The man had passed too quickly in the darkness for Chul to see much of anything about him but his plain cloth cloak, but Chul guessed he was not from the village. He had about him the rich and varied odors of travel, like the bards who had come through the Dhanani camps or the Wirthing knights he had seen in Farras—heavy smells of oilbalm and scrub pea that grew only in the southern plains, some hemlock and velmon from the high forests, others Chul had never smelled before.
He watched the two men approach each other. He suspected they were not equals. The man with Maddock seemed of higher stature, perhaps some kind of nobility. Chul frowned. Gikka had told him of Pegrine’s death and Brannagh’s betrayal at the hands of Wirthing knights.
From here, Chul could not hear what they said to each other, could not see their faces at all when they hunkered down together to talk. He gripped his cloak tightly and wondered if he should try to get closer, to hear their plans. They were not far from him; he would move in carefully—but no, he decided, watching the starlight soften and dim around him. The shape of their plan was clear to him even if the details were not, and he could not afford the time, not if his warning—both warnings—would do any good. Not if he would be away before daybreak, as he had promised.
Silently, he moved out of the clump of trees and made his way north.
Colaris stood on his turbulent perch on the sheriff’s shoulder, grasping the falconing épaulette with his talons and twitching his wing feathers in anticipation while Lord Daerwin and Renda swept down the rear steps into the bailey. Renda’s Alandro and the sheriff’s battle steed, Revien, waited in full war armor beside Matow, Barlow, Willem and their horses while the sheriff sealed the tiny scroll into his harrier’s ankle case and gave the bird his orders.
Colaris let out a soft cry and beat his wings. In a moment, the bird disappeared into the darkness above the east curtain wall as he’d been ordered, and then banked away toward the east. Toward Damerien. The sheriff did not watch after his messenger. He lowered his visor and continued toward the horses in silence with Renda at his side.
“Willem,” he said quietly when they’d reached the rest of the knights, “you’re certain they saw the cardinal leave?”
“Aye, reasonably so, my lord,” the young knight answered. “I saw the three, the same that watch every night, clustered up at the far side of the drawbridge. Then the cardinal came from the stable with the rest of his priests, all riding their horses’ bare backs and swearing and cursing and threatening to bring down the wrath of their gods if I didn’t get that portcullis up at once.” He looked down, ashamed. “Sire, forgive me. I had no reason to think I shouldn’t let them pass…”
“Aye,” the sheriff nodded impatiently, “of course not. But they were still there, then? The watchers?”
“Between the cardinal’s threats and heaving up the portcullis, I can’t say when exactly they left. All I know is, they’d run off by the time the cardinal and the rest cleared the bridge.” Willem looked behind him to where Matow and Barlow stood by the horses. “But with all the cardinal’s noise, I can’t think they missed it.”
“Half a clock past.” Lord Daerwin looked back at the castle as he fastened his mantle. “The wonder is we haven’t had Maddock clamoring at the gates already.”
“It can only mean he’s occupied with something.” Renda’s gaze drifted over the poor knights and their horses. Only five able to ride including herself and her father. That there were any knights still alive at Brannagh at all had been enough to keep Maddock and his rebels back—that or maybe some shred of hope that the cardinal might indeed work a cure. But with that hope riding away at full gallop and Chatka’s prophecies coming true against Brannagh’s best efforts, nothing would hold them back now. Maddock could no longer be content with his simple siege, a siege that could only work against himself and his followers since all the grain was locked away inside the castle’s storehouses. It would have to come to battle, and soon.
Maddock had to know by now that the cardinal and his retinue had left, and if his men had an eye between them, they’d have told him that the cardinal’s men left in haste, fleeing what came behind as much as they ran on toward what was ahead. So the farmers would lose nothing to gamble that daybreak would find the knights giving chase and the castle all but undefended, and Maddock would be making plans to that end. If he was wrong, if the knights did not ride after the cardinal, he and his followers would stay back and do nothing, but if he was right…
The trouble was that he was right.
“Assuming he discovers we’ve gone, Maddock will still need time to organize an attack, and with B’radik’s help, we shall return before he is ready. If not, well,” her father sighed and squinted over the hard rock of the curtain wall and the stout corner towers surrounding them, “these walls have held off many an army; sure they can hold off a few sickly farmers, especially with the siege weapons safe in our armories.” He swung himself up into his saddle. “Come.”
“My lord!” Sedrik stopped only long enough to shout to the sheriff before he ran down the steps toward the horses. “My lord, it’s the tanner, Maddock. He’s at the south gate demanding to speak with you. He said I should tell you, my lord, that they watch the gates, they saw the cardinal leave, and they know what you’re about. If I may, Sire, he has some of the farmers with him. If you were to take a moment to see to him…”
The sheriff sat his horse in silence, staring absently beyond the northern wall.
“I’ll see to him,” seethed Renda, unsheathing her sword, “and save us the trouble later.”
The other knights laughed grimly, but the sheriff raised his hand to silence them. “My apologies to Maddock, but I am…indisposed.” This, too, raised a chuckle from the rest of the knights, and the sheriff’s mouth curved into a wry grin in spite of himself. “Tell him I shall be pleased to receive him first thing on the morrow, say, after breakfast.” He breathed deeply. “That should do.”
Sedrik laughed with disbelief. “I doubt he’ll take it well, my lord.”
“Oh, your ears will ring the tenday, an he takes it as I mean him to take it.” The sheriff smiled darkly and nodded toward the armory. “Make haste.”
Sedrik’s brow twitched in understanding. “Aye, my lord.” He bowed and ran back to the castle.
“That should keep Maddock occupied while we leave, and hopefully, the spectacle he creates will keep his watchers busy, as well.”
Renda mounted her horse, and she and the other three knights followed her father toward the armory where the smiths had already moved aside the great anvils piled against the iron door at the rear wall. Beyond the door, a grated ramp led deep into the ground, some two hundred feet, and into the dark tunnels they had not used since the war.
Once the floor began to rise to ground level again, it was strewn with rich, dry soil, and thick layers of burlap and scrapcloth were hammered to the stone walls to damp the sound of their horses’ hooves. Two hundred yards north of the castle, the tunnel ended in a natural cleft hidden by a thick forest of brambles that was much easier to see from inside by daylight, or even moonlight. Tonight, the way ahead of the knights was merely dark.
The tunnel accounted for some of the legends and mysterious victories of the Knights of Brannagh all through Syon’s history, for good reason. It was a military secret entrusted only to the Knights of Brannagh and their smiths. One of Renda’s early victories had come during the stormy and short-lived flirtation between Kadak and the Anatayan tribes when she led a battalion of her father’s knights out this tunnel in a surprise attack on the Anatayan flank. Her knights closed the third side of a tight triangle with her father’s soldiers on one side and Wirthing’s on the other that trapped the tribesmen and forced a quick surrender.
A full battalion. What luxurious dream was this, to think that she had ever had more than a handful of knights at her command, or that Syon had ever had more than these five to defend her. Yet it had been so, and not so long ago, in a time of war, befo
re peace came to destroy Brannagh. She looked back toward the castle, toward where Maddock and his men prepared to attack. “Father,” Renda whispered, “you and I can defeat the cardinal ourselves. If we were to leave the others behind to defend the castle—”
He shook his head firmly. “We must stop the cardinal.” Her father kicked his horse into a slow gallop toward the barest brightening of the shadows ahead that signaled the end of the tunnel.
“But we cannot sacrifice all of Brannagh—”
“Can we not?” he barked, oblivious to the echo of his voice in the tunnel. “We are sworn to it, child!” He set his heel into Revien’s side, and the horse bolted out the end of the tunnel toward the northwest, toward the foothills and the dark glade where Pegrine had died.
Renda glanced back through the darkness of the tunnel, looking toward the keep where her mother watched from the chapel window, where Nara finished a last gesture of blessing over them at the door, where Sedrik stalled Maddock below the gatehouse.
They would be safe, she told herself. The goddess will keep them safe. She had to believe it. Then she turned and with a wave of her hand, led the others after her father.
Chul had thrown himself flat into the dry grass and brush when Maddock had gone by, barely hidden from him and lucky that he was so intent on his purpose. But he was not sure where Maddock was going or how long he might be or—watching the other one, the traveler, return to his army at a run—whether this was the signal that would start the charge; in any case, he had to work fast. The faintest of the stars were already disappearing from the sky.
The rope was freed, and he’d tied the hook, imprinted with G for Graymonde—or Gikka—on the end. Above him and on the other side of the dry moat was the lowest of the lancet windows on this side, a smallish window some forty feet high leading into the barracks of the resident knights. Marigan’s news of the plague had been most grave, and Chul was not sure any knights would be left, but just the same, he would rather any that were still alive not try to kill him on sight.
He was getting ahead of himself. Before he could try for the window, he had to cross the dry moat. He spied the low tree stump at the side of the castle wall that Gikka had mentioned to him and moved toward it, gripping the hook. He would have to swing the hook hard, pay out enough rope and cast it high to clear the moat.
His first weapon as a small boy had been the sling, and later, he’d learned the spear. He’d been quite good for all that his strength had been that of a child. His next weapon was to have been the xindraga, what the Invaders called the Dhanani horseflail, a spiked steel ball on the end of a forty-foot chain with a horned forearm-length handle, used from horseback, and while he’d not had any real training with it, he’d practiced a bit. This hook was not much different. With Anado’s help, he could do this; he only hoped Gikka had gauged the length of the rope correctly.
He made ready to throw, but behind him, he heard the quiet hordes spilling around the castle wall to take up their positions, and he threw himself to the ground again. They watched the castle intently, waiting and watching every stone for something very small, very subtle, placing themselves carefully. He looked hopelessly across at the tree stump and up at the window before he crawled behind some thin brush, hoping he had not missed his only opportunity. He stayed where he was and made no sound. As it was, they would have him surrounded in a few seconds; best he not give them reason to look for him.
Then their attention that had been so intent upon the castle relented sharply, palpably—so much so that he nearly stumbled from his hiding place into the sudden vacuum. The army had kept itself hidden and would keep itself hidden until the attack, but he could feel disorder bristling through them. He stood and stared out over the dark plain at four or five shapes, distant, barely discernible, that glinted and glimmered very faintly through the rising dust, reflecting back only the torchlight from the castle battlements. They seemed to have appeared from nowhere beyond the hidden army, but they ignored the gathered host—or perhaps were still unaware of them—as they rode across the meadows toward the cliffs and the foothills.
Chul moved to follow them, even ran a few steps to try to catch them before they left him behind, but it was hopeless. They were too far away and had been even as he had first seen them. His heart sank. He had seen Revien and Alandro only once before, in the stables while he and Gikka were preparing to leave for Graymonde, but at the front of this small band of knights, even as far off as they were, even in just the glimmer of torchlight, they were unmistakable, even in armor. The sheriff and Lady Renda were leaving. He had missed them.
Across the northern meadowlands, they rode in silence, every fiber of every muscle taut beneath the steel of their armors. The Brannagh Horses at Arms flew side by side over the ground in full battle armor, as sure of hoof over uneven grass clumps, creek ravines and rock mounds as if they ran a bare plain.
Sworn to it.
After the Liberation, after the Liberator took for himself and his heirs the title of duke—not king—of Syon, he swore for himself and all those of his blood an oath of gratitude and fealty to the goddess B’radik. When his son, Lexius, who later became the first Sheriff of Brannagh, gathered together a ragtag mob of exiled Byrandian rebels and made of them the most deadly order of knights the world had ever known, he likewise swore them to the service and protection of B’radik, the duke and all Syon. But to B’radik first and foremost.
Memories flew through Renda’s mind as she rode, memories of Pegrine standing serene and strong before the duke, of the strange glow that surrounded her in the crypt.
…my body was killed and my spirit was trapped with no place to go when She found me. It was smashing good luck for us both, you see.
She remembered Nara lying unconscious on the palace floor, her habit dim to almost gray, the priests’ feeble attempts to save her. What was it Arnard had told her, that they’d been gaining ground against the plague? How could they if B’radik was bound, unless…
She told me She could fix my body for a little while so I could be Her helper here. But only for a while since it drains Her so.
Arnard had seen a child at the temple’s destruction—not partaking of the destruction, but defending as she could against it. Of Roquandor and the rest of Brannagh’s dead rising to Pegrine’s protection. To B’radik’s protection.
We are sworn to it.
At last she understood. Pegrine was not raised by B’radik to be her messenger or her companion undead; she was the goddess’s avatar, Her conduit of power into this plane that somehow weakened Her binding. If Pegrine fell, B’radik would fall.
Suddenly, all around them, hundreds of armed men and women sprang from the hillocks and trees and, instead of rushing for the castle behind them, they ran for the knights shouting and screaming, waving their swords—where did so many get swords?—and from the surrounding meadows and hillsides, even more of them flowed in to enclose the horses.
Hundreds.
She rode straight on and drew her long sword.
“Do not stop for them,” her father shouted and spurred his horse on. “The glade, Renda! We must reach the glade!”
Revien and Alandro did not slow at all, and the other three horses fell in close behind them. While the jeering, shouting army clotted close around them, they raced for the cliff, driving most of their attackers out of the way as they rode. But the horses were not fast enough in their armor, and the way just ahead of them was closing fast.
Chul’s only chance now was to get back to his own horse and hope he could catch them with his warning. He had no idea where they could be going with this army massing outside their gates, but he had to reach them, had to warn them. He turned to run for the hillside, and instantly collided with what must have been a tree. In a second, he found himself crushed to the ground beneath a man’s weight and silently cursed his own stupidity.
The man who had run into him got up and squinted down at the bare ground where Chul lay gasping for breath, toed
it tentatively. He could feel something was there, and now he could hear it, but he could not see it. He flipped back his dark cape and drew his sword to probe the ground.
Cape. Sword. And beneath the cape, simple farmers’ clothes. He had spent enough time with Invaders, studying them, becoming them, to know that this was strange. First Hadrian priests chanting in Dhanani, now farmers in knights’ capes carrying swords. Nothing made sense.
The point of the man’s sword came perilously close to Chul’s knee. The boy rolled his leg slowly out of the sword’s way as Gikka had taught him. Slowly, so slowly, but not slowly enough.
The man’s gaze narrowed a moment, and then his eyes got wide. “By the gods,” he murmured. He reached down through a cloud of the boy’s breath and picked Chul up by the throat.
Chul gasped in amazement and tried to pry the man’s fingers away from his windpipe. He tried to hurl himself at the man and grapple him down, but he was off balance, and the man was strong. Chul could not seem to get his feet under him.
The man dragged him the few feet into the torchlight and threw back his hood. No, the disappointment in the man’s eyes said, this was not the one he was hoping to see. He opened his mouth. He drew breath to shout to the others.
Chul’s knife ripped through his throat.
The effect on the surrounding army was almost instantaneous. By the time the dying man crumpled to the stones outside the gate, by the time Chul had freed himself from his grasp, and run off along the castle wall, those who had heard the shout had turned to look, and confusion and fear rippled through the army.
Never mind that Maddock had sworn the Brannagh assassin was dead, killed at his own hand. If it wasn’t her, it was her ghost, and the fearful whispers of “Gikka!” that blazed through the ranks broke what was left of the villagers’ discipline and scattered them to chase their own shadows into the hills.
Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) Page 37