Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2)

by Jordan MacLean

  Chul nodded absently, uncertain what this had to do with him or why he needed to be here. But he was alone. Limigar was no longer at his side.

  Deep within the mine, a single squeak caused all the miners to stop and listen. Another squeak, then another… Suddenly every vole in the mine was screaming.

  * * *

  Gikka moved carefully and silently over the stones and rubble at the entrance to the mine, pausing very briefly at intervals to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, listening against the smoke and dust choked silence in the mine for any sign of the boy. The two horses stood a short distance away, near enough that she could reach them but far enough away that the animals could escape should the Hadrians try to capture them for ransom. An odd concern anywhere else on Syon, but here amongst the miners, a real worry. She kept to the walls, mindful that the sun was at her back, and resisted the urge to call the boy’s name. They could be spiteful, especially emboldened as they were against her now, and she would not have them kill the boy out of hand just to vex her.

  She’d seen Chul’s white horse grazing at the crossroad as soon as she’d crested the last ridge, and a thousand possibilities had gone through her mind, all terrible, as she’d raced Zinion overland toward him. Very soon, the thousand possibilities became only one, and she spurred Zinion harder: the boy had been taken by the Hadrians. She had to find him and hope she was not too late.

  His horse had still been lathered with sweat when she reached him, so whatever had happened had not happened long ago. There was still a chance to save Chul even if the Hadrians had taken him. She had only to find him. The horse had shown no cuts, no marks, no sign of a fight, and his eyes had been more or less clear and calm by the time Gikka approached him. This had to be a good sign. Even as dull a horse as he would have noticed if his rider had been snatched from his very back by a mob, especially since she could not imagine Chul being taken without a fight, and the fright would still show in his eyes. Still, it was the only explanation that made any sense.

  Then she’d seen the plume of flame and smoke shoot from the mine.

  “Gikka.”

  She stopped, squinting below into the darkness to see a bit of light reflected weakly in dark leather, or perhaps sweaty skin, just inside the deepest shadow below the mouth of the mine.

  “Chul?”

  The boy wiped his forearm across his brow and stepped into the light before he stumbled and fell at her feet. A thick layer of dust covered him, streaked with sweat and possibly blood, and he smelled strongly of smoke. She would not know for certain whether he was injured until they were in better light.

  She looked past him into the darkness, making sure no army of angry Hadrians was about to spill out over them, then slipped her arm under his to lift him. “We best not be staying, lad. The Hadrians––”

  “The Hadrians are all dead,” he murmured softly. “All of them, dead. Those that weren’t trampled to death in the rush died when it all exploded… Metal wheels. They scraped under the burden and sparked, and with just a breath of gas…”

  “By the gods,” she breathed. “All of them, then?”

  The boy nodded. “Limigar…” He shrugged, as if that was all that needed to be said.

  Gikka nodded. “It’s this favor I bought of Him with the toy you made. I told you I’d not be leaving this account unsettled long.” She raised her voice slightly, and Chul knew she wasn’t speaking to him. “A clever and righteous payment, this is, for their treasons and greed. My thanks to You for Your trouble.”

  “I think,” coughed Chul quietly behind her, “that He enjoyed it. In fact, I know right well He did.”

  A soft rumble emerged from the mine followed by another belch of dust and death smells from the depths, a sound not unlike a laugh.

  “Well,” Gikka said, looking at Chul a bit uncertainly, “I suppose everyone’s the happier for it, then. All but the Hadrians, of course. But come, and let’s have a look at you. I’ll not have you bleeding to your death while we ride. And you can tell me how it is you came to be in the mine at just the wrong time.”

  She led him out to the horses and helped him to his saddle. As she’d hoped, Chul’s wounds were no more than cuts and scrapes, probably from scrambling over the rocks. But some of them looked like they were already scabbed over, like they’d happened hours ago. A sick feeling filled her gut.

  “Did you get my message to the sheriff?”

  Chul sighed. “After a fashion, Mistress.”

  “After a fashion? Lad, you did or you did not.”

  “I did, but…by then, it didn’t matter.” He saw the questions lining up in her eyes, and he shook his head. “It’s not so simple. I’ve so much to tell you. The castle was surrounded when I got there, and the Hadrians had already left, but the knights followed them, so I followed the knights, and then there was a battle and—”

  “Peace, lad.” Gikka closed her eyes a moment, willing her heart to slow its panic as she swung up to Zinion’s back. “The rest you can give me as we ride, but tell me this at once, and only if you know for certain, not as you go guessing at it, but certain with your own eyes: do the sheriff and Lady Renda yet live?”

  He nodded. “They live, though the sheriff is injured. Badly. After Brannagh fell––”

  “Brannagh fell?” Gikka’s hands shook with rage. “And me, sitting the stoop at Graymonde like a schoolgirl, not there to fight? Why did you not ride to fetch me? I could have…” Her voice broke. “I would have…”

  “You could not have stopped it. Nothing could have. I saw it.” He looked into her eyes, and the horror she saw there said more than he could have. “Yes, Brannagh fell, but the sheriff, Lady Renda, the knights… They were not there to fight, either.”

  Gikka only stared at him, unsure which question to ask first.

  “Gikka, I’ve so much to tell you, so much I need you to help me understand, and tell you I will, but above all, know that I saw them safely away to Brannford ere I came to fetch you.”

  She blinked away her tears and nodded. “They are safe.” She nudged Zinion up toward the eastern road. “All else falls aside, and we cling to that. They are safe. Brannford it is, then. Durlindale tonight, and I’ll have this tale from you end to end, as we ride, lad. Brannagh…fallen.” She shook her head in disbelief.

  Five

  Moncliff

  The three riders were still the better part of a day’s ride outside Durlindale, which itself stood a day’s ride from Brannford, when they were forced to slow their horses. They had ridden hard through the night, almost to exhaustion for man and horse, and they’d had to cut overland to avoid being seen by Maddock’s spies on the roads surrounding Castle Damerien, which had slowed their travel. As they’d cleared the east gate, they had of course seen the distant glow of battle over the far western hills, over Castle Brannagh, but their path lay east. So they had not stopped, had not slowed their pace, riding on into the night in resolved silence and leaving Brannagh to its fate.

  This close to Durlindale and Brannford, and with the morning about to dawn, they would need caution more than speed. The roads here saw heavy traffic by day, between the farmers and the town, but also between various monasteries and temples, many of which––most of which, the duke feared––were likely in the hands of their enemies.

  Colaris, the sheriff’s harrier, circled high above the trees. The duke had watched the little hawk dodging and hunting between the trees, happily filling his little belly on warm, fresh field mouse, a luxury the bird had likely not enjoyed since the war. By now, Colaris had no doubt wearied of terrorizing squirrels and rabbits on the ground as he scouted ahead of the riders and just glided lazily between the trees, matching the riders’ pace and watching the ground below. It seemed Daerwin had tasked Colaris with staying with Damerien since Castle Brannagh was no longer safe for him, which suited the duke. Already the bird had more than earned his keep.

  Twice in as many miles, Colaris had warned them of traffic approaching on the road
, and twice they’d barely slowed and composed themselves before they were seen. In the dappled shadows of the trees, their Bremondine cloaks made them virtually invisible to those who had passed them on the road––farmers, as it happened in both cases, rather than priests or knights––whose thoughts had been lost in their own business. As a result, they’d not much inclined to notice one more band of travelers.

  The riders could not afford to be memorable, not to anyone they passed. For someone to recognize Duke Trocu Damerien was unlikely, given his rare appearances in public. But he could not risk it. Such recognition would bring questions and the demands of his station from the people of Durlindale which would delay him. At worst, it would bring unwanted attention from those who might wish him harm while he was still too weak to defend himself.

  Lord Daerwin had clearly written his message to his nephew in haste, so it had not been terribly clear. Something about Brannagh being besieged and a rendezvous in Brannford… The rest, Trocu already knew.

  He’d smelled Xorden’s ancient and all-but-forgotten stink all over the disgusting little Hadrian cardinal as soon as he’d entered the audience chamber at Damerien. But by that time, Trocu had been all but incapacitated with protecting those of Brannagh from the plague threatening to leak in at the edges of his power if his attention so much as wandered.

  Five times, only five, he had been able to rally just a bit of extra strength while still holding off the main body of the plague. He’d sought out the traces of B’radik’s power in her priests and lent his own to help purge the plague from some few of the knights. Only five. Without sleep, without food, as his own strength had begun to fail him, to his sorrow, Damerien had not been able to save another. As he’d weakened more and more, he’d despaired of outliving the plague himself, much less being able to protect Brannagh much longer.

  So it was in this helpless, nearly dead state that he had watched as through a fog as his beloved cousin, Lady Renda, Knight Commander of Brannagh, Hero of the Five Hundred Years War, had bowed to the despicable Hadrian. She was unable to see the evil spilling from his features, and so she had left the assassin alone with the duke. The cardinal had positively crowed once she was safely without, for he’d believed her to be the only being in all Syon strong enough to protect Damerien from him. Then something amazing had happened. While the Keepers frantically pooled their diminished strength to protect the duke, little Pegrine had appeared between Trocu and the cardinal, her wooden sword leveled at the Hadrian’s shocked face, with all the power of the goddess B’radik coursing through her…

  The duke’s breath fogged in the predawn cold, and he shivered.

  “My Lord, how fare you?” asked Nestor quietly. The ride had not been easy for the ancient Damerien retainer, and the duke knew the old man would feel every bounce and jolt of it by morning. But Nestor looked far more concerned with Damerien, and for good reason. But hours before they’d thought Trocu to be on his deathbed.

  Damerien chuckled weakly, rubbing at his aching lower back. “Well as can be expected,” he answered, mimicking the old retainer’s habitual answer. “Too much time abed, Nestor, and my back has no strength to it. There’s no helping that just now.” He looked around him at the familiar hills and forests, the ancient farmhouses. “But at least I don’t have the gout this time.”

  “Aye, my Lord,” laughed Nestor quietly. “And more’s the mercy, for all of us. Your grandfather had quite an excruciating ride into these very fields twenty years ago.” The retainer grinned at him.

  He smiled. Nestor and the other keepers had spent hours before that ride bolstering Vilmar’s strength so he would fall spectacularly in battle instead of slipping away in his bed and still have power enough left to achieve the Succession.

  “Aye,” agreed the stable boy Jath with a grin. “But it was well worth having to sleep the tenday through just to see the armies rattle the walls of Durlindale and retake it in the name of Vilmar Damerien. ‘Vilmar! Vilmar!’”

  Damerien smiled. He’d lain on the makeshift travois inside his pavilion at the edge of that battlefield, cold and still, peeling away his hold on the ancient flesh he’d filled for decades, while outside, his knights and farmers continued his assault against Durlindale’s walls. He’d heard their voices grow quiet, and…there! The thunderous crash of the siege machines followed by the crumbling of Durlindale’s wall and a throaty cheer rising from the men. Before that miserable, gouty perforated form had breathed its last, Durlindale had been freed of Kadak’s grasp in his name. The demon had been forced into retreat, even if only for the season, but a season had been enough to build the armies’ strength and let them regroup under B’rada after the Succession…

  Vilmar’s had been a worthy death, indeed.

  “We should stop soon,” said Nestor, “for the horses’ sake if not for our own.”

  Trocu nodded, looking back toward Brannagh and beyond it, toward the battle the shadows and disturbing reflections of which he could feel across the distance, yet he dared not intervene. Prophecy or no, if the knights of Brannagh should fail––if Daerwin and Renda should fall in this battle––he, Trocu Damerien, would again be Syon’s only hope of defense against what was coming, and if that happened, he would need to have all his strength and all his wits about him. He could not afford to turn Xorden’s attention his way again, not now.

  “Sunrise,” murmured Jath, in his dull, distant way, and his horse danced uneasily beneath him. “The fires should die down soon. Having lost all, they will come this way…”

  “Aye,” answered Damerien, “and by then, we hope to be ready.” He lowered the hood of his cloak and shook free his dark gold hair, which had all but completely filled in from the patchy peeling scalp he’d hooded when they left Castle Damerien.

  Above them, Colaris called a warning and swept lower, closer to the treetops a bit to the south. They moved into the shadows of the trees at once.

  Suddenly an arrow flew by. Colaris dodged it neatly and called off a saucy challenge to the one who had fired it. Another arrow flew by, and he dodged it again. And another.

  “Mind the arrows,” Damerien said quietly to Nestor and Jath, raising his hood again to cover his features, “these hunters have no mind for where the arrows fall.” Damerien lifted his falconing gauntlet, and the hawk immediately dove down to stand on Damerien’s forearm, fluffing his feathers with indignation at having been fired upon.

  “Easy, lad,” soothed Damerien, listening for any more arrows. None came. So they had indeed been aiming at the harrier. But why? Simple malice? The cruelty of men still amazed him, even after so many centuries. He turned to Nestor and Jath. “Best we keep moving and trust they’ve lost interest and retired by the time we should meet them, but stay to the shadows as you can.”

  Jath frowned and patted his horse’s neck. “What if they do not lose interest, my Lord?”

  Damerien shrugged. “Let us hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”

  Within a mile, they heard voices and saw a team of men approaching. Their manner said military, perhaps, possibly a routine patrol, but definitely not hunters. Damerien and his men rode slowly, quietly, taking in as much as they could before making themselves known.

  As they rode closer, Trocu pulled his cloak up closer about his face. Theirs were the colors of the Marquess of Moncliff, and they were looking for something, probably Colaris. Possibly more.

  Perhaps it was the distance from Damerien, or perhaps it was the marquess’s steadfast refusal to join any fight, even the war against Kadak, but Damerien had not much trusted the house of Moncliff since he’d first set them in guardianship over the southern coast.

  Over the millennia, Moncliff had always been eliminated early from consideration for marriage to Brannagh daughters, mostly because of their lack of solidarity with the other lords of Syon. This had led to a real if not official reduction in the marquess’s rank among them, which in turn made it that much less likely that House Moncliff would ever be able to regain a
ny standing by marrying a Brannagh daughter. They were the one noble house of Syon that had no Damerien blood anywhere in their lineage.

  This lack of favor did not go unnoticed by Moncliff, and neither did the marquess’s petty acts of spite go unmarked by Damerien, including his blanket refusal to liberate his own city. Moncliff had not sent a single soldier to free Durlindale from Kadak’s occupation, insisting that it was not his war, even while the demon’s army barked at his very gates.

  “I know he must have fallen along here,” one of the men was saying. While the other eleven rode behind him, he was unmounted, searching the ground along the road.

  One of the others laughed. “Admit it, you missed.”

  “I never miss,” the man snarled.

  Colaris kekked softly on the duke’s wrist, and Damerien smiled.

  “Was a fast, wee bird, and you shot wide!” The oldest man in the group called with good cheer. “Come. Is no shame in missing!”

  “Not for you,” the one in front shot back, “you always miss.”

  The other chuckled. “So apparently do you, on occasion. So let’s be on our way, then. We’ve duties.”

  The archer persisted. “The bird had to fall here, or maybe it’s stuck in the trees,” he said squinting up through the branches, “but either way, the poachers are somewhere nearby, and that’s a duty as well.”

  Damerien cracked a smile beneath his hood. That was all? They were concerned about poachers? He relaxed, and on his lead, the three rode casually into view.

  “You there! Poachers!” the foremost of the marquess’s men raised his bow. “Stop and identify yourself!”

  “Poachers?” Nestor slipped slightly ahead of the duke. Damerien felt a tingle down his spine as Nestor set a subtle protection over him. “Even were we inclined to hunt, lad, we’ve no weapons and no game about us. You would be hard pressed to convince any sane person that we are poaching. ”

  One of the pack snorted. “Your man there has a hunting falcon on his very arm! The very one we––”