Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) by Jordan MacLean Page B

of
Brannagh, Hero of the Five Hundred Years War, had bowed to the despicable
Hadrian.  She was unable to see the evil spilling from his features, and so she
had left the assassin alone with the duke.  The cardinal had positively crowed
once she was safely without, for he’d believed her to be the only being in all
Syon strong enough to protect Damerien from him.  Then something amazing had
happened.  While the Keepers frantically pooled their diminished strength to
protect the duke, little Pegrine had appeared between Trocu and the cardinal,
her wooden sword leveled at the Hadrian’s shocked face, with all the power of
the goddess B’radik coursing through her…
    The duke’s breath fogged in the predawn cold, and he
shivered. 
    “My Lord, how fare you?” asked Nestor quietly.  The ride had
not been easy for the ancient Damerien retainer, and the duke knew the old man would
feel every bounce and jolt of it by morning.  But Nestor looked far more
concerned with Damerien, and for good reason.  But hours before they’d thought
Trocu to be on his deathbed.
    Damerien chuckled weakly, rubbing at his aching lower back. 
“Well as can be expected,” he answered, mimicking the old retainer’s habitual
answer.  “Too much time abed, Nestor, and my back has no strength to it. 
There’s no helping that just now.”  He looked around him at the familiar hills
and forests, the ancient farmhouses.  “But at least I don’t have the gout this
time.”
    “Aye, my Lord,” laughed Nestor quietly.  “And more’s the
mercy, for all of us.  Your grandfather had quite an excruciating ride into
these very fields twenty years ago.”  The retainer grinned at him. 
    He smiled.  Nestor and the other keepers had spent hours
before that ride bolstering Vilmar’s strength so he would fall spectacularly in
battle instead of slipping away in his bed and still have power enough left to
achieve the Succession.
    “Aye,” agreed the stable boy Jath with a grin.  “But it was
well worth having to sleep the tenday through just to see the armies rattle the
walls of Durlindale and retake it in the name of Vilmar Damerien.  ‘Vilmar! 
Vilmar!’”
    Damerien smiled.  He’d lain on the makeshift travois inside
his pavilion at the edge of that battlefield, cold and still, peeling away his
hold on the ancient flesh he’d filled for decades, while outside, his knights
and farmers continued his assault against Durlindale’s walls. He’d heard their
voices grow quiet, and…there!  The thunderous crash of the siege machines
followed by the crumbling of Durlindale’s wall and a throaty cheer rising from
the men.  Before that miserable, gouty perforated form had breathed its last,
Durlindale had been freed of Kadak’s grasp in his name.  The demon had been
forced into retreat, even if only for the season, but a season had been enough
to build the armies’ strength and let them regroup under B’rada after the Succession…
    Vilmar’s had been a worthy death, indeed. 
    “We should stop soon,” said Nestor, “for the horses’ sake if
not for our own.”
    Trocu nodded, looking back toward Brannagh and beyond it,
toward the battle the shadows and disturbing reflections of which he could feel
across the distance, yet he dared not intervene.  Prophecy or no, if the
knights of Brannagh should fail––if Daerwin and Renda should fall in this
battle––he, Trocu Damerien, would again be Syon’s only hope of defense against
what was coming, and if that happened, he would need to have all his strength
and all his wits about him.  He could not afford to turn Xorden’s attention his
way again, not now.
    “Sunrise,” murmured Jath, in his dull, distant way, and his
horse danced uneasily beneath him.  “The fires should die down soon.  Having
lost all, they will come this way…”
    “Aye,” answered Damerien, “and by then, we hope to be
ready.”  He lowered the hood of his cloak and shook free his dark gold