“As tempting as that would be, discarding you back to the tender hands of the Grand Duke Hoygraf,” he said spitefully, watching her stiffen as he said it, “I am not so cruel as you and would not use that bastard merely to hurt you as you have hurt me.” He shook his head. “Even after all else, I’ll honor my pledge.” He looked away from her. “I suppose it’s the least I can do, as payment for what you’ve done to-and for-me.”
Her eyes flared. “You think me a doxy, now?” He watched, waiting to see if she would strike at him. “You consider me a whore because I gave myself to you? More the fool you are, Cyrus Davidon.” She tied the neck of her shirt together, but he could still see the redness at her collarbones. “Have it your own way, then. I’ll take your safe passage from this land as payment. And I’ll thank you, once it’s all over, for teaching me once again a lesson I should have learned before.”
“Oh?” Cyrus asked, as she turned from him, grabbing her boots and starting up the stairs. “What’s that?”
“That no man can be trusted,” she said, looking back at him, eyes flashing in the light of the torch next to her. “Not even the one who appears as a hero-a knight, shining-who says he will save you. All men are the same, with their own barbs, and swords, and their own ways of inflicting scars.” Her flush carried all the way to her face this time, and she left, her bare feet slapping on the stone up the steps, and when she reached the flat ground at the top he heard her stride turn to a run until she was gone.
Chapter 30
The dawn found him sleepless, in his tower room, with his armor already strapped on. He left as the first rays came over the horizon. The stableboy, a red-haired, freckled lad, yawned and handed over the reins to Windrider. Cyrus took them and mounted up, riding the long way around the castle, through the southern courtyard and the western one, until he reached the northern one and its gate, taking particular note of the southern gate as he passed it, the portcullis down and rusted, ominous in the silence pouring forth from beyond it.
Cyrus rode out the north gate of Enrant Monge, and found an assemblage waiting. Curatio and J’anda, Terian and Longwell, along with Aisling, who rode next to Mendicant. Not far from them waited another figure, smaller, and Cyrus called out when he saw him.
“What is he doing unbound?” Cyrus asked, pointing at Partus, who sat upon his horse, his warhammer slung behind him.
“It seemed the thing to do,” Curatio said, drawing Cyrus’s attention.
“The suicidal thing to do, you mean,” Cyrus said. “He killed me.”
“Now, now,” J’anda said, “you’ve died several times. What’s the harm in one more?”
“I don’t know,” Cyrus said, irritable. “What was your name again? I’m having trouble remembering.”
The enchanter shrugged and smiled, then loosed an illusion upon himself that made him look like Cyrus, armor and all. “Do you think you could remember my name now, you handsome devil?”
“That’s pretty damned disturbing,” Terian said, trying not to look at the two of them. “If the two of you touch each other, will you become one massive Cyrus, like, twelve feet tall?”
“No,” J’anda-Cyrus said, “we would simply touch, just as would happen with anyone else.”
“Are you sure?” Aisling said, staring at the two of them with undisguised amusement. “Try giving each other a hug and a kiss, just to be certain.”
“That’s revolting,” Terian said.
“I could stand to watch it a little while,” Aisling said with a coy smile. “And then maybe participate-”
“Ugh, ugh, ugh,” Terian said, shaking his head and speaking so loudly that it drowned out the rest of Aisling’s sentence.
“You know,” J’anda said with a raised eyebrow at Cyrus, “if you wanted to really disturb Terian-”
“No,” Cyrus said, and then looked his doppelganger up and down. “It’s not that you’re not pretty enough,” he said with more lightness than he actually felt, “but I find that this morning I’m simply not in the mood.”
“Hah,” J’anda-Cy said as Terian gagged in the background. “The way you say that would seem to indicate that later you would-”
“No.” Cyrus shook his head. “But you do look good like that.”
Cyrus looked over the space before them. They were on a dusty road, assembling with a few others. Cyrus saw Count Ranson and another man, clad in the surcoat Cyrus had seen on the men of Actaluere, speaking with Briyce Unger, who seemed to be watching them both with little interest. A guard posse of thirty or so was assembled near Unger, and Cyrus urged Windrider forward toward the King of Syloreas, catching Unger’s attention when he neared.
“We’ll be riding at a fair clip,” Briyce Unger said with a nod of acknowledgment to Cyrus. “Not so hard as to kill the horses, but we’ll be pushing them. Likely need some time to rest and care for them between rides, but I hope your animals are up to a hard pace, because we’ll be traveling north for at least the next month to get to Scylax.” The King looked at them soberly.
Without another word, Unger turned his horse around and yelled while spurring it, causing the horse to whinny and charge ahead at a gallop. Unger’s guard began to trot forward as well, following their King. Cyrus waited for Count Ranson and the Actaluere envoy to fall in and he waved a hand directing the Sanctuary force, numbering somewhere around twenty-five, he estimated, to fall in behind them.
They rode hard for the rest of the day, taking breaks every few hours to care for the horses and feed the men. Unger marveled when Cyrus had Mendicant conjure oats for the animals, shaking his massive, shaggy head. “You westerners and your magicians,” he said as his horse fed, “our ancestors had the right of it; your land is one in which our men do not belong.”
“I’m a man,” Cyrus said, raising his eyebrow at Unger. “And I have no magic. You saying I don’t belong?”
“Don’t know,” Unger said. “Can you fight those fellows that use it?”
“I’ve fought a few,” Cyrus said. “Killed a few, too.”
“All the better for you,” Unger said with a smirk. “Perhaps I’ll get the chance one of these days.” The King’s smirk faded. “Not anytime soon, though, I hope. We need all the help we can get now, magical and otherwise.”
“What’s it been like?” Cyrus asked as he ran a brush along Windrider’s side.
Briyce Unger didn’t answer for a moment. They stood under a tree that was ten times the height of a man, and Cyrus could see the sun shine through the boughs, casting leaf-shaped shadows on the King of Syloreas’s face which moved subtly as the leaves swayed in the wind. The shadows moved, the shifting patches of darkness giving Unger’s face the tint of a man uncertain, greyed out, cast in shadow. “They come in great numbers. One or two of them is no challenge; like fighting any man or perhaps a cunning bear or mountain lion.”
A very slight smile crept over his lips. “I rode back from Galbadien, from the war, when I got the message from one of my nobles in the mountains saying his hall and the villages around him had been overrun by beasts he could scarce describe-that it was like things out of our old mountain legends, the things that would bring about the end of all men. This man was brave and old and rode with my father in wars that could only be described as fearful. I went home, as fast as I could, and made it only in time to fight one battle with this scourge, this plague.
“I’ve fought battles,” Unger said, his face haunted. “You know, I can tell by your face you’ve been in a melee or twelve. You don’t fear the battle, you thrill to it. I do, anyway. But this battle was different. I’ve been overmatched before, no shame in that. Being outnumbered is a northman’s lot, it’s the way of Syloreas. We fight harder because we have fewer men, that’s the way of things.