Crusader

him. He waited, but Terian seemed frozen in thought, staring at the black, endless sea in the distance, listening to the lapping of the tides. The blue skin on his hand stood in contrast to the red metal of the blade and the white cloth. “Terian?” Cyrus asked. “Are you all right?”

The dark knight didn’t answer, his hand still moving in regular rhythm, up and down the blade. His fingers slipped, over the edge, and jerked. The dark knight stared down dully as though he couldn’t quite fathom what he was seeing. Liquid welled up, and the first drops fell to the sands. Cyrus stared at it, and remembered again of a time long, long ago, long before Sanctuary.

“Damn,” Terian said mildly. The dark elf stared at his wounded hand.

“I’ll get Curatio,” Cyrus said, starting to move.

“No,” Terian said, and Cyrus heard the dark knight’s armor rattle as he got to his feet. “I’ll go. I should have been paying attention.” He clenched his fist and Cyrus watched a thin stream of red run out of his palm and form a droplet on the base of Terian’s wrist. The dark knight’s expression was still formless, almost indifferent to his wound. “But about your question …”

Cyrus stared at him. Terian’s eyes seeming to fixate on a point beyond Cyrus, as though he were looking through the warrior, not at him. “Yes?”

Terian’s gaze came back to him, found his, and there was something in it that Cyrus couldn’t define, some depth that made Cyrus think of an open window, curtains stirred by a breeze only slightly to reveal furnishings inside. He caught a hint before the curtains blew back into place and hid the room within from view once more. “I don’t know. You got your vengeance, once upon a time, didn’t you? For your friend, after he died?”

“After we were betrayed?” Cyrus remembered, with a knot in his stomach, Narstron, his oldest friend. Of how he died. “Not revenge. Not really. Besides, this is … different.”

“Is it?” Terian took his hand and brought it to his lips, pursing them to catch the next drop before it fell to the ground. “Hurt is hurt, right? Pain is pain.”

Cyrus recalled the gut-punch pain, the agony of realizing later that people they had been allied with had betrayed him. Vara’s words came back to him again: We will not be, cannot be. Not ever …

“No,” Cyrus said. “It’s not the same.” He weighed the sensations, the loss of his oldest friend, the anguish of it all, and found it … lacking.

“I suppose,” Terian said. “Death is a much more … permanent wound, and the vengeance so much more … deserving.”

Cyrus stared out again, across the dunes, without answering. The hundred fires left spots in his vision as he cast his gaze over them then turned his eyes again toward the sea. Endless, infinite, and deep beyond any measure he could fathom. The sea goes down, perhaps forever. The blackness it contained was akin to the darkness within him, the empty cold that threatened to swallow him in despair. He felt a hand clap him on the back as Terian turned and walked away. He did not watch the dark knight go, absorbed as he was in his own thoughts.

It’s warm enough; I shouldn’t feel a chill. But it was there. The pain of losing Narstron had been bitter and hard, had laid him low for days, long days filled with a despair that choked out any happiness or possibility thereof in the future. It had been darker than the days when his wife had left him- darker than any save for those at the Society of Arms …

Until now. The little points of light that the fires had left in his vision seemed to coalesce, to flash in front of him, to give him an image, one that he wanted and yet wished he could blot from his memory. A face, her skin as pale as the northern snowfields, her hair as yellow as the gold he carried in his purse, eyes as blue as glacial ice. He felt the same pang, again, inside, the dagger wound that she’d left him with.

Cyrus tasted the bitterness on his tongue again, the sadness that clung to him like a cloak. He looked back to his bedroll and knew that his slumber was over for the night. The moon hung in the sky overhead, far above him, and he drew an uneasy breath. The morning was far, far off, many hours away, and yet it would come, inevitably, and he would marshal his armies and drive them across the bridge that he had seen by last light, the one that stretched over the infinite sea, over the unfathomable depths, one that he’d been told led to a new land and an uncertain future.

And perhaps, somewhere over there, I will forget about her-the blond-haired elf with the pale skin, and her words, the ones that had cut him deeper than any pain that the warrior in black armor had ever felt in his life.

Chapter 3

Sunrise found Cyrus staring out across the water, watching as the red disc rose over the horizon. The chatter of the young warriors and rangers had died down only a few hours earlier, and he had been left alone with his thoughts, staring across the Sea of Carmas as the first members of his army began to rise. Cyrus heard the sound of footsteps in the sand behind him and turned to see Curatio, his pointed elven ears catching the light and casting shadows on the side of his head.

“You’re up early,” Curatio said, making his way over to the fire next to Cyrus, a small loaf of bread in his hands. “Or perhaps late.” The elf broke the bread and offered Cyrus a half, which he took. “Terian said he was talking to you when he cut his hand last night.” Curatio wore the scarf of a healer, a long, rectangular cloth sash that remained untied, wrapped around his shoulders and hanging loose, the ends reaching to his waist. Runes were stitched into it in dark lettering, but the white color told all who saw that he was a healer, a spellcaster with the ability to mend wounds and restore life. “You haven’t been up since then, have you?”

Cyrus gnawed on the loaf, which was fresh, still warm. He looked up at the healer in surprise and drew a smile from Curatio. “Magically conjured bread. It’ll be down to the spellcasters to keep us in bread and water as we march onward, especially for the next few days as we traverse the bridge.”

Cyrus picked a large piece out of the doughy center and ate it, shifting it around in his mouth, enjoying the soft flour taste. He grasped a piece of the crusty exterior. It broke between his fingers and he popped it in his mouth, listening to the crunch between his teeth. He looked south and saw the Endless Bridge, something he had seen only once before. It was stone and sloped up to a hundred feet over the water, with enormous supports that reached above the span every few hundred feet, symmetrically placed pillars of stone lining its avenue. It extended into the distance, beyond the horizon, and the stone seemed to glitter in the light of the sunrise.

Cyrus smacked his lips, stopping before he took another bite. “Leaves me feeling a bit … empty inside.”

Curatio’s smile cooled. “The bread? Or something else?”

“Leaves me feeling weak,” Cyrus said, lowering the bread. “And the last thing I want to be when I’m marching into an unknown country is weak.” He turned and looked into the distance where the horses were tied to trees at the edge of the beach. “How are the horses?”

“They’ve been curried, their feet have been picked out, and Martaina is saddling them now,” Curatio said, his eyes following Cyrus’s. “She’s quite the wonder with animals, that one. She’s got a few others helping her, but she seems to be taking excellent care of them.”

“Good,” Cyrus said without emotion. “The more we have delegated to good people, the more we can focus on what’s coming.”

The elf’s face lost its smile gradually, fading as the lines slackened and Curatio turned serious. “And what might that be?”

Cyrus took another bite, a heavier one, and chewed, answering only after he’d swallowed about half of it. “Battle. Longwell says we’ll be passing through an unfriendly Kingdom on the other side of the bridge. Says they’ll have pickets out, riders, you know. They may throw trouble our way to keep us from passing.”

Curatio’s eyebrow rose, sending his ageless face into a very slight display of amusement. “Pickets? Outriders? A scouting party of what? A dozen men on horseback? Versus our fifty on horse and thousand afoot?” A light chuckle came from the healer. “I wish them the best of luck.”

Cyrus didn’t join the laughter. “They’ll present themselves, they’ll threaten, but Longwell says the outriders won’t make much fuss. This Kingdom, it’s the one by the sea-Actaluere, Longwell called it-it has holdfasts between the bridge and Longwell’s father’s lands. They may send armies out to halt us once they know we’re here.”