Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (41 page)

“It’s been thousands of years,” murmured the sheriff to
himself, and dread darkened his features.  “They’ve kept to the Kharkara Plains
since the Gods’ Rebellion, or just after…”  Renda watched him, curious,
questioning, and he looked back toward the creatures facing them, hiding his
thoughts from her.

“Why do they not attack?”  Barlow scowled.

“They defend.”  The sheriff breathed out sharply.  “They
stand between us and the cardinal; they need only hold us off long enough to
let him complete his work, and they’d rather not open any holes for us.  Sure
we’re not in a position to attack them.”

“We did not come here to stand by and watch!”

“No,” answered the sheriff with a glance toward the altar,
toward the rest of the priests, “no, we did not.”

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

The second prayer.  Chul took the sluggish garter snake he’d
dug out of its winter den and broke its neck cleanly.  Then he cut it open and
squeezed its cold blood into a small depression he’d made in the soil.  The
mulchy dirt drank the blood off thirstily.  He slit the tip of his finger and
dropped a few drops of his own steaming blood into the soil as well and watched
the soil drink his blood just as eagerly.  The blood of mortal brothers, shed. 
Then, feeling a little dizzy at the sudden cold and undeniable proof of his own
mortality, he covered the depression with dead leaves.

Not far from the knights, one of the priests let out a cry
of surprise and suddenly crumpled to the ground.  From his body, a great lash
of liquid fire spewed without direction over the ranks of the dead like a
fountain, making the whole crowded body of them surge in every direction like
panicked cattle.

“Did you see that?” cried Barlow, retreating with the rest
of the knights to put the trees at his back as the Dhanani dead churned and swirled
in panic before them.  “What in the name of B’radik…?”

The sheriff grunted and heaved against the crush of bodies
that threatened to overwhelm them.  “Hold them off!”

The priests’ careful, orderly construction had flown apart,
but they patiently restarted, quickly blending the two chants into the third,
trying to regain control.

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

But chaos had already been unleashed.  Their prayers
splintered apart again and again in the frenzy, and when they saw that they no
longer controlled the child warriors, the frightening dead warriors they had
raised to battle the knights, they scattered in terror.  In the same feverish
moment, the knights found themselves under dire attack from the warriors.
Nothing held back the Dhanani now, and the knights fought for their lives.

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

The third prayer.  He quickly untied his gold storyskin and
bound it around the snake’s body.  Then he dug feverishly in the cold, mulchy
soil to make a burial chamber and lay the snake inside.  One by one, in
ceremonial order, he spoke a blessing over each stone and set it in place until
the snake was completely covered, in the style of a warrior’s barrow.  The
honored dead, bestowed.  He breathed deeply and placed the final stone.

Nothing happened.

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

The words flew out like a volley of arrows.  His voice was
full of anger and indignation, and instantly, he regretted it.  What did he expect? 
He had no right to speak to the gods.  He had not spoken the ritual prayers
with Aidan during his Rite of Manhood; he had not used the traditional animals,
the elk calf, the goose, the wolf.  His blade was stained with human blood.  He
had no right to think that the gods would hear him, or, even if They did, that
They would help him.  But in spite of all of it, he shouted his prayers again
and again over the chanting and shrieking coming from the glade, hoping that
his gods, the gods of the Dhanani, would listen to the voice of the outcast.

“Renda!”  The sheriff shouted to her through the battle, and
seeing that he’d gotten her attention, nodded toward the eastern side of the
glade.

Through the smoke and flame and flutter of silk-clad bodies
moving through the glade, she could see only glimpses of one of the priests who
seemed to be fighting someone.  In spite of the warriors pressing him, he was
turned away, batting furiously at something Renda could not see, something that
seemed to be tugging at him from behind, pestering him more than actually
attacking him.  But beside him, something still more interesting caught her
attention.

Another priest, perhaps seeing what it was that attacked his
fellow or perhaps thinking he might be next, had tightened his hood around his
face and begun to move through the center of the glade between the risen dead. 
Toward the altar.

“Valmerous.” She snarled in frustration and redoubled her
fight to push back the Dhanani.  But she was still hemmed in on all sides by the
boy warriors, as were the rest of the knights.  They could not hope to break
free in time to stop him.

Beyond the clot of dead warriors, the embattled priest
fought with his hidden attacker, using his bare hands and what rocks and sticks
he could pick up.  Suddenly, his body arched stiffly, and his hands clawed
weakly at his back.  The posture was unmistakable—she’d seen it so many times
on the battlefield.  The priest was trying to pull a knife or a sword out of
his back, but whose?  She could not see through the smoke.

Then his cowl fell back from his head, and his strange,
alien voice rose out of the chant in a pitiful cry for mercy before he died.

Had he fallen without a sound, Renda doubted the dead
warriors would have seen him at all through the smoke.  But he had not, and the
Dhanani turned to his scream like a pack of wolves.  The terrible, strangled
cry of horror and outrage they sent up upon seeing the face of the fallen
Hadrian priest made the rest of the battle fall to stillness and silence for a
long, terrible moment.  Then those who could see the priest’s face savaged the
little Hadrian body, ripping it and rending it until no recognizable piece
remained.

The rest of the priests, stopped from fleeing the glade,
tried once again to resume the chant, but soon, they, too, fell silent, seeing
the curious warriors move closer and eye their hoods with suspicion.  Near the
knights, one of the warriors had kicked away the hood of the priest Renda
killed.  Within only a few moments, that body, too, was ripped apart.

Dhanani blood rage.  And these priests were Hadrians.

“By the gods,” whispered Matow, tentatively lowering his
sword while one of the warriors tried to peer through the slits in his visor,
trying to see his eyes.  A vexed snarl rose on the lips of the warrior, and he
shifted his grip on his pole ax.

“Remove your helmet,” Renda whispered. 

It was a risk.  After all, if they were souls from the early
Dhanani Empire, from a time before the Gods’ Rebellion or even before the first
of the Byrandian refugees had come this far west, then the knights might seem
as alien to them as the Hadrians.

“Matow,” Renda said calmly, “trust me.  Remove your helmet
and look him in the eyes.”

He hesitated for only a moment.  “For the duke, for Syon and
for B’radik,” he whispered.  He reached up to unfasten the leather straps, and
the warrior watched him, keeping the ax ready to cut him down.

“All of you,” spoke the sheriff, “take them off.  We’ve
nothing to fear.”

Barlow snorted, eyeing the huge spiked weapon his opponent
held poised over his head.  “With all due respect—”

“You have your orders,” returned the sheriff calmly, already
lifting his helmet from his own head.  The warriors studied his face, his eyes,
his waves of silver hair.

Renda unfastened the leather straps that held her helmet and
moved to strip it off, then paused, uncertain.  Aidan had told her that the
present Dhanani were distrustful of women on the battlefield, but she knew
nothing of how these men, whom the knights now assumed to be ancient Dhanani,
would react.  A woman, here, in armor and battling against them, might be even
more of an outrage to them than a Hadrian.

“Renda, no,” her father called to her.  “Only your visor. 
They should be satisfied to see your eyes.” 

She lifted her visor, and a young warrior who reminded her
of Chul loomed close to her, so close she could see the thin strands of blue
silk woven into his braids, the dusting of soil that still lingered on his
smooth, dark brow.  He reached a rude, dirty hand up to touch her face, to turn
her head roughly into the torchlight where he could see her better.  The rest
of the knights bristled, but she waved them back and withstood the warrior’s
touch.

He stared at her for several moments, long enough that the
rest of the knights looked at each other worriedly.  Then the young warrior
looked around at the mostly pale, bareheaded knights, at Renda, at Lord
Daerwin, and his lip curled into a snarl, enough that the knights readied
themselves for a renewed attack.  It never came.

Without the chant to direct them against the knights, they
seemed more inclined to hunt down this other enemy, this hideous creature whose
very existence boiled their blood, and while they did not retreat visibly from
the knights, they’d clearly relaxed their interdiction against them to focus on
the priests.

At the rim of the glade, the priests were trying desperately
to regain control, to renew their chant, but between the threats of the
warriors and the strange, hidden pest that harassed them from behind, the chant
had degenerated into muffled gibberish.  Soon it lacked even that much
substance as each priest turned his attention toward his own protection and
prayed for the mercy of whatever gods they thought might listen.

Meanwhile, the knights saw their opening and moved through
the crowd toward the altar.  Silently, the rest of the dead closed in around
them.

“
Idri…
”  Chul sobbed, sinking to his knees, and drove
his bloodied knife into the soil.

T
he
knights stood motionless, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, as they watched
the ancient Dhanani cut through the priests like so many deer.  All but one. 
Somehow, this last and most dangerous of the priests, Valmerous, still knelt
motionless at the alderwood altar on the far side of the glade, unseen,
unnoticed.

Renda marked the purplish light that touched the tops of the
trees and wondered if Valmerous would need to complete his rite against Pegrine
before daybreak.  She doubted it.  But time and the rising sun were his allies,
not theirs. The goddess was tied to Pegrine, and Pegrine was a creature of
shadow.  Once the day had broken, the knights would surely be on their own
against him and his god.

Her knights had pushed their way through the Dhanani toward
the altar, and at first, they had made good headway.  She had thought they
might get through, but now, they were no longer gaining ground; in fact, they
began to lose ground.

Then the Dhanani attacked.

The knights cut them down easily with their swords, but they
soon discovered that swords were not much good against those who were already
dead.  The Dhanani they cut down rose time and again to rejoin the fight, their
wounds gone.

“Willem!”

Renda grunted and heaved against the crush of dead warriors
with her sword and pressed forward, that much closer to the altar.  She and her
father were at the front edge of their tiny wedge, fighting through the crush
of Dhanani toward the altar, with the other three knights holding the warriors
off at the rear.

But the wedge broke, and Willem fell.  Behind her, she heard
Barlow fighting his way to the fallen knight, trying to clear the space around
him with his sword.

“Leave him,” Matow said.  “You can’t save him.”

“He moved,” Barlow grimaced, cutting through the dead.  “He
yet lives!  If I can get him to his feet…”

“Aye, he lives,” Renda shouted, pressing ahead, “but the ax
cuts too deeply into his helmet.  You do him no favor to save him now.”

Barlow looked back at Willem.  “But the priests at Brannagh
could…”

“He’s gone,” gasped Matow, falling into Willem’s place at
Barlow’s back.  He panted, nodding ahead.  “We’re almost to the altar.”  He
knocked away a spear with his sword.  “Just a bit further…”

“Tiadre!”

Abruptly, the ferocious energy of the warriors and their
unrelenting press on the knights fell away.  Even the warriors they fought
disengaged in midstroke and turned toward the voice.

Barlow cried out in triumph and raised his sword, but Matow
caught his wrist and nodded toward the edge of the glade.

There, a single young Dhanani stood, alone, uncertain and very
much afraid, with his hunting knife outstretched toward the dead warriors.  He
was clearly not one of these, not one of the ancient dead, but a living boy of
the tribes.

Renda turned and squinted through her visor.  “Chul?”

“
Tiadre!
” the boy screamed, swinging his knife back
and forth viciously.  “
Gui, il tiadre lema!
”  The warriors watched him,
studied him, as if they were seeing one of their primitive ancestors suddenly
come to life before them.  But they could not understand his language, and he
could not form the words in theirs.  When they only stared at him, he raised
his hands to the sky in frustration.  “
Tiadre,
” he cried, as if by
shouting he might make them understand.  “It’s dishonor to fight them!”

“
Tedriadre,
” echoed another voice in Old Dhanani, a
young voice but resonant in this place, and at the sound of it, the dead
warriors murmured and muttered between themselves, turning to see who had
spoken now.  A shadow emerged from the forest not far from the knights, and as
it stepped into the pale predawn light, they saw that it was another young
Dhanani the same age.  The resemblance was striking; the two boys could be
brothers.

“Dhanani, both of them,” Barlow spoke under his breath, “but
who do you suppose—”

Like Chul, the second Dhanani was dressed in the habit of
the tribes, in close fitting dark leathers, bare-chested for the hunt except
for a pale gold storyskin on one arm and a young deer slung over the other, but
as He moved into the glade, His garb changed.  His leathers seemed to spread themselves
on the air and swirl about Him until they became smooth silken robes in dark
shades of green.  Hundreds of long, unadorned black braids framed a beautiful
face that grimaced at the dead warriors in pure rage.

“Gui, le tedriadre liemna!”

The ancient warriors dropped their weapons and fell to their
knees.

“By the gods…”  Barlow lowered his sword in astonishment.

Renda raised her hand to silence him and gestured toward the
other side of the glade.

Another shadowy form appeared, this one a sleek, agile
Dhanani woman, old enough to be Chul’s mother but still handsome, with short
cropped black hair.  Her leather cuirass and kilt were a disturbing shade of
gray, the gray of mold, of decay, of bones in the grave, but these, too,
changed as she moved, becoming whispers of gray silk beneath a long gray veil.

“
Gui, le tedriadre liemnad, Xorden
!”  She spat the
name as if it tasted of bile.

Tiadre
, dishonor. 
Tedriadre
in the Old Voice,
betrayal of a blood oath.  Chul looked up in surprise when he heard his words
being echoed in the Old Voice, first by the hunter and then by the woman.  His
eyes took in the two who had come into the light, and like the warriors, his
deepest, most primitive self recognized Them.  He dropped to his knees and
kissed the ground.

The gods had answered his prayers.

Why would the gods answer you, boy, when They never answer the
shamans?

He was suddenly ashamed of himself.  It was arrogance to
think that his meager little prayer could summon the gods like so many servants
when no one, not even Aidan and the other shamans of the tribes, had ever seen
Them.  No, the gods had not answered the outcast; They had come for Their own
reasons.  Chul followed their dark gazes to the hooded shape at the altar and
wondered what sort of mortal man could so threaten gods—

At the alderwood stump, Valmerous rose suddenly.  He flung
his hands outward and whirled around, and the air rippled violently around
him.  As he whirled around, his hood lifted away from his face and fell to his
shoulders.

—and Chul’s blood began to boil.  He screeched and ran
headlong through the thick mob of bowing warriors, climbing over their backs,
shoving his way through them toward the knights, toward the impossibly hideous
creature at the altar, the one who must not be allowed to live.  The warriors
looked up at his cry, and some rose to their feet in their confusion.  Somehow,
none of them seemed to see what had driven him into such a frenzy.

The whirl of air that Valmerous raised threw the sheriff
backward.  He let out a sudden scream of pain and dropped his sword.

“Lord Daerwin!” cried Barlow, roughly searching the
sheriff’s armor for dents or breaches while the rest of the knights closed
protectively around him. “How now, are you injured?”

“Hot.  It’s burning hot!” He scrabbled frantically at the
buckles that held his right vambrace in place, but he could not seem to get his
fingers around them.

“My lady,” breathed Matow, gesturing toward the warriors who
were still watching the two Dhanani at the edge of the glade.  As far as he
could tell, none of them had noticed Valmerous.

“Watch them.”  Renda dropped at once beside her father,
sword still in hand. “Keep them back.  Don’t let them near us.  Father?”

“I can’t get it off!”

Barlow managed to unfasten the topmost buckle, but he was
burning his fingers.  “It’s getting hotter.”

“Here, let me—”  Matow pushed his way past Barlow and
grasped the buckle with his mantle.  But the cloth was too thick and clumsy,
and it began to smoke where it touched the metal.  Barlow tossed it away with a
curse and tapped gingerly at the buckle with his bare fingers.  “It’s too hot! 
If I can just—”

“You…can’t…” the sheriff groaned.  “My arm, by the gods,
Renda, cut it off, just cut it off!”

Steam and a sickening sizzling sound rose from between the
metal plates that held his forearm.

“No time.  Get back!”  Renda kicked his arm clear of his
body with her boot and raised her sword.  Then she slashed through the
smoldering leather straps, ripping through them one by one until at last the
glowing metal fell away, taking with it flaming tatters of linen and hunks of
cooked flesh.

Matow stripped off his mantle to bind around the sheriff’s
wounds, but he hesitated.  The wounds were deep, glistening, raw, and already
the charred ends of his undershirt were sticking in them.  The heavy cloth of
the cloak would surely stick as well.

But Renda took it from him and bound it around the sheriff’s
arm.  Hopefully Nara or Arnard would be able to see to a proper healing for him
at the castle, but until then, the wounds needed protection.  So she wrapped
the thick cloth around the arm and put the rest of the cloak over the sheriff’s
shoulder to act as a sling.

Lord Daerwin crumpled forward against her, gritting his
teeth in pain.

Not far from them, Chul broke free of the milling warriors
and barreled toward the knights, his blade glinting in the torchlight coming
from the altar.

Barlow caught the snarling boy and carried him to the
ground, pinning him beneath the weight of the knight’s body and armor.

“Let me…!”  Chul struggled against him and nearly fought his
way free.  He’d bitten his tongue and his mouth ran with blood.  “It must not
be allowed to live!”

“No,” grunted Barlow, trapping the boy’s knife hand, “no, he
must not.”  He stripped the knife away from Chul and nodded ahead, toward the
altar and the cardinal.  “And he will not.  But you’ll not stop him by burning
alive, lad!”

The air just a few feet ahead of them shimmered with heat,
as it did above the scorching roads during the Feast of Kanet.  As that roiling
heat took shape and substance, it formed itself into a massive dome surrounding
Valmerous at the altar until he was no more than a hazy, wavering shape beyond
it.

“We will stop him,” murmured Barlow with a glance at Renda. 
She nodded.  “Trust to that.”

Whether because Chul understood what Barlow had said or
because he could no longer see the hideous face of the Hadrian, the boy stopped
fighting.

“Chul,” she said, “all is well?”

He blinked up at Renda in bafflement.  “Yes, I think so.  I
don’t remember…”

When Barlow felt Chul relax, he helped the boy to his feet
and returned his knife without comment.  But Matow patted the bewildered boy’s
shoulder and nodded toward the injured sheriff.  “It’s a good thing Barlow
stopped you. Lord Daerwin all but lost his arm when it rose.”  He picked up a
long tree branch and threw it as hard as he could through the shimmering wall
of heat, but it caught fire as it left his hand, and the instant it touched the
wall, the thick wood vaporized.  “Hate to think what would have happened if
you’d tried to run through.”

Renda frowned through the wall.  Valmerous could have raised
it as soon as he and his priests arrived in this glade and locked the knights
completely out with it.  But he had waited to raise it until now.  Clearly, he
had been waiting for something, and that something had come to pass, but what
it was, she could not guess.

“Lady Renda,” Chul began, “Gikka sent me to warn you about
the priests.”

Matow snorted.

“Sent you?”  Renda looked back through the trees.  “Where is
she?  Is she here?”

The boy shook his head.  “She went back to Graymonde.  I was
to meet her there.  This was not…”  He looked around at the horror of the
glade.  “I was supposed to warn you.”

Renda breathed deeply to hide her disappointment.  She had
ordered Gikka to stay away.  Once, just this once, she wished Gikka had ignored
her orders.  She rose to her feet with a brave smile and gestured toward her
father.  “Chul,” she said, “I need you to help Lord Daerwin back to the horses
and stay there with him.  I may need you to see him back to Brannagh if we
cannot.”

Chul frowned at her and opened his mouth to protest.

But with amazing strength of will, Lord Daerwin raised
himself to one knee, then to his feet.  “I can go on,” he growled.  “I’ll not
be sent back to the horses while B’radik and all Syon are in danger.”  He
reached down with his good hand and picked up the sword he had dropped.  Then
he nodded toward the dome.  “The battle is joined.  We cannot stop now.”

She looked at him worriedly.  His face was waxy and pale,
and his lips looked almost blue to her, so intense was his pain.  During the
war, she would never have let him—or the boy, all the nonsense about Dhanani
boy-warriors aside—stay to fight, not like this.  But then, during the war,
she’d have had an army of knights and soldiers to take their places.

She blew out a hard breath.  “Quickly, then.  Matow and
Chul.”  She lowered her voice to a whisper, watching the warriors, who were
still distracted for the most part by the two Dhanani at the glade’s edge. 
“Gather wood, leaves, rocks, damp moss, anything we can use to try to weaken
this wall.”

Sir Matow and the boy nodded and moved away along the edge
of the trees.  Chul slipped easily between the trees while Matow, in full
armor, fought for every inch.

“
Tedriadre
.”  A new voice chuckled bitterly, the same
chilling, sinuous voice Renda had heard in Cilder’s chambers, and the knights
shuddered.  “
Tedriadre arada veo
!”  Thunder shook the ground, and a
vicious wave of power rippled outward from the dome, directed, like His
sneering words, not toward the knights who seemed beneath His notice for now,
but toward the other two Dhanani at the edge of the glade.