“Women, too?” Cattrine looked vaguely impressed. “You had women train alongside you?”
“Yes,” Cyrus said. “Some of the older boys would take it easy on the younger kids, knowing they could crush us without difficulty. Some of my roughest fights were against the girls. They did not yield an inch, regardless of age.”
“It did not …” She searched for a word, “humiliate you, being defeated by a woman?”
“Heh,” Cyrus said. “Every defeat was a humiliation, and there was no more shame in being beaten by a girl than by a boy. Sometimes there was less. Some of those girls had a pain threshold that made me look pitiful by comparison.” Cyrus felt his expression change. “I haven’t talked about this in years until a couple months ago. And again now. I don’t talk about these things. How’d you do that?”
She smiled. “I asked. Doesn’t anyone else ever ask you about yourself?”
A thought of Aisling flashed through his mind, settling within him, leaving an uneasy feeling. “Not particularly,” Cyrus said.
They were quiet for a minute then the Baroness spoke. “What is her name?”
Cyrus blinked, then looked at her, at the orange light casting a warm glow on her face in the soft light. She coaxed him with a hint of a smile. “Who?” he asked.
“The woman.” She smoothed a wrinkle on the knee of her pants. “The one you think of all the time. The one they say you ran across the bridge to get away from.” She dropped her voice an octave, and he strained to hear her next words. “The one who broke your heart.”
“Vara,” Cyrus whispered. “Her name is Vara.”
“She was not your wife, was she?”
“No,” he said. “She was not.”
There was a moment’s pause, and he heard the Baroness slide across the ground toward him, heard her inch closer, felt her only a foot away. “What was it about her that drew you so?”
“I don’t know,” Cyrus said quietly. “She wasn’t kind to me, not from the beginning. But there was something about her … a draw, a pull between us that was unlike anything I’d ever felt.”
“What was she like?”
“Sharp of tongue, quick to anger,” Cyrus said, “a terror with a blade, and a wielder of magics that could knock a man flat.” He paused. “A fighter. She’s … a fighter, at least that’s how I remember her.”
“It makes sense that a man as strong as yourself would be drawn to a woman possessed of great strength,” the Baroness said. Her face spoke of other things though, and held a drawn, harried look. “I suppose that it must be a great attraction, to find a woman so much like yourself.” She seemed to draw back from him, her confidence crumbling. “My life must seem very dull and pitiful to someone who adventures in far away lands and rides the back of a Dragonlord-”
“No.” Cyrus turned all his attention to her, sweeping away thoughts of Vara. “Not at all. My life is … well … filled to the brimming with madness, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have great respect for the way others live. Besides, it sounds like you’ve been in more peril than I have, living with the Baron.” He paused in thought. “Who told you about the Dragonlord?”
“Curatio,” she said, looking back to him. “They all tell the most amazing tales of you, of your exploits.”
“Oh?” Cyrus looked away. “They exaggerate. Most of them weren’t that interesting.”
“So you and Sir Longwell and your lady elf did not hold a bridge against an army of one hundred thousand for an entire night?” She looked at him with genuineness, and he felt a prick of conscience.
“No, we did,” Cyrus said. “But that was not the whole story. There were others helping us on that bridge, and we had additional forces on bridges to help guard our flanks.” He shrugged. “There’s just more to it, that’s all.”
“In all of the stories they tell, you seem so brave,” she said with a voice filled with wistfulness. “So fearless. Are you not concerned with death?”
He let a ghost of a smile creep across his face. “Death doesn’t concern me.”
She cocked her head at him. “No?”
“No,” he said with a shake of the head. “I killed him two months ago.”
“What?” She blinked. “Oh, you mean your God of Death. Mordo-”
“Mortus,” Cyrus said, the vision of the four-legged, eight-armed god flashing through his memory. “His name was Mortus.”
“They say you have died before,” Cattrine said. “I have heard the tales that western priests hold the power to return life.”
“Some do.” Cyrus nodded toward Curatio, who sat at the next fire, his back to them, staring into the flames. “He does. But only for an hour after death, and only when the death was caused by battle, or injury-he can’t heal natural illnesses, like fever or sickness.”
“What does it feel like … to die?”
“Depends on how you go about it. I’ve never enjoyed the sensation any of the times I’ve died, from what of it I remember. Coming back might be worse but better than the alternative, I suppose. Makes you sick,” he said in answer to her unasked question. “Powerful nausea, an ill feeling that settles in your stomach, and you come back weak, like you’re sitting on the edge of slipping back into death at any moment and a good sneeze will carry you back to the other side.”
“Is it … does knowing you won’t die … not forever, anyway,” she halted, trying to find her words, “is that where you get your fearlessness?”
“I’m not fearless,” he said. “Not exactly. I just don’t scare easily. They taught me in the Society of Arms how to bury the fear, how to master it. The natural instinct is to run from that which you fear. That doesn’t work for a warrior, we’re supposed to take the hits without flinching, to commit to battle so hard that our opponents back away knowing they’ll have to stand toe to toe with our fury in order to best us. That doesn’t work when you’re afraid all the time.” He looked away. “So they taught us that any time you fear something, you come at it with all your strength-not stupidly, mind you, but to attack it-and almost always that thing you were afraid of turns out to not be so bad. Because fear’s not tolerated in a warrior, not in the Society of Arms.” He took a deep breath. “Neither is running.”
“Could you teach me?” She sat next to him, and he could scarcely hear her breathe. “Could you teach me to be as fearless as you? Because I …” She looked away, and he could feel the vulnerability within her, at the surface, and he wanted to reach out, to touch her shoulder, but refrained. “I am afraid all the time. It kept me in a place I hated, kept me prisoner to a man who hurt me, and made me …” she swallowed heavily, “… made me come to you, offer myself to you without even knowing you, just to hold on to what little I had.” She turned back to him and straightened. “I don’t wish to be afraid anymore. I want to go to this new life-whatever it turns out to be-because I want it, not because I want to run away from what I had.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I learned most of it in an arena-the place where they put us from the time we were kids, where we’d fight day in and day out.” As he spoke he could feel the sands around his bare feet, as though he were there. “They started us from a young age, and you learn to revel in it.” He thought about it for a moment. “Or hate it. Some came to truly hate it. They didn’t last. Either way, I don’t think that you necessarily need to fight in order to banish your fear. You lived under the thumb of a man who was so far beyond cruel as to defy any explanation. I’m certain it was difficult for you, to feel … trapped, that way. I have felt … similarly before.”
“Oh?” She was next to him, closer now, and he could feel the warmth of the fire, mixed with his life’s blood coursing through his veins, reminding him that he was alive, and that she was a woman who had offered herself to him in ways that he wanted, needed. “I find it hard to believe that a man such as you could have felt that way.”
“It’s true,” he said. “Long ago, I was on my own for many years, without anyone to turn to or to trust.” He felt his face harden as the bitter pangs came back to him. “I … I’m sorry.” Emotions, strange, similar, crippling in their own way, washed over him and he stopped talking for a beat. “I …”