Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (11 page)

“Brings he the storm, this boy?” asked the singer, rising to
his feet.  “Should we stop him here?”

“Nay, nay.  He is its herald, but he must help to fight it.”

Creda stood back with her hands on her hips.  “Tevy, sit you
down, you fool.  Stop him here, the very idea!”  The boy looked quizzically at
the young woman who had fed him, but she only shook her head.  “Sada reads
fortunes for them as pays her, and it’s her what keeps us fed just now.”  She
winked at him and lowered her voice to a whisper.  “But sometimes she forgets
it’s but show.”  She put her arm around Chul and rubbed up his shoulders to
make him warm.  “Need you a bed for the night, boy?”

“Creda,” began her husband with a sigh, “where would you put
him?”

“Why, anywhere at all, but I’ll not have a child sleep out
in the woods!”

Her husband snorted.  “Child, indeed.  By his age, the
Dhanani father sons, Creda, and best you remember it ere you set him up in our
own bed.”

But Chul shook his head at their argument.  “Brannagh,” he
said, somewhat apologetically.  Then he pointed toward the old woman and
shrugged.  “Sunset tomorrow,” he added.

Creda nodded her understanding.  “But even if you run all
night and day, you’ll not get there by next-night.”

At this, Tevy stretched his legs.  “You know your way, aye?”

Chul nodded and pointed roughly southeast.

“Aye,” said Tevy, putting his arm around the boy’s shoulders
and drawing him away from the fire.  “But know you that a town lies south along
this road by ten mile?  There’s a tavern lies hard by the road, aye?  A tavern
for travelers.  Outside such a place, a trick Dhanani lad like you might find,
shall we say, means of making the trip shorter?”  He patted Chul’s shoulder and
led him back to the fire.  “Think on it, lad.”

Town.  Tavern.  He had no idea what Tevy was saying, but he
grinned and nodded.  “Creda,” he said, “thank you.”  Then he turned to the
rest.  “Thank you.”  And he ran off down the road to the south.

Castle Brannagh

“
S
low.” 
Renda tapped the flat of her practice sword against the other knight’s mail. 
“Again.”

The knight nodded as they disengaged.  But this time, when
he saw her approaching, he did not stand straight on and keep his sword in
front of him as he had before.  Slowly, deliberately, he switched his feet and
lifted his sword upright at his back shoulder, clearly offering his other
shoulder to her sword in challenge.

She studied her opponent’s posture, his focus.  He no longer
followed every motion she made with one of his own; she was glad she had broken
him of that habit.  Now he rarely moved himself at all, and then, only slightly,
just a small shift of his footing.  Good.  He had begun to see the folly of
perfection.

But in the small motions, in the way he held his sword, she
could see that he still did not completely understand what this position gave
him or how he might use it.  Strengths it had in plenty.  Renda smiled behind
her visor and flexed her fingers around her weapon.  Likewise weaknesses.

At the first flicker of movement from her he had taken his
step forward and snapped his blade into the space between them, thinking to
toss off the expected collarbone strike and put his sword at her throat as he
had watched her do countless times.  Ah, assumptions, she thought to herself.

She had not struck at his collarbone, nor did she stay and
wait for his lunge at her throat.  His eyes widened to see her suddenly at an
angle to him, behind his overcommitted strike, with her sword slicing down
toward his unprotected knee.  He hopped out of the way, managing at the same
time to force his weapon down against its own arc to stop her stroke and keep
it from following him back.

She could not help but be impressed at his sheer strength. 
Rather than push her blade against it or try to break through it, she allowed
his deflection to turn her blade away and used that power to speed her sword
through its own arc around her head to cut toward his shoulder again. 

He flipped his sword upright and barely managed to knock her
strike away.  She’d turned the game on him again, and he was once again on the
defensive, completely at her mercy.  Except that in the next breath, he leapt
in to slash at her, and this wild, artless fury was enough to make her retreat.

“Yes,” she cried, backing steadily away under his advance. 
She kept the tip of her sword almost still between them, moving the hilt only
enough to hold off his driving attack, a fast, efficient motion that did not
tire her.

She lulled him into a rhythm of strike-counterstrike until
she saw that he was anticipating her blocks.  Then she broke abruptly out of
the rhythm to drive him back with a powerful attack of her own.

They had switched roles again.  She was attacking, driving
him backward, and he was defending.  She watched his sword bound back and forth
in imitation of what he had just seen her do, trying to catch hers at each
strike, but he moved too much and had to fight the sword into position with
every movement.  Thus he was always just a little too late for a riposte. 
Worse, his reliance on his strength had exhausted him.  He needed to quiet his
movement and regain his composure, as she’d taught him.  At last he found
himself at the edge of the practice floor, exhausted and gasping for breath,
and he gratefully lowered his sword in surrender.

“Do not yield now!” she shouted, still swinging her sword at
him.  “In my attack, I am most vulnerable.”

He raised his sword into hers barely in time to deflect her
next blow.  He parried another blow away, and another, but his speed and power
were flagging.  He was defending again.  It almost seemed he was plotting his
own defeat again.  Why did they always do that?  She pressed him harder.

“You cannot win whilst you defend!  Come, strike to my
heart!”

He offered a weak stab at her side.

“Slow!” she shouted, whipping her blade past each of his
ears in a quick flourish.  “Again!”

This time, he jabbed and nearly touched her armor before she
whirled out of his reach and knocked his sword aside.  Finally, with utter
disregard for his own defense, he thrust in clumsily to clank his sword against
her mail.  And found her tip at his throat.

“Well done, Lord Kerrick!” she cried when they had
disengaged.  She stripped the practice helmet and coif from her head and beamed
at him.  “Well done, indeed.”

“To think I once held my swordsmanship in some esteem,” he
laughed, still out of breath.  He unbuckled the straps on his helmet.  “For all
that I have lain countless enemy in the ground, I cannot so much as gain a
clean touch on you.”

“You have.  But you fight as if you still fight demons.” 
She watched Kerrick take off his helmet, just as she always did.  It seemed to
her patently unfair that while her own hair hung down her back in a miserable
sweaty braid, his fell in damp chestnut curls about his shoulders.  How was it
that fresh off the sparring floor, a man should look so…so…

She noticed the amused look in his blue-gray eyes.  She was
staring.  Ignoring the heat rising in her cheeks, she picked up the practice
swords and dismissed the thought before it could fully form.

“Truly,” he went on, “it’s occasion for fanfare and feasting
should I but graze your armor.”  He took a clean towel from the rack near the
door and dried the sweat from his flushed face and his hair.  “And this, as you
kill me.”

“Hardly so.”  She bound the oilcloths around the two
practice swords and placed them into the glass cabinet. 

They had this same discussion in one form or another every
time they practiced together, but she didn’t mind.  Of all the knights, only a
few were any challenge to her even with practice weapons, and none but Kerrick
kept a sense of humor about it.

“No, truly,” he smiled and tossed the towel to her. 
“Saramore, Amara, Peringale, these I defeat regularly; at least,” he allowed,
“as often as they defeat me.  But not you.”

“Nonsense.”  She blotted her braid.  “You defeated me just
now.”

“Ah, but I did not live to tell about it!” he laughed. 
“Survival, I suppose, should be my next goal.”

She smiled.  “And a worthy goal, indeed.”

“One of many,” he mused.  He leaned back against the wall to
watch her dry her hair and folded his arms.  “You are a treasure, lady.”

“I, sir?”  She self-consciously folded the towel she’d been
using—his towel––and set it on the shelf.  “Not so.  I smell of sweat and sword
oil, and I hear I have a bad temper.”

“Yet even so, sweat, sword oil and bad temper be damned,” he
laughed, “An your father would allow it, I should marry you on the spot.”

She looked up at him in surprise, and his joking tone took
on a shade of shame hanging in the silence of the practice hall.  Marriage? 
This was something new.  The whole conversation had just become highly
inappropriate.  She was, after all, his commander.

“Lord Kerrick,” she said slowly.  “Such jest is…”  She shook
her head.  “The house is in mourning, after all.”

His smile faded.  “Lady Renda, if you would marry me,” he
said earnestly, “then it is no jest.”  A moment later, he was beside her, his
hand on hers.  “And I should count myself the most blessed man in all Syon for
it.”

She did not move, did not breathe.  She had no training for
this.  She found herself on the defensive, trying to quiet the strange panic
rising in her mind, scrambling to regain her composure.

“At last, I seem to have caught you off guard, my lady.”  He
laughed gently and looked into her eyes.  “Renda, as my commander, as a knight,
I speak of you in the same breath with Amara and Saramore, with Lord Daerwin
himself, but you must know…” He looked down with a sad smile.  “Sometimes, I
wonder that you cannot feel it when our blades touch, all these hours we spend
together.  I wonder that you cannot hear it in my voice or see it in my eyes.” 
He kissed her hand.  “Or here.”

She drew her hand away self-consciously.  What was he
saying?

He shrugged.  “Is it any wonder I can never defeat you?”

For all the gods, her heart was racing, and she was suddenly
desperate for space, for air, for someone to rescue her from this strange
conversation.  He was no danger to her, yet her hands were shaking, especially
the hand he had just kissed.  Why did she suddenly feel like an awkward child
around this knight who was one of her sworn brothers?

When she made no reply, he laughed self-consciously. 
“That’s not to say that I could defeat you otherwise, mind you.  Oh dear, this
is not going at all as I had planned.  Let me try again.  Dear Renda.”  He
looked at her and smiled.   “I know I am but one of your father’s lesser
knights, and I’d be a fool to think I deserve your favor over the countless
other noblemen who are no doubt vying for your hand, but I flatter myself that
you do not abhor my company,” he said, encouraged by the hint of a smile that
crossed her features.

No, she did not abhor his company.  She would not have him
think she did.  The truth was that she often sought him amongst the other
knights more than just for want of a good natured sparring partner—more even
than simply for his sense of humor or insight.  But beyond that, she had never
given the matter much thought.  She had never allowed herself to consider him
in any light other than as one of her father’s knights, and now he spoke to her
of marriage.  Everything was changing so quickly.

“Now, I admit, I have very little just now,” he went on,
“but I am my father’s heir since…”

She looked down.  His elder brother, Dwen, had fallen in the
same battle where Roquandor had died.  He was one of the first of her father’s
knights given to her command for exactly that reason.

“Renda, I offer you lands and title, the title of
Viscountess of Windale.  Sooner rather than later, as it happens.  My mother
sent word that my father…”  His brave smile wavered.  “Thus my proposal now,
rather than at a more suitable time.  But talk of illness and death ill
accompanies talk of marriage.”  He looked into her eyes.  “It comes to this,
and only this.  If you would so honor me as to be my bride, I will dedicate my
life to your happiness.”

So many changes, so quickly.  Moments ago, they had been two
knights sparring on the practice floor, and now she felt this strange tension
between them, this uncertainty.   No matter what she said, everything between
them would change.

“Kerrick, I truly do not know what to say.”

“Why, anything at all, as long as you don’t say no.”  He
grinned. “I know this must seem quite sudden.”

“Beg pardon, my lady,” called one of the maids from the
doorway.  She knocked and pushed the door open enough to peek in before she
curtseyed to both knights.  “A Dhanani rider has arrived for you bearing this
message.”  The maid could not conceal her smile as she presented the sealed
scroll to Renda.  “He waits in the sheriff’s audience chamber.  Shall I keep
him company?”

Grateful for the interruption, Renda took the scroll from
the girl and looked to see her own name scrawled in bold strokes across the
case.  Then she turned it over to see the seal.  A single arrowhead imprint in
brown wax, surely the mark of Aidan.  “Offer him food and drink, all he wants,”
she called to the maid without looking up, “and bid him wait.  I may have a
reply.”

The maid smiled and curtseyed again and closed the door
behind her.

A message from Aidan.  She smiled.  She had not seen him
since the end of the war, nor had she heard from him since the last of the
Dhanani victory banquets.  He had been busy with his tribe, renewing ties and
soothing resentments, delivering women of their infants and easing the pains of
the dying.   She turned the scroll over in her hand, grateful for the dark
green ribbon wound around it.  The ribbon was the traditional Dhanani assurance
of good news, and good news was particularly welcome just now.  But how very
odd that he should have sent a horse and rider.  Why had he not come himself?

She heard the door open again and looked up to see that
Kerrick was leaving.

“Lord Kerrick,” she called stupidly, not wanting him to
leave unacknowledged and not sure what else she might say.  Not sure what she
felt.  She managed an apologetic smile.  “Must you go?”

“Surely I have embarrassed myself enough for one day.”  But
his tone was, as always, good-natured, and he grinned at her.  “In truth, I
must take my watch within the hour, and you have matters of your own to
attend.  Now, at least,” he shrugged, “you know my mind.  Soon I hope to know
yours.  Fear not, Lady.  We will speak of this again.”  With that and a salute,
he left her alone in the chamber to read her message.

*          *          *

Chul sat at the long wooden table in the servants’ dining
chamber, the fire warming his back while he heaped his plate high with food
from the serving trays.  Occasionally his eyes would look upward at the heavy
stone sky that enclosed him or at the doors leading out.  One led to the
kitchen where the kindly old woman, Greta, shouted orders to the maids who kept
stopping their work to look in on him, and one to another part of the castle he
had yet to see.

“And set more bread to rise, or there’ll be none for the
knights’ supper.  Well?” he heard the old kitchen matron say behind the kitchen
door, “Quick, now!  The boy’s hungry!”

Then she threw open the door with her hip, plates in both
hands.

“Oh, the poor darling,” Greta clucked at him, “you must not
have had so much as a crust of bread the whole way!  A growing boy must eat! 
There now.”

Chul smacked his lips as she plopped two plump roast quail
on his plate with a generous ladling of cherry cognac sauce and an ample
helping of something she had called soufflé.