the fight, and he wondered how far away they would retreat, and how long it would be before he went back to rest again-or at least try.
He took long, crunching steps through the lines until he reached the front. He began to use his blade to fend off the scourge as they made their way forward, inexorably, open mouths ravenous to take life, to bleed it out on the snow in great red stains. He hacked the head from one, tore limbs from another, then made a move at yet another still that charged him before a perfectly aimed arrow took its eye and caused it to fall still as it slid across the snow to his feet.
“So are we going forward with this blatant ploy to have ourselves all declared mad?” Terian was close beside him. “Because otherwise I’m quite content to remain here, gradually retreating.”
“The problem with gradually giving ground,” Cyrus said as he slammed his blade home in one of the creature’s ribs, “is that sooner or later, no matter how gradually you’re doing it, you run out of ground to give.” Three sprang at him like dogs and he sliced them out of the air with little thought and only instinct to guide him. “We move now.”
“Oh, good,” Terian said lightly, “I didn’t really want to go on living anyway. Dull existence, you know, drinking, whoring, eating nice foods in pleasant places …”
“You’ve been locked in chains for months when you haven’t been eating conjured bread and water and fighting these things,” Aisling said from Cyrus’s left as her daggers danced while she spun aside to let a charging scourge brush past her. Her daggers hit it four times as it went by and it collapsed, knocking down a warrior behind her as it slid to a stop. “And if you’ve had any woman in that time, I’d be shocked-”
“Fine,” Terian said, and Cyrus could hear the scowl in the way he said it. “I really don’t care if I go on living since I’ve been deprived of all those things anyway, but it would have been nice to have a last meal-not insubstantial bread-before we went forward with this idiocy.”
“Now, Terian,” Cyrus said, “if we’d had a so-called last meal for that purpose, where would your motivation be to fight your way back after what we’re about to do? Nowhere, that’s where; you’d have peaked in your life, and with nothing before you but the dim, boringness of being a soulless mercenary, you’d probably just lie down and let them eat you right there.”
“Wow.” Terian’s answer sounded slightly shocked and partially amused. “I think I miss the dour and sour Cyrus Davidon, the one who didn’t know what to do with a woman in his bedroll. I thought you were truly heading toward the path to desperation and I was eager to see what you did when you got there.” He waved a hand vaguely at Aisling as he brought his sword down in the middle of a scourge’s head. “Other than her, I mean.”
“I think I’m just coming back to myself now,” Cyrus said with a slash that sent a scourge screeching away from him missing a limb. “I want to live. At least long enough to get some hard drink, like Reikonosian whiskey, and throw down a toast to the ones we lost without even knowing it.”
There was a pause then Terian spoke again. “You’re beginning to sound more and more like a mercenary every day, Davidon; loose women, hard drink, strong battle, reckless chances-why soon enough, you’ll ask for money in exchange for fighting something.” Terian paused and let that hang in the air. “Not that I’m knocking it, because as you can tell, the mercenary’s life seems to have pretty much everything I want.”
“Then why didn’t you go do that after you left Sanctuary?” Cyrus asked, turning his hips to level a scourge with a sideways slash. Cyrus got busy afterwards as three more of the grey-pallored scourge jumped at him, one going low at his legs, one coming at him from the side and another head-on in a jump. He swiped the two in front of him and turned to deal with the other when Terian’s sword sliced it in two in midair, sending the pieces tumbling past Cyrus, who stepped adroitly out of the way to avoid them.
“Because …” Terian said, and Cyrus saw a hollowness in his eyes that matched what he saw in the pits of eyes that the scourge possessed, “… Alaric asked me to return.”
“What about before that?” Cyrus didn’t let up, cutting apart a scourge then turning back to Terian. “You were gone six months. Six months you walked the face of Arkaria, could have done anything you wanted. Been anything you wanted. So what was it, Terian? You walked the path of your father in those days, didn’t you? Found out how it was, truly was, to stand in his shadow for a good long while, to see all it entailed?”
The dark elf flinched at Cyrus’s words. “Who told you?”
“No one ‘told’ me, at least not in as many words,” Cyrus said, and with a shake of his head was back at the battle, sword in motion. “The Gatekeeper told me, when he stunned you to silence with a subtle accusation. Partus told me, when he said the word Aurastra and you reacted-as though rumors of that one hadn’t percolated around. That was enough, really, to put it together. You said you were in the Sovereignty before you came back to Sanctuary, that you knew the Sovereign had returned because of it. You were working with your father then. You were doing his bidding.”
“Aye,” Terian said, after a long, strained pause of minutes. “I was.”
“But you came back to us,” Cyrus said, and turned his attention forward again.
“I did.”
“Why?” Cyrus asked, looking out over the field of the enemy, coming at them like onrushing death, their limitless numbers only broken by the countless corpses left on the ground as the front line retreated.
There was another long pause, and Cyrus prepared to issue the advancing order when the answer came, quiet, subtle. “I told you. Because Alaric asked me to.”
Cyrus shook his head. “All right-let’s go!” He leaned into the next one of the beasts that came at him, moving forward instead of back, taking an offensive posture instead of staying with the line. This time, however, the line moved around him. The second rank stepped up, and others came with him-Curatio, mace in hand, smashing the skull of one of the foes that crossed him. Nyad was in the center of the formation, her staff at the ready, two druids alongside her, ready to blaze fire and create a gap if needed. Aisling was at his side, as was Terian at the other. Martaina and Scuddar had blades in hand and were fighting their way through as well. A few others were along, but it was a tight-knit formation, a seed pod in the midst of roiling winds of chaos, and as Scuddar and Martaina pulled away from the front line it became a contained little bubble only so wide, a circular line of their own, now separated from the ranks of their fellows.
Cyrus saw Longwell down the line of defense that they had just left, his lance skewering two of the scourge while his men covered him. The dragoon looked up and saw Cyrus, and hesitated for only a moment before pulling his lance free and attacking the next enemy that came against the Galbadien army that backed him.
They were away from the front rank now by fifty feet, surrounded by the enemy, who came at them two and three deep, crawling over each other trying to attack them. Cyrus’s sword remained in motion, constant, flowing, cutting their foes to ribbons of blood in the snow, blooming black flowers of death on the trampled ground of the battlefield.
“It’s moving,” Martaina said cautiously, her short swords a flurry of motion. “Looks like it’s heading away.”
“How far are we gonna pursue this thing?” Terian asked. “And please don’t say all the way to the depths of the Realm of Death, because we’ve been there, and it’s no party.”
“I don’t know,” Cyrus said, his weapon moving in front of him, where he stood at the head of the attack party. “If it’s going to constantly circle away from us, I don’t see much need to keep going because there’s no way we can chop through these things fast enough to catch it.” He brought his sword aloft for a long, swinging chop across an enemy leaping at him, and he watched Praelior glimmer faintly in the close of day.
“Whoa,” Terian said, “it stopped.”
“Sudden, too,” Aisling added. “It was looking at us and just froze.” She let her hands work in a blur, cutting at the scourge that was coming for her; she caught it across the face with a quick thrust, then spun low and opened its neck.
