Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1)

by Jordan MacLean

  But then most of the army was not made up of villagers, and within seconds, several of those who were left split off to pursue the boy.

  The main body of the force was too well trained to completely break off its pursuit of the knights; it did not splinter apart in panic. But in the moment of confusion, in the hair’s breadth of indecision, the attacking army split its attention between the commotion at their flank and the Knights of Brannagh, and it was enough.

  The sheriff made no sound or gesture, nor did Renda, yet they both saw the weak spot, exactly where they would breach the wall of bodies ahead of them. Likewise the connection between horse and master was so complete that Revien had already banked left by the time the sheriff’s nudge was completed, with Alandro close by his shoulder. Without losing a step, Revien reared and struck through the side of their thinning, shifting blockade with the spikes on his shinguards while Alandro spun, kicked and spun again, sending them back in disarray. The breach they made could not close before all five horses broke free and rode off into the foothills with only a few of Maddock’s followers making the effort to chase them on foot.

  While Maddock cursed the knights’ escape, while his massed army watched in disgust as they rode away, no one noticed the ghostly white horse galloping north, seemingly riderless, just below the top of the western ridge.

  The knights were all veterans, blooded in the war against Kadak. They had all had to choose between battles sometimes, abandoning one to win another. If they split their own hearts, they were defeated already. Castle Brannagh had stood against the Anatayans and even Kadak’s demon armies. As the sheriff had said, it would stand one more time. If they would defeat Valmerous, if they would survive to enjoy the luxury of addressing the Maddock problem, they had to believe in those walls. And so, by the time they reached the cliff’s edge, they could no longer see the castle or the attacking army, and with minds well disciplined to the needs and inevitabilities of war, they forced their attention the only way they could, toward the battle ahead.

  Renda moved ahead and wheeled Alandro westward, counting on the rest of the knights to follow. With large brambles rising at her left, she raced him through a narrow corridor inches from the precipice that fell away to forest treetops at her right. Occasionally Alandro’s hooves kicked away pebbles and stones to fall down into the trees below, but Revien and the others stayed at her heels. She had no need to look back.

  She kept her mind as tightly focused on the way ahead as she could, not allowing herself the luxury of congratulating herself on her instincts about the cardinal.

  Congratulations, indeed. She had nearly let him kill both the duke and Pegrine—she’d all but helped him destroy the goddess she was sworn to protect. She’d even gone to attend him in the crypt when her father had not, and all for the sake of duty, of unquestioning honor and discipline, as if that in itself were virtue enough to excuse her. Worst of all, she had done this over the strident objections of her intuition.

  She had never learned to trust her intuition the way Gikka had. Perhaps it was that she always had had lives in her hands, or that her own fame and honor seemed so small against the ancient Brannagh name. In any case, she’d always let patient, careful reason decide strategy for her, and for the first time since she’d become a knight, she was beginning to see it as a weakness.

  She had taken Matow and Willem and searched the priests’ quarters after the cardinal had fled with his six remaining priests. They had not had time to return to their chambers, so the knights had found almost all of his belongings still there, including Vilkadnazor’s ceremonial plate of offering.

  Almost all? She frowned. She would never have allowed herself so careless a thought during the war. Gods, but her mind felt fat and lazy. But two years since the war’s end, and already she was making dangerous assumptions, fretting over phantoms. Valmerous had carried something into the crypt, but so miserable and self-absorbed had she been, this war hero, this guardian of B’radik, that she had not bothered to mark it. She had not wanted to know what he intended toward poor Pegrine.

  She felt guilt and failure threatening to overcome her, and she cleared her mind to focus on the battle ahead. The whole and precise truth was that the knights, even her father, had had no idea what the priests might have brought with them to Brannagh in their bundles. At the time, it had been clearly none of their business. But that meant that they also had no idea what the priests might have carried with them into the crypt, nor what they carried now.

  The only assumption she could afford to make now was that Valmerous had come to Brannagh prepared to do battle, but not with the Knights of Brannagh, not even with Pegrine, but with Damerien himself. She wanted to know why, but the why did not matter now. Damerien had been his target, but Pegrine had thwarted him, and Pegrine was the one he attacked now. In any case, knowing what he did when he left Brannagh, Valmerous would not have gone to Pegrine’s glade any less prepared than he had gone into the crypt.

  Whatever he planned would take time—that stood to the knights’ advantage—but once completed, the assault would be difficult if not impossible to stop. She bit her lip. If ever they could use a sorcerer…

  Before long, the foothills rose to the northwest and the cliff relented until the two met and rose together. Alandro banked hard to the right and slipped in the soft dry soil to graze the side of his foreleg, but he recovered with a grunt and lost but a single step to lead them upward and over the rocky range of hills.

  Renda slowed Alandro when she reached the place where she had first heard Gikka’s hunting horn, careful to keep the top of the hill above them, that their silhouettes would not be visible from below.

  “The glade,” she murmured.

  Lord Daerwin paused.

  Renda squinted at him in the grayish light, seeing in his flint and steel eyes what he would not let the others see, and his anguish broke her heart. This was the first time he had looked down at the thick copse of trees that enclosed the glade where his granddaughter had been killed.

  “A wretched place.” He breathed deeply, and she saw that her father’s pain had hardened to rage. She nodded to him and motioned the rest of his knights forward to his side.

  “Come,” she said. “We’ve little time.”

  Twenty-Five

  The trees, the same that had strained and crowded at the clearing’s edge and pulled at Renda’s cloak to keep her from the alderwood stump a season past, were no more than spindly sticks and lifeless trunks now, but for all their bareness, they still completely enclosed the cardinal and his priests and hid them from the knights. That concealment worked both ways. The priests, expecting them to come riding in at full gallop, were likewise unaware that the knights had already crept in close to their perimeter afoot.

  “The altar,” she whispered, gesturing toward the west side of the glade, “and our priests, I should think.”

  The sheriff nodded and gestured for Barlow, Matow and Willem to fan out to a single line, not too far apart but with plenty of room to swing their swords if it came to it. Then, as a body, they moved deeper into the dense line of trees.

  But after only a few steps, Renda raised her hand to stop them. The eerie chant rising from every corner of the glade ahead was now clear and audible, lacking the echoes of the crypt, for all that it was still incomprehensible to her.

  Idri gai braniana ro viana kai virara Xorden.

  Go ziara kai bar no vortai brai Xorden.

  Then, just as it had in the crypt, the perfect unison of the priests’ voices splintered apart, and the strange words twisted and curdled over themselves, but the words were different, of that she was sure. At first, she heard nothing but a muddle, a crowd of muttering buzzing together mindlessly, but as the sounds all blended, separated and recombined, they formed new words, a new chant, crystal clear and in perfect rhythm.

  Goai drio ziara goai kai baraina nro vortirarai bra Xorden.

  From the first, one word always rang clear of the muddle, just as it ha
d in the crypt—Xorden, spoken with a certain emphasis, a certain—

  comes an old, forgotten god

  —reverence.

  They never use a name.

  Hah! Renda’s spirit crowed. At last, Bishop Cilder’s unnamed god had a name. It was a name she had never heard before, a name that meant nothing to her, but it was more than they’d had before. She glanced at her father, hoping he might know something, but from the quizzical look he gave to the trees ahead, she doubted it. For once, he seemed as baffled as the rest of them. She shifted irritably on her haunches and looked away. They were still fighting blind.

  Willem shook his head. “It makes no sense.”

  “No, it does not,” Barlow answered softly. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Nor I,” murmured Matow, rubbing his aching elbow.

  “That’s not what I mean. Listen again.” Willem gestured toward the gray branches ahead. “Renda says the altar is at the west, but the sound comes from all around.”

  “Unthinkable.” Matow closed his eyes to listen, then shook his head. “It’s echoes you hear, a trick of the hills.”

  But Willem was insistent. “My ear puts them round the perimeter, spread wide apart. Listen for yourself, tell me I’m wrong.”

  Barlow turned on him with an exasperated sigh. “What manner of foolishness is that? Not even priests would be so—”

  “Shut your mouth and listen!” They listened a few seconds before Willem went on. “Foolishness or no, they ring the perimeter.”

  “Could be there’s more of them than we thought, then,” whispered Barlow.

  “Maybe one or two.” Willem listened again. “But I doubt it. Sounds like the same half-dozen.”

  Matow’s gaze traveled up the impenetrable stand of trees. “Would that we could see,” he muttered darkly. “I should dearly love to know what they’re about.”

  “As would I,” the sheriff muttered. “Priests are not traditionally clever at strategy, especially not Hadrian priests, and while I would love to think that Valmerous is merely ignorant…”

  Renda nodded. The plan they’d given the knights, the attack she and her father had discussed at the castle, had been based on the assumption that the priests would act as priests should when they fall under attack: huddle together round the altar and surround themselves with tightly overlapping rings of protections while they worked their rites. Cutting through such a defense would be almost impossible, even armed as they were. Such a massed ring of protections would be the only hope the priests would have against them, so it was the only scenario she’d thought worthy of consideration.

  But set around the perimeter as they were, even if their protections touched and interlocked one with another, each priest was effectively alone, protected only by his own power. Worse than that, they’d left a great open space before the altar with no one except perhaps Valmerous to guard it, and all his attention must necessarily be turned to the ritual. Spread so thin, the knights could pick them off one at a time, and the others could not hope to stop them much less close the gap in the ring before the knights were in the open, and from there, it would be but a few steps to Valmerous himself.

  Never underestimate your enemies.

  The words were her father’s, her uncle’s, her teachers’, her own. She’d heard them and spoken them herself so often that she could not recall where she had first heard them nor when she had last spoken them. All right, then. Five knights, seven priests. An even match, given their defensive position inside the glade and the protections they would no doubt bring to bear. But even so, they would have been best served to stay together and direct their attacks outward at the knights in concert, not meet them one to one. So why would Valmerous deliberately put his priests in danger?

  Unbelievably, and with a martial sophistication Renda would hardly have expected of a priest devoted to charity, Valmerous was trying to draw the knights’ attack, a very specific attack he apparently had prepared to meet.

  “Have a care,” the sheriff breathed, “It’s clear they expect us.”

  “Aye.” Renda shuddered away the sudden chill that settled on her spine. “He’s all but daring us to attack, spread out thus, but I’ve yet to see how he thinks to win if we do.”

  They were in no position to wait, regardless. They could not see Valmerous, could not see how far he was into his ritual attack on Pegrine—on B’radik—but every moment that passed worked to his advantage, not theirs. They had no time to formulate a new plan of attack. Given the circumstances, they would not need one. It was already clear that they would need to spring the priests’ trap quickly, most likely by attacking one of the priests and opening a hole in the perimeter—a draw of their own—then see what came next and hope they could withstand it long enough to get to Valmerous. Otherwise, all would be lost.

  They heard movement in the glade, and the knights ducked low. The priests were moving out still further from the altar, thinning their circle yet again.

  “What do you suppose…” breathed Matow.

  But the sheriff raised his hand to silence him and rose to his feet. They could not afford to wait any longer.

  The five armored knights abruptly broke through the trees, weapons drawn, with great clamor and shouting, but the priests, bundled head to toe against the chill night air, did not flee in terror, did not so much as break their chant. A single torch burned behind the alderwood stump at the west side of the glade, and beneath it, Valmerous was cloaked and cowled in the familiar blue of Vilkadnazor, kneeling before the altar with his back to them.

  Barlow raised his sword, ready to run between two of the priests and cut him down, but Renda stopped him with a look. That was certainly what the priests were expecting. The priest at the altar was almost certainly not Valmerous, not if the cardinal was as shrewd as she now supposed him to be. She looked around the circle at the closely covered faces. They would have to kill all the priests to be certain, something Valmerous must have anticipated.

  Suddenly, one of the priests beside her turned and raised his hands to attack, and before she could stop herself, before she could understand the calm, almost gloating smile under his cowl, before the knights were ready, before she could stop herself, Renda slashed him open with her sword and breached the perimeter.

  The knights steeled themselves, waiting for the attack of the priest’s protections to wash over them or for the rest of the priests to close ranks on them. But nothing happened. They looked at each other in the long moment that followed, puzzled, speechless. Why would this priest neglect to set his protections?

  Then the nightmare began.

  The stout branches of the trees moved aside under the boy’s hand willingly, as if they welcomed him to this place, but he did not find this comforting. Not in the least. He’d tracked the knights along the southern edge of the glade—clear, overly heavy steps that kicked and crushed down tree limbs, underbrush that had been viciously hacked away with swords. Their passage had been far more difficult, and not just because of their armors. He gripped his hunting knife and pressed on through the accommodating trees.

  From the moment he’d entered the glade, he could hear the Old Voice chant coming from its center. So the Hadrians were here then, and the sheriff had brought his knights in pursuit.

  Idri gai braniana ro viana kai virara Xorden.

  He was too late with his warning; the sheriff had already discovered what he was coming to tell him and apparently something more. The knights had been willing to abandon Castle Brannagh to the overwhelming forces arrayed against her to pursue this cardinal. It must be far worse than he and Gikka had feared, worse than he could even imagine. Worse still, even as few as they were, he would be of little help to them in this battle. Chul’s shoulders slumped, and he lowered his hunting knife, defeated before he’d begun.

  Idri gai braniana ro viana kai virara Xorden.

  Chul frowned and raised his head, listening.

  Goziara kai bar no bortai brai Xorden.


  The first part was as Marigan had heard it in the castle, and the sound of a sacred Idri in the strange, mewling voices of these Invaders, these “Bloody-Hadrians,” as Gikka called them, boiled up his rage. But the second part baffled him utterly.

  Goziara kai bar no bortai brai Xorden.

  It was just babbling, a series of syllables that meant nothing at all, not even in the Old Voice. Why would they call the Idri and then follow it with a lot of gibberish? Was it meant as some kind of desecration? But as he approached the center of the glade, as the chanting grew louder and mingled and muddled together, he heard it meld and crystallize into something terrifying.

  Goai drio gziara, goai kai baraina nro vortirarai bra Xorden.

  Somehow, the priests, the Hadrian priests, had done what could not be done. They had made of their Idri and their babbles a new chant in the Old Voice, something even the tribe’s Storykeepers could not do, and the meaning of this new chant was as clear to Chul as if he’d heard it all his life.

  Rise and defend, rise to your vow, ye sons of Xorden.

  The dust began boiling about their feet even before the dead priest’s body touched the ground, but with the first drops of his blood, it began to churn faster and harder. Instantly, the knights spread themselves to a tight line with Renda at the center, swords drawn. With the almost impassable trees at their backs, they awaited this new attack, this unleashing of prayers from the rest of the priests. Except that it did not seem to come from the rest of the priests. The Hadrians had not moved; if anything, they seemed most intent on not moving.

  Suddenly, a fearful, savage scream of rage rose from empty center of the glade, terrifying enough to make the priests falter in their chanting. From the open space, hundreds of shadows erupted from the ground like geysers, human shadows that seemed to drink in substance from the darkness until their footfalls had weight in the soil.