Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (22 page)

For Laniel’s particular flavor of grief, however, she was at
a loss.

“Are you well,” she asked at last.

His head lifted beneath the furred cowl he wore.  “I think
not, Lady.”

When he did not continue, she wondered if she had offended
him by asking.  She cleared her throat a bit self-consciously.  “Forgive me.  I
do not mean to pry…”

He shook his head.  “I take no offense.  I am grateful for
your concern.  But I am uncertain how I might express to you how I feel.”

She nodded.

“In the space of a day, everything I’ve held to be the
purpose of my life for a century and more has been taken from me because I was
weak.”  He turned to her, and she saw deep confusion in his dark eyes.  “Weak! 
I, a priest of Bilkar!  I am disgraced, and by my god Himself.  I do not
understand how it is that I yet live or even why I should.”

Renda studied his face.  She knew these feelings.  She had
felt them herself—still felt them occasionally in the depth of night when sleep
was not deep enough to hold off the darkness. But always her answer was the
same: the danger to Syon had not ended with Kadak’s death.  Her task was not
yet finished.  If that was enough to keep her from dishonoring herself, so be
it.  Once she was certain of victory, however, she would revisit the feelings
and face them, possibly for the last time.  But for now, she must live.  So
must they all.  And she could not have the only priest among them entertaining
thoughts of suicide.

He saw the alarm in her eyes and shrugged.  “Forgive me.  My
thoughts wander to further weakness.”

She felt a sigh rise in her breast and quelled it.  “Such
thoughts touch us all, from time to time.”

His voice hardened.  “They do not touch Bilkarians.”

“It seems they do.”  She reached over and squeezed his arm
gently.  “If you would find your strength again, Laniel, remind yourself that
Bilkar Himself set you to accompany us for a reason.  He entrusted you with His
most earnest mission.”  When she saw Laniel draw breath to protest, she raised
a brow at him.  “Bilkar Himself called it so.  Not I.”  She shivered, looking
at the eastern path ahead of them and beyond it, to the sea.  “I wish I knew
what He knows that worries Him enough to send His highest priest with us, and
do not think to argue that point with me.  Gaed may be Abbess of Bilkar, but
you are unquestionably His most powerful priest.”

Laniel nodded grudgingly.

“So occupy yourself with that mystery, an it please you. 
For my part, while yet there is nothing we can do but ride, I might be better
pleased not to know what might so vex a god.  My sleep will surely be sweeter,”
she sighed.  “Ere long, we shall be in Brannford.  Once there, we will take our
ease, gather our strength, and plan our voyage to Byrandia.”

“Byrandia,” he repeated with a wistful smile.  “I recall
that I did envy you this challenge.  And here I find myself.  It seems I have
found challenge in my path after all.”

“Then it is a good day indeed, what’s left of it.”  She
looked ahead of them, to where the bare sticks of the foothill forestland eased
away toward the coast.  “Of course, we still must find a ship that will make
the voyage, which may well prove our challenge for many days to come, so.” She
smiled bravely.  “For challenges, it seems we shall not want!  Therefore, be of
good cheer, Laniel.”

He smiled in spite of himself.  “Ever the ray of sunlight in
a darkening world, you are, my Lady.  No wonder it is that Lord Kerrick prizes
you so dearly.”

“Your pardon?”  She looked away, despising the flush in her
cheeks and the feeble deceit in her tone.

“Come now.  Have I truly said something you do not know? 
The question remains whether you should prize him as dearly.  If you allowed
yourself the…weakness.”  He looked over at her for a moment, studying her. 
“After all, he is exactly the sort of man your virtues should attract.” 

She struggled for a reply and found none.

Suddenly, Daerwin drew up short ahead of them, and signaled
a stop.  Renda rode up beside him to see what had stopped them, and the others
drew up behind them.

“What in the name of…?”  Kerrick squinted toward the billows
of black smoke rising from behind the shattered walls of the city.  The smells
were those of the battlefield, of burning wood and flesh.  Flocks of scavengers
circled high above, hungry and frustrated by the fires below.  “This is
Brannford?  It cannot be!”

“Yet it is,” scowled the sheriff.  “Come.  And caution, all
of you.  I would not have us ride blindly into a trap, for all our worry for
those within.”

*          *          *

Chul squinted up into the rain as he worked.  The cloth he’d
bound around his face to stifle the smell of rot and death moved softly with
his breath.  “I still don’t see him.”

“Who, Colaris?” asked Gikka, casting her own glance into the
sky in spite of herself. “He’s probably moved clear of the smoke and stench and
found himself a dry spot to perch.  Ever one for a tender stomach, him.” 

“I worry for him with all the other birds up there.  Some
are bigger, and the way they circle…”

She stood up straight from where she’d been working and
stretched her back.  “Gulls, one and all, from the look of it.  Any but the
biggest of that lot as would try to catch Colaris would have a big surprise,
they would.  Fear him not, now.  That bird’s been minding himself since the
war.”

“The war before this one?”

Gikka drew herself up short at the boy’s words.  Yes, taken
for all in all, she supposed this was a war, as surely as the war against Kadak
had been.  She sighed, looking around herself.  There was no denying it now.  “Aye,
the war before this one.  And I’ll thank you not to be dallying and looking at
the sky when we’ve work.”  She tossed aside a flat piece of wall and crouched. 
“Might you come and help me lift this poor soul clear?  He’s a stout one.”

Around them, the hundred or so of the scavvies Tagen had
brought back with him sifted through the wreckage, but as scattered as they
were, their numbers disappeared into the seemingly endless heaps and drifts. 
They emerged only occasionally carrying bundles of wood or bodies to the areas Damerien
had designated for them. 

She’d recognized some among them, children she’d known who
were now adults, adults who were now elders, and all of them stricken dumb with
loss.

As they found the dead amongst the rubble, the bodies were
laid out and identified as best they could be and put to the pyres with as much
respect and blessing as the scavvies could manage since even the temple priests
were among the dead.  Here and there, a bit of a statue or a broken icon had
been pulled from the wreckage to create a makeshift shrine to lend their
blessings some solemnity.  Those set to seeing to the bodies tried to remember
the rituals of the gods that they’d seen, living as most of them had in the
shelter of the temples, but their half-remembered rites for the dead were crude
and broken with sorrow.

They had known these people, of course.  The shopkeepers who
had sometimes turned a blind eye toward their thefts out of pity, the townsfolk
who had occasionally chipped them a haypenny as they passed, the sailors who
would tip them a pint for their insights into the sea’s mood.  And of course,
they’d known the priests who had let them sleep on the temple floors. 

They’d also known cruelty and derision, and not just from
the rich.  Even apart from those who took advantage of their misery or abused
them outright, those poor who styled themselves too good to be scavvies were
the cruelest of all and least likely to help a scavvy to leave that life for
something better.  But now, of course, none of that mattered.  To the scavvies’
honor, such as it was, they treated everyone alike in death. 

Had she not been so exhausted with her sad labors, she might
have found irony in these most wretched of the wretched giving final charity to
those who were, to a man, called their betters.  As it was, she had no thoughts
to spare for it.  She could only sift through the loss and destruction and see
to the dead alongside them as best she could.

At first, most of the scavvies had been inclined to hoard what
they found in the rubble:  gold, silver, rings, the kinds of things that had
held value before the disaster but which held no value now.  They’d stolen
jeweled pendants from the very throats of dead women and fine weapons and boots
from the rotting bodies of the men, but as the enormity of the tragedy struck
them, some few had put it all aside and set themselves to the sad labors for
which Tagen had gone to fetch them while others had lumbered away with their
hauls never to look back, never to return.  Tagen had let these last go without
a word even while Gikka had been inclined to ride after them and cut them down
in a rage.

“Been too long among the do-gooder knights, you have,” he’d
said to her.  “What of it, if they take from them what won’t miss it and go in
their guilt? Saves them taking from them what will miss it, and saves us having
to mind our backs.  Sure you’d not be inclined to bring them back so we’d be
tasked with keeping a wary eye on them, would you?  Let them go, my starling,
and good riddance.”  He’d glowered after them.  “They’ll not see the inside of
these walls again, not an I have any say.”

Damerien had sent Tagen at first light to bring the scavvies
back to Brannford from where they’d been camping inland with careful
instructions that they were not to know that their duke was among them, for
their own sakes even more than for his.  The duke would not have his enemies,
whoever and wherever they might be, harm these people because of him.

So it was that now Trocu, Duke of Damerien, ruler of Syon,
stood shoulder to shoulder with the lowest of the low, hefting stinking dead
bodies to the pyres and separating out the usable metal and wood, the metal to
be melted down and reforged, the wood to be used either in the fires or to
rebuild the city.  Not far from him, Nestor was overseeing the fires, and Gikka
wondered if those fires would ever have started with the soaked wood and
constant rain without Nestor’s subtle help.

Jath had managed to find some horses loose in the wilderness
surrounding the town, those who had broken loose during the quakes, or maybe
even during the initial “rumbling” as Tagen had called it, and their instincts
had taken them inland.  He said he’d begun looking because he’d not seen any
horses among the dead, which meant they had fled but were likely staying near. 
He’d brought back only about ten so far, but it was at least enough to help
with moving the larger wreckage aside.  More would eventually return once they
trusted the ground beneath their hooves again.  By then, she reckoned, she and
the others would be away from here.

“Gikka!  I see him!” 

She looked up at the sound of Chul’s voice to follow his
gaze.  They watched Colaris fly from the counting house rafters, and in the
same moment, they saw the gulls diving on him.  Chul drew breath to shout
warning to the bird, but Gikka gripped his shoulder hard. 

“Still your tongue.  You’ll kill him an he slows to find
your voice.”  When she was sure he understood her, she released him.  “He knows
they’re there.  He let them get too close, and well he knows it, so now it’s
about breaking them off.  Watch him,” she smiled.  “You’ll learn a thing or two.”

The small hawk flew high above them, pumping his wings,
riding thermals upward and diving downward to gain more speed.  But the gulls
were also gaining speed.  Colaris gave a soft call of recognition, passing over
them, but did not slow.  The harrier wheeled back toward the oily smoke clouds
that rose above the city, keeping the gulls just far enough back that they
could not reach him but near enough that they would not give up.  He’d even
slowed a bit as they tired of pursuing him, the idlers, and called out a
challenge to keep their interest.  But his sharp cry had had another purpose.  Gikka
smiled.  The echo had told the harrier exactly where he was.

She watched him fly south now, over Damerien and the
scavvies and circle back over her.  She bit her lip.  The gulls were losing
interest.  They were going to go back to the flock.  If they did that, he’d be having
to contend with their mad and stupid games for at least another day, every time
he left his perch. 

He let out a cry of pain and broke his flight.  The gulls
paused in their flight, watched him a moment, and then on they came, with that
ridiculous gloating expression frozen on their beaks. Gikka grinned.  Stupid
birds…

“He’s hurt!” Chul took a step toward him.  “Look at his wing!”

“Patience, lad,” soothed Gikka.  “Watch.”

The gulls came closer, and he cried out again, beating his
“lame” wing uselessly, rising slowly, almost imperceptibly as he flew.  Their
loss of interest had created a luxury of space between him and them, space that
allowed him to play up the broken wing while keeping ahead of them.  They were
bearing down on him, but she knew what he was about.  As she expected, he
waited until they were nearly upon him again, then dropped all pretence and
flew at full speed due north, right through the thickest clouds of smoke, with
the gulls flying at full speed right behind him, keening and screaming after
him.

The gulls’ cries stopped sharply.

Gikka chuckled and went back to her work.  “Well played,
little one.”

Chul looked at her, worry filling his eyes.  “What
happened?”

Gikka nodded toward the smoke.  “Just there, lad, beyond
that smoke, is the only standing wall in all Brannford now, save bits of the
city wall.”  She shook her head.  “Solid brick it is, the same wall them
above’s been circling for hours.”  She moved aside some broken timbers.  “Seems
Colaris remembered it were there, and they did not.”

“But where is he?”