Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (40 page)

The sheriff made no sound or gesture, nor did Renda, yet
they both saw the weak spot, exactly where they would breach the wall of bodies
ahead of them.  Likewise the connection between horse and master was so
complete that Revien had already banked left by the time the sheriff’s nudge
was completed, with Alandro close by his shoulder.  Without losing a step,
Revien reared and struck through the side of their thinning, shifting blockade
with the spikes on his shinguards while Alandro spun, kicked and spun again,
sending them back in disarray.  The breach they made could not close before all
five horses broke free and rode off into the foothills with only a few of
Maddock’s followers making the effort to chase them on foot.

While Maddock cursed the knights’ escape, while his massed
army watched in disgust as they rode away, no one noticed the ghostly white
horse galloping north, seemingly riderless, just below the top of the western
ridge.

The knights were all veterans, blooded in the war against
Kadak.  They had all had to choose between battles sometimes, abandoning one to
win another.  If they split their own hearts, they were defeated already. 
Castle Brannagh had stood against the Anatayans and even Kadak’s demon armies. 
As the sheriff had said, it would stand one more time.  If they would defeat
Valmerous, if they would survive to enjoy the luxury of addressing the Maddock
problem, they had to believe in those walls.  And so, by the time they reached
the cliff’s edge, they could no longer see the castle or the attacking army,
and with minds well disciplined to the needs and inevitabilities of war, they
forced their attention the only way they could, toward the battle ahead.

Renda moved ahead and wheeled Alandro westward, counting on
the rest of the knights to follow.  With large brambles rising at her left, she
raced him through a narrow corridor inches from the precipice that fell away to
forest treetops at her right.  Occasionally Alandro’s hooves kicked away
pebbles and stones to fall down into the trees below, but Revien and the others
stayed at her heels.  She had no need to look back.

She kept her mind as tightly focused on the way ahead as she
could, not allowing herself the luxury of congratulating herself on her
instincts about the cardinal.

Congratulations, indeed.  She had nearly let him kill both
the duke and Pegrine—she’d all but helped him destroy the goddess she was sworn
to protect.  She’d even gone to attend him in the crypt when her father had
not, and all for the sake of duty, of unquestioning honor and discipline, as if
that in itself were virtue enough to excuse her.  Worst of all, she had done
this over the strident objections of her intuition.

She had never learned to trust her intuition the way Gikka
had.  Perhaps it was that she always had had lives in her hands, or that her
own fame and honor seemed so small against the ancient Brannagh name.  In any
case, she’d always let patient, careful reason decide strategy for her, and for
the first time since she’d become a knight, she was beginning to see it as a
weakness.

She had taken Matow and Willem and searched the priests’
quarters after the cardinal had fled with his six remaining priests.  They had
not had time to return to their chambers, so the knights had found almost all
of his belongings still there, including Vilkadnazor’s ceremonial plate of
offering.

Almost all?  She frowned.  She would never have allowed
herself so careless a thought during the war.  Gods, but her mind felt fat and
lazy.  But two years since the war’s end, and already she was making dangerous
assumptions, fretting over phantoms.  Valmerous had carried something into the
crypt, but so miserable and self-absorbed had she been, this war hero, this
guardian of B’radik, that she had not bothered to mark it.  She had not wanted
to know what he intended toward poor Pegrine.

She felt guilt and failure threatening to overcome her, and
she cleared her mind to focus on the battle ahead.  The whole and precise truth
was that the knights, even her father, had had no idea what the priests might
have brought with them to Brannagh in their bundles.  At the time, it had been
clearly none of their business.  But that meant that they also had no idea what
the priests might have carried with them into the crypt, nor what they carried
now.

The only assumption she could afford to make now was that
Valmerous had come to Brannagh prepared to do battle, but not with the Knights
of Brannagh, not even with Pegrine, but with Damerien himself.  She wanted to
know why, but the why did not matter now.  Damerien had been his target, but
Pegrine had thwarted him, and Pegrine was the one he attacked now.  In any
case, knowing what he did when he left Brannagh, Valmerous would not have gone
to Pegrine’s glade any less prepared than he had gone into the crypt.

Whatever he planned would take time—that stood to the
knights’ advantage—but once completed, the assault would be difficult if not
impossible to stop.  She bit her lip.  If ever they could use a sorcerer…

Before long, the foothills rose to the northwest and the
cliff relented until the two met and rose together.  Alandro banked hard to the
right and slipped in the soft dry soil to graze the side of his foreleg, but he
recovered with a grunt and lost but a single step to lead them upward and over
the rocky range of hills.

Renda slowed Alandro when she reached the place where she
had first heard Gikka’s hunting horn, careful to keep the top of the hill above
them, that their silhouettes would not be visible from below.

“The glade,” she murmured.

Lord Daerwin paused.

Renda squinted at him in the grayish light, seeing in his
flint and steel eyes what he would not let the others see, and his anguish
broke her heart.  This was the first time he had looked down at the thick copse
of trees that enclosed the glade where his granddaughter had been killed.

“A wretched place.”  He breathed deeply, and she saw that
her father’s pain had hardened to rage.  She nodded to him and motioned the
rest of his knights forward to his side.

“Come,” she said.  “We’ve little time.”

T
he
trees, the same that had strained and crowded at the clearing’s edge and pulled
at Renda’s cloak to keep her from the alderwood stump a season past, were no
more than spindly sticks and lifeless trunks now, but for all their bareness,
they still completely enclosed the cardinal and his priests and hid them from
the knights.  That concealment worked both ways.  The priests, expecting them
to come riding in at full gallop, were likewise unaware that the knights had
already crept in close to their perimeter afoot.

“The altar,” she whispered, gesturing toward the west side
of the glade, “and our priests, I should think.”

The sheriff nodded and gestured for Barlow, Matow and Willem
to fan out to a single line, not too far apart but with plenty of room to swing
their swords if it came to it.  Then, as a body, they moved deeper into the
dense line of trees.

But after only a few steps, Renda raised her hand to stop
them.  The eerie chant rising from every corner of the glade ahead was now
clear and audible, lacking the echoes of the crypt, for all that it was still
incomprehensible to her.

Idri gai braniana ro viana kai virara Xorden.

Go ziara kai bar no vortai brai Xorden.

Then, just as it had in the crypt, the perfect unison of the
priests’ voices splintered apart, and the strange words twisted and curdled
over themselves, but the words were different, of that she was sure.  At first,
she heard nothing but a muddle, a crowd of muttering buzzing together
mindlessly, but as the sounds all blended, separated and recombined, they
formed new words, a new chant, crystal clear and in perfect rhythm.

Goai drio ziara goai kai baraina nro vortirarai bra Xorden.

From the first, one word always rang clear of the muddle,
just as it had in the crypt—Xorden, spoken with a certain emphasis, a certain—

comes an old, forgotten god

—reverence.

They never use a name.

Hah!  Renda’s spirit crowed.  At last, Bishop Cilder’s
unnamed god had a name.  It was a name she had never heard before, a name that
meant nothing to her, but it was more than they’d had before.  She glanced at
her father, hoping he might know something, but from the quizzical look he gave
to the trees ahead, she doubted it.  For once, he seemed as baffled as the rest
of them.  She shifted irritably on her haunches and looked away.  They were
still fighting blind.

Willem shook his head.  “It makes no sense.”

“No, it does not,” Barlow answered softly.  “It’s like
nothing I’ve ever heard.”

“Nor I,” murmured Matow, rubbing his aching elbow.

“That’s not what I mean.  Listen again.”  Willem gestured
toward the gray branches ahead.  “Renda says the altar is at the west, but the
sound comes from all around.”

“Unthinkable.”  Matow closed his eyes to listen, then shook
his head.  “It’s echoes you hear, a trick of the hills.”

But Willem was insistent.  “My ear puts them round the
perimeter, spread wide apart.  Listen for yourself, tell me I’m wrong.”

Barlow turned on him with an exasperated sigh.  “What manner
of foolishness is that?  Not even priests would be so—”

“Shut your mouth and listen!”  They listened a few seconds
before Willem went on.  “Foolishness or no, they ring the perimeter.”

“Could be there’s more of them than we thought, then,”
whispered Barlow.

“Maybe one or two.”  Willem listened again.  “But I doubt
it. Sounds like the same half-dozen.”

Matow’s gaze traveled up the impenetrable stand of trees. 
“Would that we could see,” he muttered darkly.  “I should dearly love to know
what they’re about.”

“As would I,” the sheriff muttered.  “Priests are not
traditionally clever at strategy, especially not Hadrian priests, and while I
would love to think that Valmerous is merely ignorant…”

Renda nodded.  The plan they’d given the knights, the attack
she and her father had discussed at the castle, had been based on the
assumption that the priests would act as priests should when they fall under
attack: huddle together round the altar and surround themselves with tightly
overlapping rings of protections while they worked their rites.  Cutting
through such a defense would be almost impossible, even armed as they were. 
Such a massed ring of protections would be the only hope the priests would have
against them, so it was the only scenario she’d thought worthy of
consideration.

But set around the perimeter as they were, even if their
protections touched and interlocked one with another, each priest was effectively
alone, protected only by his own power.  Worse than that, they’d left a great
open space before the altar with no one except perhaps Valmerous to guard it,
and all his attention must necessarily be turned to the ritual.  Spread so
thin, the knights could pick them off one at a time, and the others could not
hope to stop them much less close the gap in the ring before the knights were
in the open, and from there, it would be but a few steps to Valmerous himself.

Never underestimate your enemies.

The words were her father’s, her uncle’s, her teachers’, her
own.  She’d heard them and spoken them herself so often that she could not
recall where she had first heard them nor when she had last spoken them.  All
right, then.  Five knights, seven priests.  An even match, given their
defensive position inside the glade and the protections they would no doubt
bring to bear.  But even so, they would have been best served to stay together
and direct their attacks outward at the knights in concert, not meet them one
to one.  So why would Valmerous deliberately put his priests in danger?

Unbelievably, and with a martial sophistication Renda would
hardly have expected of a priest devoted to charity, Valmerous was trying to
draw the knights’ attack, a very specific attack he apparently had prepared to
meet.

“Have a care,” the sheriff breathed, “It’s clear they expect
us.”

“Aye.” Renda shuddered away the sudden chill that settled on
her spine. “He’s all but daring us to attack, spread out thus, but I’ve yet to
see how he thinks to win if we do.”

They were in no position to wait, regardless.  They could
not see Valmerous, could not see how far he was into his ritual attack on
Pegrine—on B’radik—but every moment that passed worked to his advantage, not
theirs.  They had no time to formulate a new plan of attack.  Given the
circumstances, they would not need one.  It was already clear that they would
need to spring the priests’ trap quickly, most likely by attacking one of the
priests and opening a hole in the perimeter—a draw of their own—then see what
came next and hope they could withstand it long enough to get to Valmerous. 
Otherwise, all would be lost.

They heard movement in the glade, and the knights ducked
low.  The priests were moving out still further from the altar, thinning their
circle yet again.

“What do you suppose…” breathed Matow.

But the sheriff raised his hand to silence him and rose to
his feet.  They could not afford to wait any longer.

The five armored knights abruptly broke through the trees,
weapons drawn, with great clamor and shouting, but the priests, bundled head to
toe against the chill night air, did not flee in terror, did not so much as
break their chant.  A single torch burned behind the alderwood stump at the
west side of the glade, and beneath it, Valmerous was cloaked and cowled in the
familiar blue of Vilkadnazor, kneeling before the altar with his back to them.

Barlow raised his sword, ready to run between two of the
priests and cut him down, but Renda stopped him with a look.  That was certainly
what the priests were expecting.  The priest at the altar was almost certainly
not Valmerous, not if the cardinal was as shrewd as she now supposed him to
be.  She looked around the circle at the closely covered faces.  They would
have to kill all the priests to be certain, something Valmerous must have
anticipated.

Suddenly, one of the priests beside her turned and raised
his hands to attack, and before she could stop herself, before she could
understand the calm, almost gloating smile under his cowl, before the knights
were ready, before she could stop herself, Renda slashed him open with her
sword and breached the perimeter.

The knights steeled themselves, waiting for the attack of
the priest’s protections to wash over them or for the rest of the priests to
close ranks on them.  But nothing happened.  They looked at each other in the
long moment that followed, puzzled, speechless.  Why would this priest neglect
to set his protections?

Then the nightmare began.

The stout branches of the trees moved aside under the boy’s
hand willingly, as if they welcomed him to this place, but he did not find this
comforting.  Not in the least.  He’d tracked the knights along the southern
edge of the glade—clear, overly heavy steps that kicked and crushed down tree
limbs, underbrush that had been viciously hacked away with swords.  Their
passage had been far more difficult, and not just because of their armors. He
gripped his hunting knife and pressed on through the accommodating trees.

From the moment he’d entered the glade, he could hear the
Old Voice chant coming from its center.  So the Hadrians were here then, and
the sheriff had brought his knights in pursuit.

Idri gai braniana ro viana kai virara Xorden.

He was too late with his warning; the sheriff had already
discovered what he was coming to tell him and apparently something more.  The
knights had been willing to abandon Castle Brannagh to the overwhelming forces
arrayed against her to pursue this cardinal.  It must be far worse than he and
Gikka had feared, worse than he could even imagine.  Worse still, even as few
as they were, he would be of little help to them in this battle.  Chul’s
shoulders slumped, and he lowered his hunting knife, defeated before he’d
begun.

Idri gai braniana ro viana kai virara Xorden.

Chul frowned and raised his head, listening.

Goziara kai bar no bortai brai Xorden.

The first part was as Marigan had heard it in the castle,
and the sound of a sacred
Idri
in the strange, mewling voices of these
Invaders, these “Bloody-Hadrians,” as Gikka called them, boiled up his rage. 
But the second part baffled him utterly.

Goziara kai bar no bortai brai Xorden.

It was just babbling, a series of syllables that meant
nothing at all, not even in the Old Voice.  Why would they call the
Idri
and then follow it with a lot of gibberish?  Was it meant as some kind of
desecration?  But as he approached the center of the glade, as the chanting
grew louder and mingled and muddled together, he heard it meld and crystallize
into something terrifying.

Goai drio gziara, goai kai baraina nro vortirarai bra Xorden.

Somehow, the priests, the Hadrian priests, had done what
could not be done.  They had made of their
Idri
and their babbles a new
chant in the Old Voice, something even the tribe’s Storykeepers could not do,
and the meaning of this new chant was as clear to Chul as if he’d heard it all
his life.

Rise and defend, rise to your vow, ye sons of Xorden.

The dust began boiling about their feet even before the dead
priest’s body touched the ground, but with the first drops of his blood, it
began to churn faster and harder.  Instantly, the knights spread themselves to
a tight line with Renda at the center, swords drawn.  With the almost
impassable trees at their backs, they awaited this new attack, this unleashing
of prayers from the rest of the priests.  Except that it did not seem to come
from the rest of the priests.  The Hadrians had not moved; if anything, they
seemed most intent on not moving.

Suddenly, a fearful, savage scream of rage rose from empty
center of the glade, terrifying enough to make the priests falter in their
chanting.  From the open space, hundreds of shadows erupted from the ground
like geysers, human shadows that seemed to drink in substance from the darkness
until their footfalls had weight in the soil.

“Stand your ground,” Renda called, shifting her stance and
regripping her weapon.  “Do not be drawn in!  We cannot let them surround us.”

Unlike Kadak’s armored demons, these creatures moved
quickly, explosively, and within a single breath, the first wave was upon the
knights, crowding in close to their swords.  By the light that fell from the
cardinal’s torch, the knights could see the enemy. Those who faced them were
boys of every age that could walk, dark-skinned, as dark as Dhanani.  Below
those shadowy, feral faces, they wore no armor, only strange, knotted robes of
richly colored cloth, silk or linen, and they carried wicked-looking weapons
like nothing the knights had ever seen before.

But they did not attack.

The throaty scream of rage that came from the glade almost
knocked Chul backward in terror.  He did not want to consider what these sons
of Xorden might be, or for that matter what Xorden might be.  Instead, he
swallowed painfully and regained some of his composure, enough to continue what
he had begun.

“Idri ga brinania ro bana ka verere ba triaksa arada.”

The first prayer.  Chul held the shrew by the back of its
neck and lifted it above his head.  He touched the small shrieking creature’s
throat with his blade—a blade already stained with the blood of a man—but did
not cut.  Then he touched the point to the animal’s chest, then its little
belly.  The power to kill reserved.  After a moment, he lowered the terrified
creature to the ground and released it.

“What are they,” gasped Barlow, shifting back and forth in
his stance, trying to stay calm.

“The dead,” answered Matow quietly, with a certainty the
others found disturbing. “Dhanani dead, from the look of them.”  Two of these
dead, young and willing if inexperienced with the thick bladed swords they
carried, shouted something in challenge and shook their weapons menacingly.
“This glade must be an old Dhanani burial ground or temple, perhaps,” he added,
looking around him. A shudder shook his weak frame, as if he’d found with these
shades a certain kinship—those who had looked Death in the eye and somehow come
back.  He shut his eyes a moment to regain his composure.  “Though what they’d
be about this far east is beyond me.”