“It can be done,” Curatio said, speaking up for the first time since the meeting started. “But it will be neither easy nor a short process. More spellcasters would be better, and I’ll need to uh …” He looked around, but J’anda and Longwell were the only other Sanctuary officers present. “Let’s just say that we’ll have to do more than a little heresy in order to get it done. Which I don’t have a problem with, but I’ve been around since before such things were considered heretical.”
J’anda blinked. “Wait … what?”
“It can be done,” Curatio said, “and that’s the important part. But I’ll have to be there for some time, preferably not interrupted, in order to strip the enchantments off the portal. After that, you should be able to use enchanted weapons to break it to pieces and guarantee it never re-opens.”
“There’s something else we need to be concerned about,” Cyrus said. “If these things come from the Realm of Death, then there’s another portal that opens onto the Island of Mortus. J’anda, you said their efforts there have been fruitless but we don’t know what that means. They could be massing there right now, ready to swim the miles to shore in order to stage an invasion of Arkaria like they’re doing to Luukessia.”
J’anda cursed and ran a hand over his smooth face. “We’ll need to send a messenger to Sanctuary.”
“Yeah,” Cyrus said. “We’ll wait until we’re at Enrant Monge tomorrow and we’ve met with the other Sanctuary officers, then we’ll figure out who we can send. We need help if we’re going to make a push for that portal. I doubt the thousand we have is going to get the job done.” Cyrus looked to Briyce Unger. “No offense to your people, but we’re talking about using a coordinated army to thrust through the enemy rather than fighting toe to toe with them while they try and bleed us to death and vice versa.”
“I got the gist of your strategy,” Unger said. “You’re talking about using mobility and speed against them, the two things they lack against a horsed army. The problem is, your thousand don’t all have horses, and your speed advantage is less in the mountain passes between Scylax and that valley. So first of all, you need Longwell’s dragoons, and second, you need flatter ground, or you’ll be driving them back over those same damned roads that collapse in landslides and send people to a long fall and a quick stop at the bottom.”
“What would you suggest?” Cyrus asked. “Draw them onto the plains and have a bloody free-for-all there?”
“It may come to that,” Unger said, “if they decide Scylax is too tightly buttoned up to bother with, and they’re truly hungry for blood, they ought to head south. If we can come at them with the three armies-Galbadien, Actaluere and Syloreas, we can probably match them, put them down, and all the while you take your army another couple weeks north through the passes and into that valley, and put the crushing blow on their reinforcements.” Unger nodded. “That’d sort them out on our end, leave us to mop up whatever they had left over here, but they wouldn’t be getting that constant stream of endless numbers like they apparently can now.” Unger had a strange light in his eyes. “I’d fight like all hell, too, way past the close if I had an army of raging souls behind me who had no fear of death and no care for numbers.”
“There’s something we’re missing here,” Cyrus said. “If they’re more than beasts, then there has to be more to them than just a simple hunger. There’s something driving them besides rage if they’re coordinating their attacks. J’anda, did you sense any sort of leadership structure to these things?”
“Just because I didn’t sense it doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” J’anda cautioned. “I got the picture of the creature’s mind, but it was not like reading a map or even like absorbing the thought of a normal person-not that there necessarily is such a thing as normal. But this is how it is-humans think a certain way, as do dark elves, elves, gnomes, dwarves and so on. Within every species is a certain way of thought, and I understand all of them-except trolls. Well, with the exception of Vaste. Within each species there are also variations of their manner of thinking, some radical, some bizarre, but none as different as the jump between species. The point is, I understand all of them, can read all of them, can know all of them. This creature … I could not know given a year or two or ten in its mind. It is angrier by far than a troll, more guarded than a dark elf and more bizarre than any mind I have ever seen into. I get flashes, enough to understand the origin, but only pieces of the whole. I could read a man’s mind and feel confident in telling you everything of the man,” he blushed and looked away from Cyrus as he said it. “This thing, I would not feel confident telling you I know anything of it but the facts I outlined. They are … bizarrre. Truly bizarre. They could well have a leadership and a hierarchy driving them and I would not know it.”
“Marvelous,” Cyrus said, running his hands over his eyes and then through his hair, brushing it over his shoulders. “We have an enemy that appears countless in number, unknowable in intent-other than that they want blood and death-we have no way of judging their movements, their desire, how far they will take this, and even though we now know their origin, we don’t know if they have a leader of any sort or if there is any motivation for them to be doing what they’re doing. We’re completely blind, facing a numberless enemy.” He sighed. “At least we have a plan.”
“And our plan involves slipping behind the lines of this enemy and trying to cut off their entry point to this realm,” J’anda said. “This doesn’t sound like our best plan ever, if I may say so.”
“When have you ever hesitated to say so?” Cyrus asked, holding his head. “But you’re right. This … will not be pretty.”
Unger smiled, an unsettling one. Ranson and the envoy from Actaluere had left moments earlier. “The fight ahead or the moot?”
“Either one,” Cyrus said. “I wonder if King Aron has at the least soothed Milos Tiernan over the Baroness Cattrine?”
“I doubt it,” Unger said. “It’s not Tiernan who’s truly upset by that anyhow; my spies say he’s most displeased with what Grand Duke Hoygraf has done to his sister. It’s Hoygraf himself who is driving that issue. Milos Tiernan would just as soon have his sister away from Hoygraf forever, but Hoygraf holds too many favors in his Kingdom, too many strings of powerful people.”
“How?” Cyrus asked. “The man’s a sadist.”
“Aye,” Unger said, “but sadism can have its uses when you run a Kingdom. And the man was a dog of war, until you perforated his belly. Now he’s unlikely to walk straight upright ever again, but he has allies in Actaluere. He controls easily a third of their armies, and King Tiernan’s a clever bastard. He knows it, he knows Hoygraf knows it, and he’s playing it entirely cool in order to keep Hoygraf from acting on it.”
“I crushed Hoygraf’s army,” Cyrus said, waving off Unger. “I broke his keep, killed his men. What the hell else has he got?”
“You did not break his army,” Unger said. “His army was two days march behind you when you hit Green Hill. You killed his attendants, you killed many of his close advisors, but not his army. He intended to delay you until they could crush you, and it would have been a rather clever stratagem if he’d been facing traditional forces. Unfortunately for him, you were more magical and somewhat cleverer than he might have given you credit for.” Unger chuckled and shook his head. “Still, bedding his wife before the man was dead? I admit, I have no respect for Hoygraf and his woman-beating ways, but cuckolding the man after you opened his belly and left him to die? The Grand Duke will be upset with you for the rest of his life, shortened though it might be by the grievous wounding you gave him.”
“I don’t give a damn about Grand Duke Hoygraf,” Cyrus said. “I can handle him if the time comes.”
“Oh, the time will come,” Unger said. “I mean, did you not think that word would get out about your escapades in the Garden of Serenity before we left?”
Cyrus froze, and caught the look of confusion from both Curatio and J’anda. “You heard about that?” Cyrus asked Unger.
“Oh, yes,” Unger said with a laugh. “That was all the talk of the moot the night before we left. You have a set of brass ones, Cyrus Davidon. Everyone knew about that.”
“I didn’t hear about that,” J’anda said, slightly miffed.
“Everyone who was of the three Kingdoms,” Unger amended. “The Garden of Serenity is not exactly a holy place, but it’s as near as we get in Luukessia. My goodness, lad … taking the wife of a man whose grievance was that you had taken his wife, and doing it there? Sort of defeats the idea of suing for peace, doesn’t it? I mean, you’re adding fresh grievances by the bucketload. You’re quite fortunate you didn’t speak with King Longwell before you left, I’m certain he would have given you an earful for that last insult.”
Cyrus looked to Samwen Longwell, whose face was drawn. “Yes, that’s something of an insult,” Longwell said. “And yes, it likely made my father’s negotiations after we left somewhat more protracted, if you did in fact do …” he coughed, “what he said you did.”
