Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (51 page)

“Bernold of Avondale and Finnig of Estrella are curious
names for murderous thieves, are they not?  They were your knights, unless you
renounced them at some point.  Did you?  No?  I see.  As to what they did…”

Wirthing looked at her, resentment building in his eyes.  “Your
Lordship,” he said to the marquess, not taking his gaze from her own, “you must
pardon me.  I had thought this discussion would prove of interest to us both,
but I see it will be of interest only to myself and Her Ladyship.  I do
apologize.”  At last he turned his glare away from her and smiled at the boy. 
“There is no sense in us both wasting our time here.  Perhaps you would prefer
to take some air.”

The marquess leapt to his feet.  “I think I might!  I want
to ride out and see how my regiment is faring, in any case.  They should be
nearly in position to strike by now.  I should like to watch them in action! 
Ladies,” he bowed, and strode for the door.

In the tenth of a second it took for the earl to glance at
Glynnis, she had already damped her reaction.

She stood and called to the boy as he fairly ran from the
room, “A pleasure to have met you, Your Lordship!”

Wirthing sighed deeply, then looked up at her and laughed a
bit sheepishly.  “I am mortified, my Lady, just mortified.”

She smiled warmly, disarmingly.  “Take only that shame upon
yourself that is rightfully yours, Wirthing. You need not borrow any of his.”

“Lady,” Nara said, rising.  “His Lordship the earl has dismissed
his second.  If he would be made uncomfortable by my continued presence…”

Glynnis turned to watch Wirthing’s reaction.  As expected,
he nearly cursed the air.  Form would not allow him to ask this ancient woman
to give up her seat, yet she was now the sole witness to what they would
decide, and she was far from sympathetic to him.  Had he dismissed Nara, the
nun would be free to warn the Dhanani at once, something she supposed Wirthing
had weighed since he had obviously developed suspicions that they were
sheltering with the tribesmen. 

No, he would not allow the marquess to fall to fall into
Dhanani hands, much as she was sure the thought tempted him.  As tedious as the
boy Banya was, he was the strongest ally Wirthing had at the moment.  So, as
irritating as it might be, she assumed he would support the boy through cutting
his teeth on the Dhanani before calling on him to bring his forces to bear
against Maddock and his men to retake Brannagh lands.  Thus he could not afford
to see the marquess betrayed or his forces weakened, so…he would not allow Nara
to leave, which suited her just as well. 

He smiled coldly.  “That will not be necessary, madam. I pray
you, stay and warm your bones as long as you like.”

“If my Lady would have me stay,” Nara smiled pointedly, “I
will stay.”

Glynnis looked at Corin for a moment, an enigmatic smile on
her lips while Nara’s dismissive words hung in the air just long enough.  “Of
course I would have you stay, Nara.  After all, we may need a witness.”  She
turned to Corin.  “Enough of this.  The letter, my Lord of Wirthing.”

“What of it?”

“I would know that you read it.  Then I would know why your
knights joined the attack on Castle Brannagh.”  She settled into her seat. 
“Until I know both of these things, we have nothing to discuss.”

“Very well, let us speak frankly.”  He walked toward the
fire.  “I did read Lord Daerwin’s letter several times, and it cut me to the
quick.  I wish I could tell you that Bernold and Finnig were disgraceful
knights, but they were not.  They were heroes in the war, did you know that?”  She
shook her head, and he smiled sadly.  “Of course not.  No one does.  The only
heroes in this war were the famous Knights of Brannagh.  I understood my men’s
resentment.  I also felt it, to be frank. I fought beside Lord Daerwin and Lord
Brada in nearly every battle across the central plains, yet all cheers went to
Brannagh!  Brannagh!  No glory came to Wirthing.”

Glynnis nodded, surprised at his honesty.  “I understand.”

“Do you?”  Corin chuckled darkly. “This is nothing new.
Wirthing has always lived in Brannagh’s shadow.  Occasionally over the
centuries, Brannagh daughters have become Wirthing brides, and we have been
called ally for centuries, but generation after generation, my title, my honor,
my…”

“Infamy?” she offered.

“I was going to say ‘prestige.’  My name’s prestige has
stood hopelessly overshadowed by that of the dukes’ second sons, the Sheriffs
of Brannagh.  Generation after generation.”  His hand brushed the hilt of his
sword.  “My sword was sworn to Damerien, as surely as Brannagh’s.  My house is
as ancient, yet always favor falls to Brannagh.”  He looked at Glynnis for a
long time.  “Always.”

The longing in his eyes made her look away.

“Indeed,” she replied, “and your house and your knights have
always served courageously.”  Glynnis brushed what seemed a stray wisp of hair
from her cheek, and Nara nodded faintly.  In spite of Wirthing’s apparent
candor, they both felt the tension building.  “The duke recognized you and
decorated your men generously.”

“Yes, yes, he did,” Wirthing replied impatiently.  “And as
my ancestors have done for generations, we accepted his tepid accolades and
stood aside while Brannagh took the actual glory.”

He turned, his face reddening as his anger grew.  “When I
read what Bernold and Finnig did in the sheriff’s careful words, something
within me awakened, something angry, something proud that has been asleep for
generations while we of Wirthing always stood aside to let the crowds cheer for
Brannagh.”

“Their actions made you proud?”  Her eyes narrowed. 
“Avondale and Estrella were villains!  They sold our granddaughter , our
Pegrine, to her death.  A seven years’ child!”

He waved dismissively.  “Oh, the child meant nothing.  Not
even to them.  No, what they did was far more extraordinary.  They did the unthinkable! 
They defeated Brannagh!”  At once, his face was inches from hers, pressing her
back against the hard chair, his breath hot on her face.  “Don’t you see? 
Wirthing knights hurt Brannagh!”

Her heart was pounding.  Through the corner of her eye, she
saw a faint glow rising around Nara’s face, but she dared not look, or Wirthing
would follow her gaze.  Her fingers trembled, seeking the hilt of the Dhanani knife
at her hip.

“They showed me it could be done.  Brannagh could be
defeated, and I, Corin of Wirthing, could at last take from him everything that
should have been mine!”  She felt his gaze travel over her face and her body,
as if he could see right through her cloak.  “Everything.”  He laughed and
pushed away from her, his hand tapping menacingly on his sword.  “Of course the
sheriff’s pathetic whining missive only fired my resolve further.  I was
already in preparations when Maddock came with his proposal.  Then it was but
to find a pretext so that my men did not balk.”

“Your men still had their honor.”  Glynnis breathed deeply,
trying to regain her composure.  Nara whispered softly where she sat, the glow
about her building slightly and being damped away as fast as it appeared.

“The plague provided just that pretext,” he said, ignoring
her.  “So now the house of Brannagh is defeated, the sheriff’s bride will be
mine as she should always have been.”

Her voice was no more than a whisper.  “I beg your pardon? 
Do you think I should be married to the very man who wished my husband killed?”

“I do.”

“I shall not.” She stood, her voice calm.

“You shall!”  He grabbed her arm and shoved her roughly into
the chair.  “What else can you do, woman?  You have nothing!  You have no one
but this decrepit nun!  How can you possibly retake your dead husband’s lands? 
Even if you could, how could you hope to hold them?  You need me!”

For the first time since she’d arrived at Wirthing Castle,
she had no words.

His tone softened abruptly, alarmingly.  He smiled, shaking
his head.  “But this is not how I meant for this to be.  This is no way to make
a new start.”

She watched with wide eyes as he took her hand and knelt in
front of her where she sat in the chair.

“I have dreamt of this moment for so very long, and now it
has come to pass, and I find myself almost speechless.  Glynnis of Berendor, I
will make you queen.  Hero that he may have been, this is something your sheriff
could never have done.  If you will be married to me, Syon will know peace.  I
even promise amnesty for those of Brannagh, if any yet live.”  He smiled humbly. 
“And I, Corin, Earl of Wirthing, someday King of Syon, will devote all the days
of my life to your happiness.”

She stared at him in silence for a long time, a storm of
emotions churning in her breast, words yearning to be spoken.  Slowly, the
realization crystallized that there could indeed be only one resolution to this
conflict.

“If I agree to marry you,” she said softly, “you would grant
them all amnesty?”

He nodded, though her use of the word “all” seemed to bother
him.  Ah, so he was still calculating, as she’d thought.

A reluctant smile crossed her lips, and laughter twinkled
across her bright blue eyes as her tears welled.  “In truth, I weary of living
as a refugee, and I worry for them.  I suppose I have no choice.  I would do
anything to restore Brannagh and to keep my loyal servants safe…”  She squeezed
his hand warmly and after a moment, shyly, reluctantly, she nodded.

Having said that, she feared he would not think her words
sincere, but he laughed, hearing from her only her acceptance, and drew her up
from the chair to take her in his arms.

Steel flashed as she rose, and in the next moment, Corin,
Earl of Wirthing, fell backward thrashing to the ground, his throat laid open
to the bone.

The words yet yearned to be spoken, words of scorn and
spite, words of hate and anguish that had filled her breast since Renda and
Gikka had brought Pegrine’s poor little body home from the glade where she had
been murdered––words of emptiness and bitterness at the loss of her husband and
her daughter, her home. 

Instead, Glynnis stood silent, satisfied merely to watch the
life drain from the earl’s astonished eyes as the rhythmic gouts of blood
became weaker.  When the gore only flowed and then seeped, she came near and
wiped Aidan’s blade clean on Wirthing’s silk doublet, replaced it in the sheath
at her hip beneath her cloak.  By now, the glow of B’radik’s approval, which Nara
had bestowed upon her and which had glinted off the blade like Dhanani sunfire,
had faded.

“Praise to Rjeinar,” she muttered, unpinning the verinara
leaf from inside her blood spattered cloak and dropping it on Wirthing’s
lifeless astonished face.  “Vengeance is done.”

In the dark hidden niche where the two men had first spied
on the women when they arrived, the young Marquess of Moncliff sat back,
carefully absorbing what he’d just seen.

The knight commander raised his hand in exasperation, and
the rest of his men slowed their horses behind him.  The damnable terrain
seemed ever to shift beneath them in the lengthening shadows of the afternoon
just as it had since they’d entered the Kharkara Plains. The light
foreshortened every feature and flattened every hillock and ravine into the
vast sea of grasses and low trees, so that what looked from a distance to be no
more than ripples caused by a taste of wind were as often as not rolling dips
or even deep gorges.  Several times the soldiers had drawn up to what had
looked to be a reasonable path through the scrub, only to find themselves
looking over an impassable ravine and having to find another way.  They’d lost
hours backtracking and meandering along countless such canyons already, and
still they had not found Moncliff’s men.  He squinted at the sun where it was
but a few hours above the horizon.

He did not want to allow himself the luxury of resentment at
having been sent into the cold and treacherous Kharkara plains, he and what
remained of his men, as nursemaid to that insufferable brat of a marquess.  The
boy was as arrogant as he was ignorant of war, and his rabble––a rabble they
had yet to locate––were too ill trained to understand the difference between
hiding from the enemy and hiding from one’s allies.  They were not at the
rendezvous point when Wirthing’s men arrived, and the scouts had found no sign
of where they’d gone.  Reluctantly, he’d moved his men forward toward the
objective on the assumption that Moncliff’s men had grown impatient waiting and
moved ahead without them because, while Moncliff’s men had no discipline, by
the gods, his men did.

Logistics would prove problematic for them, however.  He and
his men could spend the tenday if not the entire season searching the plains
for this regiment.  Meanwhile the men had to eat, and the horses had to eat….
Water was already scarce.

No. 

If they did not find the marquess’s men by sunrise, he would
return his men to Wirthing and leave Moncliff’s forces to their own against the
Dhanani.  He might be forced to withstand the earl’s ire, but on his honor, he
would not lose men to this child’s whims.

Worst of all, he found himself overlooking yet another chasm
that seemed to sink itself deeper and deeper into the plain as he drew near. 
This trick of the afternoon sun grew worse as the shadows lengthened.  If he
were not in the Kharkara, he would be inclined to attribute the strangeness to
some deliberate trickery, a capricious work of magic.  For all he knew, perhaps
a kind of magic was at work, something set upon the Kharkara ages ago and
forgotten.  Whatever it was, it gave him chills.  Then again, the thought of
any magic gave him chills.

All magic.

His thoughts touched again as they had several times in the
last months on Brannagh, on the siege against their one time ally.  Had it
truly been but a season?  It seemed long ago now, a memory woven all of murmurs
and torchlight in the dark of night, like something imagined.  But it was real.