Crusader

The day was filled with planning; when night fell, it was almost sweet relief of its own kind. Cyrus woke in the middle of the small hours, Aisling settled in next to him in the quiet, nothing audible in the tower room but her breathing. The smell of the air was stale, and the last taste of the night’s stew was still with him. There was a chill in the room, as it had only a small hearth of its own and the fire had died down. He tossed a log upon it and stirred, feeling the slight weight of the poker in his hand as the ashes came back to life slowly over the next minutes and were roaring again soon enough.

Aisling did not move, and he watched her for a few minutes in the quiet, her white hair catching the orange glow of the fire. She looks so … small, he thought, and wondered about it only until he remembered that she was short, shorter than-

Cyrus’s fingers came to his face, rubbed his eyes, as though he could strike the vision out of them, rub the image of the blond-haired elf from them. It has been near a year since last I saw her. One would think I would be well and truly done with her by now. He looked back to Aisling, who lay under the blankets, her blue skin dull against the grey cloth. I am different. Things are different, now. She told me flatly that it would never work, could never work. He squeezed his bare hand against the cold stone floor, pressed it, felt the smoothness of it. Why is it so hard to be rid of her?

He stewed for only another minute before he stood, quietly dressed and went out the door. He gave a last look at his lover before he left; if she was awake, she had the good grace to say nothing. Another reason she’s vastly superior to … her. Sometimes I just need to be alone with my thoughts.

His steps carried him along the spiral staircase to a lower landing. The lamps were low, dim, and Cyrus saw a glow of color outside a translucent window, something faintly orange and red. He stopped at the landing and stepped toward the door, which he knew led outside, onto the castle’s interconnected ramparts.

With a squeak the door opened, and he grimaced at the sound. He shut it back carefully then looked around. The ramparts led in either direction; to his right he knew he could find himself overlooking the Garden of Serenity with only a few twists and turns. To his left, however, was the outer wall, and all that lay beyond. He went left, felt the chill of the night air. He drew his heavy cloak around him, trying to hold in the warmth escaping through the cracks in his armor.

His feet carried him along and he looked up into the sky, where an aurora lit the blackness like a fire of its own. It was a magnificent red and orange glow, shimmering faintly, stronger, like a snake of fire sliding its way across the night. He took a breath and exhaled, watching the air steam in front of him. The sky was clear above, but the wisps of clouds were visible in the distance, lit by the aurora. The smell of the night air drew into his nose, freezing it, giving it the smell of cold, all in itself. How is it that cold has a smell?

His walk took him around the perimeter; there were guards, here and there, and they nodded to him as he passed. He found himself at the east wall and looked out, across the small valley beyond. Lit campfires waited below, the entirety of Galbadien’s army laid out before him. Tomorrow they will move north, a half- day’s ride … and a day from now, perhaps two … it will begin.

He let his gauntlet slide along the uneven ramparts, clanking as he dropped it off a crenellation. He followed the curtain wall, though in truth it was all one massive structure. How has this stood for ten thousand years? It is the most magnificent and detailed castle I can recall ever seeing-other than perhaps Vernadam. He thought, too, of Scylax, high upon a mountain. I wonder what Caenalys must be like? Where she was raised-

He let out a small, angry hiss at himself. Can I not be rid of the thoughts of these women? It has been nearly five months since I have seen her, yet she does not leave me be, either …

He walked on toward the north, toward tomorrow. We set out tomorrow. We face them on the day after. He felt a chill, more than the cold. Can we best them? He did not press the answer to that question, almost afraid to know it.

Another guard passed with a nod. Their helms were a simpler things that partially covered their faces. Like the Termina Guard, Cyrus thought, and wondered if he should banish that thought as well, for all its unpleasant associations.

There was a figure on the northern rampart, on the wall segment that jutted out allowing archers to cover the north gate in a siege; the armor was familiar even at this distance, though Cyrus had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he had come to within twenty feet and not even realized it. The outline was visible against the aurora above, spikes shadowed behind hues of fiery orange and flaming red. His helm was off, lying on the nearest crenellation, a spiked crown of its own sort, as pointed as the personality of its wearer.

“I’m not going to kill you now,” Terian said, turning to Cyrus, his black hair flowing in the wind. The dark elf had an accumulation of stubble that might have been more easily visible on a human. As it was, it gave the dark knight a shadowed look about his jaw and lips. “I gave my word to Curatio that I would not settle my personal grudge with you until this was all over.”

“I’m trying to decide if I should take comfort in the word of a dark knight,” Cyrus said, his hand already on Praelior’s hilt, “especially one who has already attempted to murder me without warning.”

“There was plenty of warning,” Terian said, turning back to look over the edge of the wall, toward the north, “you were just so wrapped up in your own petty concerns that you didn’t notice it.”

“Petty concerns?” Cyrus asked. “Like coming here, winning the Sylorean war, assaulting Green Hill?”

Terian chuckled lightly. “As though you devoted more than a few hours of thought over the course of our months-long journey to any of those things. No, Cyrus, you know very well of what I speak-Vara, Cattrine, and Aisling. These women that you stumble to, one after the other, hoping they’ll pick you up and fill that shallow, empty place in your chest where you used to keep your conviction.” He cast a sidelong glance at Cyrus, who took tentative steps to stand down the wall from him. “They won’t, you know.”

“I hardly think that I’m looking for them to fill some gap in my belief,” Cyrus said, staring at the northern reaches; there were no fires here, just vast, empty woods. There was light in the distance, though, something like a fire, but it was far off.

“Truly?” Terian asked. “Is it possible that the great Cyrus Davidon, that shining light of all virtue, has finally come to the point where all he looks to a woman for is the physical? Because I believe we had a conversation about this some time ago, my friend-”

“I think we stopped being friends when you cursed me and left me to die,” Cyrus said quietly.

There was a pause. “True enough,” Terian said, and Cyrus watched him clutch the edge of the wall, and the image of a man clinging to something for life sprang to mind.

“Shouldn’t you be happy about that, if it’s true?” Cyrus asked, flicking his gaze back to the empty lands in front of him. “You were the one who chided me to ignore the idea of deep feelings or of any kind of resistance to baser appetites. You were the one who wanted me to come to whorehouses with you, to ‘scratch the itch,’ as it were, with any woman freely available. Now that I’ve done it, you say I’ve lost something-what? You were the one urging me down that path all along; I think it a bit late now to fret about some irrelevant consequence of me doing what you suggested, however unwittingly I might have come to it.”

“I never thought you would,” Terian said quietly. “Not in a hundred years, not in a thousand. Cyrus the Unbroken, wallowing about in the filth, fallen from his iconic high?” He turned to gaze directly at Cyrus. “I think I erred in trying to kill you.”

Cyrus snorted. “You erred? You slit the throat of my horse after casting a spell on me that caused immense pain and left me surrounded by enemies. You betrayed a guildmate and a friend who had no idea he had wronged you; yes, Terian, I would say you erred. Badly.”

“That’s not quite what I meant,” the dark knight said, a quiet sadness held firm on his face, his pointed nose angling just away from Cyrus. “What I meant was … revenge on you might have been a foolish notion, seeing how much you’ve suffered this last year. Perhaps a more fitting punishment was to let you live in this strange, fallen state of anguish you seem to have gathered to yourself.”

“‘Fallen state of anguish’?” Cyrus repeated. “That’s poetic.”

“No,” the dark knight said, “I mean it. Truly. As a friend, killing you might have been more merciful-”

“You have a strange notion of mercy, ‘friend.’”

“Think about it,” Terian said, and Cyrus watched him anchor his hands on the wall, holding them there as though he might fall if he didn’t. “Everything horrible that could have happened to you this year has just about happened. The woman you loved rejected you in spectacularly brutal fashion. Your mentor and father figure berated you for the first time in your history, you came thousands of miles from home, trying to find some soothing