Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four by Robert J. Crane Page A

you’re among friends here.”
    He gave her a wan smile and turned back toward the officer’s fire, Odellan at his side. “Even if I forgot, there seems to be no shortage of reminders.”
    “These people love you, General.” Odellan said it with quiet certitude. “The veterans, the ones who came to help you train the newest, they have been through fire and death with you and have followed you off the very map.” He shook his head. “I wish I had commanded such loyalty when I was in charge of the Termina Guard.”
    “I daresay you commanded more in your last battle,” Cyrus said. “My people have a very good chance of resurrection if they should fall. Your men knew that the fight for Termina would cost many of them their lives and they stood with you anyway.”
    “They fought for King and country and for their homes, for the lives of their brethren,” Odellan said with a quiet shake of his head. “That is a powerful motivator, and one that is lacking in guilds such as Sanctuary. At first blush, I should think guild life would be the purest sort of mercenary company, a people banded together for mutual gain, undertaking adventure, exploration and battle in the farthest and most dangerous reaches of the world for the wealth and riches they can reap. Yet it is not so.”
    Odellan’s mailed fingers rested on his helm, his eyes seeming to trace the lines of the carving upon it. “I watched Sanctuary stand against the God of Death—a god! Something not seen by living eyes in generations of your people! Yet it was not Sanctuary that broke but Mortus. Of those who stood with you, only one of them shouted in fear, and none of them lost command of themselves or ran. I should imagine that any mercenary company would have trembled when he descended from the air above us. I would think that even the Termina Guard, who held against the certain death that the dark elves levied against us, would have quailed at the sight of a god, of death, of the endless sleep.
    “You say that these people stand with you because they know there is a chance of resurrection if they fall. I remind you that many of them stood with you then, in the Realm of Death, when there was no chance at all if they died. It is not because of King or country or riches or gain that the army of Sanctuary stood with you then or that they are with you now, here beyond the edge of the world.” The fire in Odellan’s eyes burned brighter. “They believe—in you, in the cause, in what we are doing here. The veterans believe enough that they would die for it.” Odellan turned his head and looked back to the still-burning fires that littered the beach. “The newest have been sent here to find that conviction for themselves.”
    Cyrus stopped and looked with Odellan down the beach, at the thousand souls under his command, waiting for his word to march forward on the morrow, into battle, pain, and possible death. “I don’t know what kind of belief I can give them.” He shook his head, and the little mirth that he had felt when talking to Martaina dissipated like a wisp of smoke after a fire has been put out. “I’m carrying a weight of my own right now. I’ll do my duty, help forge them in battle and keep them from danger as best I can, but … belief?” Cyrus shook his head. “That’s something they’ll have to figure out for themselves.”
    “You’re right, they do,” Odellan said. “But you will show them the way.”
    “I don’t know how I can do that,” Cyrus said, “when I’m not sure what I believe in anymore.”
    “You still hold true to duty—honor—purpose. These are things you wear like your armor.” Odellan stared at Cyrus, and Cyrus looked back at him. “You are here at a time when you’d almost assuredly like to be elsewhere. You’re doing your duty to your guild and holding true to a friend who asked for help.”
    Cyrus cleared his throat. “It sounds pretty when you say it like that, and I told myself the same when we