Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (54 page)

“Yes, yes, of course,” he murmured.  Aidan.  Why did that
name seem familiar to him? Now that his tear glands were working again, he
blinked his eyes open, but he was not prepared for what he saw.  Sitting on the
edge of his bed and ministering to him was Lady Glynnis of Brannagh dressed in
a Syonese gown, but built of Dhanani battle leather, her long coppery silver
hair flowing about her shoulders in the most scandalous fashion for a
noblewoman.  Dreaming.  He was still dreaming.  But…something about this dream
warranted alarm.

Brannagh.

Dhanani. 

The sudden sharp understanding of his situation and that it
was not a dream at all sent him scrambling off the bed, at which point he went
unconscious at once with the pain.  Lwyn and Aidan caught him as he slumped
down and moved him back into the bed.

Nara and Aidan looked the knight over carefully, examining
his ribs and his shoulder.  “At least he did no new harm, jumping up as he
did,” the nun allowed, “praise…the gods,” she added, glancing at Aidan, “though
he did himself no favor for the pain.”  She waved a hand across his brow, and
instantly his body relaxed.  “Perhaps tomorrow, madam,” the old nun said,
touching her shoulder.  “Tomorrow, we can begin anew.”

Tomorrow, Glynnis thought to herself, rising.  She looked
over the makeshift cots of wounded knights.  Yes.  Tomorrow she would begin to
rebuild.

The Landbridge

Renda walked her patrol as she had every night, occasionally
looking to the east where Gikka and Chul had gone to scout ahead in the
darkness.  She chided herself for watching across the expanse of muck and mire
for them. She would not see them return, even if they did return on her watch. 
Still she looked that way, as always, anxious for their safety and anxious to
hear their news.

Depleted in number as they were and with two wounded, the
knights could not afford to rush headlong into another battle, but neither
could they dally on the landbridge.  Their pace was a careful balance of haste
and caution.  The end of the landbridge, for all that it broadened as it
approached Byrandia, was yet only so wide.  It was a span readily patrolled by
a small force. One way or another, the Syonese knights would have to cross that
way into Byrandia.

For the last tenday, the landbridge had broadened steadily
to both sides until now, they could no longer see or even hear the water, and
the sea bottom coral reefs had given way to short rocky crags jutting up above
the silt that looked tide worn.  On a hillside far away and southward, she saw
a constant light high on a cliff wall, or perhaps in a tower.  Beyond that,
Gikka had said she thought she could see a band of faint flickering glow, as of
a city.  She had wanted to take the boy and scout the city ahead, but Renda had
said no, not yet.  There was no telling what they would find, especially in a
coastal city, and she would not send Gikka and Chul to scout until they were
all closer.  The city would be the knights’ first stop in Byrandia, a place to
resupply and establish a foothold, and the closer they got to the city, the
more likely they were to be ambushed.

The demons had retreated, but that was days and days ago. 
They might still be running in terror through the Byrandian countryside, but
she thought it more likely, assuming the creatures here were like those on
Syon, that their initial panic had eased not long after they entered familiar
territory.  Soon after that, they would regroup for a new assault, or, more
likely, given their advantage in knowing exactly where the knights had to pass,
they would set an ambush.  Assuming they still intended to stop the knights,
such an attack would be imperative.

Every day that passed along this singular route and every
night that they spent camped along the way, their danger grew.  Sitting still,
even for the few hours they stopped each night to eat and sleep, the few
remaining knights and their small retinue were far too vulnerable to attack. 
Once the knights were off the landbridge and into Byrandia proper, the strange
fellowship of demons and mages would find them much more difficult to track,
unless, of course, the entire land was overrun, as was her fear.

As they approached Byrandia, the knights were at more and
more of a disadvantage in that their enemy was retreating into familiar
territory or at least territory they had seen before, while for the knights,
the terrain was completely unknown.  With no supply chain from Syon, they would
be at the mercy of what they could find along the way in Byrandia.  She
supposed it was a small blessing, then, that they had only a handful of men and
women with them.

So much remained unknown.  The mages had not originated on
Syon and were somehow allied to demons in Byrandia, but somewhere ahead was the
one who had sent them, someone had chosen to attack Syon, though her father had
no idea who.  What the duke knew of it and how it bound up with the prophecy
that seemed to loom over them….  She looked back toward the hasty lean-to where
the duke slept.  What he knew, she would learn when he needed her to know.  She
was a soldier, and she trusted his leadership.  She could accept that.  She
only hoped he knew where he was leading them and why.

Even so, every night while she was on patrol, she ran the
prophecy fragments through her mind, searching for some hidden bit of information
she had missed.  Doing so was futile, of course.  Even if the description of a
place were laid quite bare, as was rarely the case in prophecy, it would likely
be lost on her since she had no knowledge of Byrandia at all.  That, and she
had only the B’radikite fragments of the prophecy anyway, and she suspected her
father and the duke had little more.  Still, lacking anything else to keep her
awake on her patrol, her mind would not stop worrying at the pieces.

She drew a breath of cold air into her lungs and felt a
thrill of excitement along her spine.  Before long, they would set foot on a
continent that no one of Syon had visited in millennia.  She laughed at herself
for putting such importance on it.  After all, was she not standing right now
on ground that no one had set foot upon in millennia?  But Byrandia was
different.  It was the birthplace of their civilization, the old homeland so
many had fled whether because they were mages or because they sought a frontier
away from the judgments of a decaying society. 

She had heard stories and legends, most likely myths colored
by the embellishments of the bards across generations, but never had she
considered the possibility of seeing Byrandia for herself, so occupied had she
been with Syon’s own problems.  Great gleaming cities built of gemstones,
sparkling glass towers rising into the clouds.  Impossible, fantastical stories
for children, to be sure.  But then she thought of the demons and felt her
spirits sink.  Whatever cities they find might be no more than decaying ruins,
overrun with death and brutality. 

Either way, here she stood, on the precipice of another
unexpected adventure.

Another adventure bought with Pegrine’s blood.

She stopped and looked back over the camp and over the men
and women who had followed herself and her father this far.  Shanth, easily the
youngest of the knights, only a few years older than Jath and Chul, lay
sprawled to the sky atop a saddle blanket, as always, with no covering but his
own clothing, his cloak laid by where he’d kicked it off himself in his sleep,
even while his breath fogged the night air.  Just looking at him made her draw
her mantle up closer against the cold.

He’d become a knight on the eve of their entry into Kadak’s
stronghold, and up to that point, he could have counted the number of demons
he’d seen on one hand.  Somehow still, even after the battle at the Lacework,
he slept with a depth that only a child could know.  The sleep of the innocent.

Not far from him, Kerrick and Amara were also getting a few
hours of sleep.  She wished she could have allowed them a fire, but the night
was warm enough that she could not risk it.  So, after having completed their
watch, they had huddled together against the cold beneath their heavy woolen
cloaks and talked in low voices, eventually dropping off to sleep.  Occasionally,
Amara would mutter in her sleep, and Kerrick’s arm would tighten around her to calm
her.

The two knights had shared something terrible in having had
to kill Vonn as they did, and as was the way of warriors, that shared memory
and shared guilt had forged a bond between them, a bond that, while deep, was
not what they took it to be.  Soon they would share what privacy they could
find, most likely a makeshift lean-to of furs and clothing like the one Gikka
and Dith shared.  And, knowing Kerrick and Amara both as she did, soon
afterward, they would stop.  A while later, long enough not to seem churlish,
Kerrick would press his suit with the sheriff again for Renda’s hand.  She knew
it, Kerrick knew it, and she supposed even Amara knew it.  But they would all
pretend they did not and let the sordid little drama play itself out. 

She sighed and continued on her way, feeling terribly old
for her years.

Beyond the sleeping knights and lit only by cloud-dulled
moonlight, she saw Grayson stubbornly battling shadows with his sword.  He was
still awkward and slow with the blade, and his posture told her he was getting
more and more frustrated at fighting against his pain.  She looked away,
saddened by his struggle and embarrassed for him.  Grayson’s great pride as a
swordsman had always been his grace and his reflexes.  He always seemed to know
what an opponent would do before the opponent himself knew.  To see his body
fail again and again to meet what his mind expected of it broke her heart, even
over her pride at his perseverance.

Laniel had assured both Renda and her father that Grayson
would heal fully with time.  His own body would have to do the work, and in so
doing, he would need time to recover his ability.  The trouble was, he was not
yet fully healed, but coming as they were into what looked to be hostile lands,
he could not afford to be helpless.  So he practiced.  And he raged against
himself for his weakness, punishing himself with the pain.

“Commander,” he gasped, and gave her a nod before resuming
his battle.

“Sir Grayson,” she nodded.  “Much better tonight.”

“Aye, just enough better each day to vex me, my Lady.  The
damp is no great help, either.  But,” he added, slicing the air with his sword,
“I reckon I could beat a demon or two now, an it came to it.”

“Good man,” she said with a smile.  “But do not neglect your
bow.  Until you have healed fully, I should rather have you at a distance than
fighting close quarters.”

“Aye, madam,” he answered quietly.

She smiled.  He hid his disappointment well.

If only they had had they a proper healer along, one who
could bring the power of the gods to bear….  She looked at Laniel where he
toiled over Qorlin, encouraging the man to use his injured arm in spite of the
pain, and she felt that flush of shame again, the same that she had felt at the
abbey.

A wonder, it is, that your weak bodies even remember how
to heal themselves, what with the constant intervention of your gods ere you so
much as sneeze!

Almost a season later, Laniel’s words still stung.  Of
course she was grateful for everything Laniel and Amara had done to save Qorlin
and Grayson.  And to his credit, Laniel had saved Qorlin from the poison of the
ha’guaka
, something no other priest had ever been able to accomplish. 
Not even Nara.  Bilkar had charged him to use everything he knew.  She wondered
if the old Dhanani power he had so long forbidden himself to use was how he had
managed it.  But she would never ask.

She was grateful to Bilkar the Furred for sending Laniel
with them.  Otherwise, they would have had only Amara’s limited skills with
bandages.  But she did miss Nara’s skill even while she cursed her own
impatience.  She could not afford to have two of her knights injured,
especially not after the terrible losses they took at the Lacework.  Nor in a
colder and more pragmatic light could she afford to have her entire camp
dedicated to their care.

The mystery of the missing vial and how it found its way to
the prisoner had been at the back of her thoughts since Laniel first brought it
to her attention, and she was no closer to having any answers now than she had
been.  With the heavy losses they had sustained at the Lacework, she supposed
it might not matter now.  The thief, assuming there was a thief, was likely
among the dead, and if not… She looked over the camp.  If not, if it was one of
those still here, still fighting for their survival, then it was not someone
she could afford to be without in the days ahead.  She would have to be
watchful even so.

She had not seen the stars tonight, hidden as they were
behind great thunderous clouds.  Stars.  She smiled sadly. After everything
she’d seen, after fighting her way across land that no one had traversed in
thousands of years, after making camp for the first time in Byrandia––Byrandia,
of all things!––Why did the simple lack of stars in the night sky suddenly make
her feel like she was horribly far from home?

And yet, she was home.  On a strange battlefield, fighting
demons again, just as she had for nearly half her life, her knights beside her.
 This place, this land, was not her home, but the battlefield surely was.  She
could never be so at peace as she was at war.

Sure you’d not take it all back.

Would I not?

No, she answered finally.  Even if she had missed the
excitement and glory of her former life, she had not caused
this
war
merely by thinking it.  Pegrine had already been sacrificed long before the
thought had even formed in her mind or on her lips that she should rather be at
war again.  What superstitious rubbish for one who was otherwise so pragmatic. 
The mechanisms for the war’s beginning were in play long before that day in the
library so long ago.  Cilder had already been corrupted.  Even the army of
Byrandian mages had already arrived.