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

“My Lord Damerien.”  The shivering mage stood and bowed,
grateful for the brief respite from the wind as he stood in the soldier’s lee.

The man’s appearance should not have surprised him, and in
fact, it did not, not really.  The Guardian had known Ildar Damerien for years. 
He had camped, dined and fought alongside him both in Byrandia and on Syon
during the Battle of the Liberation.  Damerien looked the same as he had for at
least a decade.

Still, the Guardian could not help but stare.  Once, in the
smoke and haze of battle, he’d caught a glimpse of Ildar through the corner of
his eye, and for a moment––only a moment––he thought he’d seen…something.  He
was not sure quite what, and of course as soon as he’d looked directly, the
vision, perhaps just a fancy, was gone.  It had lingered tantalizingly for only
a moment, a blinding array of tendrils of power spreading in every direction, a
vision so bright the dark stain left in his eye had taken a while to recede,
but when he’d finally blinked it away, he’d seen only a warrior riding across
the battlefield with no more than the strands of the Guardian’s own protections
swirling around him.

It must have been battle fatigue or exhaustion because he’d
never seen it again after that, no matter how many different ways he’d tried to
look.  And as a Guardian, he had so very many ways to look.

“An unexpected pleasure, my Lord,” he smiled.  “Come to help
me see the lambs safely into Pyran?”

Ildar looked out over the refugees.  “These are the last,
then.”

The mage hesitated.  “The last we can bring this season, my Lord,
yes.  The ice, the cold…  We’ve had no frostbite yet among them, and none
slipped into the sea this trip, but…” he shrugged.  He saw tension creep into
Damerien’s stance.  “I’d not like our chances if we should risk another group
this season.  Not without prayers to Limigar and Bilkar, both.”

“How many remained behind?”

“Oh,” he said, looking over the line of refugees.  “About
this many and half again, I reckon, assuming no more come forward.”

“So many,” breathed Damerien.

“Aye, quite a few, my Lord, but well bestowed and guarded by
my best.  They should be safe until––”

“They’re dead.”

His heart jumped.  “My Lord…?”

“Killed, one and all,” the warrior growled.

“That’s not possible.  How…?”

“One of your ‘best’ was well paid.”  He kicked viciously at
a stone in his path.  “A child ransomed, a life of luxury ensured, what matters
the price?  So those left behind are delivered up to join the millions already
dead––their knowledge, their power in the Art, gone like the rest…  And the
Guardians––“he gestured impatiently, “—I mean the rest of the Guardians––just
stand by doing nothing, saying, ‘It’s not our place to interfere!’  Meanwhile, Cragen
slaughters all but those of Wittister, those who grovel at his feet and pick
the fleas from his furs for their blood!”

The mage looked back toward Byrandia in shock and disbelief,
as if he might see what had happened and somehow undo it and make it not so.  But
of course he could not.  He felt dizzy.  They’d come to him from all over
Byrandia, sometimes families, sometimes entire clans in which the gift bred
true, following the arcane signs and vision marks he’d hidden for them, dodging
Cragen’s forces to make their ways to the coast, to make their way to the
promise of a new life in Syon, away from Cragen’s oppression.  They’d overcome
so much to put their lives in his hands, only to be betrayed to their deaths.

“Take comfort that your traitor was the first to die.  Often
I heard the king say, ‘an a man will lie for me, he will lie to me.’  He rarely
suffers an informant to outlive his news by a breath, and never by two.”

“Is this news certain truth?”  The Guardian’s mouth went
dry.  “Not to doubt your word, my Prince, but we are more than a month out from
Byrandia.  Perhaps this is a lie meant to bait us back for a rescue.  Or
perhaps a tale exaggerated in the retelling…”

Damerien shook his head.  “Cragen is not the only one who
can buy spies.  Your traitor led the soldiers to the hidden ones the day after
you left.  I will spare you the worst of what was done, but know––accept and know
the truth of it––that no one was spared.”

The mage clenched and unclenched his fists, hot rage rising
to his face.  He’d left those he trusted to watch over them, men and women of
the Art themselves, people who had personally lost so much to Cragen.  How
could any one of them have been corrupted?  Selfishly, he wondered how he could
have been fooled.  So many lost…  He turned and vomited violently, retching long
after his stomach was empty.  His eyes streamed with angry tears.

“There was nothing you could have done,” Ildar said gently. 
“Had you lingered, had you tried to bring them all together, you would have
lost these as well and probably perished in the bargain.”

“By the gods, not so!”  His face twisted horribly with his
anger.  “I’d have seen each and every one across, alive and hale, and with all
our power together, you and I, we’d have reduced Cragen’s mage hunters to so
much tallow!  We would have found a way to save them…”  Tears of commingled
fury and grief poured down his face.  “Oh, my Prince, if only I’d stayed!  If
only I’d known!”

“Old friend,” Ildar put his hand on the mage’s shoulder, “we
have not the luxury of regret now.  Cragen has already slain those you left
behind, which means he knows you are here.  He will seek to stop you on this
bridge.”  He looked eastward through the pre-dawn gloom.  “His men cannot be
far behind now, and they follow on horse.  Forget the dead.  They are beyond
his reach.  You must get the living to Syon, at any cost.  The lives of these
few and those already on Syon are so much more precious now, and they will need
your guidance.  My forces and I will hold him off as best we can.  ”

Damerien moved toward his horse and gestured, releasing him
from silence.

“Is there time, my Lord?  If his men follow hard upon us, by
the time your forces arrive, you will engage them in our very midst…”

The duke shook his head.  “You passed far to the north of my
men two days ago by my scout’s reckoning.”  His horse danced uneasily to stand
so near the mage, and he quieted the animal.

“So far south?  That’s treacherous ground, my Lord.”  The
Guardian had dismissed the sharp rock and uneven terrain as nearly impassable
when he’d first scouted for a route he would take with the refugees.

“A necessary risk.  I did not want to alarm your refugees or
the horses by riding too near, nor did I want news of our preparations to reach
Cragen by the main road.”  He swung himself up into the saddle. “By now, my
forces have already moved well eastward and should be coming upon Cragen’s men
soon.  We hope to force a retreat.”

“A retreat or a frank rout, my Lord?” asked the mage,
looking up at him.  “I would not anticipate Cragen committing too many men to
chasing a few mages across the bridge, not while he is still recovering from
the last beating he took.  The sight of your colors alone should give them
pause.”

 Damerien looked away to the east and blew out a hard
breath.  “At the very least, we will slow them enough to allow you to reach
Pyran.”

“At the very least?”  The Guardian wondered what Ildar was
not telling him.  “But––“

“You must protect these few.  All of them.”  Ildar kicked
his horse up.  “Do what you must.”

The mage looked out over his charges, enjoying for his own
sake their last minutes of easy, optimistic innocence.  They walked slowly, but
laziness more than fatigue slowed their steps.  They’d slept and they’d eaten
ere they’d set out from their last camp.  At least this was to their
advantage. 

Odd that only moments before, he had congratulated himself
on how near Pyran they were.  In light of Damerien’s news, it seemed impossibly
far away.  How was he to move them all quickly, without panic, without using up
all their reserves of power?

To move them…or to organize them?  These people were not
warriors, but then, neither were they coddled schoolboys.  Not only had they
each and severally survived against Cragen and managed to make their ways to
him in Byrandia, but he’d trained them well ere they’d set out. 

The difference was, the ambush could now be theirs.  They
knew the attack was coming, which meant they had the advantage.  He looked
around him carefully.  They were still at least a day’s march outside Pyran,
but the terrain and foliage as they neared the broadening into Syon could work
to their advantage.  If nothing else, it would certainly allow them to fall
away by stages to Pyran.  And once there…

Do what you must.

Just after dawn, he drew them all together and addressed
them briefly.  He did not dwell on the massacre of those in Byrandia, only
mentioning it to underscore the very real danger that approached them.  He told
them what he expected if Damerien should fail to turn the mage hunters back,
and he described his plan.  They moved to act upon it at once.

The mages formed up ranks, ready to turn and fight on a
moment’s notice, and in that formation, they moved as fast as they could through
the morning toward Pyran, many running to keep up.  Some had asked if they
might leave traps behind them, but the Guardian had said no.  Most likely
Damerien’s men would be the first over their path, and he would not want them
to come to harm.  Besides, they could not afford the delay.

He saw no need to restrict their magic now that Cragen’s
army was headed toward them, but still he had forbidden them to port to Pyran. 
Taking into account the position of the world and its spin, variations in
altitude and placement…these were difficult calculations to make, magnified
hugely with distance.  They required a perfect knowledge if not direct sight of
the destination.  A single mistake, a misremembered layout of a building, or
even simple bad luck, and the mage could find himself half buried in a floor or
bursting through another person.  Hard enough for a single soul who had at
least seen Pyran, but to have half a thousand mages porting in blindly all at
once would almost certainly result in tragedy.  He simply would not allow it.

At the same time, the youngest, the oldest, the infirm and
the pregnant could not stay.  The presence of these, though certainly a boost
to their strength overall, would weaken the strongest in trying to protect
them.  He needed them away, but most of all, he needed their families and protectors
to know they were away.

He used his power to bolster the beacons he’d laid.  Those
who would not withstand battle could use them as guideposts along which to port
themselves quickly under their own power, one after another, until they were
close enough to run for the city gates.  If he could have sent all of them that
way, he would have, but the logistics and more importantly the dangers of
moving a few score this way were not nearly the same as moving a scant half
thousand. 

They had left right away, and now, this many hours later,
the last of those sent should be within Pyran’s walls warning the city and
bolstering its defenses.  Now he and those who remained with him could focus
all their energy on the battle, if any, to come.

Trees, rocks, brush.  The cover was sparse, but it was
sufficient, and now they had the higher ground.  That much, at least, stood in
their favor.  His hope was that Damerien and his men would appear on the
horizon presently, having beaten back Cragen’s men just as they had in the
Liberation, and the mages could go safely on their way.  But while this was his
hope, it was not his expectation.

He would much rather have made it inside Pyran’s city walls
and had their defenses to bring to bear, and indeed this was his original plan,
but something in Damerien’s tone as he’d left had given the mage pause.  They
might be able to reach Pyran, but they might not.  Should Cragen’s men come
upon them at the wrong time, the near certainty of being trapped in the low
marshes between here and Pyran had forced the mage to change his mind.  This
hilltop was readily defensible, and but for the sleety rain, they would be able
to watch all approaches.  From here, even the darkness of night would work to
their advantage, should they be here so long.  It seemed their best option
until Damerien’s return.

Damn the rain, he thought, peering into the dim afternoon
light.  Still it fell, and he saw nothing but half frozen muck and mire
everywhere he looked.  While the obvious line of approach from the east should
have been visible below them, the rain obscured their view.  Should Damerien
fail to force a retreat, the mages would have little warning before Cragen’s
force was upon them.  Perhaps they might hear the sound of pounding hooves
through the ground getting closer and closer, but with the storm, perhaps not…

Marvelous.

Maybe he should have kept moving toward Pyran after all.

Still, he had chosen this spot and was content to make their
last stand here if such it should be.

“Guardian, I think I see something.”

At least the boy had had the good sense not to shout it. 
The Guardian peered through the storm in the area the young mage pointed to,
and at first he saw nothing but trees waving in the storm.  Nothing disturbed
the strands of power and the threads of probability across the darkness.  In
fact, they were remarkably still.  But as he watched, his eyes widened.  Here
and there, dull glints of reflected gray light, almost lost in the icy rain,
speckled the valley, and his scalp prickled.  Those were not all trees.

Where he had seen only brush and scrub and shadow in the
gray afternoon light, he now saw the ground a-writhe as if with beetles.  But
they were not beetles. They were horses bearing soldiers.

But were these Damerien’s men or Cragen’s? 

He thought to throw light over them, to read their colors,
but stopped himself.  As of yet, they did not seem to know the mages were near,
and he had no intention of letting them know prematurely.  “Take your positions
and hold,” he called to his mages, and the command echoed through the lines.