The hunter squinted shrewdly at the mayor then. They had no intention of paying; they were lucky if they had five hundred crowns in the whole town of Montor. But once Dith was dead, they would have what they wanted whether they paid or not. “Something more,” he growled. “I’ll be needing six men to ride with me. Six as know these mountains, mark, and rugged besides.” Six as he might hold for ransom.
Dalthaz sat back and crossed his arms, a bit puzzled. “If we could spare six men, we would have gone after him ourselves.”
“And never found the least trace of him. Dalthaz.” The hunter leaned forward. “See these men as your witnesses. There’s no telling what that head’ll look like, coming back. They can see to it I make a fair kill for my gold.”
The mayor nodded at last. “Very well, then. Six men.” He sent one of the men off with a list of names. “Six of our best.”
“Settled, then.” The bounty hunter stood like a giant over the Hadrians and straightened his seamless robes. “I leave within the clock.” He squinted out the open tavern door at the overcast sky. A light rain had just begun. “See me provisioned for two tendays; after that, I fend for myself. Let the rest provision themselves.” He flexed his huge hands and strode away toward the door. “You know which horse is mine.”
Fifteen
Castle Brannagh
Day after day, the knights swung their scythes through the grain from sunrise until sunset, fewer and fewer of them each day, to Renda’s grief. In the time since the knights had begun their harvest, many fields had been cleared, and the straw stood stacked neatly near the farmers’ doors that they might re-thatch their roofs against the coming snows. So far, no one of the farm families had touched a stick of it, not even to sweep it from the doorways.
From time to time, Renda caught glimpses of the farmers watching from the windows of their houses while the knights worked the fields, and she wondered what resentful, murderous, fearful thoughts lay hidden behind their expressionless eyes. When they feared they had been seen, they would turn themselves away from the windows, sometimes waving their hands in imitation of the priests’ wards against evil and always toward the fields where the knights worked. But she minded their watchings and wardings far less than she did the blank, staring windows of the empty houses or the blackened stones of those that had been burned out.
Scores of people, some from the villages, most from farms and outlying lands, had come through the castle gates in the many days since Arnard had brought the hospice within the castle walls, reluctant, distrustful, and at the same time, desperate beyond bearing. Some came with the first cough, others not until their flesh had begun to run, but all carried the same hopelessness, the same pleading desperation of those who see Death riding close behind them. While they could expect no more than small comfort before death in the makeshift hospice, they all hoped for a miracle to save them.
They all watched the horizon.
The first score of days had passed and another ten besides, and still Brannagh had heard no word of their cardinal, whether he might be on his way or whether the request had been denied. Strange that while this was the first day on which they could possibly hope to see the cardinal, the mood of those of Brannagh was almost gloomy with caution and wariness against hopes raised too high.
The priests in the hospice said nothing openly, but they had confided to the sheriff and Renda that they were afraid that the high temples would choose to ignore the sheriff’s pleas and abandon Brannagh to the plague. The temples and basilicas would no doubt couch it in terms of the will of the gods, but she was certain the decision would be based in worldly cowardice. After all, priests had been the first to fall to the plague.
Even so, B’radik’s priests continued to hoard their strength in the hopes of eventually effecting even a single cure. So far they had done no more than to prolong the misery of those afflicted. Still, they did what they could. The victims themselves relinquished all hope before they so much as crossed the garrison threshold, which did nothing to help the priests. But they knew that even if a cardinal arrived within the hour, many of them would not survive to greet him.
The knights would continue to join their watches with enthusiasm for a time, each hoping to be the one to announce the cardinal’s arrival. After all, each day that passed meant he was that much more likely to arrive. But she knew her soldiers. Each day that passed without any sign of him, each additional death to this enemy they could not defeat with swords, would bleed their morale, and the mood would turn into fearful resignation.
As she carried out the bones of the plague victims, numb against her grief and horror after so many days of helplessness in the face of death, and as she mindlessly helped lift new patients from the floor to the newly emptied beds before the mattress even grew cold…she wondered, in her despair, if the gods—if B’radik Herself—had indeed abandoned the House of Brannagh for harboring Pegrine. But if destroying Pegrine was the price of B’radik’s grace…no, she could not let herself form the blasphemous thought. She prayed it was not.
At first, few of her father’s farmers had come into the hospice, and she had begun to wonder if Chatka was partially right about the plague. If so, it could only be for all the wrong reasons, that perhaps the farmers were able to protect themselves with prayer by bolstering the gods’ strength against the plague or perhaps against this strange nameless god. Perhaps it was as simple as staying indoors and away from those who were ill.
But then more and more of them had begun to fall ill.
The villagers had come into the habit of meeting each evening at the same time at Chatka’s door to listen to her pronouncements, but as Renda had learned from Gikka’s reports, time had made mundane the meat of the Verdura’s visions. They still listened with reverence—they could not be seen to do otherwise—but she could not tell them something new each day, and they had stopped listening to her irritating and obscure messages.
Yet still they met at her door every night.
They had learned that they could use this time away from their prayers to watch each other for signs of plague. Those who coughed, those who seemed a bit pale or feverish, those who missed a meeting, they and their families were burned to death in their very homes, in their very beds, with the rest of the village looking on. Afterward, assured of their safety and their hard proven piety once again, the rest went home to pray or finger the strange bundles of herbs Chatka had been selling to them.
Four homes had burned so far. Four homes, six and twenty souls, and as she watched from where she stood now cutting away a row of wheat, more smoke rose from the horizon. The sheriff had taken several knights to stop them each time, and each time they returned to the castle, they were certain they had turned the villagers away, but always by morning, the marked house and those within had been destroyed. Finally, even the sheriff himself gave up. Now, only those lucky ones who managed to escape from the villages before any of the others found out could hope to reach the sanctuary of the hospice.
Even so, the burlap beds had filled quickly, and each new victim was forced to wait until another died before he could have a bed. They had discussed stuffing new burlap sacks with straw from the fields and spreading them in the main hall of the castle, but the sheriff had forbidden it. The priests could not tend so many spread so far apart, he’d said. It was a feeble excuse, assuredly not his only reason for keeping them only to the garrison, but Renda did not press him.
Likewise, from some of the men in the hospice, she had heard that women and children were now being left to die at home that the priests’ energies might be spared for the men. This news infuriated her. Why in this time of peace were the men’s lives so much more important that they would sacrifice their wives and children to save them? These were the thoughts that haunted her before her eyes closed at night, the thoughts that held her guilty for bringing this plague upon them.
Of Brannagh itself, those of the household, including Lady Glynnis and the servants, were miraculously spare
d, and according to the duke’s letters to the sheriff, Damerien was untouched as well, though Trocu’s letters came less frequently these days. Only the knights were stricken, and only those of Brannagh, the formidable fighting force that had won the war against Kadak, and once that force was destroyed and all the fighting men and women of the surrounding lands were gone as well, Syon’s defenses would be crippled. The forces of the rest of Syon’s nobles would not stand for long against the power which had so readily destroyed B’radik’s temple.
All of the House of Brannagh helped in the hospice as they could by night, cooling fevers, changing bedclothes, emptying chamberpots into the lavatory chutes, even wielding the broom and pan to clean up the sloughed dust and ash as it fell from the bodies. Most often, Renda and the sheriff spoke comfort to the dying while the priests administered healing oils and spoke their prayers over the victims or touched their throats with B’radik’s grace to make them sleep through the worst of their pain.
One by one, Renda watched the knights, her father’s and her own, grow pale and begin the coughing and the stiffening that were the first true signs of the plague. One by one, she and her heartsick father watched them crumble to dust. On those few nights when she managed to make her way to her own bed before the sun called her to the fields, she would sit in the gallery above the great hall and think of those who were lost, but the rest of the time, her face was a masque of strength and hope. She could do no less for those who remained.
By day, they led the rest of their knights into the fields to harvest the grain, trying not to hear the stifled barking coughs, trying not to see those who flexed their hands worriedly. Trying to ignore the inescapable stink of the plague that seemed to rise from the very ground beneath them.
“Renda.”
She started suddenly from her nightmare, awake and once more enfolded in the stinking darkness of the garrison. Outside the window slits, the sky was still dark, although the first tinges of the dawn shown on the horizon, and she supposed she must rise and lead the rest of the knights into the fields once more. In her weariness, she had fallen asleep against the wall where she sat beside Sir Cammon, a young Brannagh knight, and someone, probably Arnard, had draped a blanket over her as she slept, not wanting to wake her. Cammon slept peacefully on his burlap sack on the floor, and she wondered whether he had finished telling her his story before she had fallen asleep.
A few feet away stood Lord Daerwin, and his voice had been the one to wake her.
“Father,” she began, rising hastily to her feet. Then she stopped. His arms were black with telltale ash, and his eyes shone with weariness and sorrow. “Saramore?” she asked.
The sheriff leaned against the wall beside her, and she could smell the putrid dust on him, even over the swirling odors of illness around her. When at last he spoke, his voice was soft but tinged with anger. “I am just come from carrying him out. Not enough was left of him to bury ere it was over.” He looked away from her. “Saramore was a brave knight and strong. He took a long time to die.”
Renda touched her father’s shoulder. “The priests—”
“The priests could do nothing, nothing!” Lord Daerwin slammed his hand against the wall. “Not even Nara could make him sleep through the worst of it. It was all I could do, standing beside him, not to draw my sword and...”
Renda looked around her in alarm, afraid that those nearby might hear him and lose heart. But at the same time, she asked herself, how many times had the same thought come to her, standing over them, watching them die so horribly, so slowly? She wondered sometimes if the sleep the priests imposed might not be permanent, especially for the babies and children, but she had never asked and she never would.
“This waiting, this ministering to the dying, this is not our way, Father,” she said finally. “You and I, we are not made to stand with swords undrawn to watch brave men die. Such is the work of priests.” She spread another blanket over the knight on the burlap sack beside her before she stood again. “To fight an enemy we can see or touch, to avenge these deaths, that is our way. Would that we could begin this war in earnest!”
“Indeed,” her father sighed. “But until we know our enemy, we can only remain here and fight this plague as we can. Until the cardinal comes. Then perhaps he will know where to find our enemy and how best to fight it. If our enemy is not already among us.” He turned then and stared out the window slit. “Meanwhile, my farmers openly foment rebellion, my knights die by the score, and the frost drives relentlessly south toward us.” The sheriff looked at his daughter and smiled sadly. “By the time our cardinal arrives, we may have no need of him.”
* * *
Matow lay motionless, as he had since the priests had told Lord Daerwin that he would live. The sheriff sat in the chair beside his bed looking out the window at the moody gray sunrise, a thin blanket wrapped around his shoulders, flattened and wadded with the night’s use. Now, with the sun fully above the horizon, Lord Daerwin stood and stretched, and moved toward the door to lead the rest of the knights into the fields again, as he did each day.
“Mi...my lord?” Matow’s voice sounded hoarse with disuse.
Lord Daerwin turned abruptly at the sound of the young man’s voice to see him blinking in the morning light. When he came near the bedside, he looked down at the knight and, deserted of his usual eloquence, merely beamed with joy and clasped Matow’s hand.
His hand! The Sheriff watched Matow stare in amazement at the full fingers that curled weakly under his elated grasp, fingers that had been no more than bones when Matow had last closed his eyes.
“I...I live?”
The sheriff laughed then and felt tears spill from his eyes. “Indeed, you do. One of the first saved, praise to B’radik.”
“The cardinal is come, then?”
Daerwin’s smile faded, and he shook his head. “Not yet, but soon.” But hope rang in his voice. Daerwin truly believed a cardinal would come, and his conviction was nearly strong enough to convince Matow as well. “This healing of yours was worked by Arnard and the others. They’ve each cured one of you, knights all,” he said, the barest glimmer of a frown on his brow. “Barlow, Willem, Jadin and Cammon, and yourself, of course. More will follow. Trust to that. It could be our cardinal will arrive when we’ve no longer any need of him.”
Matow rolled to his side to rise from the bed and grunted beneath the coil of pain that buckled his arms and legs beneath him, and he fell onto his back again. “Alas, my lord,” he gasped weakly, “I am yet ill.”
“Oh, no, lad. We did not make you whole just so you could suffer your way through the plague band back to your death. Arnard assures me that you are cured,” spoke the sheriff, “though not completely healed of the wounds.” He squeezed the young knight’s shoulder gently, his hand trembling with his excitement at the young knight’s healing. “An they would cure your fellows, the last of your healing must come later. But for now,” the knight smiled down at him gratefully, tenderly, as if Matow were his own son brought back from death, “you live, which is miracle enough for one day.”
Sixteen
The last sharp rays of the sun winked down below the horizon, and they began their slow, grateful trek back toward the castle. As always, the wagons went first with the men and women of Brannagh following behind. No one passing them on the path would think them knights, not now. Their tunics were filthy and torn, already worn through and faded with their short time in the fields. Their skins had darkened under the Gatherer’s Sun, and their hair had lightened until they looked just like the farmers who peeked out at them from shuttered windows.
The squires and pages no longer followed formally behind the knights, instead walking just where they fell, with some of the younger boys being carried upon the knights’ backs. These ragged men and women were the last of the brave fighting force that had defeated Kadak.
Occasionally, a word or a quiet laugh would drift back to where the sheriff and his daughter walked in exhausted silence behind
them, but most often the knights said nothing or spoke their prayers as they walked, grateful for one more day of life, grateful tonight for the sheriff’s quiet news of the five cured. They were forbidden to speak of the cures outside the castle, lest the villagers overhear, but even so, their steps moved with just a bit more energy tonight, and the wagons were just a bit more full.
But as they approached the castle, one of Renda’s knights slowed her pace and looked behind her toward the village. Patrise was her name, and her mother was part-Bremondine. When Lord Daerwin and his daughter stopped beside the young woman, her eyes were wide with fear. “Hear it, do you?”
At her frightened words, the sheriff and Renda looked back over the fields behind them. They saw nothing, but a moment later, they could hear a distant sound, and a moment after that, the noise was enough to bring the sentries out of the gatehouse at the castle. It was distant taunting, the sound an army might make by night toward its foes’ camp on a neighboring hillside before the next morning’s battle. Except that this noise was coming closer. Only then did they see the moving forms of a great mob of farmers coming through the fields behind them. It looked to them to be all the farmers remaining in the sheriff’s lands.
They must have heard.
“Quickly,” shouted the sheriff to the knights ahead of him. “Get within the castle walls.”
Daerwin was the last across the bridge that spanned the dry moat, and once across, he signaled to the sentries to draw it up.
A quarter-mile’s distance from the gate, in a stream of spotty firelight along the road, came the farmers and villagers, shouting angrily. Most were dressed thickly in quilting and leather as they had been during the war, and some carried butcher knives, others pitchforks and scythes. They carried something else as well, an injured man on a litter, a plague victim, perhaps a captured knight.
Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) Page 24