Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (43 page)

No.  Despair was of no use to him, and he refocused his
thoughts on the battle.  “They begin to see that time works against them now,
even more than it works against us, and they must defeat us before we defeat
them by attrition.  Still, I would think they would use their power with more
shrewdness or at least frugality.”  He peered around the corner, drew the bow
and fired an arrow, but by the time it arrived, his target had shifted
position, and the arrow flew by.  Daerwin shook his head and nocked another
arrow.  He hated bows.  Give him a sword, a pike, a weapon to drive home with
his own hands, anything but these damnable arrows.

Sir Peringale edged himself out and fired, wounding one of
them and drawing an attack that splattered harmlessly into the now fire
hardened coral behind him.  His armor was beaten and scorched where a few
burning bits of coral had fallen on him.  He looked over at Daerwin and gave a half
nod of salute.

Dame Liddy had taken a more forward position slightly to the
south.  Her slight frame allowed her to take cover in a dip behind a low clump
of coral.  The advantage she had, of course, was the nearer shot, and she had
killed several already.  But her cover would fail soon under the constant
barrage of attacks against her position, and soon she would have to move. 
Daerwin had already considered this and had Shanth and Grayson, the archers
nearest her, ready to provide some cover for her in case she had to move
quickly.

From her position among the swordsmen, Renda signaled to
Gikka, who signaled back at once.  The enemy’s numbers were down to no more
than fifty.  Part of her rejoiced that they had cut the enemy’s numbers by
almost half so quickly, but part of her marveled that she should see them as
only
fifty mages when but a season before, the idea of two mages at one place had
seemed impossible.  Then again, a season ago, many things had seemed
impossible.

Through the corner of her eye, Renda saw a white flash that
threw one of her knights—Phen, the archer furthest back from the line—backward
against the stone wall. 

“Amara!  See to him!”  Renda’s cry had not even finished
before the knight had thrown herself to the ground beside Phen where he’d slid
bonelessly to the ground.  A moment later Laniel was also at the wounded
knight’s side helping to drag him out of the battle.

Phen’s timing had been just a bit off, and he had stood
directly into a crackling stab of lightning, taking the brunt of it right in
his chest.  Lightning was an odd and unpredictable thing which sometimes
bounced between people or went straight into the ground, depending.  In this
case, it had entered at his chest, lifted him with the force of the blow, and
exited his heel, which was the first part of him to touch the ground, melting
his steel boot into the flesh of his foot.  Fortunately for him, he was
unconscious.

Renda had already sheathed her sword and taken up Phen’s bow
and his position, setting aside her worry for her knight.  He would live or die
now, not by the severity of his injury nor even by the skill of Amara and
Laniel in caring for him but by whether or not they defeated this enemy just as
they all would.  She saw at once why he had been hit.  It was a terrible
position, far too open and with poor visibility.  She scrambled upward over the
rough stony coral and put herself prone over the top of a rise and looked out
over the plain below.  Much better.  Here and there, she could see a glimmer of
seamless robes behind low stands of rock and hillocks.  Perfect.

She fired two arrows, landing one in the shoulder of a mage
more by luck than by aim as he walked right into an arrow meant for another. 
The other arrow glanced off another mage’s protections and sparked
spectacularly.  It seemed he had not yet been hit by anyone. Very well, she
told herself, he will be mine and mine alone.  She lined up another shot.

Orange light, like a sunrise, began to glow over the coral
around her, and her heart pounded.  Her body moved to scramble down off the
rise, but she stopped short.  The light did not come from the coral itself nor
any magic cast upon it, but was reflected.  Off to the east, a surge of liquid
fire was spreading across the vale below toward the army.  It was not heavy
like molten steel but impossibly light, like a river of pure flame, dancing
across the land, breaking like an ocean against the corals.  The first of the
enemy hit by it were caught unawares, their protections flaring and billowing
against it feebly before burning away, leaving them vulnerable to the flames.

From where they were on the Lacework, the knights could feel
a hot wind blowing over them from the sea of flames, a bit more heat than was
quite welcome in the waning cold of Bilkar, and they drew back.

Suddenly, the flames broke and ran in strange rivulets
around what could only be new protective shields the remaining mages threw up
against it, and then, as suddenly as they appeared, the flames were gone.  But
now the mages had turned their attention almost completely toward that eastern
flank, from the spot where the flames had come, all but ignoring the archers
for the moment.

Gikka smiled and signaled down to Renda and the sheriff: 
Dith.

Renda breathed out with relief.  Only about thirty remained,
and many of those were injured.  Only thirty.  Renda gripped the bow and fired
a shot.

“Was this what you wanted?”

Dith watched the flames he’d sent over the valley die away
to a whisper between the protective shields the mages had raised and then saw
the great volley, the strands bent and twisted with their efforts, braided with
the combined energies of thirty minds all bent on his destruction.  It was an
impressive amount of power, he thought rather dispassionately, watching the
strands writhe and crackle with their energy.  No doubt it was a bundled mass
of fear, vitriol and death all directed at him––or more precisely, at the spot
where he had been when he sent the flames toward them.  He glanced at the sea
above and below the Lacework, wondering idly why the mages hadn’t thought to
raise it and wash the Lacework clean.  It was what he would have done.

“They do not because they cannot.”

What do you mean, they cannot?  With all their combined
power, it should be trivial.  By myself, I could––

“Do not even form the thought.  Look closely at the sea. 
Not at the mages themselves but at the sea.”

Dith looked, and what he saw terrified him.

“Indeed, you see it.  You asked me once what the power of
the Wittister mages looked like.  Now you see it for yourself.”

“Do you see that?  What in the name of…?”  Renda raised her
visor and looked out over the plain beyond the end of the Lacework in
amazement, barely recovering herself enough to duck behind cover as a blast of
heat rippled past her and blasted away part of a block of coral.  “Suddenly
that does not look like just thirty-odd mages to me!”

“Are those what they seem?”  Grayson shouted to her, but she
only shook her head.

“It cannot be.”

“Reinforcements!” called Peringale over his shoulder.  “They
must have called for reinforcements, but why…?  And what…?  They almost look
like…”

Gikka scowled.  She turned back toward Renda and signaled to
her:  Several hundred, maybe a thousand in total.  Another hundred mages but
also infantry, still on the far horizon but approaching fast.  A moment later,
as they got closer, she used a signal they had not seen since the war, a signal
Renda asked her to verify.  The signal came back more adamantly.  There could
be no mistake: demons.

The sheriff looked at Renda in barely veiled horror.  He
beckoned Chul down from his perch and sent him to fetch the duke.  This could
not bode well.

How could it be?  There was no record of demons or anything
like demons in Byrandia in any of the histories, at least not before the Liberation. 
Her mind raced.  Kadak had appeared out of nowhere, taking for his own an old
Hadrian castle, and from there he had poured his demons out, seemingly from
Syon herself.

Perhaps early on, the protectors of Syon might have
concerned themselves with Kadak’s origin, but over five centuries, concern had
turned itself entirely toward being rid of him.  In their isolation, she
doubted anyone had considered the question that now occurred to her.  “Father,”
she asked, “What if the invasion of Syon was not the only one?  What if the
demons also invaded Byrandia, and what if, even though we beat them in Syon,
they somehow won in Byrandia?”

Daerwin shook his head.  “It is possible.

The considerations of liberating an island were far less
complex than liberating an entire continent.  Renda swallowed hard.  The
landbridge could very well act as an open sluice for the demons to pour into
Syon.  Five hundred years of war against Kadak would be as nothing compared to
such an invasion.

“Demons.”  Trocu breathed as he, Nestor and Jath approached the
sheriff and Renda.

Kerrick looked out at the dark tumult on the horizon. 
“Curious bedfellows, to be sure, but they will hunt the mages, yes?  As they
did on Syon?”

Gikka looked down from her perch and shook her head. 
Allies, she signaled.  They move together to a purpose.  Neither attacks the
other.

The knights looked out over the valley that sparkled and
exploded with the energy of the near mages’ attacks on what could only be
Dith’s position.  One mage, a handful of knights…against an army of demons
allied to mages––the rest of the army, refreshed, with all their power unspent.

Suddenly Renda laughed, the sparkle of it dancing over the
stones around them.  “If we lords of Syon know anything, we know how to fight
demons.  The real problem is still going to be the mages.”

Daerwin added, “Archers, take position and wait for my
signal. You will focus fire on the near mages, but not until I say.  Their
attention seems fixed away from us at the moment.  Pray do not upset that, and
let us hope Dith can hold them off until we can get ourselves organized to
ride.”

Trocu raised his fist.  “It will be a near thing, mark you,
but the day will be ours.” 

She threw aside her bow and drew her blade.  “Swordsmen!  To
your horses.  Rejoice, for we once again have demons to kill!”

The knights cheered.

We must win, the duke told himself.  For the sake of Syon
and all the world, if this is what Byrandia has become, we must hold the line
against it.  He glanced up at the late afternoon blush in the sky.  “The sun
will set soon.  That would be your cue to move, and move quickly.”

Jath looked away in the distance.  “It will fall to him to
save us, to show his true self…”

Damerien nodded.  “Though I fear Dith’s power may be spent. 
I hope he realizes he will be safer among us than out there alone.”

Jath glanced at him, a flash of amusement passing over his
face.  Then he followed the knights to help them armor the horses.

“Chul,” Gikka said, “I’ve a dangerous mission for you, lad,
but one of merit and trust. Are you game?”

He nodded eagerly.  “I have been itching to enter this
battle all along.  What is your will?”

“Fetch Dith safely to us.”  She tossed him her cloak. 
“He’ll not be safe flanking this army by himself.  Best we face them together,
is my thought.”

The boy stared at her blankly for a moment.  To say it so
simply made it seem simple––fetch Dith safely to us––and yet the task was
daunting.  It meant crossing unmarked to the far side of the enemy, approaching
an embattled mage surrounded by fearsome protections without getting killed,
and bringing him back.  It sounded almost impossible.  Almost.

He grinned at her.  “In a trice.”  A quick look across the
field, and he’d planned his course.  Then he was away.

Dith felt the familiar rumble through the ground long before
he saw the dark shadows crossing over the eastern hills, familiar but
unexpected.  Ahead of them, more mages shimmered from one beacon to another, porting
by hops to stay just ahead of the creatures.  This was no illusion, as he’d
hoped it might be, a deep terror plucked from the minds of the knights or
perhaps from his own by a clever dreamweaver.  No, the creatures were real, and
they were what they appeared to be: demons.  If he was very lucky, they were
hunting the other mages.

“Would that it were so, but alas.  The mages do not run
from them but merely go from beacon to beacon, leading them as they run.  They
were brought as reinforcements, no doubt to fight against the Wittister mages.”

For a brief moment, the battle slowed to a stop as the
reinforcements drew nearer and the army reorganized itself.  During the lull,
he edged his way westward, closer to the Lacework.  He watched a handful of
riders emerge from the stone battlements of the Lacework, and he bent the light
around them as they rode.  So few to fight so many….

Bending the light was almost no effort, not with that much
glare.  The sun was dropping low behind the Lacework, no doubt blinding the
enemy already, at least between the spotty shadows cast by the coral spires.  A
thought spread the sunlight wide and filled those shadows, helping to hide not
only the riders but the archers still in the Lacework besides. 

“You should have gone.”

But he had not.  “Should have” meant nothing now.

“All the same, you will most likely die here.  Even you do
not have enough power left to hold off an entire army like this.  Mages are one
thing.  This many demons, however…”

You said the demons were most likely here to fight the
Wittister mages.  How do you know that?

“I do not
know
for certain, but…”

But that was your initial thought.  Why?