"Five minutes or less," the ranger said, pulling his bow off his shoulder casually. "Your glorious battle is coming."
Cyrus eyed him. "I"m not convinced it"s going to be all that glorious." The smell of greenery was in the air around them, and the jungle felt close and heavy, not quite steamy but only a few degrees off.
Gareth smiled. "Isn"t your guild founded on these sorts of defenses? All give, no quit, fight to the last?"
"It"s easy to say that, I suppose," Cyrus said, "and I"ve certainly professed it a time or two myself." He lowered his voice. "I don"t even mind for my own sake, but ... leading these good people into death?" He shook his head. "Not much glory in that."
Gareth"s face fell. "I convinced them to get as many children and non-combatants out as I could, but ... it"s a low number."
"Every little bit helps," Cyrus said, pulling Praelior out of its scabbard and kicking at the edge of an exposed root that was almost as tall as he himself was.
"Your help is more than a "little bit,"" Gareth said with a faint, fleeting smile. "It gives us a chance."
Cyrus chewed that one over as thoroughly as the dried meat he"d supped on a few minutes earlier. "I don"t believe it does, not against these numbers." He nodded to the distance, where the sound of crashing through the underbrush could now be heard easily. "Unless they run right past, these odds are so long that even the most foolish gambler in Reikonos would fail to take them."
I believe in you, whispered a familiar voice, faintly, somewhere in the distance.
"What?" Cyrus jolted upright.
"I didn"t say anything," Gareth said. "Couldn"t think of anything to say to that."
They fell into silence, and once more Cyrus surveyed his impromptu army. Erith lurked by a tree trunk, hiding one of the hollows, barely peeking out. She was the only healer on the field of battle, and so far as he knew, the only one who had not bound herself here in Amti. She watched tentatively as the crescendo of noise approaching out of the west grew ever louder, and the battle lines of the Sanctuary army grew ever more restless. Weapons were clutched in hand, bows were nocked with arrows, and Vara drifted to Cyrus"s side at the last, as he guessed they were no more than a minute from the first of the t.i.tans breaking through into sight.
"Are you sure about this?" she asked at a whisper.
He looked at her in surprise. "You"re not?"
She smiled, both impish and sad in one. "It does rather put a halt to that marriage proposal, doesn"t it?"
"I could marry you right here," he said with a smile of his own, "with battle as the backdrop. It"d be very "Warlord of Bellarum," really, almost a holy rite-"
"Yet somehow not exactly what I dreamed of in my youth on those exceedingly rare occasions when I contemplated my wedding day." Her expression softened as the crash of the underbrush grew to a pitch. "How did you imagine it?"
"I didn"t back then," Cyrus said, staring into the dark of the canopy, no light coming in from above, his eyes only able to see via spellcraft. Another thing I"ll lose if they cast a cessation spell. "I never once imagined it-which is probably why I jumped on the possibility so quickly with Imina." He smiled wanly. "The thought of relying on others ... it wasn"t part of who I was back then, so the thought of sharing my life with someone ... well ..." He lowered his gaze. "It was a little too farfetched for me to believe." He took her hand. "But now? I can"t imagine my life without you."
"That"s so precious," Erith called from her place between the roots. "Kiss her already!"
Cyrus did, but it only lasted a second, perhaps a little less, before the warm, tenderness of her lips was pulled away as the first of the t.i.tans broke through the jungle into sight less than a hundred meters away.
There was no exchange of wit when the t.i.tans came, no fiery repartee, words thrown and challenges made. The beasts from Kortran carried a branch at their fore with an elf tied upon it, both legs and an arm pinched off, almost limp within its bindings, but his remaining hand pointed out, croaking, "There ... there ..." directly at the trees of Amti.
The t.i.tans charged without hesitation, without pause, without mercy. Cyrus met them, as he always did, on the fore of the battle line, Praelior finding a knee above the metal boots of his first attacker. His attacker faltered at the strike, failing in his counterattack, an unarmed slap of the hand. The t.i.tan tumbled down and was stabbed through the face by Longwell.
A blast of force from Vara spit into the face of the next t.i.tan coming at Cyrus, slamming him back into a tree and splitting his skull with a mighty crack. He slid down the bark, dropping his prize of the elven hunter on the stake, and the poor man went face down in a root.
The ground was thick with roots, and it made for an uneven charge for the forces of Sanctuary, vaulting the living wood obstacles before them even as the t.i.tans walked easily over them. Cyrus found himself battling for breath as he took down his next foe, the t.i.tan hordes coming as exactly that-a horde, not lines of an army, led into the fight by a tortured man on a stake, with much cheering, like a hunt with near-wild dogs and men that Cyrus had once had the misfortune to witness.
Even now, the t.i.tan jeers filled the air in that peculiar language of theirs, full of glee and rage all at once. The smell of them was in the jungle air now as well, musty and deep, the first few dead adding their own particular scent to the early night air.
Cyrus severed a hand that reached for him, fighting furiously against all threats. Calene lanced an arrow into the face of that t.i.tan, sending him flinching back. Menlos Irontooth followed it with his wolves, attacking the exposed ankles of this particular t.i.tan.
The line of battle was already chaos, though not somehow as bad as it had been in the Heia Pa.s.s. The t.i.tans fell at a faster pace here, even without spellcaster magic at Sanctuary"s easy disposal. Cyrus watched three t.i.tans turn on their brethren, and knew as a fourth and fifth joined the fray on the Sanctuary side, that J"anda Aimant had entered the battle.
Still, the t.i.tans were relentless, flooding into the battlefield as they had into the arena in Kortran, enthusiastic if not skilled, trying with everything in them to overmatch their tiny prey and constantly outmaneuvered by them nonetheless.
"Sure you don"t want to do that wedding now?" Cyrus shouted as he launched himself up and landed on the back of a stooped-over t.i.tan"s neck. He plunged Praelior into the sweet spot between vertebrae, and exited with a leap before the t.i.tan toppled over.
"I hope you"re not asking one of these dead beasts to marry you," Vara called back from some fifty feet away. "Because I would expect that from the Guildmaster of Goliath, but we hold you to a somewhat higher standard in Sanctuary."
"Is that so? Then should I take aim for royalty of some sort, then? Perhaps hold out for a dwarven princess or some elven royal-?"
"It"ll be a frosty day in the Realm of Fire before you get any offers from elven royals, I"d wager, other than a few opportunists who have more issues with their father than even you do," Vara said, leaping from the shoulders of one t.i.tan that she had just struck down to the next. "But I might know a certain elf of some importance that could be interested."
"Is that so?" Cyrus asked, splitting a leg from a t.i.tan to the howls of his victim.
"Don"t be coy," Vara said, smirking as she vaulted down, "or you might lose your "last hope.""
"Never, shelas"akur," Cyrus said, not entirely able to cover the anxious feeling that followed his braggadocio, and instead planting his blade in a leaning t.i.tan"s skull. "Never leave me."
The t.i.tan numbers were increasing, but Cyrus saw little sign of his own troops growing in number. A trickle of Sanctuary fighters were coming out of the trees of Amti, a few at a time, and then they stopped altogether for some several long moments, during which J"anda, still unseen, seized a never-ending procession of t.i.tans and reversed them upon their own, single-handedly holding off any a.s.sault from their left.
"This lack of reinforcements is concerning," Cyrus muttered as he was kicked by a pa.s.sing t.i.tan. He clipped a tree and caught himself on one knee, the wind knocked out of him.
"Perhaps your people thought the better of throwing themselves into this fruitless endeavor," Gareth said, running past in a flash, yanking Cyrus back to his feet as he went.
"We"re not that smart," Cyrus replied, straightening up with some effort.
"You"re also not alone!" came the call from above. The armor of Alaric Garaunt came raining down into battle from on high, the axe of its new wearer brandished above. Terian"s blow found the back of a t.i.tan"s neck and separated it cleanly as the white knight swept down to Cyrus"s level on the wings of a Falcon"s Essence spell.
"Glad to see you," Cyrus said with a grin as Terian sped down to him. "Might not want to rely on that for loft when the cessation spells come to call, though."
"True enough," Terian said, and with a wave of his hand his boots slapped back to the earth. "Sorry for the tardiness. It took a few minutes for your spellcasters to coordinate and bring mine in, but ..." He grinned. "Now we"re here, and more of us are coming all the time."
"Then maybe we"ve got a little more of a chance," Cyrus said, with a grin of his own, as the next wave of t.i.tans burst through the trees in front of them.
"I wouldn"t call it even just yet," Terian said, and now he was back to grim. "You got a plan for ending this?"
"I was thinking we"d just fight to the death."
"Oh, h.e.l.l." Terian puckered his lips. "I should have known." But he swung his axe, delivering death to the next t.i.tan, and the one after that, his army falling in behind him, a trickle of spellcasters joining them now in the battle at the trunk of the trees.
The t.i.tans came thicker now, and more armored, sweeping in under branches as warriors and rangers of Sanctuary and the Sovereignty fought side by side. They gave against the onslaught, surrendering ground and pressing back, and Cyrus was reminded of the days of Luukessia once more, of the ceaseless drive of the scourge to knock them back.
And that didn"t end so well for us, Cyrus thought, with just as implacable a foe, but weaker, and more easily channeled along controllable lines. He watched Vara blast a t.i.tan with her force spell so hard that its neck was snapped back and was broken. Still, though ... we aren"t failing ... perhaps we could- "YAAAAAAAAAAH!" the low, rumbling shout came from somewhere above, and the entire battle seemed to pause as everyone looked skyward. A black blur, a dark shadow in the night came falling down like a stone, crashing into the back of a t.i.tan"s neck and hammering him into the ground with fury. Rocky hands rose up and pummeled the already downed t.i.tan, shattering skull and drawing blood.
"I AM LORD FORTIN THE RAPACIOUS OF ROCKRIDGE!" the rock giant shouted, voice crackling in fury over the suddenly quiet jungle. "DEFENDER OF THE EMERALD FIELDS AND GRAND KNIGHT OF SANCTUARY!"
"I don"t remembering anyone bestowing him that particular t.i.tle," Vara said into the silence.
"I"ll do it later," Cyrus said, transfixed as everyone else by the rock giant"s entry to the fight. "I like it."
"IF YOU SEEK BATTLE, GLORY AND DEATH, SEEK ME, COWARDLY t.i.tANS!"
With that, the fray resumed, but in a suddenly unbalanced shift. t.i.tans that had been advancing toward Cyrus and the others, even some who had been in the throes of combat, broke loose and turned toward Fortin, coming at him in a knot, fighting amongst each other for their opportunity at the rock giant"s challenge. Cyrus watched a few breaking into fights with each other, jabbing out eyes, crushing throats, throttling their fellows, and he was hard pressed to say whether J"anda had even had any sway on this particular outbreak of feuding among the t.i.tans.
Cyrus fought to the side as well, the rock giant still in the midst of a thrashing ocean of t.i.tans. Body parts were being flung, knees were being crushed, and the anguished screams of t.i.tans were enough to suggest to Cyrus that the rock giant was in the thick of it, but he hurried along nonetheless, plunging his sword into the backs of exposed knee joints and slitting throats among the fallen in a race to move with the line into place to defend Fortin- The sound of feet crashing into the clearing, louder than any others, made him turn his head to the side. He looked once, then did a double take and turned again to be sure he had seen what he thought he had.
It was exactly what he had feared.
A t.i.tan stood at the edge of the fight in full plate armor, covered from head to toe in the manner of Arkarian warriors. As Cyrus watched, awestruck in contemplation of trying to fight through even folded steel smithed at such a scale, the armored t.i.tan spoke in the familiar voice of Talikartin, but with an even rougher edge, the bucket-shaped helm"s dark eye slits focused right on him.
"Cyrus Davidon," Talikartin said, "you let a creature of the earth do your fighting, issue your challenges for you? How cowardly you have become, to hide in the shadow of such things rather than fight your own battles-and scarcely worth the battle I came all this way just to have ... with you."
"You came all this way for me?" Cyrus asked, staring across the darkened forest at the armored t.i.tan, whose head was held high, eye slits shadowed. "Well, then what are you shuffling toward that rock giant for?" He waved. "Come on over here, Tali, and let"s finish this properly."
Talikartin"s nose flared in fury, snorts echoing in the dark under the canopy and the night sky. "Do you think me a fool? How many times have you run from me now?"
"Only every time your army tries to rush in and crush us," Cyrus said, swallowing his nerves. "If you came here for me ... fight me."
The battle around Fortin had ceased, and every eye in the forest was on the challenge being offered to Cyrus. "You negotiate like a merchant," Talikartin scoffed. "Too long in that human capital and its profane markets has soured you, turned you into something weak and incapable of staring into the true face of combat, meeting it with your eyes and striking out at it."
"Yeah, well, I didn"t get to choose where I grew up," Cyrus said, stalling for time. He saw Vara edging around behind him, circling up a tree. "Neither did you, big boy, though I suspect if you"d grown up in Reikonos like me, you might have also had some civilizing influences on you, unlike the sort you run into out here in the savage wilds." He waved a hand around. "Like for example, you might have learned-very merchant-like-that you don"t necessarily throw your best warrior stupidly into a contest with a creature four times their size without some guarantee of gain."
"You truly are haggling," Talikartin said in disgust.
"I don"t hear you making a counter-offer," Cyrus said, narrowing his own eyes, "so listen to this: I beat you, your people get the h.e.l.l out of this jungle and don"t come back."
Talikartin bellowed out in laughter that seemed to shake the trees around him, laughter that was quickly echoed by the t.i.tans standing around listening to the discussion play out. "You wish to barter for the lives of these elves?"
"They"ve never been a threat to you," Cyrus said, clenching Praelior tightly. "They"ve kept to their lands and-"
"You think we would countenance invaders?" Talikartin asked, still tall, still implacable, still refusing to bend to so much as look down at Cyrus through those eye-slits of his helm. "Tolerate this weak elven sc.u.m to sit in our lands unchallenged? How far you have fallen from the height of a warrior, how low you are in my estimation, how feeble in the beliefs that I was so sure bred true in you."
"You don"t know me," Cyrus said darkly.
"Indeed not," Talikartin said. "You wish to bargain? Very well, I offer you this: Fight me, now, alone, without your healers or other spellcasters as aid, to the death, or I will slaughter without mercy or weakness every one of your guildmates I can lay hands on, tearing them to ribbon and mashing their little heads to paste beyond any hope of healing magic to repair them."
"Here endeth the vendetta," Cyrus whispered, looking up at the t.i.tan. "All right. Fine. I-"
"Don"t!" Vara slid into place next to him. "That thing is armored from heel to crown."
"So am I," Cyrus said, nodding at Talikartin.
"It doesn"t matter," Vara said with a frown, "even Praelior is going to take time cutting through that-a.s.suming it"s even possible."
Cyrus eased in her closer to her. "We always knew it was going to come down to this-coming here, I mean. This was always a fight to the death."
"Yes," she said archly, "but I was supposed to die first."
He frowned. "All these years, you told me that you were afraid you"d die last-"
"Well, yes, and that was why I didn"t want to be with you-"
"But now you are-"
"And you don"t even have the good grace not to go feeding into my greatest fears about our relationship, you inconsiderate a.r.s.e-"
"ENOUGH!" Talikartin bellowed. "Enough bickering!"
"I haven"t had enough yet." Cyrus leaned in and gave Vara a kiss, short, but filled with meaning. He saw the regret in her eyes, the fear, and he tried to smile. "Don"t get involved in this one," he said.
"I will try not to," she said, looking as troubled as he"d ever seen her.
"Talikartin the Guardian," Cyrus said, turning back to look at the t.i.tan, "I accept your challenge."
"Good," Talikartin whispered, and finally, at last, he looked at Cyrus. His helm moved just enough to give Cyrus a full view of the eye-slits beneath, like windows into the soul of the t.i.tan he was about to do battle with.
And it was enough to drive the cold of winter into Cyrus"s very soul.
As he stood there, staring at his considerably larger opponent, it was not the armor, nor the disparity in height, nor even the challenge of strength that caused Cyrus to hesitate, to feel that ephemeral sense of fear that he thought he had long ago banished from his life, at least for himself. None of that weighed in his considerations at all, in fact.
It was the glowing red eyes that sent the twist into his stomach and the hint of weakness into his knees, for Cyrus knew at once that they were eyes he had seen in a thousand dreams over his many years, eyes that had looked into his very soul and handed him a mission to collect the pieces to put together the very sword he held in his hands.
The eyes of the G.o.d of War himself-Bellarum.