Blocks were set a few feet apart, creating teeth on the battlements, parapets in a line for archers to fire down at approaching armies from behind cover. Cyrus watched them coldly, analytically, trying to decide how best to approach. The curtain wall was square and went all the way around, a thirty-foot ascent no matter which direction they approached from. Though he couldn’t see it, he suspected that the Baron’s chambers would be toward the back of the castle, past the courtyard-a bailey, he had heard them called-and it would be a guess whether the prisoners would be kept in quarters there or in the dungeons.
“One hour,” he said under his breath as he brought Windrider to a halt. “One hour,” he said more loudly, to the officers behind him, and he heard the words passed back to the army on foot behind them.
A slight breeze stirred his hair under his helm. He looked up at the battlements, heard hushed voices from behind them. The drawbridge was up, a mighty wooden brace separating him from the walls by a moat filled with brown, grimy water. It stank from stagnation and the castle’s waste. He saw slick walls next to holes in the edge of the battlements, and knew he wanted to go nowhere near the water nor the front gate, either.
“Pass the word for Martaina and Aisling to come forward,” Cyrus said, and he heard the murmur of voices behind him. Martaina appeared at his side almost instantly, her horse edging past Longwell’s to stand next to him. Aisling was slower to appear, taking her time, showing up almost a minute later, her traveling cloak hiding her features in the light shadow created by the cowl. “Ah, good, there you are.”
“You summoned us, oh great and mighty General,” Aisling said, each word coming out as a curse. Her bustier was gone, and she was clad in the familiar leather armor that he had always known her to wear.
“Shelve your issues with me until later,” Cyrus said. “We’ve got people being held hostage in that castle. Do you have your bow?” He turned to look at Aisling, and she stared back, defiant, before reaching under her cloak and pulling out a bow with a fox carved near the grip. “Good.” He took a breath. “You’ll need it, I suspect.”
“Hail,” came a voice from above them. Cyrus looked up to see Olivere staring down, his red hair and beard visible, leaking out of a cavalier’s helm. “I have passed along your message to the baron and he has one for you in return.”
Cyrus felt his jaw click into place, felt his teeth bear down. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“Oh, no,” Olivere said, teeth bared in a broad grin. “You’ll see it.”
With a flourish, the envoy stepped aside and two guards joined him, lifting something under the edge of the battlement. “Make ready with your arrows, ladies,” Cyrus said, tense, waiting for what he suspected was coming. “I’ll need someone willing to take a swim if they do what I think they’re about to.”
“I’ll go,” Ryin said. “I can use Falcon’s Essence to-”
“No,” Cyrus cut him off. “I need someone to swim.”
The three men behind the rampart came up again, this time with a struggling burden. It was a woman, a human in the garb of one of Sanctuary’s rangers. Her face was bruised and her clothing was in disarray, her leather armor missing, and her underclothes were ripped and tattered. She said nothing as the men lifted her and set her upon the ramparts, but she struggled, a spiteful look of hatred burning in her eyes as she glared at her captors.
“Calene Raverle,” Martaina said in a gasp at Cyrus’s side. “She looks like the hells have had at her.”
“Something has had at her, that’s for certain,” Terian said, his voice low and menacing. “And by something, I mean animals that don’t deserve the mercy we’d show a dying dog.”
“You had your warning,” Olivere said, “army of Sanctuary!” With a push from Olivere, Calene Raverle screamed and was loosed from the battlements. She fell almost ten feet before the noose around her neck caught her.
The crack of the rope reaching full extension caused Martaina to cry out, but Cyrus kept his eyes on Calene Raverle. He had seen her before, in the Realm of Death, he realized, had passed her by when they were teleporting out. He had seen her face among the other rangers throughout the journey, and he realized he didn’t know a thing about her-not even her name, until Martaina had said it. He stared at her now, though, looked at her face, her dead eyes, staring at him accusingly. Cyrus stared back.
“Get her down,” he said in a voice so low and guttural he didn’t even recognize it as his own. An arrow flew from his left, from Aisling, and the rope broke, sending what had been Calene Raverle falling into the moat where her body landed with a splash, then floated to the surface. “Someone go get her.” Martaina made to get off her horse and Cyrus held out a hand to stop her. “Not you. Keep your bow ready to fire.” He didn’t watch for her nod.
Odellan stepped in front of him, shedding his armor piece by piece as he made his way to the edge of the filthy moat. The elf jumped in, causing Cyrus to grimace. “That was my responsibility, I suppose,” he said, so low it was almost inaudible to his ears. He caught a worried look from Martaina on one side and an almost imperceptible nod from Aisling on the other.
Odellan grasped the body and swam back to the edge of the moat, where he was helped out of the water by Longwell and Scuddar In’shara, a Sanctuary warrior from the Inculta Desert. Cyrus watched as Odellan handed the body up first, with care and reverence, as others stepped forward to handle it.
“Curatio,” Cyrus said, low enough that he knew that those watching on the battlements above them couldn’t hear it, “take her to the back before you do it. Then join me up here again. We go in ten minutes.”
“Aye,” he heard Curatio say.
“Admirable, what you’ve done for your comrade. You have one hour,” Olivere said from above them, “and then we will execute the rest of your people. One hour to begin your journey home, or all of your people will come to a sudden, tumbling end, just as that one did.”
Cyrus looked up at Olivere, but could only see the shadow of the man’s face. “I can tell you truly treated her well as a prisoner, and I assume you’ve extended the same courtesies to the rest of our people that you’ve taken.”
He heard a laugh from behind the parapet, and Olivere’s voice was tinged in humor. “You come at the head of an army into a foreign land, bringing the threat of sword and fire to our holdings, but you expect great civility in the treatment of those captured in the course of your transgressions?” Olivere let out a humorless bellow. “You presume too much, foreigner. Count yourself lucky we haven’t executed all of your people yet-though that hour is drawing nearer.”
“I expected civil treatment because while I have come at the head of an army,” Cyrus said, “you have yet to seen our ‘sword and fire.’” He gave Olivere a grim smile, one he was certain the envoy could not see at the distance they were apart. “But soon, I think, you will.”
“Bold threats,” Olivere said. “Perhaps I should tell the baron you’ve refused his offer and to just send me the other prisoners now?”
“The remaining prisoners are your only hope for mercy at this point.” Cyrus’s hand lingered on the hilt of Praelior. “Kill them if you must, but remember my words, Olivere. You are trifling with the wrong people.”
“You have one hour. Start marching.” Olivere disappeared behind the battlements, leaving Cyrus staring up at the castle walls, a cold, seeping fury blanketing him, making him immune to the warm rays of the sun.