Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (15 page)

“Baroness,” he said. “A pleasure to see you.”

“I believe it’s soon to be simply Cattrine, if it is not already.” She remained proud, her head held up. “I have mulled over your offer and believe it is in my best interest to leave this place behind.”

“I see,” Cyrus said. “Very well then. Follow my commands and keep up.” He looked at her horse. “That looks like a solid animal; I doubt you’ll have any trouble in that regard.”

“Thank you, Lord Davidon,” she said, oddly formal. “I shan’t present any problems for you.”

“Good to know,” he said. “How familiar are you with the lands between here and Galbadien?”

He saw the first hint of emotion as the corner of her lip curled slightly in response to his inquiry. “I am an expert rider, sir. I have been over the entirety of Actaluere, from the southern shores to the northern and eastern borders. I have even been,” she said with a hint of pride, “all the way to the bridge to your land and on it, though only for a short distance.”

“The well-traveled sort,” Terian said as he mounted his destrier. “Which makes sense, considering who your husband was.” The dark knight smiled wickedly. “I bet he broke you in quite well.”

Cattrine’s eyes narrowed. “I think I hear an inference from you that I don’t care for, sir. Don’t think that simply because my fortunes have been lost in the last day that I’ll take any sort of insults from some blue-skinned devil. I am a lady, sir, and if you won’t accord me the respect due—”

“You’ll what?” Terian moved his horse close enough to hers to look her in the face, and Cyrus saw nothing but pique in the dark elf’s expression. Cyrus started to tell Terian to back off her, but there was a flash of metal and Cyrus saw a dagger at the dark elf’s throat.

“I’ll ask you to take a step back,” Cattrine said in a low voice.

“Get away from her, Terian,” Cyrus said.

The dark knight backed his horse away, a few steps at a time, and Cattrine sheathed her dagger under her cloak.

Cyrus cleared his throat. “I trust that the rumor of this will spread through the ranks—and let them know that the Baroness,” he heard her cough, softly, “excuse me, the former Baroness, is under my personal protection and any harm that comes to her will be revisited upon the giver a hundred-fold.” Cyrus turned his gaze on Terian, who was already glaring at him.

There was a ripple of quiet agreement, but no one said anything of distinction. Those close in attendance held the awkward silence until Cyrus broke it. “Is everyone with us?”

“The last of them are coming out of the castle now,” Longwell said, pointing to the drawbridge, where a few stragglers carried large burlap bags, and a few carried other outsized objects. Two men struggled with the Baron, dragging him over the drawbridge. Once he was over, they dropped him limply to the ground and left him there, filing away back into the neatly ordered rows of the army’s formation.

“Very well,” Cyrus said, and turned to Odellan. “Let’s start heading east. We’ve lost enough time in this place.” He looked around and caught the Baroness’s unflinching gaze and he blinked. “I mean … uh …” She did not say anything, merely stared at him with an eyebrow raised, without emotion until he looked away first. “I don’t know what I meant.” He looked back at Nyad and gave a subtle nod, which she returned. With a slight extension of her hand she pointed to the castle Green Hill—
a hellhole if ever there was one
—and Cyrus saw black smoke rise from within it, small puffs going up into the sky.

“All right,” he said, “let’s start this convoy moving.” He urged Windrider forward at a canter, following the muddy dirt path that cut through the green fields and hillocks.

He checked after a half a mile, just to be sure that the army had fallen in. It had, a long line of marchers, with a few wagons visible at the far back of the column, bringing up the rear. A few of the officers and veterans on horseback rode alongside the column rather than at the front with the other horses. Odellan and Longwell were the most obvious, their armor in shining silver and deep blue, respectively. Longwell’s white surcoat had appeared as clean as ever, showing no signs of the battle yesterday. Behind them, some distance back, a pillar of black smoke rose into the heavens.

Cyrus’s wandering eyes found Curatio in deep conversation with J’anda, the two of them especially cheerful this day. The sun shone down; Cyrus could feel the warm tropical air of spring and wondered if the mild winter around Sanctuary had broken yet, if the occasional patch of white, frosted grass that could be found in the mornings had disappeared. It was like seeing the first signs of age, the little bits of silver streaking hair, leeching the color from the strands.

He thought of Reikonos, of the bitter snowfalls that encased the city in winter, the white snows that would pile up while one slept, waking to find the world changed the next morning. He thought of the uneven roofs of the city, the high and low buildings situated next to each other, the towers beside one-story dwellings. He thought of the slums, of the deep valley that saw direct sunlight only at midday and of how bitter and dark it became in the winter. He wondered if the dark elves had surrounded the city or if the humans still held them at a distance.

Cyrus thought back to a winter in Reikonos, the worst of all of them, and it was like a thread of oddly colored string in a tapestry; unfamiliar, unmatching, that looked nothing like the rest of the weaving.
When was that? I was young … first year at the Society? Yes …

“What were you thinking,” Terian’s voice whipsawed Cyrus out of his memories, “having her come along? Are you so hard up to get laid that you’ve taken to embracing the wives of your enemies before they’re even dead?”

“Are you a little testy because she held a knife to your throat?” Cyrus tried to keep his tone indifferent.

“That’s hardly the closest anyone’s gotten to me with a blade,” Terian said, and Cyrus heard the groan of metal in the dark knight’s gauntlets as he gripped the reins of his horse tighter. “We’re in the middle of this hostile Kingdom. Her husband ordered the capture of our people and personally tortured and beat them.”

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t know,” Cyrus said.

Terian’s face turned a deeper blue, darkening, almost purple. “Then why did you have the wife of an enemy who you personally gutted and left to die a slow, torturous death come along with us? She could be a spy, she could be harboring a desire for revenge—she could just be here to try and get close to you so that she can slip a knife in your back.”

“She had a chance to do that last night,” Cyrus said. “She’s coming with us because with her husband’s death she loses everything. I offered her a chance to come to Arkaria, to make a new life in a place where she’s not reliant on a man for everything.”

Terian’s flush subsided and his face loosened, settling into a kind of disbelieving wonderment. “And you believed her? Did she try to sleep with you?”

“Lately, who doesn’t?” Cyrus asked warily.

“Umm, me,” Martaina said from over Cyrus’s shoulder. He looked back and saw the elf raise her hand in the air.

“I was joking,” Cyrus said. “But duly noted, and thank you.”

“I don’t know how to take that,” Martaina muttered under her breath. “But you’re welcome.”

“She tried to use her feminine wiles on you,” Terian said, bringing Cyrus’s attention back to their conversation. “She’s getting close to you to exact revenge.”

“Revenge would be easy.” Cyrus shook off the dark knight’s concern. “I’m not worried about that. And if she ‘used her feminine wiles,’ as you said, it’s probably because the women of Luukessia have no other weapon to use. We’re in a land where women don’t carry swords and are subject to men’s whims. What else are you going to use when force of arms is denied you? Sharp words?”

“I find they get me where I need to go.”

“Because you can use a sword to back them up,” Cyrus said. “The women of Luukessia have no such option; they’re not trained with weapons, and if you’re going to take a blade to a skilled swordsman, you damned sure better have the element of surprise on your side, otherwise you’re going to get cut into tiny fillets. So what else is she supposed to do? She tried to persuade me, it didn’t work. I didn’t give her what she wanted, I offered her an alternative that she decided to avail herself of.”

“Which involves following in your wake for the next few months,” Terian said, shaking his head, “being in perfect striking distance—I mean, she already has a knife. You should at least take that from her.”

“I think not,” Cyrus said. “If I were a woman in the middle of a foreign army, with the upbringing she’s had, married to the monster she was, I’d carry ten swords, three spears and a battleaxe just so I could feel safe. I remain unconcerned about her dagger.”

Terian’s hand went to his throat, fingers playing in a line across it. “Something you might learn—and I hope you don’t—there’s an old quote from my people. ‘A woman can slit a throat as easily as a man.’”

Cyrus looked at Terian with undisguised amusement. “Are all your people’s sayings that dark?”

Terian stared at him blankly. “Perhaps you’re mistaking darkness for truth. It’s a hard, bitter, and cruel world, and the people you think you can trust aren’t always what they seem.”

Cyrus raised an eyebrow at him. “Weren’t you the guy who once told me that you can’t stand people who aren’t what they appear to be?”

Terian blinked, bewildered. “I … what? I said that?”

“When we were about to kill Kalam, the black dragon. You were talking about the Alliance and why you hated them.” Cyrus smiled. “It always stuck with me because it was the first time any of you officers had bothered to explain why you detested the Alliance. And of course,” he said grimly, “about a week later, you left Sanctuary. You know, to ‘roam the world’ or whatever.” Cyrus cocked his head in curiosity. “You know, you never did tell us what you did while you were ‘roaming.’”

Terian’s eyes, dark purple, had been focused on him until the last. The dark knight seemed to lean back in his saddle, and Cyrus watched him swallow hard. “You know what I was doing.”

“No, I don’t,” Cyrus said. “We may have this easy familiarity, but you’re not exactly the easiest guy to get to know on a deeper level, Terian. The Gatekeeper suggested you were doing things that wouldn’t make any of us proud, but I don’t know what you were up to. You could have been dancing in an all-male revue in Saekaj, for all I know.” Terian’s eyes narrowed and Cyrus shrugged, a smile on his face. “Well, that wouldn’t exactly make me proud of you, but hey, we all hit rough times …”

“I think I liked you better when you were moping and brooding over the loss of your blond elf-princess,” Terian said with a note of bitterness.

Cyrus felt a stab of pain within. “Yeah, well … I’m sure I’ll be back to my old self any day now. I doubt that I can shed the pain of her easily, like a snake shedding its skin.”

“How do you know if it’s easy for a snake to shed its skin?” Terian stared ahead, looking at the road in front of them as he spoke. “Just because it happens often? It could be painful as all hell, trying to leave behind something you’ve lived your life in like that. It could be as tough as leaving behind family, upbringing … anything you’ve carried with you.”

Cyrus turned to look at the dark knight. “Is that like you, then? A dark knight in the service of Sanctuary, trying to shed the wicked parts of your training?”

“Probably.” Terian turned his head and the mask was there, visible for Cyrus to see, nothing underneath it, no lines on the dark elf’s face. “I was raised to serve Yartraak, the Lord of All Dark. At seventeen, in my eighth year of training with the Legion of Darkness, I, along with all the other budding dark knights, was expected to seal that oath of loyalty with a soul sacrifice.” He let that hang in the air between them.

“What’s a soul sacrifice?” Cyrus stared at Terian, who kept his eyes ahead.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to.” Terian turned his head, and Cyrus caught a glimpse behind the mask—a cool, calculating look lay on the face of Terian, something Cyrus hadn’t seen from him before. “They might scare you, after all, shake your pretty little worldview and crush all your ideas about honor and virtue and nobility in the world.”

“Maybe you’ve forgotten who you’re talking to,” Cyrus said, feeling the irritation rise within him. “I’m not Alaric.”

Terian let out a low chuckle. “I suppose not—stabbing your enemies in their guts and letting them squirm to death, taking their wives away before they’re even dead? You know, I would have had a whole new level of respect for you if you’d told me you had slept with her.” Cyrus turned to look at Terian in disgust. “I know,” the dark knight said, “it’d be low, I’ll admit, but let’s face it, she’s pretty and you’re … well … I hesitate to say you’re not a man in your urges, but … I mean … come on, Cyrus, it’s been since before I met you, hasn’t it? Do you just feel nothing down there?” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you a eunuch?”

Cyrus gave him the hard glare, and Terian shrugged. “Just asking. Most men who hack and slash with a sword for all the days of their life tend to be fairly free with the other sword as well, if you take my meaning. So is it something to do with the God of War?” Terian cracked a smile. “Did Bellarum order his initiates to keep armor between them and women folk at all times, or something? Was there a command to avoid sex at all costs, even when offered to you by beautiful women of varying races and species?”

“No!” Cyrus shouted his answer then looked around, drawing the curious stares of others. He ignored Martaina’s giggles behind him, and when Curatio caught his eye, the healer looked away as did Odellan. “It’s not that,” Cyrus said.

“Please tell me you weren’t holding out for Vara,” Terian said. “Because that would be … actually, that would be comically amusing.” The dark elf snickered, then straightened out his expression. “Though not for you, I suppose.”

“I was.” Cyrus let the words out, scarcely believing them. “I actually was.”

“Oh dear gods,” Terian said. “You don’t mean you’re a … I mean, you never? Not even with your wife?”