already reached the other side and started to head that way.”
“You want me by your side for this again,” Longwell said, letting his bound hands hang in front of him.
“I need your help,” Cyrus said. “You, Scuddar, Odellan,” he darted a look backwards, “Terian, probably. This could be days of fighting. I have a lot of veterans thanks to our army being in a near-constant battle these last few months, but I need an elite, a front rank that won’t buckle, no matter what.”
Longwell settled, his struggle with the bonds done. “It almost sounds as though you mean to try and drive them back; to stand and fight and make them feel the pain and blink.”
Cyrus looked at Longwell out of the corner of his eye, just for a moment, then back to the dark, swampy night. “Maybe I do. Maybe I do.”
Longwell gave a short nod after a moment of thought. “Very well, then. I cede the wisdom of your proposal. I will fight alongside you on the bridge.” He held out his hand. “You may release me now; I won’t go anywhere.”
Cyrus pulled the water skin from between his lips. “I know you won’t. Because you’re going to stay roped until we get to the bridge.”
Even in the dark, Cyrus could see the disbelief as Longwell’s face fell. “What? But I gave you my word.”
“Yeah,” Cyrus agreed. “But a man desperate to die in the defense of his homeland might be possessed to say some untruths. After all, who’s gonna care if he lied after he’s dead?”
“But,” Longwell said, sputtering, looking around for some sort of support. “I’m the King of Galbadien!”
“Right you are, Your Majesty,” Cyrus said, and bowed his head. “Would you like some more water?”
Longwell’s expression turned from disbelief to fury, then slowed to irritation, then finally to a long, sustained eyeroll. “Very well.”
Chapter 105
Two days later, they crossed the berm to see the bridge spanning the sea before them. The last of the straggling refugees were already upon it, barely visible on the horizon. At the base of the span, though, waited a familiar party-two blue-skinned figures at the side of the bridge along with another, her brown hair above her shoulders. Cyrus rode up to them, felt the salt spray of the tide hitting his face, and gazed upon J’anda’s face in shock. His own gasp filled his ears, and a feeling like someone had jammed a rod into his spine set him upright in the saddle. After a moment it subsided, as he got closer, and looked at the lined, worn skin on the enchanter’s face. “You burned through your magical energy,” Cyrus said, “and started trading your life for bread.”
There was a nod from the enchanter, whose hair was now streaked with a faded grey. “Worth it, I think,” he said, voice raspy. “A few hundred years of my life to spare thousands of lives.” He shrugged. “In mere days, it may not matter anyway.”
“Very laudable,” Curatio pronounced as he arrived.
Cyrus shook his head at J’anda. “It’s your life, I suppose.”
“I did what I thought was right,” J’anda said with another shrug. “I regret nothing.”
Cyrus waved toward Longwell, who sat at the front of a line of horsemen. “Start them across. They’ll be able to catch the back line of those refugees fairly easily. Tell them not to hurry, not to push. We don’t want to start a stampede, and we’ve got some time.” He paused. “I think.”
Longwell tossed him a mock salute with only a little acrimony and motioned for the horsemen to start across.
“How many horsemen do you have?” Cattrine asked, with a look of slightly shocked awe as she looked at the perfectly formed lines, moving up the bridge at faster than a walk.
Cyrus dismounted and landed his hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “More than ten thousand. Enough to give the scourge a fight if we can get to open ground on the other side of the sea. Transport will be a problem because you can’t teleport nearly that many in one bunch with one wizard, but if we can get to the portal two days north of the other side of the bridge, we can transport everyone fast-in half an hour or so-back to Sanctuary.”
“Your magic still amazes me,” Cattrine said with a shake of the head.
“I don’t have any magic,” Cyrus said. He gave Aisling a nod of greeting, which was returned with some reserve. He looked Cattrine in the eyes. “I’m sending you with the second regiment of dragoons.”
She looked to him, and her head went from leaning forward, eager to see him, to relaxed and falling back as her face did the same; it fell. “I wouldn’t want to be a bother, I suppose.”
“Not a bother,” Cyrus said. “But I promised your brother I would see to your safety, and I need to keep my word.”
“Very well,” she said. “Did he send any other message?”
He let his jaw relax. “Just to see you to safety. His last worries, aside from wanting to die fighting the good fight for Luukessia, were about you.”
She gave a slow nod and started to turn away toward the horsemen marching up the bridge. “I don’t suppose he gave a thought to what would happen to our people in this new land? Of how he should have stayed to lead them?”
“I don’t think he much wanted to contemplate a new land,” Cyrus said. “I believe the pain of the loss of the old was the sort of wound he would not ever have been able to put aside.” There was a sting in his words, as though he were rubbing salt on a wound of his own. “That’s my suspicion, at least.”
“I’m certain you have no idea what that feels like,” Cattrine said, her eyes warm, but her tone slightly sardonic.
The horsemen went on for the rest of the day. As the night began to fall, the Sanctuary army moved onto the bridge at last, the back ranks going first-the most wearied, in Cyrus’s eyes, along with Windrider and the other horses. Curatio and a few of the others came toward the end, with their spellcasters, and finally Cyrus himself, along with Odellan, Longwell, Martaina, Scuddar, and Terian.
After the first hour, Terian eased over to Cyrus. “You haven’t asked me to fight alongside you.”
“You’ve been fighting alongside me on and off since Enrant Monge,” Cyrus said, unimpressed. “What’s different now? You finally going to try and kill me again?”
“Not today,” Terian replied. The clank of his boots and Cyrus’s, and countless others, was soft in the night, and somewhere far below the splash of water against the pilings of the bridge could be heard. “Maybe tomorrow, though,” the dark knight said with a wicked grin.
“You don’t even really believe it anymore,” Cyrus said.
“Hm,” Terian said with only a trace of amusement. “I think it’s more accurate to say I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
“Lot of that going around.”
“Indeed there is,” Terian said. “We’re still not done yet though, you and I.”
“No,” Cyrus said, “I suppose we’re not. I’m fine with that, so long as it doesn’t bleed into this.”
“No,” Terian said somberly, “I won’t let my personal vendetta against you stop us from saving these people as best we can.”
“‘As best we can?’“ Cyrus mused. “I don’t know, Lepos, maybe there’s some hope for you yet.”
Terian shot him a scathing glance. “Why? Do you think there’s some chance for redemption for me, even after I tried to kill you? Because if you say ‘yes,’ I may have to kill you now, outside of my promise, just on the principle of it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Cyrus said. “Redemption’s a funny thing.”
“Oh?” Terian said with a scowl. “What’s so funny about it?”
“I don’t know.” Cyrus looked back over his shoulder, into the darkness, to the long, empty stretch of stone behind him. “The Kings-Unger, Tiernan, Longwell,” he looked to the side and gestured to Samwen, who trudged alone quietly to their left, “and Ranson, I suppose. They thought they’d failed to protect their Kingdoms, the places
