Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (20 page)

“Oh, you disappoint me, Daerwin.  I had thought you better
schooled.  And has your illustrious daughter no insight, either?”  She smiled
sadly.  “A pity.  I had expected more.”

“My question remains,” he spoke over her words, “and it is,
why?”  He turned to face her, and his eyes locked on hers.  “Why do you tell
them that to serve Brannagh angers the gods?”

“When in truth it angers but one?”  Her voice was shrill,
but suddenly she smiled.  He had not veiled his expression of surprise fast
enough.  “Oh, yes, Brannagh, my gift is real; my visions,” she seethed,
narrowing her eyes, “are real.  Frighteningly real, of late.  But as to why,”
she cooed as she turned and walked away from him.  “I have my reasons.” 

“Your reasons?”  Daerwin stormed in frustration.  “What
manner of answer—”

“That is all the answer I intend to give!”  She paused a
moment.  “Oh, and Daerwin?  Do close the door when you leave; the nights grow
cold already.”  She glanced back at him, and her smile held a predatory leer. 
“I predict an early frost this year.”

*          *          *

The morning sun rose to find the sheriff, Renda and the body
of Renda’s resident band of knights, squires, pages and those as yet unlanded
of the sheriff’s knights and their attendants spread by ones and twos over the
lands of the nearer knights swinging scythes through the wheat and amaranth in
the abandoned fields.  Behind them followed servants from each lord’s household
and some from Brannagh as well who gathered the awkward armloads of grain from
the ground and piled them into large flat wagons to be taken back to the
storehouses and threshed.

With the exception of some of Renda’s knights who had grown
up on farms in the northern plains, most of those in the fields were born to
noble houses, and while they all came from families who kept tenant farmers on
their lands, none had ever held a real scythe in hand.  But they were bright
and strong and willing to take on almost any task, especially one so critical to
the survival of Syon, so after only a few false starts, they had managed to
clear quite a bit of their first fields already, with very little grain having
been destroyed in the process.

Even so, this late in the Gathering they could not hope to
harvest half the grain, even with every knight of the House working through the
sun day after day, especially not if, as Chatka had said, the frosts would come
early this year.  But they would gather what they could and hope it would be
enough to see themselves and all their superstitious farmers and villagers
through the coming year.  Brannford and the other cities would have to fend for
themselves, buying grain from the Anatayans at terribly inflated prices or
making do with what they could get from the rest of the noble houses of Syon,
assuming that their situations were any different.  Economically, it was a
disaster for the House of Brannagh.  But that could not be helped.

Renda looked up gratefully at the clear morning sky and
wiped the sweat from her brow.  The sun would be hot by mid-afternoon, but the
cloudless sky promised them a full day of harvest.  It was a good omen.

Her heart and mind were grateful for the honest exertion and
the open air, though the scythe showed her most mercilessly how weak her swordarm
had become since the war’s end.  Practice swords and sparring were not the same
as real battle, as she had seen against Sir Bernold of Avondale.

You disappoint me, Brannagh.

Indeed her reflexes were not as quick as they had been.

Bah.  Her reflexes had been more than enough to best him,
she reminded herself, and hacked away another swath of amaranth, enjoying the
satisfying crunch of the grain against the blade.  But she was no match now for
the Renda of Brannagh who had won the war, and, she reminded herself, even
then, she could not meet Gikka’s speed, not stroke for stroke.

Gikka.  Renda stopped and wiped her blade.  She looked
northwestward, past the castle, beyond the rocky foothills and the horizon
toward the base of the mountains proper.  A half-day’s march beyond the
forestlands in the foothills of the Fraugham Mountains stood Graymonde Hall,
far beyond the reach of this plague, or so Renda prayed.  With any luck, Gikka
and the boy Chul would be safe there, though two more pair of hands, especially
strong, fast hands, would be welcome in the fields.

Better still, would that Dith were here.  The grain would be
cleaned and put away in the storehouses with no more than a wave of his hands
or a look from his bright blue eyes.  Renda smiled darkly.  No, more likely he
would set the farmers to itching or some such until they should have cleared
the fields themselves, sin or no sin.  That seemed more to his nature, and
occasionally she wondered if his sense of justice might not be clearer than her
own.

But Dith had grown weary with minding Gikka’s miners and
avoiding Rjeinar’s priests and bounty hunters, and he had gone far to the north
somewhere near the Hodrache Range.  By the time news of the bizarre disloyalty
among the farmers and the priests’ disease and Pegrine’s murder reached him,
Renda sincerely hoped the whole ordeal would be over.

The Earl of Wirthing was surely calmed by her father’s reply
by now, though another tenday would pass before they might receive any
acknowledgment of it.  Only a scant over a tenday remained before they might
begin to look for their cardinal.  Then the farmers would be calmed, Chatka
would be quieted, and the world would be at peace again.

Peace again.

She swung angrily through the grain.

And would that it were not so.

“Beg pardon, my lady,” gasped a runner from the castle who
trotted up behind her, “but there’s a B’radikite priest at the gate, name of
Arnard, who would speak with you.”

Arnard, at the gate?  She stopped and looked at the boy. 
“But why is he here, did he say?”

“He did not say, my lady.”  The runner shrugged.  “But
behind him come three more priests and some wagons as smell of old cheese.”

Renda swallowed her worry and handed the boy her scythe. 
Then she ran through the field toward the castle.

*          *          *

“Everything is lost,” sobbed the priest over the cup of
mulled brandy she had given him.  He drew a deep breath before he looked up. 
“The temple is destroyed, the ground desecrated with salt and soot.  By
B’radik’s grace alone did we escape, though how,” he shuddered suddenly, “I
cannot say.  But we have nowhere else to go, my lady.”

Renda looked over the arm he cradled against his chest and
the angry swelling around the cuts on his face, and she gestured for one of the
servants to fetch Nara.  The priests had no strength left, but perhaps Nara
would have enough strength to ease his pain, at least.

“Perhaps I was wrong to come to Brannagh.  If you would turn
us away—”

“Of course we will not turn you away, good priest.”  These
words came from the sheriff, who stood now in the doorway drying his face on a
towel.  “Please forgive my appearance; I’m just come from the fields without.”

“Father,” said Renda, rising.  “May I present Arnard of the
Temple of B’radik?  Arnard, Lord Daerwin, the Sheriff of Brannagh.”

The priest bowed his head.  “I greet you in the name of
B’radik and sow your heart with truth and light, my lord.”

“They would bring the plague victims inside the castle,”
said Renda as she took her seat again.  She tried to keep the note of fear out
of her voice.  “The temple was destroyed; they’ve nowhere else to go.”

“Destroyed, but…”  The sheriff mopped his brow.  “Well, our
first priority is what is before us, to wit, the wagons in the courtyard.  How
many priests do you bring with you?”

“I had only three priests left standing when it came, but
four of us together against it.  We called upon B’radik, but...”

Only four.  “You told me at the temple that you could not
protect more than one knight, and this while you had nine and twenty priests.” 
She felt a panicked scream rising in her throat and fought it down.  “Yet now,
with but four of you, you have brought the plague within our very walls, within
a breath of the villages and farms.”

“I wonder if this might not fall exactly within our enemy’s
design, that I should bring the plague into Brannagh and from there into
Damerien’s lands as well,” he sighed.  “But it was that or trek ourselves
across all of Syon to the grand basilica in Brannford.”

“Regardless,” the sheriff replied, “we of Brannagh are sworn
to B’radik’s service, and if we are to die, so be it.”

Renda looked out the study window at the courtyard below
where the knights and servants helped to unload the wagons.  “How many?” she
asked at last.

“We could save no more than fifteen of the stricken, taking
those most likely to survive the journey.”  He looked away.  “The rest died
when the temple fell, more’s the mercy.”

The rest?  How many had been in hospice when they were
attacked?

“Forty-five were lost, left behind.”  He continued. 
“Perhaps a few more.”

“Sixty souls in a space of ten days!”  Renda was shocked. 
Such devastation was not possible, not outside battle.  Even if the plague
traveled on the wind itself, it could not spread so quickly.

“But tell me.  If we would defend the castle, I must know. 
How did the temple fall?  What enemy attacked you?”

The priest shook his head.  At last, he drew a deep breath. 
“Would that I could say it was an army of men, or even of demons,” he said,
turning to Renda.  “Such an attack you might well understand.  But it was not.”

Daerwin cocked his head.  “Yet the temple was
destroyed—actually destroyed.”

“Yes.”

“Please tell us what you saw.”  Renda sat forward in her
chair.  “Not an army of men or demons, very well, but flashes of light?  A
creeping blackness?”

The priest shook his head firmly.  “I cannot describe it in
any of those terms except to say that we were overwhelmed at once, and from
every side.  And yet we saw no one.”  He sipped at his tea, and his cup shook. 
“The sheer power of the force against us, that it had no boundary, no limit...”

The sheriff’s eyes widened slightly, but he said nothing.

“Was it this nameless god Himself, come against you?”  Renda
glanced at her father then back at the priest.  If Arnard had seen Him, perhaps
they might better know who He was.  “The god of the slain priests?”

Arnard seemed uncertain for a moment.  “I cannot know, but I
think not.  My memory is dark and colored with fear, but while it seemed at
once a single being, I recall noise, the strangely disordered energy of an
entire army of beings, all of a single goal but of many minds.  But I also
remember a child.  At the end.”  He sighed and rubbed his eyes.  “I make no
sense.  Forgive me; I have had no sleep in days.”

A child.  Renda frowned.

The door pushed open slowly, and Nara hobbled through,
drawing her shawl up about her thin shoulders.  She seemed to have recovered
some of her strength, especially since Renda told her about Pegrine.  While
Nara had not yet seen Pegrine, already the white light of her habit shone stronger,
and her eye carried a gleam of purpose Renda had not seen since before
Pegrine’s death. 

Pegrine.

I also remember a child.

Renda’s lip trembled, and she wondered if she had not made a
terrible mistake to trust her dead niece so.  But surely Pegrine would not
attack the temple of B’radik, the temple of her guardian.  Unless she had been
fooled, unless her guardian was not B’radik at all.  Renda felt ill.

“I greet you,” breathed Nara with a bow to Arnard.

“And I, you, Venerable One,” he breathed, glancing excitedly
from Renda to her father.  “How have you kept such a one secret all this
time?”  He looked back at Nara in astonishment.  “Is it she, keeps the plague
from Brannagh?”

Renda and her father looked at each other bewildered.

“But you mistake me,” Nara said quietly.  “I am no more than
a governess in a childless house.”

Arnard met her eye and nodded, with a glance at the two
knights.  “Forgive my…presumption.”

She squeezed his hand and smiled sadly.  “Any strength I
have against this plague is by B’radik’s own grace.”  She saw his broken arm
and rested her hands on either side of the break.  A moment later, the glow of
her habit flared a brilliant white, and Arnard’s arm was whole again.  The
priest stood wriggling his fingers and flexing his elbow while she tended his
other injuries.

The two knights left Arnard to speak with Nara while they
set the servants about clearing out the empty garrison in the courtyard.

The building, a stout, square tower, was all that remained
of the original curtain wall built by Lexius.  Just before the war against
Kadak began, Borowain the Peacekeeper built an outer curtain wall five score
paces further out that was better suited to archers and prolonged siege.  Then,
during the early part of the war, the inner curtain wall had been severely
damaged by fire and had had to be demolished, all but the garrison.

Over the years, it had been used to billet knights and
infantry and to shelter the farmers and villagers during times of siege, though
since the war’s end, the farmers had been using it as yet another marketplace,
bringing their foods, crafts, newfangled farming tools and used goods each
Marketday to barter and sell between themselves.  The building was large, built
of the same stones as the castle itself, but with only thin angled slits for
windows that now faced the newer curtain wall and more slits in the stone roof
high above for letting out the smoke that rose from the fire pits cut into the
huge floor.  Ingeniously, the roofing stones had been laid such that even in
the worst storms, smoke could escape but no rain could come in.

Renda made her way past the makeshift stalls and tables and
threw open the doors at the far end to let light and fresh air wash through the
place.  But having done so, she turned to see the huge task ahead of them. 
Rotting hay was strewn across the floor and piled against one wall next to
several large mounds of dried manure where she supposed the farmers were wont
to keep the animals they would sell.  In another area sat a pile of rotting
vegetables, most decayed beyond recognition.