Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (20 page)

He smiled.  “Of course.  Still, I should very much like to
hear from your own lips what happened, my Lady.”

Lord Daerwin patted Kerrick on the shoulder.  “We shall have
time enough for stories as we travel.  The monks have prepared food, if you’ve
stomach.  I should like to take our leave within the hour.”

“We are yours to command, my Lord.  My Lady.”  Kerrick
bowed.  “We are provisioned and ready to leave here at your will.  Are we to
take back Brannagh, or…?”

“No.”  Daerwin sighed.  “No, there is nothing left to take
back, I’m afraid.  Once you and the knights have eaten, we will leave this
abbey with all praises to Bilkar and go southeastward.  To Brannford.”

*          *          *

The riders slowed their horses as they crested the last hill
overlooking the valley leading to the coast of Syon.

Below, in the fading twilight, the fortified port city of
Brannford was barely visible in the distance, little more than a silvery ribbon
that separated the snowy farmlands from the coastline.

An ancient sea wall built of stones taken from the harbor
itself traced the coast, joining at its ends with a series of breakwaters that
lined the outer edge of the narrow natural shelf to protect the city and, more
importantly, her fishing fleet from the foul moods of the sea.  Inland, another
stone wall surrounded the actual city, a wall that had kept Brannford safe from
attacking armies through the centuries.

Of all the cities on Syon, Brannford alone had not fallen
since its founding, not to great waves or hurricanes, not to siege, not even to
open battle, which was surprising only because it was the largest and most
prosperous city on Syon.  Named as it was during the reign of Lexius, the first
Shire-Reeve of Brannagh, the city was held and ostensibly governed by the House
of Brannagh, although Lexius in his wisdom had granted the city sovereignty to
rule itself with a board of ministers who would report to the House of Brannagh
once a year.  So, throughout its history, it had withstood siege after siege,
patiently rebuilding whatever of its walls were knocked down during this attack
or that.  But wars were not all that plagued Brannford.

Brannford and all the coast of Syon were constantly wracked
with wind and storms.  If the weather had been consistently too bad for
fishing, perhaps Brannford might have become no more than another miserable
coastal farming city like the rest up and down the coast had.  But right at
Brannford Bay, usually once every tenday to a month, the constant churn of
storm systems aligned such that the weather would break just for a short time and
allow the fishing ships in harbor to sail out to sea where they hoped the wind
and weather were less fickle.  And while the waves at sea could be violent and
unpredictable, at least the ships would not get dashed against the rocks.

Timing was the key to survival for Brannford’s fishermen. 
The worst luck that could befall a captain was to be caught in port with a full
hold when the weather broke.  If that happened, he had two choices.  He could
either sell his catch at the scales, a lengthy and tedious process which would
strand himself and his crew in port until the next break in the weather perhaps
a month or more away, or he could dump his holds and sail out again
immediately, hoping for a bigger catch to make up his loss.  Ever hoping for
that better haul smacked of gambling, but a captain’s ability to find and keep
a fishing crew was better if he kept his men working at sea instead of idling
on the quay.

For ships to dump a half-hold of fish had become so common
during these windcalms as they were called that a whole population of
“scavvies” had grown up around the practice.  Just as the winds died down and
the rains slowed, the scavvies would set out into the bay on makeshift rafts,
smoothed planks of wood and even hollowed out logs to wait for the outermost
ships to dump their holds, and usually, they were rewarded.  They would gather
all they could right up to the last minute before the storm hit again.  Then
they’d sell what they brought back to the less reputable fish mongers or,
barring that, share it amongst themselves. 

No one ever starved to death in Brannford, but then, for the
multitudes of poor in the streets, not being at any risk of starving to death
doomed them to a dull gray life of never having enough and never being quite
miserable enough to strive for more.  Worse, being that no one was in danger of
starving, the boardsmen felt no imminent need to change much at all, neither to
hire more guardsmen nor to press for any reform.  So it was in the idle space
between starvation and hope that Brannford’s criminal element flourished. 

Gikka had spent her childhood here in these streets, living
among the scavvies, sleeping in temples, learning the better part of her trade.

As twilight faded to night, Jath lowered his hood and gazed
out over the darkness of the valley that extended all the way out to sea.  “Is
Brannford supposed to look like that?”

“Why,” asked Chul, noting how the worry spread from Jath to
the others.  “I don’t see anything.  How does it look?”

The stable boy shrugged and looked between Nestor and
Damerien.  “Broken.”

 “Broken all to pieces, aye.”  Swallowing her fear, Gikka
kicked Zinion up and raced down the hill toward the city.

She pulled her cloak close against the blowing ice storm and
climbed through what remained of the shattered city wall into the darkness
beyond, listening into the silence past the occasional gust of the storm.  She
heard nothing.  No one stirred. 

The streets she’d known since childhood, the houses, the
taverns, the familiar landmarks and alleyways, even the trees––all were gone,
leaving an unfamiliar landscape in the darkness.  Everything had been
destroyed, swept into drifts of splintered wood, twisted metal, plaster mud and
thatching that lazed in the last receding channels of water which cut between
them.

Water.  Just water.  She fairly choked on the absurdity. 
Brannford’s drainage system had withstood hurricanes and storm surges, even
great waves, time and again over the centuries.  Nothing the sea could do could
harm Brannford––at least, not the sea by itself.  She remembered Chul’s
description of how Brannagh had been destroyed and the immense unnatural forces
brought against it, and she shivered, wondering how Renda and the sheriff hoped
to defeat such power.

Assuming they hadn’t been here when this happened.

 She could see, heaped here and there amidst the twisted
window frames and shattered wood and glass, all the trappings of these people’s
lives.  Lock boxes and kitchen trappings, broken antique chairs, soaked
tapestries and ruined portraits, filthy gowns both silk and wool, boots with
the prices still marked, weapons, statues from the temples, everything mangled
and forlorn.….  Yet no one picked among the piles of rubbish for treasured
belongings.  More worrisome still, no one even picked through them for loot.

She could not see very well in the darkness, beneath the
occasional flashes of lightning from the storm, but what she did not see told
her as much as what she did.  No carriages clogged the broken gates of
Brannford, nor had they been swept away and piled up together anywhere that she
could see.  Had anyone escaped, the obvious direction to flee would have
inland.  West toward Durlindale was the most obvious route. She and the others
would have seen any refugees coming along the road.  Yet they’d seen no one. 
She shuddered, looking over the wreckage.  Not a soul.

Seaward, beyond the broken sea wall, the ocean churned and
roiled, growling where it slammed against the shore, where it should have been
mostly calm.  In the darkness, the waves seemed almost to be laughing at her,
laughing at Brannford’s audacity at trying to claim a tiny piece of calm for
its bay.  More than laughing.  The piers, the ships and even the breakwaters
that had served for so long to keep the bay calm, were gone.  Not broken, not
heaped against the sea wall, simply gone.

As she moved, she could make out the smells of recent death,
and in the mottled light cast over the drifts by scattered lightning, she could
sometimes make out a hand, a leg, even an occasional face looking out at her in
the darkness, and she looked away before she could see more.  With the storm,
the animals had not yet been at them, as far as she could tell, and she was
grateful for that.  She closed her eyes and listened again to the silence beneath
the storm around her.  No one moved.  No one cried or called for loved ones in
the darkness. 

She could not accept the devastation around her.  Brannford
was gone, almost as if it had never existed.  This was the city where she had
first lived and first loved and first found her way in life, the place she had
thought of as home, and it was simply destroyed, like none of it had ever
mattered, like none of the people she had known here had ever mattered.

She ran through the icy rain into what had remained of the
old counting house just inland from the piers.  Most of the building had been
shattered and swept away, but where it had been built into the ground, the
better part of three partially buried walls remained with a waist-high pile of
rock and rubble blocking the fourth side.  Above, a few oak beams held up what
had been part of the roof or perhaps the second story’s floor.  The shelter was
not perfect, and it was by no means safe, but it held off the worst of the rain
and wind and let her collect her thoughts.  She settled into what little
shelter the old building offered and looked out over the destruction,
scratching absently with the long nails of her littlest fingers against the
wall.

She wondered if Limigar might have done this, but she
dismissed the notion as quickly as it arose.  She’d minded the rites carefully,
and she’d given Him thanks for His trouble, as well.  Besides, Limigar always
left His victims a choice.  It might not seem much of a choice, but ever it was
a choice.  From the look of it, these people had had none.  They were surprised
in their beds and destroyed, drowned and crushed along with all their
belongings.

Still, if He’d wanted to take from her everything that had
ever mattered to her, drowning Brannford was the way, especially if Renda and
her father were here.  All He’d miss was Dith, assuming he wasn’t here as well.

She stilled the silent scream that rose in her mind.

No.  Dith would have no reason to be here.  He was north, in
the Hodrache.  Brannford would have taken him far out of his way and to no
purpose.  He knew no one here, and besides, he never could stomach fish. 

Renda and her father could not have been here, either, she
told herself sternly.  The sheriff was injured badly, from what Chul had said,
and that would have slowed their travel some, if only for Renda having to mind
him all the way.  They’d had in mind to go to Windale to collect Kerrick and
the rest, and she thought it likely they might have stayed a night there.  That
would have made sense, even if they were rushed, and it would likewise have
slowed them.  No, she insisted to herself, they were still miles and miles
off.  A day away, at least.

She would not find them among the bodies. 

Would not. 

No matter how deep she searched.

She clung to that certainty and tried to drive out the
thought of all those who were here in Brannford, those she had lost, those she
would inevitably find in the rubble and have to put in their graves, and an
ugly sob rose in her breast.

“And lo, below me, I feel a familiar scratching through the
stones,” mused a gravelly voice from the darkness above her, “and I ask myself,
could that be my noisy little starling, my Gikka, from so long ago?” 

She put the wall at her back as the man tumbled smoothly
from his perch on the beams above to land beside her. His feet barely disturbed
the rubble as he danced over it to spill the energy of his fall and put himself
safely out of her reach.

“But no, says I, she’s lady mistress of lands and mines now,
my Gikka.  This one with the bad habit of scratching at the wall could not be
she.”  He lowered his hood and grinned at her.  “And more’s the pity.”

“Tagen.”  Tears filled her eyes, and she hugged her old
mentor to her.  His hair was almost all gray now.  His tanned leathery face had
a few more lines in it, and he was missing a few more teeth, but he still
looked hale and strong.

“What,” he growled, “and no knife for me, besides?  You’re
getting slack, girl.  Far too trusting.  Comes of keeping company with those
do-gooder knights.”  He looked out over the chaos around them.  Then he turned
and smiled sadly at her, his gray eyes brimming.  “I told you no good would
come of it.”

“By the gods, Tagen, you’re alive!”

“You sound surprised,” he chuckled.  “Oh, come now.  Sure
you’d not think a little wet would be the end of old Tagen, would you?”  He
brushed a damp strand of her hair aside and kissed her forehead.  “Now what
kind of sense would that make?”

“When I saw all this, when I heard no one, saw no one…”  She
swallowed her rising hysteria.  “I’d not dared hope against hope to find you
alive.  Any of you.”

“Yeah, well,” he sighed, “Truth is, you very nearly didn’t. 
An I’d not set the scavvies scrambling for high ground days ago, you’d have
found us all here, amongst the dashed and drowned.”  He shook his head at the
carnage and kicked angrily at the rubble.  “Tried to warn these fools, I did. 
Bloody board of ministers, and not a ship’s man among them.  The fishermen,
now:  they know to listen when a scavvy tells them the sea is in a mood, but
not these.  Tried to make the boardsmen see, but,” he added, looking down at
his muddied threadbare clothes and his patched cloak, “those fine gentlemen’d
not the time of day for the likes of me, nor for looking out their windows at
the sea, withal.”