Crusader

reassuring smile. “If you want courage-which is the virtue of being able to look fear in the face in spite of all the daunting it would give you, well, that’s something I can tell you about.”

Cyrus felt his lips crack open and the words desperately wanted to come out in a plea, begging for the how. Instead he remained silent.

“To put aside fear,” Erkhardt said, “you must confront it. Courage is standing up to it, facing it. Pain, suffering,” he put a hand on Cyrus’s jaw and a slight twinge radiated out from it from where he had been hit a week earlier. “These are normal things to fear. If you want to master fear, stare it in the eyes.” Erkhardt stood. “And if you want to be able to face it harder than any other man you know, then find something … something you truly can believe in, put your faith in, your trust in … and you fight for that thing. Or that person.” Erkhardt looked out the sidelong path up the arena steps. “They won’t tell you that here. They’ll tell you about the God of War, they’ll tell you to believe in him. I carry my doubts that that’s the best way to proceed. But I’ll tell you this, a man who’s fighting for something he believes in will fight ten times as hard and look worlds more fearless than a man who cares for nothing, believes in nothing. An empty soul means when times become hardest, it doesn’t matter that you’re fearless, because you’re not going to fight for anything but yourself anyway.”

Cyrus looked into those dark eyes, saw the warmth in them-the last warmth I saw for some time after that, the adult Cyrus remembered-and listened. “Now,” Erkhardt says, “there’s something you need to learn before I leave this place. Something more important than believing …”

Cyrus blinked and the memory, the feeling, was no more than that. His fingers strained at the edge of the bridge, the sun beat down overhead on the face of Drettanden, and those red eyes stared back at him. The smell of salt air from the sea wafted under his nose, his knuckles ached and longed to be set loose, and he wondered in that moment if there was, in fact, anything left to believe in.

Chapter 111

Vara

Day 223 of the Siege of Sanctuary

It was broken loose now, all manner of hell, and she knew it from her place on the wall. The smell of something new was in the air, acrid, sharp, oddly chemical, like something from an alchemist’s shop but worse. It wafted in the smoke that came from where the wall had exploded, and even now the crater where the gates had stood only moments earlier was filled from the surge of dark elves, clambering across the dead space of the battlefield. The smell of the dead was overwhelming.

She jumped from the top of the wall without thought, hitting at the bottom of the thirty-foot fall and already whispering a healing spell as she heard her leg break. There was a push as the bone realigned itself and thrust her back to her feet, her joint pain subsiding as she ran, charging toward the place where the enemy was coming through into the yard, picking through the debris with shouts and screams of imminent victory. They smell the blood of their foe. They know it comes soon, the end. But I will show them their end, not ours. Coming through that wall is the worst mistake they have made yet, because now they face the teeth of this tigress. She didn’t smile, but it was close, a white-hot rage at the violation of her home. And this tigress is bloody hungry.

Her sword found its first target, a troll warrior who was looking the wrong damned way. Trolls seemed to be the leading edge, ten feet tall, most of them. The smell of swamp wafted off of them in waves, as though they had been freshly plucked out of Gren and its surroundings, fitted with armor, and thrown to the front lines. A bold move. Savvy, though, O Bastard Sovereign. She spilled the beast’s guts out with a crosswise slash and ran on, clashing next with three dark elven warriors in full armor. She broke the sword of the first with a furious slash, splintering the blade and then the man’s helm. She made a stabbing motion toward the next to feint then kicked him with such fury in the chest that his armor dented in and he clutched himself in pain. The third she brought her sword across, aiming for the neck but hitting low and glancing off his armor, leaving a deep crease in the steel. She swung around faster than he could adapt to her angle of attack and came up with a strike that caught him where the legging armor of his greaves met his groin and the armor broke. The man folded, and she finished him with a stroke to the face, plunging her sword into his open-faced helm.

They were coming too fast, though, and she saw others around her; the red armor of Thad, fighting off four of them, Belkan with his sword and shield, battering away at another one. Fortin had waded into the fray and pieces of bodies began to fly through the air with every hit the rock giant levied. Flames shot forth into the new hole in the wall, scorching those that were there, turning back the advance. The dark elven assault had stalled, and the first wave that had besieged the wall was trapped. Yes. Come forth a few at a time, and we’ll destroy you in those small numbers. We’ll plunge blades into you, spear you to death, stick your heads upon pikes as warnings to the next to come that this is what happens when you face the might of Sanctuary. You can carry the message back to your Sovereign, with your very deaths, that he … will … not … break … ME.

She took a breath as the battle began to subside. There were a few more of them now, and Fortin was wiping the last of them out, holding a dark elf in each hand and listening to them squeal as he crushed the life from their armor, squeezing it in the palm of his hand as she listened to it strain under the screams, heard the cracking of bones and the rending of flesh-and she did not stop him.

“They failed,” Thad said, a rough smile on his face. “They made their bid, some new magic and horror, that-but they failed. We held them back.” He nodded to the hole in the wall, blocked by fire, then looked to Mendicant. “Can you maintain that?”

“For a time,” the goblin agreed.

“Then drop it,” Vara said, “and let them come forth for a while before you raise it again. “We’ll disassemble them piecemeal, a hundred at a time, and in a thousand cycles of this we’ll have them killed.” She wore a grim smile. “We can hold them back like this, we can defeat them. The Sovereign will come to rue the day he ever set upon us here-”

The explosion whistled first then loudly blew down the section of wall a few hundred feet to the left of the gate. Vara covered her head instinctively but looked back quickly and saw that another fifty-foot gap of wall had been removed, smoke in its place, and the first surge of dark elves came through, wildly, screaming their victory. And they came even as another explosion rocked the ground from the wall far down to the other side and then another and another.

Chapter 112

Cyrus

There was nothing but the soulless eyes of death, staring at him, waiting, looking him down. The teeth were exposed, and something dripped onto his face-blood, he realized as it speckled him, spattered on his black armor, the strong smell of it came to his nose along with the wet, disgusting feeling of the sticky saliva mixed with it. It was enough to make him want to let go, to let his fingers, screaming with pain, release, but he held on. He stared back into the red eyes, heard the low growl that Drettanden made, and wondered where his army was, what they were doing. There were screams in the distance, of pain or surprise, he couldn’t tell, but they were there.

The pain in his knuckles was near unbearable. Even the cushioning in the gauntlets did not assuage it, the searing ache that radiated out from having the entirety of his weight relying on the one hand. He tried to readjust, staring back at Drettanden, lifting his other arm, still numb from the scourge-god’s blow, and trying to reach up to the bridge. He failed and nearly lost his grip. I can’t do this. I can’t hold on. Why am I bothering? It’s over. He’s broken through our line. The minute that fire drops, his friends will join him and that’ll be it. They’ll be on Arkaria, and there will be no stopping them, even if we could get everyone allied and cooperating. This is the end. I’ve failed. He looked from the red eyes, the hopeless feeling they conveyed, to the sea below,