More loss. He should have thought himself numbed to sorrow, having lost so many in a space of days. Still, to his amazement, he had unplumbed depths yet to his grief and the burn of tears in his eyes. “Alas.”
“Indeed.” Kerrick shut his eyes a moment before he went on. “The night after, even as we returned from his burial, the rebels sent their leader to our gates offering parlay, thinking to intimidate the new boy-viscount, as they saw me. Their man sauntered into my audience chamber posturing and making threats upon my very life, refusing to give up his weapons, proclaiming as he came that he would bend knee to no man, least of all some ‘bookish milquetoast.’”
“’Bookish milquetoast,’ he said as much, truly?”
“Aye, he did,” Kerrick smiled. “And in so many words, right to my father’s––my—retainer, who was of a mind to dash out the fool’s very brains.”
Daerwin snorted and shook his head. “A few years of peace, and they forget the nights they spent cowering within your castle walls.”
“Indeed. I met him, my Lord, ‘bookish milquetoast’ that I am, sword at my hip, Brannagh mantle on my shoulder, with your knights lined up behind me.” Kerrick laughed. “You should have seen the color drain from his face. He dropped immediately to one knee and began stuttering and dribbling out a much diluted version of his demands.”
“Which, I trust, you refused out of hand.”
“How could I do otherwise? I could not reward such tactics.”
“Good man.” Daerwin smiled. “I see much of your father’s wisdom in you.”
Kerrick smiled. “But neither could I let his threats go unanswered, so I imprisoned him with the promise of execution for his threats in the morning.” The young knight shook his head and chuckled darkly. “Poor soul even called for a Verilionite priest, he was so scared.”
Brannagh’s smile faded. Execution? “But you would not kill a man for so little.”
“Oh, no, of course not!”
The sheriff breathed a sigh of relief.
“I wasn’t about to kill a man in cold blood, no matter how much the ass he acted. So next morning, with his neck upon the block and his tears falling into the basket below, my headsman grinding at his ax, I let him wring from me my slow clemency. At length I released him and bade him think carefully upon my mercy.”
“Never did the birds sing so sweetly to his ear, methinks.” Daerwin grinned. “I trust your point was well made.”
“Enough so that I had no fear of riding to your aid, my Lord,” he said with a slight bow. “Not that any such fear would have stayed me.”
The sheriff laughed quietly. “Well played, son. Later you can consider his demands and grant those you find reasonable, the better to secure your reputation for fairness.”
Kerrick cocked his head. “If he should find voice to make such demands again, I would be surprised.”
“Well played, indeed.” Renda smiled from the door to the practice area, offering her hand to Windale. “Dearest Kerrick, I cannot tell you how relieved…” her voice broke and she looked away.
Daerwin looked between her and Kerrick. He was surprised to see his daughter’s practiced poise break. Surprised and rather pleased. “Indeed,” he said, neatly filling the silence. “Our gratitude knows no bounds.”
“My dear Lady Renda,” beamed Kerrick. He grasped her hand and hugged her to him. “I am pleased beyond words that you are safe and well. It seems so much has happened, and I’ve missed all!”
“I praise B’radik that you did miss all, Kerrick.” She held him close, then released him and squeezed his hand. “Else we might have lost you. All of you. All the knights.”
He smiled. “Of course. Still, I should very much like to hear from your own lips what happened, my Lady.”
Lord Daerwin patted Kerrick on the shoulder. “We shall have time enough for stories as we travel. The monks have prepared food, if you’ve stomach. I should like to take our leave within the hour.”
“We are yours to command, my Lord. My Lady.” Kerrick bowed. “We are provisioned and ready to leave here at your will. Are we to take back Brannagh, or…?”
“No.” Daerwin sighed. “No, there is nothing left to take back, I’m afraid. Once you and the knights have eaten, we will leave this abbey with all praises to Bilkar and go southeastward. To Brannford.”
* * *
The riders slowed their horses as they crested the last hill overlooking the valley leading to the coast of Syon.
Below, in the fading twilight, the fortified port city of Brannford was barely visible in the distance, little more than a silvery ribbon that separated the snowy farmlands from the coastline.
An ancient sea wall built of stones taken from the harbor itself traced the coast, joining at its ends with a series of breakwaters that lined the outer edge of the narrow natural shelf to protect the city and, more importantly, her fishing fleet from the foul moods of the sea. Inland, another stone wall surrounded the actual city, a wall that had kept Brannford safe from attacking armies through the centuries.
Of all the cities on Syon, Brannford alone had not fallen since its founding, not to great waves or hurricanes, not to siege, not even to open battle, which was surprising only because it was the largest and most prosperous city on Syon. Named as it was during the reign of Lexius, the first Shire-Reeve of Brannagh, the city was held and ostensibly governed by the House of Brannagh, although Lexius in his wisdom had granted the city sovereignty to rule itself with a board of ministers who would report to the House of Brannagh once a year. So, throughout its history, it had withstood siege after siege, patiently rebuilding whatever of its walls were knocked down during this attack or that. But wars were not all that plagued Brannford.
Brannford and all the coast of Syon were constantly wracked with wind and storms. If the weather had been consistently too bad for fishing, perhaps Brannford might have become no more than another miserable coastal farming city like the rest up and down the coast had. But right at Brannford Bay, usually once every tenday to a month, the constant churn of storm systems aligned such that the weather would break just for a short time and allow the fishing ships in harbor to sail out to sea where they hoped the wind and weather were less fickle. And while the waves at sea could be violent and unpredictable, at least the ships would not get dashed against the rocks.
Timing was the key to survival for Brannford’s fishermen. The worst luck that could befall a captain was to be caught in port with a full hold when the weather broke. If that happened, he had two choices. He could either sell his catch at the scales, a lengthy and tedious process which would strand himself and his crew in port until the next break in the weather perhaps a month or more away, or he could dump his holds and sail out again immediately, hoping for a bigger catch to make up his loss. Ever hoping for that better haul smacked of gambling, but a captain’s ability to find and keep a fishing crew was better if he kept his men working at sea instead of idling on the quay.
For ships to dump a half-hold of fish had become so common during these windcalms as they were called that a whole population of “scavvies” had grown up around the practice. Just as the winds died down and the rains slowed, the scavvies would set out into the bay on makeshift rafts, smoothed planks of wood and even hollowed out logs to wait for the outermost ships to dump their holds, and usually, they were rewarded. They would gather all they could right up to the last minute before the storm hit again. Then they’d sell what they brought back to the less reputable fish mongers or, barring that, share it amongst themselves.
No one ever starved to death in Brannford, but then, for the multitudes of poor in the streets, not being at any risk of starving to death doomed them to a dull gray life of never having enough and never being quite miserable enough to strive for more. Worse, being that no one was in danger of starving, the boardsmen felt no imminent need to change much at all, neither to hire more guardsmen nor to press for any reform. So it was in the idle space between starvation and hope that
Brannford’s criminal element flourished.
Gikka had spent her childhood here in these streets, living among the scavvies, sleeping in temples, learning the better part of her trade.
As twilight faded to night, Jath lowered his hood and gazed out over the darkness of the valley that extended all the way out to sea. “Is Brannford supposed to look like that?”
“Why,” asked Chul, noting how the worry spread from Jath to the others. “I don’t see anything. How does it look?”
The stable boy shrugged and looked between Nestor and Damerien. “Broken.”
“Broken all to pieces, aye.” Swallowing her fear, Gikka kicked Zinion up and raced down the hill toward the city.
She pulled her cloak close against the blowing ice storm and climbed through what remained of the shattered city wall into the darkness beyond, listening into the silence past the occasional gust of the storm. She heard nothing. No one stirred.
The streets she’d known since childhood, the houses, the taverns, the familiar landmarks and alleyways, even the trees––all were gone, leaving an unfamiliar landscape in the darkness. Everything had been destroyed, swept into drifts of splintered wood, twisted metal, plaster mud and thatching that lazed in the last receding channels of water which cut between them.
Water. Just water. She fairly choked on the absurdity. Brannford’s drainage system had withstood hurricanes and storm surges, even great waves, time and again over the centuries. Nothing the sea could do could harm Brannford––at least, not the sea by itself. She remembered Chul’s description of how Brannagh had been destroyed and the immense unnatural forces brought against it, and she shivered, wondering how Renda and the sheriff hoped to defeat such power.
Assuming they hadn’t been here when this happened.
She could see, heaped here and there amidst the twisted window frames and shattered wood and glass, all the trappings of these people’s lives. Lock boxes and kitchen trappings, broken antique chairs, soaked tapestries and ruined portraits, filthy gowns both silk and wool, boots with the prices still marked, weapons, statues from the temples, everything mangled and forlorn.…. Yet no one picked among the piles of rubbish for treasured belongings. More worrisome still, no one even picked through them for loot.
She could not see very well in the darkness, beneath the occasional flashes of lightning from the storm, but what she did not see told her as much as what she did. No carriages clogged the broken gates of Brannford, nor had they been swept away and piled up together anywhere that she could see. Had anyone escaped, the obvious direction to flee would have inland. West toward Durlindale was the most obvious route. She and the others would have seen any refugees coming along the road. Yet they’d seen no one. She shuddered, looking over the wreckage. Not a soul.
Seaward, beyond the broken sea wall, the ocean churned and roiled, growling where it slammed against the shore, where it should have been mostly calm. In the darkness, the waves seemed almost to be laughing at her, laughing at Brannford’s audacity at trying to claim a tiny piece of calm for its bay. More than laughing. The piers, the ships and even the breakwaters that had served for so long to keep the bay calm, were gone. Not broken, not heaped against the sea wall, simply gone.
As she moved, she could make out the smells of recent death, and in the mottled light cast over the drifts by scattered lightning, she could sometimes make out a hand, a leg, even an occasional face looking out at her in the darkness, and she looked away before she could see more. With the storm, the animals had not yet been at them, as far as she could tell, and she was grateful for that. She closed her eyes and listened again to the silence beneath the storm around her. No one moved. No one cried or called for loved ones in the darkness.
She could not accept the devastation around her. Brannford was gone, almost as if it had never existed. This was the city where she had first lived and first loved and first found her way in life, the place she had thought of as home, and it was simply destroyed, like none of it had ever mattered, like none of the people she had known here had ever mattered.
She ran through the icy rain into what had remained of the old counting house just inland from the piers. Most of the building had been shattered and swept away, but where it had been built into the ground, the better part of three partially buried walls remained with a waist-high pile of rock and rubble blocking the fourth side. Above, a few oak beams held up what had been part of the roof or perhaps the second story’s floor. The shelter was not perfect, and it was by no means safe, but it held off the worst of the rain and wind and let her collect her thoughts. She settled into what little shelter the old building offered and looked out over the destruction, scratching absently with the long nails of her littlest fingers against the wall.
She wondered if Limigar might have done this, but she dismissed the notion as quickly as it arose. She’d minded the rites carefully, and she’d given Him thanks for His trouble, as well. Besides, Limigar always left His victims a choice. It might not seem much of a choice, but ever it was a choice. From the look of it, these people had had none. They were surprised in their beds and destroyed, drowned and crushed along with all their belongings.
Still, if He’d wanted to take from her everything that had ever mattered to her, drowning Brannford was the way, especially if Renda and her father were here. All He’d miss was Dith, assuming he wasn’t here as well.
She stilled the silent scream that rose in her mind.
No. Dith would have no reason to be here. He was north, in the Hodrache. Brannford would have taken him far out of his way and to no purpose. He knew no one here, and besides, he never could stomach fish.
Renda and her father could not have been here, either, she told herself sternly. The sheriff was injured badly, from what Chul had said, and that would have slowed their travel some, if only for Renda having to mind him all the way. They’d had in mind to go to Windale to collect Kerrick and the rest, and she thought it likely they might have stayed a night there. That would have made sense, even if they were rushed, and it would likewise have slowed them. No, she insisted to herself, they were still miles and miles off. A day away, at least.
She would not find them among the bodies.
Would not.
No matter how deep she searched.
She clung to that certainty and tried to drive out the thought of all those who were here in Brannford, those she had lost, those she would inevitably find in the rubble and have to put in their graves, and an ugly sob rose in her breast.
“And lo, below me, I feel a familiar scratching through the stones,” mused a gravelly voice from the darkness above her, “and I ask myself, could that be my noisy little starling, my Gikka, from so long ago?”
She put the wall at her back as the man tumbled smoothly from his perch on the beams above to land beside her. His feet barely disturbed the rubble as he danced over it to spill the energy of his fall and put himself safely out of her reach.
“But no, says I, she’s lady mistress of lands and mines now, my Gikka. This one with the bad habit of scratching at the wall could not be she.” He lowered his hood and grinned at her. “And more’s the pity.”
“Tagen.” Tears filled her eyes, and she hugged her old mentor to her. His hair was almost all gray now. His tanned leathery face had a few more lines in it, and he was missing a few more teeth, but he still looked hale and strong.
“What,” he growled, “and no knife for me, besides? You’re getting slack, girl. Far too trusting. Comes of keeping company with those do-gooder knights.” He looked out over the chaos around them. Then he turned and smiled sadly at her, his gray eyes brimming. “I told you no good would come of it.”
“By the gods, Tagen, you’re alive!”
“You sound surprised,” he chuckled. “Oh, come now. Sure you’d not think a little wet would be the end of old Tagen, would you?” He brushed a damp strand of her hair aside and kissed her forehead. “Now what kind of sense would that make?”
“Whe
n I saw all this, when I heard no one, saw no one…” She swallowed her rising hysteria. “I’d not dared hope against hope to find you alive. Any of you.”
“Yeah, well,” he sighed, “Truth is, you very nearly didn’t. An I’d not set the scavvies scrambling for high ground days ago, you’d have found us all here, amongst the dashed and drowned.” He shook his head at the carnage and kicked angrily at the rubble. “Tried to warn these fools, I did. Bloody board of ministers, and not a ship’s man among them. The fishermen, now: they know to listen when a scavvy tells them the sea is in a mood, but not these. Tried to make the boardsmen see, but,” he added, looking down at his muddied threadbare clothes and his patched cloak, “those fine gentlemen’d not the time of day for the likes of me, nor for looking out their windows at the sea, withal.”
Gikka looked out at the storm and shivered. “Sure you’re freezing. Come back with me a ways, and we can talk away out of the storm. We found a farmhouse still standing not far beyond the gates, and there they’ve made camp.”
“They?” He smirked. “Your do-gooder knights?” He shook his head. “Gikka, you forget who I am. Sure I’d not be welcome amongst such lofty folk.”
“My word makes you welcome, Tagen, even in the duke’s company.” She squeezed his arm. “Come, I’ll not hear no. You’ve not been warm or dry in days, and sure there’ll be a fire and hot food. Besides, I’ve someone I want you to meet. A boy I’ve taken up to teach.”
“Sure you’ve come up in the world, girl,” he smiled. “But me, made welcome with the duke his own self, sure not! That’s a lie even you can’t sell, that. But if you’re sure your so-and-so knights won’t turn an old scavvy away…. Very well, but mind, it’s the promise of a fire and hot food as turns my head.”
“As to knights,” she sighed looking out over the drifts of broken lives, “my dearest hope is the sheriff and Renda were not here as it hit.”
Tagen shook his head. “No, none of your blue knights came through.”
Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) Page 15