Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (25 page)

He had only Kano’s word that they would never awaken.

“You do not know,” he said aloud, unconvinced even by his
own voice.  “You do not know...”  Slowly, he lowered his hand and let the stone
fall.  Somehow, it managed to land in the rucksack.

He could walk away.  He stood and smoothed his damp robes. 
The rucksack was empty but for the strange rock; he could leave the whole thing
there on the ground beside him.  He could turn without looking back and simply
walk away.  One step, then another.

He squinted north along the river, along his route toward
the keep, along the low trees that lined the banks.  Then with a deep sigh, he
turned and walked away.

Four miles later, making his way down the side of a ravine,
he shrugged his shoulder up irritably—the rucksack was slipping down again.

*          *          *

“You making a new offer, then?”  The dark Syonese man sat
picking the dried mud from his boot tips in the tavern and flicking it to the
floor.  “How much?”

Mayor Dalthaz pulled his gaze away from the curls of mud
where they fell and smiled broadly, obviously pleased with the generosity of
his offer.  The man could not help but accept.  “Whatever
they
are
offering, we will gladly double.”

“Well,” the other breathed, pulling his chair forward.  He
squinted over the Hadrian selectmen who sat gathered at the nearby tables. 
“That’s just the problem, ain’t it?  They,” he said heavily, “are withdrawing
their offer, just like that.”  He settled back and crossed his arms.  “Double
nothing ain’t but nothing.  I need round numbers, and bloody big ones, or I’ll
be saying good day.”

“Withdrawing their offer, did you say?”  Mayor Dalthaz
blinked in confusion.  “But that cannot be.  He destroyed the temple!  Do you
mean to say that Rjeinar’s—”

“And a big bloody bounty they were offering, too.  More’s
the pity.”  He hawked and spat into his mug.  “But I hunted this one before,
during the war, and well I know him.”

“You’ve…failed at hunting him before, then?” asked one of
the selectmen with a frown.

Hallin glared at him.  “I hunted this one off and on, as
bounty against him rose and fell.  But then at war’s end, he’s the hero, and
besides, I’m tripping right and left over Rjeinarian priests twixt him and me,
so it’s not long before I’m at better things.”  When the man looked away, he
shrugged and turned his attention back to Dalthaz.  “As for the Rjeinarians,
just as well they lost interest.  Between us?  No man could bring him in alive
like they wanted, not even me.  So I’m thinking,” he shrugged again, “none’s
the loss.”

“Well,” chuckled the mayor weakly, “we have no such
conditions.  Dead or alive, either way.”

“Better dead,” muttered the constable.  He scowled up at the
hunter.  “Two of my men lay all but killed at his hand.  Good men, too, and
wasting away, curled up like newborns in their beds.  I can’t even pension
their wives proper, not until they’re in the pyres.”  With a bitter shake of
his head, he looked away.  “All I want is his head.”

The bounty hunter nodded.  “Notice of bounty said fifty.” 
He sat forward.  “For one of his ilk, I’ll leave him lie unless you make it
five hundred.”

The selectmen stared at him in silent disbelief.

“Five hundred,” repeated the mayor, gesturing them to calm
themselves.  He smiled shrewdly, cracking his mental knuckles.  “What say you
to seventy-five?”

“No less than five hundred.”  The hunter smiled through crooked
teeth and gazed around at their faces.  “I’m not playing with you.  Either your
word is yea or I’m at my own hearth in Durlindale come the tenday, and Dith be
damned.”

“But—”

“But what?  He’s got a couple of tendays lead on me already,
and he knows his way besides.”  The bounty hunter jabbed his finger at them. 
“You’ve no time to dicker.  Now, what’s it to be?”

The mayor looked between the selectmen for a moment.  “Yes,
yes, all right, five hundred.”  They gasped in astonishment, but he ignored them. 
He nodded to the constable, who stood fidgeting near the door.  “For his head. 
Payable in full,” he added hastily, “upon delivery.”

The hunter squinted shrewdly at the mayor then.  They had no
intention of paying; they were lucky if they had five hundred crowns in the
whole town of Montor.  But once Dith was dead, they would have what they wanted
whether they paid or not.  “Something more,” he growled.  “I’ll be needing six
men to ride with me.  Six as know these mountains, mark, and rugged besides.”  Six
as he might hold for ransom.

Dalthaz sat back and crossed his arms, a bit puzzled.  “If
we could spare six men, we would have gone after him ourselves.”

“And never found the least trace of him.  Dalthaz.”  The
hunter leaned forward.  “See these men as your witnesses.  There’s no telling
what that head’ll look like, coming back.  They can see to it I make a fair
kill for my gold.”

The mayor nodded at last.  “Very well, then.  Six men.”  He
sent one of the men off with a list of names.  “Six of our best.”

“Settled, then.”  The bounty hunter stood like a giant over
the Hadrians and straightened his seamless robes.  “I leave within the clock.” 
He squinted out the open tavern door at the overcast sky.  A light rain had
just begun.  “See me provisioned for two tendays; after that, I fend for
myself.  Let the rest provision themselves.”  He flexed his huge hands and
strode away toward the door.  “You know which horse is mine.”

Castle Brannagh

D
ay
after day, the knights swung their scythes through the grain from sunrise until
sunset, fewer and fewer of them each day, to Renda’s grief.  In the time since
the knights had begun their harvest, many fields had been cleared, and the
straw stood stacked neatly near the farmers’ doors that they might re-thatch their
roofs against the coming snows.  So far, no one of the farm families had
touched a stick of it, not even to sweep it from the doorways.

From time to time, Renda caught glimpses of the farmers
watching from the windows of their houses while the knights worked the fields,
and she wondered what resentful, murderous, fearful thoughts lay hidden behind
their expressionless eyes.  When they feared they had been seen, they would
turn themselves away from the windows, sometimes waving their hands in imitation
of the priests’ wards against evil and always toward the fields where the
knights worked.  But she minded their watchings and wardings far less than she
did the blank, staring windows of the empty houses or the blackened stones of
those that had been burned out.

Scores of people, some from the villages, most from farms
and outlying lands, had come through the castle gates in the many days since
Arnard had brought the hospice within the castle walls, reluctant, distrustful,
and at the same time, desperate beyond bearing.  Some came with the first
cough, others not until their flesh had begun to run, but all carried the same
hopelessness, the same pleading desperation of those who see Death riding close
behind them.  While they could expect no more than small comfort before death
in the makeshift hospice, they all hoped for a miracle to save them.

They all watched the horizon.

The first score of days had passed and another ten besides,
and still Brannagh had heard no word of their cardinal, whether he might be on
his way or whether the request had been denied.  Strange that while this was
the first day on which they could possibly hope to see the cardinal, the mood
of those of Brannagh was almost gloomy with caution and wariness against hopes
raised too high.

The priests in the hospice said nothing openly, but they had
confided to the sheriff and Renda that they were afraid that the high temples
would choose to ignore the sheriff’s pleas and abandon Brannagh to the plague. 
The temples and basilicas would no doubt couch it in terms of the will of the
gods, but she was certain the decision would be based in worldly cowardice. 
After all, priests had been the first to fall to the plague. 

Even so, B’radik’s priests continued to hoard their strength
in the hopes of eventually effecting even a single cure.  So far they had done
no more than to prolong the misery of those afflicted.  Still, they did what
they could.  The victims themselves relinquished all hope before they so much
as crossed the garrison threshold, which did nothing to help the priests.  But
they knew that even if a cardinal arrived within the hour, many of them would
not survive to greet him.

The knights would continue to join their watches with
enthusiasm for a time, each hoping to be the one to announce the cardinal’s
arrival.  After all, each day that passed meant he was that much more likely to
arrive.  But she knew her soldiers.  Each day that passed without any sign of
him, each additional death to this enemy they could not defeat with swords, would
bleed their morale, and the mood would turn into fearful resignation.

As she carried out the bones of the plague victims, numb
against her grief and horror after so many days of helplessness in the face of
death, and as she mindlessly helped lift new patients from the floor to the
newly emptied beds before the mattress even grew cold…she wondered, in her
despair, if the gods—if B’radik Herself—had indeed abandoned the House of
Brannagh for harboring Pegrine.  But if destroying Pegrine was the price of B’radik’s
grace…no, she could not let herself form the blasphemous thought.  She prayed
it was not.

At first, few of her father’s farmers had come into the
hospice, and she had begun to wonder if Chatka was partially right about the
plague.  If so, it could only be for all the wrong reasons, that perhaps the
farmers were able to protect themselves with prayer by bolstering the gods’
strength against the plague or perhaps against this strange nameless god. 
Perhaps it was as simple as staying indoors and away from those who were ill.

But then more and more of them had begun to fall ill.

The villagers had come into the habit of meeting each
evening at the same time at Chatka’s door to listen to her pronouncements, but
as Renda had learned from Gikka’s reports, time had made mundane the meat of
the Verdura’s visions.  They still listened with reverence—they could not be
seen to do otherwise—but she could not tell them something new each day, and
they had stopped listening to her irritating and obscure messages.

Yet still they met at her door every night.

They had learned that they could use this time away from
their prayers to watch each other for signs of plague.  Those who coughed,
those who seemed a bit pale or feverish, those who missed a meeting, they and
their families were burned to death in their very homes, in their very beds,
with the rest of the village looking on.  Afterward, assured of their safety
and their hard proven piety once again, the rest went home to pray or finger
the strange bundles of herbs Chatka had been selling to them.

Four homes had burned so far.  Four homes, six and twenty
souls, and as she watched from where she stood now cutting away a row of wheat,
more smoke rose from the horizon.  The sheriff had taken several knights to
stop them each time, and each time they returned to the castle, they were
certain they had turned the villagers away, but always by morning, the marked
house and those within had been destroyed.  Finally, even the sheriff himself
gave up.  Now, only those lucky ones who managed to escape from the villages
before any of the others found out could hope to reach the sanctuary of the
hospice.

Even so, the burlap beds had filled quickly, and each new
victim was forced to wait until another died before he could have a bed.  They
had discussed stuffing new burlap sacks with straw from the fields and
spreading them in the main hall of the castle, but the sheriff had forbidden
it.  The priests could not tend so many spread so far apart, he’d said.  It was
a feeble excuse, assuredly not his only reason for keeping them only to the
garrison, but Renda did not press him.

Likewise, from some of the men in the hospice, she had heard
that women and children were now being left to die at home that the priests’
energies might be spared for the men.  This news infuriated her.  Why in this
time of peace were the men’s lives so much more important that they would
sacrifice their wives and children to save them?  These were the thoughts that
haunted her before her eyes closed at night, the thoughts that held her guilty
for bringing this plague upon them.

Of Brannagh itself, those of the household, including Lady
Glynnis and the servants, were miraculously spared, and according to the duke’s
letters to the sheriff, Damerien was untouched as well, though Trocu’s letters
came less frequently these days.  Only the knights were stricken, and only
those of Brannagh, the formidable fighting force that had won the war against
Kadak, and once that force was destroyed and all the fighting men and women of
the surrounding lands were gone as well, Syon’s defenses would be crippled. 
The forces of the rest of Syon’s nobles would not stand for long against the
power which had so readily destroyed B’radik’s temple.

All of the House of Brannagh helped in the hospice as they
could by night, cooling fevers, changing bedclothes, emptying chamberpots into
the lavatory chutes, even wielding the broom and pan to clean up the sloughed
dust and ash as it fell from the bodies.  Most often, Renda and the sheriff spoke
comfort to the dying while the priests administered healing oils and spoke
their prayers over the victims or touched their throats with B’radik’s grace to
make them sleep through the worst of their pain.

One by one, Renda watched the knights, her father’s and her
own, grow pale and begin the coughing and the stiffening that were the first
true signs of the plague.  One by one, she and her heartsick father watched
them crumble to dust.  On those few nights when she managed to make her way to
her own bed before the sun called her to the fields, she would sit in the
gallery above the great hall and think of those who were lost, but the rest of
the time, her face was a masque of strength and hope.  She could do no less for
those who remained.

By day, they led the rest of their knights into the fields
to harvest the grain, trying not to hear the stifled barking coughs, trying not
to see those who flexed their hands worriedly.  Trying to ignore the
inescapable stink of the plague that seemed to rise from the very ground
beneath them.

“Renda.”

She started suddenly from her nightmare, awake and once more
enfolded in the stinking darkness of the garrison.  Outside the window slits,
the sky was still dark, although the first tinges of the dawn shown on the
horizon, and she supposed she must rise and lead the rest of the knights into
the fields once more.  In her weariness, she had fallen asleep against the wall
where she sat beside Sir Cammon, a young Brannagh knight, and someone, probably
Arnard, had draped a blanket over her as she slept, not wanting to wake her. 
Cammon slept peacefully on his burlap sack on the floor, and she wondered
whether he had finished telling her his story before she had fallen asleep.

A few feet away stood Lord Daerwin, and his voice had been
the one to wake her.

“Father,” she began, rising hastily to her feet.  Then she
stopped.  His arms were black with telltale ash, and his eyes shone with
weariness and sorrow.  “Saramore?” she asked.

The sheriff leaned against the wall beside her, and she
could smell the putrid dust on him, even over the swirling odors of illness
around her.  When at last he spoke, his voice was soft but tinged with anger. 
“I am just come from carrying him out.  Not enough was left of him to bury ere
it was over.”  He looked away from her.  “Saramore was a brave knight and
strong.  He took a long time to die.”

Renda touched her father’s shoulder.  “The priests—”

“The priests could do nothing, nothing!”  Lord Daerwin
slammed his hand against the wall.  “Not even Nara could make him sleep through
the worst of it.  It was all I could do, standing beside him, not to draw my
sword and...”

Renda looked around her in alarm, afraid that those nearby
might hear him and lose heart.  But at the same time, she asked herself, how
many times had the same thought come to her, standing over them, watching them
die so horribly, so slowly?  She wondered sometimes if the sleep the priests
imposed might not be permanent, especially for the babies and children, but she
had never asked and she never would.

“This waiting, this ministering to the dying, this is not
our way, Father,” she said finally.  “You and I, we are not made to stand with
swords undrawn to watch brave men die.  Such is the work of priests.”  She
spread another blanket over the knight on the burlap sack beside her before she
stood again.  “To fight an enemy we can see or touch, to avenge these deaths,
that is our way.  Would that we could begin this war in earnest!”

“Indeed,” her father sighed.  “But until we know our enemy,
we can only remain here and fight this plague as we can.  Until the cardinal
comes.  Then perhaps he will know where to find our enemy and how best to fight
it.  If our enemy is not already among us.”  He turned then and stared out the
window slit.  “Meanwhile, my farmers openly foment rebellion, my knights die by
the score, and the frost drives relentlessly south toward us.”  The sheriff
looked at his daughter and smiled sadly.  “By the time our cardinal arrives, we
may have no need of him.”

*          *          *

Matow lay motionless, as he had since the priests had told
Lord Daerwin that he would live.  The sheriff sat in the chair beside his bed
looking out the window at the moody gray sunrise, a thin blanket wrapped around
his shoulders, flattened and wadded with the night’s use.  Now, with the sun
fully above the horizon, Lord Daerwin stood and stretched, and moved toward the
door to lead the rest of the knights into the fields again, as he did each day.

“Mi...my lord?”  Matow’s voice sounded hoarse with disuse.

Lord Daerwin turned abruptly at the sound of the young man’s
voice to see him blinking in the morning light.  When he came near the bedside,
he looked down at the knight and, deserted of his usual eloquence, merely
beamed with joy and clasped Matow’s hand.

His hand!  The Sheriff watched Matow stare in amazement at
the full fingers that curled weakly under his elated grasp, fingers that had
been no more than bones when Matow had last closed his eyes.

“I...I live?”

The sheriff laughed then and felt tears spill from his eyes. 
“Indeed, you do.  One of the first saved, praise to B’radik.”

“The cardinal is come, then?”

Daerwin’s smile faded, and he shook his head.  “Not yet, but
soon.”  But hope rang in his voice.  Daerwin truly believed a cardinal would
come, and his conviction was nearly strong enough to convince Matow as well. 
“This healing of yours was worked by Arnard and the others.  They’ve each cured
one of you, knights all,” he said, the barest glimmer of a frown on his brow. 
“Barlow, Willem, Jadin and Cammon, and yourself, of course.  More will follow. 
Trust to that.  It could be our cardinal will arrive when we’ve no longer any
need of him.”

Matow rolled to his side to rise from the bed and grunted
beneath the coil of pain that buckled his arms and legs beneath him, and he
fell onto his back again.  “Alas, my lord,” he gasped weakly, “I am yet ill.”