Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (44 page)

Colaris hissed sharply.  Suddenly a barrage of electricity
crackled through the air around them, held off by Dith’s protections.  They’d
seen him.  He swore angrily and revisited the attack over the nearest body of
mages many fold, disintegrating the bodies of a few outright and leaving many
more incapacitated and most likely dead.  Then he galloped further north,
moving behind physical cover.  If they hadn’t marked his path northward, they
soon would.  But he hoped to be at the Lacework by the time they did.

Suddenly he drew Glasada up short.  Behind a hillock stood
what could only be a Dhanani, a young warrior.  He seemed to have appeared out
of the very coral itself as he dropped back the hood of the Bremondine cloak he
wore.  Gikka’s cloak.

“Dhanani?  Here? And that cloak!”

None of this made sense.

The boy simply looked up at him for a moment and looked at
his strange eyeless horse.  A mixture of fear and admiration filled the boy’s
eyes.  Then he frowned suddenly.

“Colaris!” he cried, seeing the harrier on the back of
Dith’s saddle, and the bird bobbed his head in recognition.  “The sheriff will
be so glad to see you.”  He looked up at Dith.  “What happened to him?”

The mage narrowed his eyes.  “Who are you?”

He extended his arm to the horsed mage in the warrior’s
greeting.  “Chul Ka-Dree.  Gikka sent me to––”

Another attack came, and the mage’s protections extended
instinctively as the boy tumbled to the shaking, liquefying ground.  The mages’
strength had multiplied already with the proximity of their reinforcements, a
strength that likewise fed his own, but Dith knew that, having expended his
power as he had, even his protections could not hold against this assault for
long. 

He could port, but those within the Lacework were changing
position too much to make a port safe, especially with the boy.  They were
going to have to ride.  “Chul, you say?  I am Dith.”  He gripped the boy’s
forearm in the warrior’s greeting.  “A pleasure, but we must hurry.”  Not
releasing the grip, he hefted the boy up onto the horse’s back.

Glasada huffed under the extra weight.  In spite of his
tolerance for Dith, the power of so many mages around him was threatening his
calm, but racing headlong down the hillside toward the entrance to the Lacework
labyrinth would let him run off the fear, or so Dith hoped.  Behind him,
amongst the petty small attacks coming from the nearest few of the Byrandians,
Dith could feel the power of several hundred building along the strands, a
steady barrage burning toward him, far too much power for what remained of his
protections to bear, especially if he would keep Renda’s swordsmen from being
seen.  He urged Glasada faster, wondering if the boy riding with him knew quite
how desperate their position was.

Horse.  Two riders.  Gold seamless robes….  Gikka marveled
only for a moment at the sight of Dith and Chul riding the ugly horse at
breakneck speed toward the Lacework.  She signaled quickly to the sheriff, who
directed all the archers to focus fire to try to protect their approach.

The light was failing, and soon, the advantage they enjoyed
of having the light bent around them would be nullified by the darkness.

Renda had felt the unmistakable crackle of magic descend
over her as she rode, just as it had during the war with Kadak, and she’d
watched the rest of her knights and their mounts vanish into the heightened
white gold light of the sunset beside her.  At first, for only a moment, she’d
feared they were under attack, but no, the energy that fell over them had had a
feel about it that was unique and very familiar if substantially more powerful
than she remembered.

She’d breathed silent thanks to Dith as she rode, holding
the course she had outlined to her knights before they left the shelter of the Lacework,
riding toward the northern side of the gap between the attacking mages and
their reinforcements who were still more than a mile out.  She trusted that her
knights were there still beside her and would not run afoul of each other. 
This was not their first time riding or fighting under concealment.

Her strategy was a dangerous gamble.  She was riding into a
position where they would not only be flanked but surrounded if the battle
continued for long.  But if the gods favored them, they could disrupt the two
forces and keep them from joining, at least in any but the most chaotic way,
which might be enough, not for victory but for a chance at escape, which was
all they could really hope for now.  She hoped those in the Lacework were
watching for their moment.  The panic and the disruption would not last long.

The remaining Byrandian mages had spread themselves thin to
mind the width of the Lacework, but their attention was directed almost
exclusively toward the south side where some other threat held their attention. 
She assumed it to be Dith or perhaps the archers.  Either way, whatever it was
vexed them soundly and kept them occupied, for which she was again grateful. 

When she came near their thinned line, she slowed and eased
herself and the other knights quietly through one of the wider gaps.  Beyond
them, still more than a mile away, she could see their reinforcements
approaching in a dark angry cloud of wispy blackness, and she imagined she
could feel the mages’ power building around her.  They would not have much
time.

She reined Alandro in and gave a short low whistle once they
were in the gap between the armies and well out of earshot.  In the odd quiet
between the armies––odd after the endless barrage of magic that had echoed
through the Lacework––she could hear where the other horses stopped around her.

“What, only a few hundred apiece?”  Kerrick murmured, and
Renda could hear the grin in his voice even if she could not see him. “We shall
run out of demons to kill well before daybreak!”

“My Lord Viscount, it were better we should start gently,”
Amara chuckled quietly.  “We are out of practice, after all.”

“Fewest kills buys the first round,” quipped Vonn, drawing
his sword.  “Assuming they have ale in Byrandia.  They do have ale, yes?”

Renda smiled to herself.  She had no illusions that her
knights were incapable of fear or of reckoning their odds of survival against
such an enemy.  Had they been so, she could never have trusted their judgment
in battle.  But this bravado, this reinforcement of each other’s courage, was
another layer of armor for a time when loyalty and duty to Syon and the Duke
might not be enough.

“We armored the horses for this?”  Qorlin’s voice sounded
like it was in mid-yawn.  “The rest of you can go back, if you like.  I can
dispatch these, myself.”

Renda said nothing.  Her own attention remained focused on
the approaching enemy, and as the reinforcements came near enough to make out
plainly in the fading sunset, her last hope, that perhaps Gikka had been wrong,
disappeared.  These were indeed the same sorts of creatures who had plagued
Syon for half a millennium, the ones the Syonese had dubbed “demons,” bathed in
wispy tendrils of evil to her sight.  She was not going to let them into Syon
again.

The rumble of their approach deepened, and the knights fell
silent, turning their thoughts to prayers, not a few of which were directed
toward Verilion as well as toward B’radik and some others.  The winds did not
favor them, so they could already see some of the nearer demons slowing, sniffing
the air and peering out through the failing light looking for them.

Kerrick marked it.  “They know we’re here.  We have lost our
advantage.”

“Not so, Lord Kerrick,” growled Amara softly.  “See how they
cast about for our scent like hounds?  Our scent is only a trace, peeking out
now and again from behind the stink of rotting fish and kelp.  It teases at
their apprehensions and should work to our favor.  No, we’ve lost nothing. 
We’ve simply begun our attack early.”

“The academy teaches that fortune favors the steady mind and
the prepared soul.”  Renda smiled, and her knights heard around her the
unmistakable sound of metal on metal, muted but unmistakable: double stranded
battle chain.  She secured one end to her pommel. 

Alandro snorted in anticipation. 

“Qorlin,” she called, and she reached her hand out to touch
his leg.  He placed his hand over hers and she handed him the other end of the
battle chain.  His mount, Zati, was the largest of the other knights’ horses
and best able to handle the heavy chain with Alandro.

“Aye, so she doth, my Lady,” grinned Qorlin, securing the
chain to his pommel, “though I’m none too proud to take any other advantages as
present themselves besides.”

She tugged at the chain, testing it.  “Remember, we must
disrupt and disorganize the demons, drive them to frenzy if we can.  Ignore the
mages as long as you can.  If we do our part, they should be trampled in the
panic at once.  Do not let the demons slip the flank or we are done.  Likewise,
do not let them get a sense of our numbers,” she breathed, “or we are done.” 
She nudged Alandro up, and Qorlin matched pace with her.  “May the gods ride
with us,” she murmured.

“May they ride with us indeed,” Kerrick replied.

“That one!”  The sheriff cried.

Grayson turned his bow, looking out across the mages,
searching.  While the other mages were throwing their magic at Dith, this one
stood terribly still, tense, almost vibrating, building his power for a massive
attack.  “I see him.”  The knight breathed out slowly and loosed the arrow into
the mage’s throat.

The Byrandian exploded in a pillar of white flame so
powerful that the knights ducked behind the coral for the brightness of it. 
When Daerwin looked again, the flames had completely incinerated Grayson’s
target and three others close by.  Several more were injured so that now only a
handful remained, their power significantly diminished.  Better still, those
who were still to the north had moved south to bolster the others’ power,
leaving more room for Renda and her knights to work.  She and her knights were
no longer truly flanked.  He grinned. The battle was starting to look
manageable.

The knights perched in the Lacework cheered as the horse
scrambled over the last rise and through the first pillars marking the outer
edge of the Lacework.  Dith and the boy were safe.  Then without needing
orders, the archers turned their attention on the remaining mages.  He had
charged them with killing all those remaining before their reinforcements
arrived.

“My Lord Sheriff,” Laniel said quietly.  “We are prepared to
move on your order.”

Daerwin clapped a hand on the priest’s shoulder.  “Knights,
to your mounts.  Time is short.”

“Grayson, was that their leader you killed?”  asked Liddy,
nocking another arrow.

The other knight shook his head.  “No.  He was powerful,
truly, but he seemed not to mind the actions of the others, only his own.”

“Good,” she grinned, looking out over the field.  “It means
the leader is still out there for me to kill.”  She looked back at the horses. 
She had time for one more shot.

Daerwin turned to her.  “Look for the one who does the least
and is best defended, most likely at the center and rearward.” 

Grayson fired again, but they could not see if he hit or
not.  The light was nearly gone, and he was relying on the light from the fire
the mages threw at the Lacework to place his shots. 

“Indeed,” murmured the duke.  “Back with the luggage.”

Daerwin looked up at the duke.  “I meant only…”

But Trocu was gone.

In the distance, as if someone had dropped a pebble into a
still lake, a ripple of chaos erupted at the northwestern corner of the
approaching army and spread through its ranks.

Renda.

The sheriff smiled proudly, watching the devastation.  In a
thin ribbon that serpentined haphazardly through that corner of the demons’
formation, the creatures were falling, and radiating outward from that ribbon,
other demons ran in panic or attacked each other.  Fear was still their best
weapon.  He could not see them, of course, but to eyes that had watched
countless battles against demons, the results showed her strategy: two knights
on the chain to drag through the demon hordes, just as they had on Syon, and
the rest to terrorize and kill the panicked stragglers.  No better way to set
an entire mob of demons into panic and leave them ripe for the killing.

He was about to give the order to ride.  Except…

He looked worriedly out at the edge of the ripples of chaos
in the demon army’s ranks.  The maelstrom’s expansion had stopped abruptly as
if it hit a wall and was being forced back.  Order was returning at the outer
edges and creeping inward toward the knights.  While a section of the advancing
army turned to face this threat, the rest ignored it and continued on toward
the last few mages.  He felt the hair on his neck prickle, and he looked back
at the tiny corner of chaos Renda had wrought.  What had seemed the beginning
of their victory now looked to be a tiny island of futility, and worse, a trap closing
around his knights––around his daughter.  His throat tightened. 

“Mages,” said Nestor.  “It’s what I feared when first Gikka
said they were in league with the demons.  The one weakness in them was their
fear.  But if the mages can calm them…”  He shook his head.

“They will be unstoppable.”

“If our knights fall, Syon will fall.”  Trocu scowled out
over the battlefield. 

Daerwin bit back the bitterness that rose in his throat.  So
much for your damned prophecy, Father.  The poetics and the cozy fireside
interpretations of pieces here and there.  Your prophecy and everything else
dies here.  With her.  With my sole remaining child. 

The duke blew out a sharp breath.  “I should be out there––”

“That, you should not!” shouted Daerwin, his rage exploding
at last.  “You’ve done enough already.”