Destiny’s Conflict: Book Two of Sword of the Canon Page 16

Dace’s heart-beat slammed under his ribs. “You would have to use force.”

  Lysaer bridled. Paced to a nearby stuffed chair, dangerous as a spread cobra, he matched his valet’s spaniel loyalty with fury. “I expect a betrayal! Have invited the prospect. Why set yourself up as a pawn in the path of near-certain destruction?”

  “Because,” Dace demurred, moved by deferent steps to resume his lapsed duties. Instinct prompted him to risk everything. “After the spying of East Bransing’s priests, I’m convinced the servant behind you cannot be a stranger.”

  Under his applied towel, Lysaer’s alarmed start verified every foreboding. Dace blotted his master’s chin fast enough to stifle an argument. S’Ilessid justice demanded the uncompromised move in redress: against reason, against odds, his liege planned to challenge the might that enforced the True Sect Canon.

  Against desperate stakes, Dace seized the initiative. “All I ask is sufficient notice and coin for the quiet purchase of two decent horses.” Which meek request floundered into a strained silence.

  When Lysaer retired and the lamp had been snuffed, Dace sought his cot in the darkness, terrified he had overstepped.

  Then only, his liege relented. “You’ll have five days. A week at the most, before my rogue dedicates defy the High-Temple and march against Erdane. I’ll give you the silver for adequate mounts in the morning.”

  Late Summer 5923

  Vicissitudes

  Having thwarted Rathain’s clan trackers by boarding the Daenfal ferry before dusk, the Mad Prophet slips into a tavern, where, cornered, he delivers his ultimatum to Tarens, “No! I won’t safeguard your foray to Ettin. Not before I’ve contacted his Grace’s handfasted enchantress, Elaira. Tell Cosach and his henchmen the same, or burn in Sithaer and suffer the consequence …”

  At Telmandir, under Fellowship guidance, High Queen Ceftwinn of Havish prepares to access the crown jewels’ heritage for the first time: “Will I meet the same end as my brother?” she asks, aggrieved for the irony, that Gestry had seemed transported by the attunement; and Asandir’s iron integrity cannot in honesty ease her concern …

  On the hour The Hatchet’s primary assault draws blood to scour the clan presence entrenched in the Thaldeins, a messenger pigeon flown across Camris breaks the explosive news: the rogue avatar marches from Miralt with a company of suborned dedicates, intent on upsetting the High Temple’s decree and denouncing the True Sect Canon …

  Late Summer–Early Autumn 5923

  IV. Debacle

  The scout runner who carried word of the catastrophe reached the outpost in the Thaldeins, reeling on exhausted feet. Winded beyond speech, he choked on stirred dust, forced to shoulder a path through the chaos that met his arrival.

  Wailing children, foot-sore women seated upon bulky bundles, and dazed-looking elderly men crammed the inner bailey from wall to wall. The messenger cut through their heaving misery, toned in ochre and shade, with the fallow gold of full sunlight stamped against the black loom of the portal to the inner sanctuary. The noisy sprawl of refugee families choked every available cranny: still living, still safe, the heart-core of the ancient clan lineages, though immediate threat to Tysan’s blood heritage was more urgent than anyone realized.

  The messenger dodged a crying toddler, clinging to a tow-headed brother’s grubby hand. The flashed recall resurged: of another child grotesquely gutted, alongside a sister no older than three. Nauseated, the scout runner pushed past, nostrils clogged still by the stench of the recently slaughtered. His anxious survey swept the moil for one angular form.

  Even through turbid haze and the seethe of uprooted humanity, Saroic s’Gannley stood out. Too thin for his height, his gangling form was crowned by flaxen hair the day’s crisis left no time to braid. A young man to be charged with the outpost’s main garrison, his preferred reticence a lost indulgence, he towered, shouting for someone to unsnarl the activity jammed around the supplies.

  Movement shuddered and heaved, shifting the stacked barrels and clearing the jumble of wagons and hand-carts, while another crisp order detailed the caverns to be cleared for communal shelter. Just acceded as caithdein of the realm, and yet unaware of the burden, he turned his head at the runner’s approach.

  “News?” he demanded, one hand raised to defer a healer’s concern for the risk of disease under crowding.

  The scout slid to his knees at Saroic’s feet. He gulped the thin air. Spoke, though his hoarse voice scarcely pierced the racket stewed inside the fortified ravine.

  “My Lord Steward, ill tidings!” which phrase broached the first word of an appalling disaster. “Your grandfather’s fallen. The war band at his back is lost also, killed outright defending Orlan. Both pickets on the banks of the Valendale crumpled under a surprise attack. They failed to mislead a concerted advance, never had the numbers at hand to hold out for reinforcements. A dedicate war host pours up-country, unchecked. The enemy’s on us as never before, guided by diviners and head-hunter trackers. They have swept the deep vale. Our outlying settlements are destroyed without quarter, the food stores for winter put to the torch.”

  “Survivors?” rasped an elder at Saroic’s back.

  The scout bowed his head. “The women, the children, and babes—all were butchered by arrows or ridden down and razed by the sword as they fled. We’re facing a scour by a True Sect mandate, organized for extermination.”

  Like the splash of a stone in a pool spreading ripples, horrified outbursts settled into aghast silence. Shock reigned, and stark disbelief at the vicious speed of the disaster. A furtive advance by Sunwheel troops into free-wilds territory had called the most vulnerable folk into sanctuary. But no one foresaw a merciless cleanse unleashed on a scale such as this.

  Saroic s’Gannley fought shattered composure. Too stressed to question why their seers’ heightened prescience had failed to forecast the ferocity of the assault, he shouted to stem the imminent threat to clanblood survival.

  “Round up every straggler still on the trail to the outpost. Hurry them in. Then shut the front gates. Archers! Break out lint and oil! Station yourselves with torch shafts on the battlements. You’ll fire the forest outside.”

  Someone shouted a panicky protest. “That’s against charter law!”

  “Yes!” Saroic rebutted, bloodlessly pale. “But the flames can’t spread far against a south wind. The blaze will die out at the timberline.” Did no one see? The ruin of Orlan vale was the only tactical choice to wrest a margin for escape. “While the deep ravine burns, no Sunwheel troops can storm these defences. We have that long to lead our people out. To me, the armed garrison! Conscript every adult who’s fit to bear weapons. Assign them in squads. They’ll clump the refugees into groups and funnel them single file through the tunnel connecting the natural grottoes under the stores vaults.”

  Saroic tasked the field scouts to manage the exodus, then hand-picked the best twenty-five from the war band. “You’re to cave in the passage after the last group. Then, if you can, collapse the archway to the galleries before the enemy breaches our gates. Should they break through beforetime, delay their advance. If luck favours, and you fight your way free, harry the dedicate troops at the rear-guard with traps and diversions.”

  A shadow raked over the distraught messenger. Weathered oak, with someone’s strayed infant crooked in one muscled arm, the war captain of the Thaldein outpost reached Saroic’s side. Kin resemblance was unmistakable, hewn into a middle-aged profile hardened by experience.

  “You will leave through the tunnels and stay with the families,” Saroic commanded the uncle displaced from succession. “I charge you to keep them safe! If I don’t live to rejoin you, then serve the s’Gannley lineage and stand shadow for Tysan’s crown after me.”

  “Not the Sorcerer’s will, or a shrewd use of resource.” Ice calm, the scarred campaigner handed the baby off to the anxious mother arrived at his heels.

  “You will do what is best for the realm!” Saroic snapped, strained.

 
; “Exactly.” Authority spoke. The uncle snapped callused fingers. Five veterans poised for his signal closed in. A moment’s demeaning, adamant scuffle saw Saroic s’Gannley hurled flat on his back in restraint.

  “Truss him!” Tears moistened the stony cheeks of the man who betrayed his young nephew. “You’ll run with the families as Asandir wished. I stay to fight. No, by Ath’s witness! Don’t gainsay sound sense! You know me, Saroic! I’d give rein to fury. Turn back and fight, when wisdom demands swift retreat for survival. Let my band shoulder the final stand, and don’t sacrifice the better use of your canny leadership.”

  Saroic spat a mouthful of grit. “But your wife and children—”

  The winded scout turned his head, sick with sorrow. “Dead,” he gasped, brutal. “They were in the low country, remember? For your cousin Saieda’s coming of age.”

  Saieda, who had loved roasted chestnuts and somehow acquired indigo ribbons for her oldest sister’s wedding. Tysan’s pinioned caithdein raged in bludgeoned grief. “Damn the murdering True Sect, and thrice curse the Fatemaster’s cruelty!” To his insurgent uncle, he shouted, “No! I won’t sanction suicide. Our people need you as never before!”

  Yet the stricken husband and father stayed deaf. “Go on, you daisies! Gather the children. Get these people out! I’ll see the withdrawal through as rear-guard. For those who object, call my bootless conduct down later!”

  Against Saroic’s furious protests, he thundered, “Try me for treason if I outlive the day! No contest, I will take up arms here and now. Yes! And cut down all comers who won’t back your dutiful place as Tysan’s caithdein!”

  Lysaer s’Ilessid marched southward across Camris with the martial glitter of steel at his back. Requisitioned under his direct authority, the white-and-gold panoply of Sunwheel standards paraded before an elite mounted troop of Miralt Temple’s dedicates. They went armed for war beneath blazoned surcoats. The divine ultimatum thrust on their truculent priests had silenced indignant objections. Lysaer claimed his prerogative as their hallowed avatar: either the religion shouldered his bidding to redress The Hatchet’s mandated massacre, or the temple and its lofty sanctuaries would burn, levelled by the Light of his wrathful hand.

  Dace followed in the stirred dust of the baggage-train. Assigned to mind the wagon with Lysaer’s effects and the loan of an upstaged officer’s canvas pavilion, he travelled astride a dappled grey gelding of mild temperament. If he no longer tumbled from the saddle when horses shied underneath him, his plodding mount did not stem his anxiety as the cavalcade crossed the bleak grasslands of Karmak. Drought had baked the soil to flour. The wind bore the scent of crisped sedge and an ominous taint of distant smoke.

  Yet no carmine glare stained the horizon. Insects clicked, while the sunlit dazzle of mica glanced reflections off the bleached rocks. Rushed by the ripple of displaced senses and another ephemeral whiff of torched pine, Dace battled distress: the clanbred traits of his ancestry sensed slaughter, stamped into the flux. While no fallen bled on the earth in this place, and no wildfires burned, Lysaer’s challenge of True Sect authority came too late for the temple’s campaign. Eastward, the swords swung by Canon decree already reaped barbarian lives.

  Nauseated, Dace let the sensible gelding keep pace. He dared not pull up. Too many hooded eyes watched. Not only the ranks of the dedicate faithful, but two vested priests and a True Sect diviner marched with the column from Miralt. Though he remained shielded by Davien’s conjury, an upsurge of Sight might be miscalled as madness or worse, an aspect of unsanctified talent.

  The priests nursed their creeping suspicion that a corrupt influence acted on Lysaer. Night and day they sought for the signs of foul practice at large in his company.

  After dark, crossing the scrub between camp fires, Dace heard the furtive whispers. He watched the uneasy glances exchanged. As he lugged his liege’s warmed wash-water from the cook-shack, he drew scrutiny along with his tarnished master. If the dedicate guard conspired in disloyalty, Dace feared above all the stealthy blade of an assassin by night. His liege would be betrayed by the faith: not if, but when, as the road to Erdane steadily shortened, and the messenger pigeons flew daily from the priests’ wicker cages, winging updated word across Camris.

  Yet mornings came and went without incident. The company re-formed and tramped onwards through its ochre cloud of stirred dust. No underhanded attack disrupted their southbound march. White and glittering gold, the conscripted men snaked in columns across the taupe barrens. Dace was not reassured. When a horn blast from the vanguard brought the baggage-train to an unscheduled halt, he jabbed his heels into the grey and reined out of line to identify the obstruction.

  The willing horse leaped the dry gulch at the verge and cantered through the open broom. Dace disregarded an officer’s inquiry. Accusations shouted in his wake failed to turn him aside. Whipped frantic by need, he flanked the stopped squares of ranked men, climbed the hill-crest, and seized a clear vantage.

  The bristling line of another war host occupied the country ahead, a daunting show of superior numbers to challenge Lysaer’s bid for passage. Foot ranks and horse, their formation meant business. Dace sized up the banners, dismayed.

  The moment was lost to try a deterrent. Before the poised muscle nerved up for the charge, the Light’s proclaimed avatar spurred forward alone. A toy figure on a white horse, caparisons aflash with gold bullion, he left his escort, bare-headed and weaponless. The gesture outstripped human mortality. Godlike, Lysaer claimed his authority bald-faced. He would wrest the True Sect High Priesthood to heel through a blustering arrogance that caught the breath in the throat.

  Dace knew the man behind the facade. Perhaps only he grasped the act’s drastic courage, or foresaw the hideous price if the bluff went awry. Stakes that in fact might see another trained host razed to ruin, with naught left beyond winnowed carbon.

  If The Hatchet understood the ploy was no game, but a duel waged with blunt nerve at lethal risk, no party came forward to parley under a flag of truce. Without even a token attempt to negotiate, an officer’s bugle sent movement through the massed lines.

  “No!” Dace exclaimed.

  But like the cresting foam of a breaker, archers stepped to the fore. There, they poised with strung bows and nocked arrows, readied for the order to loose.

  Dace shivered. Warning jabbed him to clap desperate heels into his horse and careen down-slope at a foolhardy gallop. Distance was the enemy: a windswept expanse of bleached grass spread between the unstoppable, unfolding tableau. Oblivious to the servant’s belaboured approach, the lone horseman in dazzling splendour opposed the pale flash of drawn yew. Naked majesty faced the steel teeth of the war host aimed on a headlong course towards grief and tragedy.

  Lysaer must shoulder the terrible crux. Defied, he could sensibly turn in retreat: but only if he granted the True Sect’s murderous cause his endorsement. Back his stance with force, and he jeopardized three thousand lives. The humane statesman might treat for the greater good: yield in the hope that rabid, blind faith could be cajoled into a compromise. Hope and sanity died if inflamed zeal spurned reason and The Hatchet refused to stand down. Once the archers unleashed their staged volley, the blood-bath would be joined. The temple must answer the insolent threat served on the Canon by its tarnished avatar.

  Apostate defiance had to be crushed, no matter whether the man on the horse wielded the direct might of an elemental power.

  Dace charged his gelding over rough ground in a race that stared down futility. The heritage of s’Ilessid sprang from the royal fibre to treat with the Paravians, never to compromise inborn principle. The Hatchet’s companies should have quailed, set at brash risk of the intractable fires and fell fury that had broken their comrades at Lanshire.

  Martial orders ought not to smother survival before such a threat.

  Yet not a man in the hostile host cracked. The ranks held, enthralled dedicates headed for sanctimonious martyrdom.

  The grey galloped, reckles
s strides thudded against the baked earth, to the rake of green thorn in the tinder-dry brush. Dace lashed the reins and drove the animal’s pace faster. Chaff and winnowed dust raised a plume at his back, while ahead, the lucent view etched a confrontation too distant to curb.

  Dace groaned for the heart-ache. He could not arrest the spin of Fate’s Wheel; could not belabour more speed from his mount. Through sight whipped by wind, then blurred through tears, he watched the glittering, gold-embroidered glove as his liege dropped his grasp on his destrier’s rein. Hurtled towards the breach, too late to matter, the faithful valet saw the fingers close into a forewarning fist.

  Sunlight limned the vista like nicked brass, as though cast in the relief of a monument. Lysaer, on the horse, raised his arm overhead.

  As one, the ranked archers nocked arrows. Their varnished shafts winked like needles as they bent their bows to full draw.

  Dace’s oblique approach, still bearing down, sighted the single odd movement amid the massed war host that did not fit: across the sweltering shimmer of air, a tin-toy, squat figure upright in a war chariot lifted a cocked crossbow and took aim from the shoulder.

  Lysaer s’Ilessid had no cause to fear. Placed at front and centre, always, his gift of light had flash-charred hostile arrows and steel into carbon and dust. Upon this same heath, two hundred and eleven years ago, a barbarian marksman had sought his death. The levin bolt that sowed his claim to divinity had reduced that killer’s shaft in mid-flight. For two centuries since, command of the wild elements had dispatched volleys en masse without casualties.

  Yet history seemed poised to overturn this time. Warning tingled from the Sorcerer’s mark on Dace’s breast, then that caustic sensation joined the uncanny pressure where a hidden, spelled bracelet circled his wrist.

  Another yard closer, almost near enough, Dace unclenched his grip on the grey’s mane. He flinched as the bow-strings released, cringing under the deadly whine of the arrows as he launched his fly-weight in midstride from the saddle. Whether he meant to drop Lysaer out of harm’s way, or if he offered his body as shield, none who beheld ever knew.