, burning them off completely. Stray searing bolts ran across his scalp, and the smell of disgusting acridness disappeared as his nose was once more burned completely off by the acid bath.

In spite of this, Cyrus struck twice more into the face in front of him, staggering ahead blindly, sensing the dragon reeling away from him by the sound of his screeches. He swung again and missed, then struck once more as he raised his blade and speared it forward.

The next healing spell hit him and threw the pain back some distance, leaving a little more than the normal residual pain. Cyrus realized that some of the acidic liquid was trapped between his helm and his skull, and the scent of chemicals burning his hair drifted into his reconstituted nose. He ignored the feeling like a claw rubbing against his scalp and drove himself into the face of the dragon again as it recoiled away from him. He plunged his blade under its jaw as it tried to lift its neck higher, and then it jerked down, yanking him toward the toxic nest below. Cyrus caught his footing on the invisible platform the Falcon’s Essence spell provided and extracted Praelior from where it was stuck, plunging it into the roof of Weck’arerr’s open mouth just as another splash of the dragon’s breath belched forth.