Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (29 page)

“Six hundred mages,” Aidan whistled softly.  “I cannot even
imagine it.”  His gaze took them all in.  “You must have been terrified.”

“Not terrified. We were overwhelmed. ” Sir Tero spoke up,
his deep voice no more than a growl in the darkness.  “There was no run, no
fight, no indecision, no terror.  There was only ‘keep everyone alive’ at Nara’s
order, and that is what we did.  Terror is a luxury for when you have nothing
left to do.  By the time we had nothing left to do, there was nothing left to
fear.  We had succeeded.”

Aidan looked into Tero’s eyes, thinking to see there the
malignant taunts he’d seen in Vaccar’s eyes whenever the shaman had said
something embarrassing and unwarriorlike, but no.  This man was a knight
through to his marrow and one who had taken many lives in the war, but he was
not a brute.  Tero was a creature of duty and honor, one whose blood froze
rather than burned in a crisis.  Aidan nodded to him, and he returned the nod.

Arnard shrugged.  “From there, I’m afraid the story grows
duller still.  We waited until we could no longer hear them scratching around
the great stone that sealed the tunnel to the crypt and then waited a bit
longer before we came out.  With enemies in every direction, we went the only
way that seemed sensible.  We struck out into the Bremondine forest and hid
there until our provisions ran low, and then, once we were fairly certain we
had not been followed, we came here.”

Bakti looked earnestly at Aidan and murmured quietly to him.
Aidan nodded.

“The chief asks, and with this he asks your absolute candor: 
do you believe they might follow you here?”

Again, the knights looked one to another.

“No,” answered Dane.  “I’m no great scout, but I served
under Gikka of Graymonde at times in the war.  I learned me right well how to
clean a trail.  So we know they do not follow.  We should be safe.”

“No,” said Tero quietly, looking into the fire.  “We only
know they did not track
us
here.  We do not know their objectives, so we
cannot know where they go next.”  He looked up at Bakti.  “Best we prepare and
hope it is for nothing.”

Bakti nodded without waiting for the translation.

Landbridge

Glasada’s ears pricked forward and he slowed his step as he
neared the top of the hill, alerting Dith to the danger ahead.  Dith was
pleased that his horse had learned quickly that he did not need to sough or nicker
or make any vocalization to signal danger to his rider.  He touched the horse’s
thin shoulder gently, acknowledging what he had already felt on the strands and
what he’d been dreading since he left Pyran:  the mages were massing ahead.

“The Lacework, as I suspected, although it’s
substantially larger and higher than it was when last I saw it.”

Indeed, the image of the Lacework which Galorin had placed
in his thoughts was delicate by comparison to what he saw before him.  Great
towering coral reefs ranging in color from white to dark brilliant purples cut
upward from the ground below the sea, piercing through the crevasses in the
original gray stone lattice and climbing above it by hundreds of feet in
places.  Between the jutting spires of dying coral, the stone was surprisingly
clean.  Whether it was because the coral itself had shunned the stone or
whether the mages had cleared a path, he could not know, but the blotchy
rainbow reefs had held aloof from the bland rock, leaving gaps in places along
the way.  Most were only of a size to break a horse’s leg, but a few he could
see were large enough for a man to drop through to the sea below.

“Have a care.  Even before I sank the landbridge, this
was already the most difficult part of the journey, but now….  As I told you
before, were I planning an ambush, this is where I would place it.”

Dith blinked away the exasperation that filled his
thoughts.  Of course Galorin had been telling him all along that they would
ambush him at the Lacework, and of course Galorin was right.  But neither of
those facts had been useful before since he could not very well port past it,
and neither was of particular use right now, especially since the Lacework bore
no resemblance to what they had both expected.

He had left the main road before he was even out of sight of
Pyran, and once he had felt secure enough to stop his headlong flight, the
first order of business had been to dig his gold robes and his seamless
Bremondine boots out of his rucksack.  He was quite cold by that point and in
spite of the comfort of his seamless robes, he found himself missing the
scratchy heavy velvets and wools that his power had flashed out of existence
like so much spider silk.

To say nothing of the sword.  Not that he’d ever really
learned to use one, but given his present situation, he wished he’d been able
to keep some weapon about him.

By far, his biggest concern thus far had been that the
provender he’d brought along for Glasada would not be enough.  He had bought
only as much as Glasada could carry, enough for perhaps a tenday, thinking to provision
more completely once they had secured passage aboard ship.  He could provide
for himself, taking fish from the salt water ponds they passed or even catching
a sea bird if necessary, and of course he could distill fresh water for himself
and the horse easily enough, but for food, Glasada was completely at the mercy
of the feed bags since he could not eat the sea plants.  Every option that
presented itself to find food for him this far from either shore required a
bending of probabilities.  As soon as he’d touched the strands, he’d known the
mages would be upon him and all would be lost.  So he’d been rationing the feed
carefully to stave off the worst of Glasada’s hunger pangs, his heart breaking
as his horse grew thinner with no end to the landbridge in sight.

Several times, he had ridden near enough to the road to see
a few of the mages on hilltops along the way, looking out over the bare muddy
terrain and then vanishing, whether porting away to wherever their forward camp
was or merely running away.  No doubt they had regular patrols, and no doubt
he’d managed to be in the right place to see them only a fraction of the time,
but it was enough to know they were looking for him.  He had watched them bind
their clumsy beacons to the strands to detect any movement, any presence, that
might disturb them, and each time he’d ridden by them undetected. 

Still, their calculations with regard to his speed of travel
had been surprisingly accurate—accurate enough that he worried that, for all
his care, they might know exactly where he was.  If so, they were not so much
looking for him with their little scouting trips as they were tracking him or
even herding him in the direction they wanted him to go.  An unsettling
prospect.

The broad miles north and south he had taken for granted,
and only as they’d narrowed approaching the Lacework had he begun to feel
constricted.  Now, with but a half mile of width over twenty miles of blind
roadway cutting between great towers and canopies of coral reef and areas with
no cover at all, he would alternate between being utterly blind and having
nowhere to hide.  He had no way to port past it since one side was not visible
from the other, and he had never seen the other side.  Whatever he did to cross
the Lacework, he would be vulnerable to their attacks.

“Vulnerable?  No more so than you were in Pyran.”

“They were completely disorganized in Pyran,” Dith muttered
under his breath, “and we were bloody lucky.  Besides, they have had time to
gather reinforcements.”

“Time, perhaps, yes, but inclination?  I tend to think
not, since gathering reinforcements would mean making a report, a thing they
might not wish to do, hard on the heels of defeat.  You have so little faith in
yourself, boy.  Fortunately for us, they have immense faith in you, and it
keeps them at bay.  Do you suppose the fact that you decimated them with only
your protections in Pyran is lost on them?  Or the fact that that they stand
upon ground which you raised rather readily and could sink again if the mood
struck?  I wager half will break and run the moment you show your face.”

“Have you forgotten that this same army killed you in your
own keep?” he seethed.  “I will not underestimate them the way you did.”

“Then do not.  But likewise, do not so overestimate them
that you defeat yourself with panic.  Yes, there are many of them, and yes,
their power magnifies with their numbers.  But understand:  you are a single
man, and they are many.  In any other context, you would be at a disadvantage. 
But not here.  Not on the Lacework.  At least, not if you’re careful.”

Dith slid quietly from the saddle and moved up the hill
ahead, slipping slightly in the mud as he climbed.  From the hilltop, he could
see the easy grade of the Lacework rising and narrowing still further, even as
the land beneath it disappeared under the water.  At the near side of it, men
and women of the Art were slogging about in the swamp surrounding the base of
the coral and stone lattice.  Behind them, a tapestry of bent and twisted
strands led to illusions, protections and even latent attacks they’d readied
for him, as if they’d expected him to ride right up the road––something he had
not done since he left Pyran––and straight up the Lacework without a thought. 
They could not be that stupid.  Could they?

“I suppose they could, but given your fear of
underestimating them, I would err to the side of caution.  This whole scheme is
meant to draw you into overconfidence, I think.”

Dith nodded and slipped back down the hill to mount
Glasada.  They no doubt expected him to ride straight through and weaken
himself by holding off all their silly nonsense.  Of course, in their zeal to
embroider the edge of the Lacework so carefully, they had necessarily had to
leave the areas beyond them unprotected, areas they apparently did not expect
him to be able to see from the road, but areas he could see quite well from the
hilltop.  He considered only for a moment before he and Glasada––

“No!  What are you doing?”

––ported to a clear space on the Lacework.

*          *          *

“
Ro brimina, brimina,
” Chul murmured to reassure his
horse and urged him just a bit faster over the flat.  Between the slick patches
of mud and the constant ropy tangles of dying seaweed and stinking kelp that
grabbed at the horse’s hooves as he moved, he’d had to go carefully, but now
with a length of the ancient stone road ahead of him, he could afford to let
his horse stretch his legs a bit.

Each morning before dawn when they broke camp, Jath reminded
him to ride with caution.  His words said that it was a wonder that they’d not
yet lost a horse to injury, but what he meant was that it was a wonder Chul
hadn’t lost his horse yet.  Of all the horses they’d brought along, including a
fair number of those Jath had gathered at Brannford, his had had the least
training.  Now and again, to let this horse rest and clop along the easy road
with the others, he’d taken one of the rescues from Brannford, but all that had
served to show him was that this horse, this white horse he’d thought
hopelessly stupid for so long, was his horse after all. 

So he’d taken Jath’s further advice, and, rather than ride
along the road with the others along the much safer stone of the ancient
roadway, he’d ridden with Gikka to scout ahead, using the opportunity to give
his horse the training he needed––proper Dhanani training, as he’d promised. 
To his joy, the horse drank the training up, as if he’d been thirsting for it
all his life.  Already, he could feel a difference in the horse’s confidence
and his own.  Between the Dhanani training and what Chul was incorporating of
the way the knights trained their horses, by the time this horse earned his
name, he would be, indeed, a proper Dhanani warhorse.

Chul had left the heavy blacksmith’s saddle in Brannford,
his gift to the new Baron to go with Jath’s gift of one of the spirited young
geldings he’d rescued.  Poor Tagen knew as little of riding as he did of being
a nobleman, but the horse was good natured if a bit oversized––a fine and
patient mount for the Baron of Brannford––and Tagen would learn quickly. 

So now Chul rode with nothing but his own leathers between
himself and the horse.  He had strapped a very light rope-knotted mesh, more of
a belt than anything, about the horse’s belly which served to let the horse
carry Chul’s bundled belongings, including the strange Hadrian bow the sheriff
had given him, low and tight to his sides instead of high on his back or higher
still, on Chul’s back.  As a result, he was faster and much more nimble over
the treacherous terrain than the other horses.

The bow had done precious little but vex him, and it was not
a weapon he enjoyed using, though per the sheriff’s command, he had worked with
it.  Perhaps it was his own fault because he knew it was Hadrian made, but he
simply could not seem to work it as readily as the knights, not even as readily
as Nestor and Jath, and the humiliation of trying over and over to knock over
an apple core had worn on his good nature.  It was not until Gikka pointed out
to him that most all the knights had been bow hunting since childhood that he
forgave himself his newness to the art even a little and was able to relax
enough to learn. He’d finally knocked over an apple core.  Once.  He still
preferred his sling.

Within only a few miles of Pyran, Gikka and Chul had come
upon Dith’s trail, surprisingly far to the south of what remained of the
ancient roadway.  The trail had been completely unhidden, either by magic or by
conventional precaution, as if he had no fear of who came behind him but only
of what lay ahead.  Or, as Gikka had suggested, perhaps he’d used so much of
his power in the raising of the landbridge that he had none left to cover his
tracks.  Another possibility rose in Chul’s mind, the idea that this was a
false trail, but that seemed a lot of trouble, especially if the mage was
conserving his power.  In any case, his trail was not difficult to see, what
with his horse’s prints being the only ones ahead of them and drying into the
mud as they were.