Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (19 page)

“Patience.”  The Dhanani cast one last withering look up at
the commander, who met his gaze with equal contempt.  Chul flicked his fingers
under his chin in a sign of disdain he had learned from the streets of Farras,
which the commander received with rage.  Satisfied, at least in small part, he
sheathed his knife and spurred his horse up beside Jath to catch up with the
others while the marquess’s soldiers spilled out of the inn and mounted to
pursue them.

A few miles away, they crossed out of the marquess’s lands,
and just as Jath had predicted, those chasing them had fallen behind one by one
and eventually disappeared.  Still, they continued apace for another several
miles just to be sure before they slowed to rest the horses.  Brannford was
still the better part of a day away, but at least now they were not being
pursued. Now they could travel more at their ease.

Colaris was circling them at about a mile in every
direction, a tiny speck above the trees, gliding lazily.  They were safe.

“The marquess’s title is as ancient as any on Syon, as
ancient as Tremondy or Brannagh, far older than Wirthing,” Damerien was
saying.  “Rowan was not the bravest of those who served with Ildar the
Liberator but neither was he craven.  He had a particular gift for diplomacy
and believed that maintaining neutrality was crucial to brokering any sort of
negotiation.  To the extent that little skirmishes broke out between the noble
houses of Syon, he was perfectly suited, due to this neutrality, to arbitrate
these disputes.  Many of the most famous rulings and decisions in Syonese law
were written by the first Marquess of Moncliff, and they helped us avoid much
bloodshed. But over the centuries, with each succeeding generation, the
marquess’s prized neutrality came to be seen as
ennui
, cowardice and
even weakness as each heir took less and less interest in the affairs of Syon. 
Is it laziness?”  Damerien shook his head.  “Laziness is a vice of a single
soul.  This, whatever this is, rings across generations and the corruption
seems to deepen.  The apple falls further and further from the tree, I’m
afraid, and the tree was not magnificent from the start.” 

Chul looked over to see Jath cutting chunks from an apple
and feeding them to his horse as he rode, for which the horse was grateful. 
Then, when nothing but the rotten wormy core remained, he watched Jath throw it
to the roadside.

“Patience,” Chul murmured.

Jath only smiled.

The Abbey of Bilkar

“Kerrick!”  The sheriff made his careful way down the stairs
and across the abbey courtyard.  His balance was not entirely trustworthy over
the ice that coated the abbey stairs, especially since beneath his mantle he
held his injured arm close to his body, more to protect it from the cold than
from further harm.  The result was that he moved like a man much older than
himself, and in spite of the brilliant blue of his cloak, for only a moment, Kerrick
seemed not to recognize him.

Daerwin had awakened a bit disoriented in the predawn
darkness of the abbey surgery, but with no more than a dull ache lingering in
his arm.  His memories of what had happened following his injury had been
dreamlike and terrifying, and they were missing important pieces here and
there, but, as Renda had confirmed for him through her joyful tears at his recovery,
they were real in substance. 

Brannagh was gone.  Glynnis, the servants, the last of his
knights and the B’radikite priests…gone.  He knew the numbness would pass
eventually into rage and then sorrow, but for now, he used it to rally himself
for what must be done.  Time enough to grieve later.

Since the first shouts from the monks in the tower
announcing their approach, Daerwin had watched the mounted knights as they
passed in and out of view over the icy terrain below.  Even at that distance,
Daerwin had known them by their armor:  Peringale, Qorlin, Amara, Phen,
Grayson, Shanth, a few others he could not see clearly…ten in all, with Lord
Kerrick, newly made viscount, in the proud burgundy and silver of Windale at
their head. 

While he’d been glad to see them, he had also felt an
unworthy pang of disappointment.  They were all young knights, and while they
had all seen battle, not one among them was as experienced as those Brannagh
had lost to plague and to the cardinal’s mischief.  The sheriff was not
surprised, really.  These, Kerrick had seen as his peers, and they had been the
only ones that he, as a young and then-untitled knight, had felt bold enough to
ask to come to his family’s aid at Windale.  Or perhaps they were the only ones
who had been willing to go.

Still, unproven as they were, they were here, and above all,
they were alive.  Tears had threatened to overwhelm Daerwin as he’d watched
them in their urgency to reach the abbey. To reach him.

These few of his knights yet lived.  All else would come
with time.

Now he lifted his shaking hand to them where they stopped
just within the gate and they raised a cheer.  Several of the monks were
already helping them to dismount, and inside the abbey refectory, they would be
greeted with steaming bowls of venison stew.

Daerwin smiled, grasped Kerrick’s arm and hugged him in a
warrior’s embrace.  “You are a welcome sight, indeed, but we did not expect you
until noon.  The sun is barely risen.  You must have ridden all night!”

“Aye, my Lord, so we did,” the viscount said, smiling with
astonishment to see the sheriff walking.  “The Bilkarian’s message seemed most
dire.  In truth, I feared to find you on your deathbed or worse from the sound
of it, so we rode at all speed to get here.  Yet here you stand before me!”  He
laughed and hugged Daerwin to him.

“The monk spoke true.  It was a near thing.”  Daerwin turned
to lead him to the abbey door.

Kerrick looked at him quizzically.  “The Bilkarians restored
you?  That seems…uncharacteristic.”

The sheriff rubbed at the healing scar beneath his sleeve. 
“Restored me, yes, after a fashion.  I am yet weak while the muscle rebuilds,
but the damage and corruption are stopped.  Above all, my arm is still mine,
which is more than we had believed possible yesterday.”  He flexed his right
hand and smiled bravely.  “A few passes with my sword, I think, and all will be
well.”

“My Lord,” the young viscount began uncertainly, “the monk
also brought wild stories of plague, of tainted priests, of Brannagh fallen….”

After a moment, Daerwin nodded.  He did not trust his voice. 
Instead, he just patted Kerrick’s shoulder.

“But that is not possible!  Where are the other knights?  I
don’t see…”  Kerrick looked around the abbey yard as they walked, fear coming
into his eyes.  “What has become of Lady Renda?”

“Ah, there, at least, I can offer good news, my boy—that is
to say, my Lord Windale.  My daughter is well.  She is yet within, asleep in
the surgery.  No, no, she is unharmed.  She watched at my side the whole night,
and I was loath to wake her until you arrived.”  He pushed open the abbey doors
and led the viscount inside.

“Praise the goddess.”  Kerrick took no pains to hide his
relief.  “Good news indeed, my Lord.” 

“Aye,” breathed Daerwin.  “Without her, we stand no hope at
all.”

Their steps echoed over the stones in the entry.

“The rest are all lost, then?”

The sheriff breathed in slowly, marshaling himself against
the grief.  He had not had to say it until now, but forming the words made it
all the more real and inescapable.  “Most fell to the plague that attacked us
not long after you and the others left, and ere you start blaming yourself,
stop.  Had you remained with us, you should all have ended up dead like the
rest.  This plague did not recognize virtue or vice, strength or weakness.  It
struck down Saramore as readily as it struck down the merest child.”

“Even Saramore.”

“Even he.”

“By the goddess…”

Daerwin brushed an angry tear aside.  “Any who did not fall
to plague died in the attack on Brannagh.  Or in the glade where Valmerous fell. 
But that is past, if only by a day.”  He listened to himself speak the words
but could not believe them himself.  Had it indeed been only a day?  He looked
down at his newly healed arm and flexed his hand.  But for the dull ache that
remained, he might have thought the whole thing a dream.

He looked up to see Kerrick watching him worriedly.

“Past, as I say.  We must focus on the enemy that remains.”

“Aye.  We know, then, who was attacked Brannagh?”

Daerwin stopped outside the practice chamber and lowered his
voice.  “In part.  My own farmers made hysterical by their fears of plague, but
also Wirthing’s knights––”

“Wirthing!”

“Aye, but there is more. Renda tells me she saw what could
only be an army of mages.”  He raised his hand against Kerrick’s objection.  “I
know.  I know how that sounds, but if she speaks it, it must be so.  And if it
be so, this has far deeper implications than I even dare to consider.  As it
is, you saved some few of my knights, and for this, I am ever in your debt.”

“And I, yours.  Without the Brannagh banner flying over our
gatehouse, the renegades on my father’s lands might have gathered their courage
and attacked us while his health failed.”  He faltered.  “I realize, after your
own ordeal, our tiny plight must seem insipid….”

“Nonsense.”  Daerwin smiled gently.  “I would gladly hear of
your victory.”

Kerrick nodded.  “Father passed into the stars within twice
a tenday of my arrival, more’s the mercy.  His passing was difficult.  The
priests…”  The knight shook his head.

Daerwin nodded sadly.  Taynor of Windale had led his men
bravely in the battles in the northern lands.  While Taynor had not achieved
any dramatic victories, he had quietly and systematically driven Kadak’s forces
out of Tremondy and Windale lands, essentially closing the northern side of the
triangle and isolating Kadak’s stronghold.  Without him, Brannagh and Damerien
forces could not have won the war. 

But now he remembered Taynor of Windale as a classmate at
the academy, a freckled tow-headed boy a year younger than himself who had
followed him around like a puppy one year and towered over him the next, a dear
friend and a sworn brother.

More loss.  He should have thought himself numbed to sorrow,
having lost so many in a space of days.  Still, to his amazement, he had unplumbed
depths yet to his grief and the burn of tears in his eyes.  “Alas.”

“Indeed.”  Kerrick shut his eyes a moment before he went
on.  “The night after, even as we returned from his burial, the rebels sent
their leader to our gates offering parlay, thinking to intimidate the new
boy-viscount, as they saw me.  Their man sauntered into my audience chamber
posturing and making threats upon my very life, refusing to give up his
weapons, proclaiming as he came that he would bend knee to no man, least of all
some ‘bookish milquetoast.’”

“’Bookish milquetoast,’ he said as much, truly?” 

“Aye, he did,” Kerrick smiled.  “And in so many words, right
to my father’s––my—retainer, who was of a mind to dash out the fool’s very
brains.”

Daerwin snorted and shook his head.  “A few years of peace,
and they forget the nights they spent cowering within your castle walls.”

“Indeed.  I met him, my Lord, ‘bookish milquetoast’ that I
am, sword at my hip, Brannagh mantle on my shoulder, with your knights lined up
behind me.”  Kerrick laughed.  “You should have seen the color drain from his
face.  He dropped immediately to one knee and began stuttering and dribbling
out a much diluted version of his demands.”

“Which, I trust, you refused out of hand.”

“How could I do otherwise?  I could not reward such tactics.”

“Good man.”  Daerwin smiled.  “I see much of your father’s
wisdom in you.”

Kerrick smiled.  “But neither could I let his threats go
unanswered, so I imprisoned him with the promise of execution for his threats
in the morning.”  The young knight shook his head and chuckled darkly.  “Poor
soul even called for a Verilionite priest, he was so scared.”

Brannagh’s smile faded.  Execution?  “But you would not kill
a man for so little.”

“Oh, no, of course not!” 

The sheriff breathed a sigh of relief. 

“I wasn’t about to kill a man in cold blood, no matter how
much the ass he acted.  So next morning, with his neck upon the block and his
tears falling into the basket below, my headsman grinding at his ax, I let him
wring from me my slow clemency.  At length I released him and bade him think
carefully upon my mercy.” 

“Never did the birds sing so sweetly to his ear, methinks.” 
Daerwin grinned.  “I trust your point was well made.”

“Enough so that I had no fear of riding to your aid, my Lord,”
he said with a slight bow.  “Not that any such fear would have stayed me.”

The sheriff laughed quietly.  “Well played, son.  Later you
can consider his demands and grant those you find reasonable, the better to
secure your reputation for fairness.”

Kerrick cocked his head.  “If he should find voice to make
such demands again, I would be surprised.”

“Well played, indeed.”  Renda smiled from the door to the
practice area, offering her hand to Windale.  “Dearest Kerrick, I cannot tell
you how relieved…” her voice broke and she looked away.

Daerwin looked between her and Kerrick.  He was surprised to
see his daughter’s practiced poise break.  Surprised and rather pleased. 
“Indeed,” he said, neatly filling the silence.  “Our gratitude knows no
bounds.”

“My dear Lady Renda,” beamed Kerrick.  He grasped her hand
and hugged her to him.  “I am pleased beyond words that you are safe and well. 
It seems so much has happened, and I’ve missed all!”

“I praise B’radik that you did miss all, Kerrick.”  She held
him close, then released him and squeezed his hand.  “Else we might have lost
you.  All of you.  All the knights.”