“Tempting,” Terian said with a wide grin, looking down at Partus, whose eyes were slightly wider but spiteful, and who wasn’t saying a word. “Very tempting. I could find myself enjoying an execution.”
“Not today,” Cyrus said. “Let’s have a talk first. Nyad,” he looked back to find the wizard behind him. “I’ll need a cessation spell, if you could, please.”
She nodded, and began to cast the spell. Her eyes rolled back in her head, a light green glow seemed to emanate from around her body, giving her red robe a peculiar aura. She nodded once at Cyrus and continued to speak low words under her breath, keeping the spell in effect.
Cyrus pulled the gag out of Partus’s mouth, and the dwarf spat the last of the oversized rag out with a choked noise that turned into a cough. When he was finished, he glared at Terian. “After all we’ve been through, dark knight, I’d have expected a little more kindness from you when you stuffed that in.”
“After all we’ve been through,” Terian looked at the dwarf with a raised eyebrow, “you should have been grateful I didn’t slit your throat before putting you on the horse.”
“Enough niceties,” Cyrus said, pushing Partus’s shoulder enough to cause the dwarf to look up at him with a smoldering rage in his eyes. “Where’s the rest of the Sylorean army heading?”
“North,” Partus said, his eyes flicked down in uncaring. “What, you didn’t hear him a minute ago?” He jerked his head toward the count. “Might wanna clean your ears out.”
Terian lifted a knee and hit the dwarf perfectly in the back. Partus’s armor had been removed before they had bound him, and the dwarf let out a sharp cry and fell to his knees; Terian’s hit had perfectly landed on the tender spot above Partus’s kidney. The dwarf sucked air in through gritted teeth, his hands still bound behind him.
“Terian, enough,” Cyrus said, placing a hand on the dark elf’s breastplate, barely touching him but prepared to hold him back. “He’s a smartass; it’s not as though we haven’t dealt with those every day of our lives.”
“He’s a Goliath smartass,” Terian seethed, “and you’d do well to remember it. They’re treacherous, traitorous blighters who have no issue with sticking a blade in your exposed back the moment it’s turned. If he sold out his own guild to Goliath for a few pieces of silver, you can imagine what he’d do to the likes of us for much less.”
“I didn’t sell out my own guild,” Partus said, wrenching himself off his knees and back to his feet. “Time came that the Daring was too set against moving forward, I moved on. Hardly my fault others followed with me. It’s not as though they came with me when I left Goliath, did they? Save for the few you lot just left rotting on the battlefield here.”
“I can see you’re real broken up about their deaths,” Terian said, now leaning against Cyrus’s placed hand. “If we left you to your overwhelming grief for just a few more years, we might even see a single tear.”
“I’m not the excessively sentimental kind,” Partus said sullenly. “Unlike some people I know, I deal in the real world; and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sometimes in our line of work, things take an occasional wrong turn down a bad alley. Those blokes knew what they were into when we signed up for this. So did I. If you mean to take my head off for what we’ve done, I’d take it as a kindness if you’d get to it and spare me, please, this sanctimonious, holier-than-thou sermon from the dark knight.” He straightened. “I think I’ve had quite enough of being lectured on virtue by you, Terian Lepos.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Terian asked, and Cyrus felt the very slight pressure against his hand from Terian’s breastplate slacken.
“It means Aurastra,” Partus said with a sneer.
Cyrus watched as Terian’s pupils seemed to dilate before his eyes, like pinpricks of color lost in the light. He felt the subtle shift in the dark knight’s footing through the plate armor, sensed something was amiss before it happened, and a shudder ran through his arm as Terian drew his sword and let out a shout, pulling the blade over his head.
Before the dark elf had a chance to get his balance, Cyrus lunged, kicking Terian’s legs from underneath him. They landed with a clatter of armor as Cyrus seized the dark knight’s sword hand by the wrist, holding it up as he crashed to the ground on top of Terian. Cyrus shoved down with his weight and strength, pinning the dark knight into place. “Enough! You’re not killing him.”
“Oh yes, I am,” Terian said, not even bothering to strain against Cyrus. The dark knight glared at Cyrus with frosty eyes. “It may not happen today, or tomorrow, or even this month or year, but something you need to realize, Davidon-it will happen. If I mean to kill a man, he will die.” Terian jerked his hand away from Cyrus, and slowly slid his sword back into the scabbard as Cyrus stood up and proffered a hand to help Terian up. “Nothing stops that. It’s just a matter of timing, that’s all. But you’re right,” Terian said, hauling himself back to his feet. “It’s not today.”
Cyrus watched Terian out of the corner of his eye but also saw the smug Partus send Terian a little wave. The dark knight didn’t react, at least not visibly, though Cyrus could swear he felt Terian’s glare burning a hole into his back. “I’m not even going to ask you what Aurastra means,” Cyrus said, his attention back on Partus.
“You should, it’s an interesting tale,” the dwarf said.
“I want to know about the Sylorean army.” Cyrus kept his gaze trained on the dwarf, though he spared a glance at Count Ranson, who watched the proceedings with cool disinterest mingled with a certain disdain. He’s not impressed with the discipline of my army right now, that’s for sure. Neither am I, when you come to it. I just had a man try and slay a prisoner in front of me and I had to take him down myself. Not a great sign; at least I got the result they were looking for.
“Yeah, it went north,” Partus said. “We split far up the countryside from here. They were supposed to hit country towns, plunder and pillage and the like, lay siege to some keeps and then meet us at Harrow’s Crossing for the battle with you lot, but a couple nights ago the King-Unger, the bloke who hired me-gets a messenger from his capital. Something happened up there, something bad. We’re in the middle of dining on some spoils from a keep we’d broken down the night earlier, and he takes his officers and loads up and buggers off in the middle of a meal.” Partus spat on the ground. “Left one of his lessers in charge, didn’t say much of what it was about. Didn’t much matter, neither, rolling over Vernadam was supposed to be a foregone conclusion, that we were going to crush your army at Harrow’s Crossing even with our reduced numbers and waltz right in or blockade the place if necessary. War over.” Partus let out a rough snort. “Promises not worth the warm air they’re breathed into.”
“So what was it about?” Cyrus spoke and Partus turned to look at him; previously the dwarf had been addressing his comments to the Count.
“Told you, I don’t know.” The dwarf shrugged his shoulders.
“You said he ‘didn’t say much of what it was about,’” Cyrus repeated. “Word for word.”
The dwarf let a half-smile curl his lips, a snide one, as though he knew he’d been caught. “I did say that, didn’t I? Well, he didn’t say much, and what he did say didn’t make a bit of sense, really, not to me at least. Then he and his band buggered off before he went and explained it.”
Cyrus rolled his eyes. “Enough drama. What did he say?”
Partus met Cyrus’s eyeroll with one of his own. “He said, ‘they’re coming.’” The dwarf held his bound hands in front of him. “That’s it. And then he got on a horse and scampered off to the north with his little wagon train in tow, as though Mortus himself was following behind him.”