Master (Book 5) Read online

  “Deft strategy,” Cyrus said. “We’re an army. They’re a civilian populace.”

  “Hubris is quite unbecoming on you,” Vara said to him after a moment’s pause. “Much like that black armor.”

  Cyrus frowned. “You don’t like my armor?” She rolled her eyes but did not reply, letting his words sink into the silence.

  The wind gusted through the town gates and swept between his legs. He half expected to hear the sound of an animal, anything, but there was naught.

  I stand in the city of Gren. He looked over the mud houses and suppressed a shudder. Here, in a place that sent out armies that menaced half the lands, in a place that my father died trying to reach, and I walk in at the head of an army less than half the size of the one he came with.

  Hubris? Perhaps. Perhaps Vara is right.

  He glanced at her and felt the hint of a smile. He did not turn away quickly enough to escape her notice. “What was that about?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, suppressing the smile.

  “Oh, you are aggravating,” she shot back.

  “Always,” Cyrus said. “In fact—”

  There was a hiss from a doorway, and Cyrus cut himself off. It was followed by another, and then another, the sound of flimsy cloth being ripped from its hangings as bodies rushed out of every doorway on the avenue, and green, mountainous trolls poured into the ranks of the Army of Sanctuary in furious assault.

  Chapter 42

  They came from every direction at once, a true fury of claw and tooth, the way that Vaste had described. They moved quickly for being so large—but not quickly enough. Cyrus had split three of them into pieces before he realized just how surrounded they were.

  “Fire spell!” someone called. It sounded like Andren’s voice, cutting loud above the chaos.

  “Hold!” Cyrus shouted. “No flames!” He made himself heard in a bellow that scratched his throat, giving it a rough feel, like he had taken a long drink of hard sand and rock. “Short ranged spells only! Do not set those houses afire!”

  “You’re so restrained,” Vaste said from behind him, staff whirling as he delivered a crushing blow to the side of the head of a female troll. “I assure you they won’t be.”

  “They already aren’t,” Cyrus said. He brought Praelior down on the brow of a female troll that was charging him, bisecting her furious face and casting her aside. Mammoth trolls were cascading from between the houses in lines of roaring, frothing fury, their faces torn with anger and bellowing into the fray. “I don’t think burning the whole city to the ground and killing children and women will change their minds.”

  “They’re already throwing the women and children at you, fool,” Vara said, and Cyrus looked back to see her blond hair stained with green blood. “They are the sole defenders of this city.”

  Cyrus turned back to the fight and brought his sword across three trolls that came at him in sequence. They were each of them only a hair taller than himself; short, relative to trolls he had dealt with in the past. He saw the patches of loose hair and realized that every one of them was female as well, the shape unmistakable even to his war-filled eyes. “Son of a bitch,” he pronounced.

  “They will throw everything they have at us,” Vaste said. “They will come and keep coming unless you kill them all. This is their home.”

  Cyrus felt the fury crease his forehead even as the sweat of exertion began to roll down from within his helm. He could feel it soaking the top of his head, running down through his hair as he swung his sword over and over. This swing killed a woman. The next a teenage boy, his green face mottled with spots.

  “FLAME!” Cyrus called, his anger rushing out along with a fury and bile he felt deep within. They truly are savages. Vaste was the exception. They will offer no quarter and accept none. They will overrun a battlefield with corpses until something—anything—makes them break with fear. “Cast flames before us and send them to running!”

  “Yes, sir,” Nyad said, and Cyrus caught a kernel of eagerness couched in her reply. A thin line of fire stretched past Cyrus, a gushing geyser of flame that looked no bigger around than his leg as it pushed forth like breath blown forward.

  “Out of the way, girl.” Cyrus looked back to see Verity knock Nyad aside, adjusting her grey hat upon her head as she did so. “Let me show you how to cast fire.”

  Verity’s staff emitted a belch of flame that became a gout. A bonfire-sized burst shot forth in a line that forced Cyrus to step aside to allow its passage. It grew into a wall that stretched twenty feet into the air, solid and wide, and then it proceeded to walk forward into the approaching trolls, catching them in its sweep like a broom pushing forth nothing more troublesome than dirt.

  “This rabble shall prove no problem,” Verity said, stepping forward in time with the movement of her spell. It spread before her like nothing so much as a great shield of flame, one that stretched the span of the entire avenue.

  “This looks familiar,” Cyrus said, jostling into someone next to him clad in armor. The battle had paused, the trolls coming out of the side alleys halted in fear of the spectacle of flame unleashed.

  “That’s because my mother did something very similar in Termina,” Vara said, shoving him back from where he’d encroached on her space. He caught a look of annoyance. “Powerful spell, more than the princess of Pharesia could muster on her best day.”

  “Hey!” Nyad said, her blond head emerging from behind Vaste’s bulk to send them a reproachful look.

  Cyrus raised his voice again, shouting over the roaring of the flames. “Run for your lives, swine! We come to you now with the strength of sorcery, with the power of forces you have not seen since the days that Quinneria sent you scrambling back into your swamps!”

  “That’s dramatic,” Vaste said.

  “He’s always a bit dramatic,” Vara said.

  “Always has been,” Andren said, taking a sip from a flask. “Plays to the crowd with the best of them.”

  “Stand before us and your village will burn!” Cyrus said, ignoring them all. “You have felt the wrath of our kind before, and it broke you. Stand in our path again, and there will be nothing left but ashes. Flee this city now, while you have the chance, or your lives will be forfeit, and we will burn the flesh from your bones, leaving nothing blackened ash of marrow in the ruins of this place!”

  “See?” Vaste said. “Dramatic.”

  “Think he’d do it?” Andren asked.

  “Don’t push me,” Cyrus said, casting a dirty look in the direction of the healer. He looked back to the side streets, the gaps between alleyways. He could see the uncertainty in the eyes of the trolls that waited there, the fear. They took uncertain, shuffling steps back toward the safety of the darkness, away from the light of the street, lit by the midday sun and the Verity’s glorious flames.

  “My name is Cyrus Davidon, son of Rusyl Davidon,” Cyrus said, raising his voice. “I am the slayer of dragons. I am the destroyer of the goblins. I am the fear of the dark elves. And this is my army.”

  He delivered the last with a rush of heat, with the satisfaction of emotion, with a grinding sense of long-festering anger let loose. He saw the eyes, the tentative eyes, and they faded. The fear took over, moving among the trolls like a pox, and they ran, full flight back into the alleys and the huts. Cloth was torn and adjusted as they hid, wide eyes staring out at him, tremor-stricken hands visible against the mud bricks.

  “Let’s go,” Cyrus said, surveying the street around them. It was quiet, and as Verity pulled down the wall of her flame, the path before them was clear. He took up the lead, striding down the street of Gren, a conqueror here in a land that his father had died trying to reach.

  Chapter 43

  The square was a depressing place, a center for a city caked in the grime and dirt of the swamps and ovens, unclean and still possessed of that same stink. Cyrus walked along steadily, waiting for no one but not outpacing his army. He could feel them at his back, waiting, followi
ng, and it carried with it a reassurance even in the silence.

  The sky above held an odd tinge of yellow, the sun refracting through a large cloud. Plants sprouted in the cracks between the dusty dirt roads, making the city look half-abandoned even though he knew by what had happened only moments earlier that this was not the case.

  “There are slaves in some of the houses,” Vaste said from behind him, and Cyrus halted at the edge of the square. He turned around to look upon his army even as he shot a glance at Vaste; the army seemed to be in fine condition. Bodies of their foes, on the other hand, lay strewn in the street on either side, giant green-skinned mounds pushed out of the thoroughfare and abandoned.

  Cyrus felt a sigh build behind his lips. “Assign groups to go house to house. Do trolls understand the human language?”

  “Well enough to get the job done, as you just witnessed by your speech,” Vaste said. “Still, I can handle this; there are only a few words of troll necessary to convey the meaning we’re looking for, and I think I can make myself understood.” He paused, and then let loose a sonorous voice that seemed to reach up to the yellowed sky above. “Unchundah, for-unadhn, Cyrus Davidon! Charenay, ghruntal yas jhraunsah, erti chraumastie!” He adjusted his robes as he stopped speaking, and Cyrus could hear nothing but bare silence over the army and the city.

  “What did you say?” Cyrus asked.

  Vaste stared at him, unblinking. “‘Now comes the master of your city, Cyrus Davidon of Sanctuary; make way for him and cast out your slaves, or he will become the master of you through spell and sword.’”

  “How poetic,” Vara said, and try as he might Cyrus could not discern whether she was being sarcastic or not.

  “I’m not making myself master of anyone right now,” Cyrus said as he caught motion in the doorways behind them. He stared, and bodies began to appear from behind the cloth curtains, haggard figures with bowed backs, ranging in size from gnomes to men of a height with Cyrus himself.

  Cyrus stared; fewer than half the homes had cast out slaves. He pondered it for a moment and cast the gaze over his army. “Find out from each of the slaves just cast out if any of the neighboring houses are harboring unfreed slaves.” He made a motion with his hands, which was matched by immediate movement in the army.

  “And if they are harboring unreleased slaves?” Vara asked, sidling closer to him so that she could lower her voice. “What then, oh master of Gren? Spell and sword?”

  “If need be,” Cyrus said, coldly watching the street. He turned his head slowly to take in the abandoned square. There were carts set all about like some half-prepared circle one might find in the Reikonos markets. Not one of the shopkeepers remained, though. “We need to start spreading out if we’re going to do this in a reasonable time. Vaste?” Cyrus turned back to the troll, who was staring straight ahead with his jaw slightly to one side in contemplation.

  He stirred and looked back at Cyrus. “Yes?”

  “How long will it take us to clear the city?” Cyrus asked.

  “There are only three avenues like this where you might find slaves,” Vaste said. “This one,” he pointed to their right, “that one, and then the last,” he pointed to the left, “which leads to the slave markets themselves. You can expect perhaps some resistance in the markets themselves; I doubt you’ll get much of anything from the wealthy down that way.” He gestured to the right again.

  “There are thousands of side streets and alleys in this city,” Vara said, glaring at him. “You are telling me that none of them contain slaves?”

  “Slavery is a privilege of those with status,” Vaste said with a shrug. “As is having your home on a main avenue. People in alleyways are the poorer strata of troll society. They aren’t allowed to own property as valuable as a slave.”

  “What a charming society your people have built,” Vara observed.

  “I take it by your sarcasm that you missed the part about goat buggery?” Vaste quipped. “We’re not exactly the most civilized people.”

  “Where else will we find slaves?” Cyrus asked. “As many as they’re apparently taking, you can’t tell me it’s all going to service less than a thousand households.”

  Vaste pursed his lips, turning them an even deeper green. “If my people have returned to the old ways—and obviously they have—most of the slaves are working the fields or harbor, or they’ve been sold to Saekaj. The fields are past the slave market, and it’ll be fairly obvious to see once we’re done there. The harbor is straight ahead, but unless something has changed you’ll find only a handful on the wharfs because not many ships come this way. So …” He blinked. “Saekaj. There’s good money in sending workers to Saekaj, and my people need money. That and favors from the Sovereign.”

  “Saekaj will have to wait for another day,” Cyrus said with a swift hand motion he intended to indicate his closure of the debate.

  “What the hell was that supposed to mean?” Vaste asked, mimicking his motion. “We’re supposed to lop off their heads?”

  “I think it’s a gesture to suggest we fling swords at their faces?” Vara’s nose was wrinkled as she stared at him, befuddled.

  “No, dolts,” Andren said from slightly behind them, “it’s plainly to indicate he’s about to draw his sword, so take a step back.”

  “I doubt his sword is so large that anyone need take a step back,” Vara said a little sourly.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Cyrus said, frowning. “I was trying to close the topic of conversation about Saekaj; plainly next time I just need to say, ‘Let’s focus on Gren right now instead of daydreaming about some day freeing all the slaves of Arkaria.’” He shook his head. “My life is not so much a ribald joke as a comic farce. I never imagined commanding an army and invading lands would so easily lend itself to the utterly ridiculous—”

  “Conquer now, gripe later,” Vara said as she started past him. She smacked her pauldron against his vambraces, clanking his upper arm as she passed, ponytail whipping so hard it nearly caught him in the face.

  “Right,” Cyrus said, watching her go forward. “And now for a hand motion everyone can understand.” He raised his arm and dropped it in the signal that commanded the army to march, and he heard them follow the order as he hurried to catch Vara, who was already on her own march. “Would you care to lead a detachment down that avenue to our right?”

  “While you steal all the glory that is to be had from wrecking the slave markets?” Vara asked, tossing a casual look over her shoulder, ponytail flitting as she did so. “Very well, then; I suppose turning out the homes of the wealthiest trolls would be a task fitting for a holy warrior, after all.”

  “You’ll find they’re not much different from the homes of the very poor trolls,” Vaste said, “save for a paddock out back for—”

  “Goat buggery, yes,” Cyrus said.

  “Well, they also eat the goats,” Vaste said. “You know, presumably after their grotesque and wandering eyes have moved on to a younger, prettier nanny.”

  “Much like J’anda, I could do without the details,” Cyrus said, taking his march left around the square in a slow, circular arc. He spared a glance to his right and saw Vara waiting, impatiently, for the first ranks of Cyrus’s army to clear the edge of the square. A second division was splitting off, he could see; so well orchestrated were their maneuvers that no orders had been called. They marched entirely on the motion of a hand. Handy skill to have in the event of a lockjaw curse.

  The flat, mud-built huts down the avenue gave Cyrus little impression of the peoples inside. The yellow sky, tinged almost green, came from a glow that had settled low over the buildings to his right. Every building carried a browned look, like sun baking had hardened the mud against the elements. They were tall enough, he realized, bigger than the mud huts he’d seen fishermen use in the Riverlands or the sand-glassed buildings of the desert dwellers of Inculta. They were troll-sized buildings but made of the dirtiest material he’d ever seen used. There was none of the
artifice of elven stonecutters here, nor of dwarven tunnelers, nor of human craftsman with their brick and wood. This was something of a low art, a functionality that bordered on the basic, like a house a child could build on a city street, doomed to be washed away in the next rainfall.

  “How long have these homes stood?” Cyrus asked, unintentionally aloud.

  “Ten years, perhaps,” Vaste said. “The oldest twenty, maybe?”

  Cyrus looked down the desolate, abandoned street. “Why?”

  “Quinneria destroyed Gren,” Vaste said. “Leveled it to the ground.”

  Cyrus blanched. “But the people—”

  “Oh, they had a chance to flee first,” Vaste said. “After the second battle of Dismal Swamp, the one where she broke our defense with a single spell, she marched in at the head of the allied armies. In a booming voice, one that swept over the hillside and down to the town below—not that far off from what you just did, actually—she commanded them to leave, and then lit the plains outside the gate with the most fearsome display of spellcraft you could probably imagine. Then she advanced it toward the city a few feet at a time, warning the people that if they did not run before her, she would leave nothing remaining of them.”

  “And they left,” Cyrus said.

  “But of course,” Vaste said. “They may be slow, but they’re not entirely stupid. Word had reached the people of Gren when their broken army came fleeing back to the homeland. It was a smaller city then, we were spread around the coast and further out. Dwellings in the higher parts of the swamp, and even as far down as Nalikh’akur. All of them, the refugees, they’d been driven north, hiding behind the—well, there no walls at the time.” Vaste stroked his chin, and let out a short, barking laugh. “We didn’t think we needed walls. In any case, the people fled. Grabbed their children—and their goats,” he sent Cyrus a cockeyed look, “and they ran. Hid in the fields, in the swamps. And they watched …” He hesitated, face suffused with a sort of awe that Cyrus could see came from deepest memory, “… watched the once-wondrous city of Gren, a marvel of the ancients and the elves, as that witch’s magic leveled it into near nothingness.” He looked at the center of the square, to the broken pillar, covered in vines, which remained.