The Guardian

by Angus Wells

  A WARRIOR’S WORD

  I drained my wine, staring at her. “What do you ask of me?” “That you guard Ellyn. That you take her away and see her safe until her day comes. That you be her champion and her guardian, for Chaldor’s sake. Hide her in the Highlands—wherever—and see her safe until she gains her power. She’ll know what to do then.”

  “Why me? The gods know, Ellyn has little enough liking for me.”

  “Or you for her, eh?” Ryadne essayed a wan smile. “But you were Andur’s choice, and mine, for we trust none so much as you. Shall you accept, Gailard?”

  I felt fate settle on me then, heavier than any armor, heavier than any sword’s blow. I felt wary and reluctant, but I could not say her nay: I had given Andur my word. I said, “As you command, my lady.”

  Bantam Books by Angus Wells

  BOOK OF THE KINGDOMS #1: WRATH OF ASHAR

  BOOK OF THE KINGDOMS #2: THE USURPER

  BOOK OF THE KINGDOMS #3: THE WAY BENEATH

  THE GODWARS #1: FORBIDDEN MAGIC

  THE GODWARS #2: DARK MAGIC

  THE GODWARS #3: WILD MAGIC

  LORDS OF THE SKY

  EXILES SAGA #1: EXILE’S CHILDREN

  EXILES SAGA #2: EXILE’S CHALLENGE

  For Maggie Mann,

  who knows all the reasons why

  PROLOGUE

  My name is Gailard, and I am a soldier. No matter what folk name me now, I consider myself nothing more.

  I was born into the Devyn, which is one of the five clans dwelling in the Highlands that border the Bright Kingdom of Chaldor and, be the times and politics right, consider themselves subjects of Chaldor—or not, largely as the mood takes them. Clan folk are of independent mind, and swear their allegiance first to their chieftain, and only after to the king. Or now to the queen … But that takes my tale ahead of itself, so:

  The Highlands encircle Chaldor’s inland boundaries like a stern girdle around the well-fed belly of some fat merchant. Chaldor is rich in farmland, the Highlands bleak and barren—all lonely moors and hills that become mountains as they reach the vastness of the Styge or the bleak coasts of the great southern sea. The living there is hard-won and breeds a hard people, none more so than my father, who was chieftain of the Devyn. And I, had my father had his wish, his successor, save I’d not obey him.

  He’d have wed me to Rytha, who was daughter of the Agador’s chieftain, and thus blood-bonded our clans that we, together, be greater than any other. But I did not love Rytha, nor much like her, and so I took my sword and my shield and ran away, which prompted my father to pronounce me outlawed and forbidden to return ever again to the land of the Devyn. Nor did it much endear me to the Agador, and most surely not to Rytha. But, for all it pained me to leave behind the high hills of my youth, I did not then much care. I was young and headstrong, and I knew that great adventures lay ahead. So I went west to Chaldor and found employment in the army of Andur, who was then king, even though he was no older than I.

  There were no few Highlanders in Chaldor’s army—warriors of the Agador and the Quan and the Arran, of the Dur and my own Devyn—and did the lowlanders name us mercenaries, and sometimes look down on us as savages, still we swore our allegiance to the Bright Kingdom and gave our blood to Andur’s cause. And got back the king’s respect, and more besides: I learned to read and write in Chaldor; and how to fight in ordered ranks, where thousands massed on bloody battlefields (though it was always we Highlanders who led the charge); and how to conduct myself in the chambers of the civilized folk of Chorym, which was the king’s city; and how to use a knife and fork, and suchlike niceties.

  I rose through the ranks of Andur’s army until I found myself commander of five hundred and known to the king. Indeed, I pride myself that we became friends, and I sat sometimes at Andur’s right hand, and joined him on the practice ground with wooden swords, and drank with him in taverns. I spoke with his wife, Ryadne, who was, like me, from the Highlands, albeit of the Dur, for whom we Devyn bore little love. Indeed, we’d a saying: “Proud as a Dur,” for they boast themselves magicians (though of nowhere near so much power as the Vachyn) and claim small sorceries, which we Devyn eschew. But I liked Ryadne. She was very lovely and, I thought, honest, and surely Andur loved her more than anyone save, perhaps, his daughter, Ellyn.

  Now Ellyn—who is so large a part of this tale—was different as trout to salmon. She was but a child then, promising her mother’s beauty but none of her mother’s wisdom or calm. Perhaps I am unfair—she was, after all, only a girl—but she seemed to me arrogant and willful, selfish in her desires and petulant of temper. I did not like her, but she was the apple of her father’s eye, and so I tolerated her displays of childish anger and avoided her as I could.

  He was a great king, Andur, and wise beyond his years, and had he lived, I think this world of ours should have known peace sooner. But peace is often hard-wrought, and won only with shed blood, and Andur was not granted the time to see all his dreams made real. Even so, it was he began the construction of the Great Roads that now link the Highlands to the low, and spread compass-pointed across the kingdom. He forged alliances with the clans and brought peace to the kingdom, so that Chaldor shone like some bright jewel, and all enjoyed its bounty. It was a different world then, and unlike Andur I could not see it in its entirety. I lacked his vision, but I loved him fiercer than any brother born of blood—surely far better than my own brother, whose name was Eryk.

  It was Andur first told me of the Vachyn sorcerers, of the threat he perceived in their machinations, and I hated them then for his loathing of their wiles. Now I hate them for what they are, and what they’d do, and they are proscribed in Chaldor.

  I met them first in Danant, embodied in the form of Nestor, who was, for want of a better title, counselor to Danant’s ruler, Talan Kedassian, though I and others who thought as I did, believed that Talan had sold his soul to the Vachyn.

  Danant stood across the Durrakym from Chaldor, and for long years had vied for the lucrative river trade. Andur was content to take his share and no more; and did the Great Roads afford the kingdom better trade, then even so they were built to benefit all the populace, not to swell the king’s coffers. Talan, on the other hand, was greedy and looked to own it all, to which end he emptied his coffers that he might employ a Vachyn sorcerer, and thus bought Nestor’s loyalty—if the Vachyn have loyalty to any save their own dark ends—and began the war.

  Pirate boats came first, swift river raiders that preyed on Chaldor’s craft, and falsely vaunted Chaldor’s flag as they assaulted the vessels of Naban and Serian so that both those kingdoms sent embassies of protest to Chorym, which was Andur’s capital. Andur explained as best he might, but trade was lost to Danant, where Talan avowed his innocence and Nestor wove his dark magicks that the ambassadors went away convinced of Chaldor’s guilt, and the Chaldor ports stood empty of commerce, so that Andur must sustain them from inland. Messages of protest were sent to Danant, and ambassadors, and the messages were ignored and the ambassadors insulted and sent home answerless, so that Chaldor stood alone, and open to Nestor’s next fell move.

  Direct attacks began, the river raiders assaulting the Chaldor shore, burning villages and towns, slaughtering folk and animals, venturing inland to destroy crops and vineyards. It was, Andur told me, as bad as the ancient days when the Sea Kings came upriver to pillage and rape. It was more than Andur could bear, and he determined to teach Talan the error of his ways. He did not seek war, but all the avenues of peace were explored and found empty of hope, and so Andur must make a terrible decision.

  We formed a great army then, and called up all our rivercraft and sailed across the Durrakym to invade Danant.

  Which was, had we only known it, exactly what Nestor had planned.
We fell neatly and all willing into his trap, and there begins my story.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Our shield wall broke under the magefire of the Vachyn sorcerer. It was a clear, bright day, the sky a cloudless blue—a day better suited to lounging beneath the shade of the olive trees, conversation oiled with wine, than to bloody battle—and I remember that swallows darted overhead and that my hauberk stank of sweat. Beads of perspiration ran down my face into my eyes, but still I saw the bolts strike from out of that pristine sky: silent lightning that set shields to glowing as if touched by furnace heat, spearheads flaring like lofted torches. I remember the awful dread that filled us, like those sour dreams that sometimes come in the slow, dark hours of the night, all nebulous and filled with guilts and unnamed terrors. Men shouted in alarm, or wept, and shed their weapons in panic, crying out that they held snakes and lizards and suchlike, or screamed that they were burned and flung away their weapons to slap at invisible flames. I fought to hold my own ebbing confidence and shouted that my men hold their place, for all I heard my father’s voice condemning me, and saw his accusing face in the magefire that danced about my sword and shield. Tears joined the sweat on my face then, and I wanted nothing more than to turn and run. But I ground my teeth and told myself this was no more than hedge-wizardry, all illusion, though that did little to help.

  Then Talan sent in his chariots and his cavalry to break our line.

  That was, I believe, the precise moment in time that we lost the war. We were flung back in disarray, the battle no longer the shifting of disciplined forces but a thing of individual combats, of simple survival.

  The heavy chariots struck through our line, javelins and arrows flying. The cavalry slashed at us with their curved horse-swords, and then the hoplites came with spears and axes and blades. All was confusion then, and I could not rally my men; only shout curses that they did not stand and fight, but ran in terror. I saw the beginning of Chaldor’s demise then, there on the plain before the Darach Pass.

  I limped away from that bloody field leaning on a spear. I bore other wounds, but the worst was where a Danant halberdier had swung his blade against my knee and laid me low. I’d have died had a man whose name I did not know not flung himself screaming against the point and granted me the chance to put my sword into the halberdier’s belly. That gave me some small satisfaction, but when I clambered to my feet and saw the carnage all around, I knew the day was lost, and our best—our only—hope was retreat. I picked up the fallen halberd and used it for a staff as I sought Andur’s gonfalon.

  That brave pennant stood where the fighting was thickest, and I saw my chosen king at the brunt. What few were left of the Royal Guard fought with him, but they were hard-pressed, and Talan concentrated his forces there. I began to limp toward him even as the horns belled retreat.

  It was hard going, that, back across the plain with Danant’s chariots harrying our flanks and the bowmen sending shafts like rain from out of a sky that now faded into dusk. I barely noticed that the magefire had ceased, but I saw that the swallows were replaced with bats, and that flights of carrion birds forgot their homeward journey and settled instead upon the surrounding trees, anticipatory.

  The sun went down behind the Darach Pass, shining briefly off the polished armor massed there, and the moon rose dispassionate. Stars twinkled, distinct as the cries of the wounded and the dying. I heard dogs howl, not so loud as the men, and for a little while the battle ceased.

  Horns sounded on both sides, Talan’s army regrouping, massing for the attack that would surely come at dawn and sweep us away—save we march clear and find the Durrakym; our own summoning Chaldor’s bloodily depleted force to Andur.

  I found what few were left of my men and went to my king. Fires were lit, and by their light I guessed our army was lessened by perhaps half its number. It was a sorry defeat, and I ordered the remnant of my five hundred to eat and rest as I sought Andur.

  He sat beside a guttering fire that threw stark shadows across his dented armor. A bandage sat stained about his head, and he drew a whetstone down the blade of his great sword. He looked up as I approached.

  “Greetings, Gailard. You’re hurt?” There was concern in his voice and in his eyes, which was characteristic of that brave man.

  I shrugged and said, “A trifle.”

  He beckoned me closer, indicating that I sit, and I slid down my borrowed spear as he waved for an attendant to bring us food and drink.

  “How many of your Highlanders survive?”

  “Perhaps a hundred hale,” I said. “As many again hurt.”

  “Ah, yes.” Andur sighed. “You took the brunt, you Highlanders.”

  I said, “Were it not for the Vachyn sorcerer, we’d have fared better. But …”

  “I know.” Andur took the flask the attendant brought and filled our cups himself. “Should I have hired a Vachyn?”

  “No!” I cried. “There’s no honor in such stratagems.”

  “But victories are there,” Andur said, his tone dour. “The gods know, Talan’s won this day—and likely tomorrow.”

  “We can rally,” I argued, forgetting all my convictions that the war was lost. “A night’s rest … We can fight again tomorrow.”

  Andur drank. At his feet a platter of bread and cold meat went unnoticed as my own. “Tomorrow,” he said, “those magicks shall come against us again, and all Talan’s army with them. They outnumbered us from the start, but now they overwhelm us by—what?—perhaps five times our number. We cannot fight them, my friend—we can only run from them.”

  The megrims of the Vachyn were gone now and I felt my blood course hot. It was not the way of us Highlanders to run, but to charge into battle no matter the odds. I said as much.

  And Andur gave me back, “You can barely walk, Gailard. How can you attack?”

  “The gods shall aid me,” I said. “And a healer can tend me tonight.”

  “We’ve not so many healers left alive,” Andur said, “and I think the gods have forsaken us this day. I’d not see more slaughter than I must. So—no, what we shall do is this.”

  He set out his plan. I argued, but he motioned me to silence. He was my king and so I listened, for all I liked it not at all.

  “If not tonight,” he said, “then come the sun’s rising the magicks and the fighting shall again commence. We’ve too many hurt, and too long a journey to the river. Should Talan and his god-cursed Vachyn slay us all on this plain, then Chaldor’s scant defense must surely fall. Talan shall come unopposed across the Durrakym and march on Chorym …”

  The drink he’d poured me was strong and likely fueled my anger at our defeat. Surely it fueled my words: “Chorym’s strong enough to withstand siege. Let Talan come against those walls and find his comeuppance there.”

  “Oh, Gailard,” Andur said, “had I only your plain courage I’d have fewer problems to consider.”

  I felt for a moment insulted, but on his face I saw grave concerns, and so I held my tongue and waited for him to speak again. And when he did I could only listen, confused and somewhat frightened by his words.

  “Does Talan cross the river—which he likely shall—then he’ll march direct to Chorym. He’ll siege the city with more than catapults and towers and miners; he’ll have the Vachyn sorcerer send magicks against the walls. And does Chorym fall, then Chaldor’s lost her heart. And what, meanwhile, of the countryside? Think you Talan shall leave the little towns and villages alone? No! He’ll impose his rule over all—and how shall Ryadne accept that?”

  I shook my head. I had learned somewhat of politics during my sojourn in Chaldor, but I still saw war as an affair of swords and shields, of honor, of courage and individual bravery. I suppose I was old-fashioned; I suppose I should have learned better from that day’s events.

  “She could not,” Andur said, “and so should have no choice but to submit.”

  I frowned. I could not imagine Ryadne submitting to Talan.

  Andur laughed, all mournful. �
�I’ll tell you what Talan will do,” he said. “He’ll cross the Durrakym and march on Chorym. He’ll siege the city and lay waste the land. He’ll offer to take Ryadne in marriage—end the war and unite Chaldor and Danant as one kingdom.”

  “She’d not accept,” I said. “Never! And what of you?”

  He said, “There must be a rear guard to cover this retreat, and I shall lead it. So …”

  I interrupted him, king or not. “No! Give me the rear guard.”

  He set a hand on my knee and squeezed. It was a gentle touch, but still I jerked and ground my teeth at the pain. “I’d not insult you, Gailard, but you cannot stand unaided, so how can you lead a rear guard? No, I shall do that, and you shall—are you willing—hold a greater duty.”

  I could not imagine a greater duty. I looked past our fires to where those of the Danant army glowed like scattered embers across the mouth of the Darach Pass. I remember that the night was hot and still, the sky all filled with careless stars and that indifferent moon, heavy with the scent of olives and smoke. I thought that I had believed I’d not see another day, and then believed I must likely die the next. That I accepted: I was a soldier, and it was my chosen duty to die on my king’s command.

  I said, “What greater duty?”

  “I’d see the hurt go safe across the river,” Andur answered me, “and find what safety they can in Chorym—or wherever else they choose to go. I’d see you take them across, and then leave them …”

  “Leave them?” I could scarce comprehend that I was assigned to ferrying wounded men over the Durrakym, let alone leave them there. I was suddenly aware that the night was filled up with more creakings and squealings than wounded men make. I looked about and saw wagons moving, and heard the snickering of horses and mules, and the cries of the wagoneers. I looked at Andur and realized that he had this all planned.

  “Listen, eh?” He filled our cups again; I wondered if I grew drunk. “I’ll hold Talan’s army as long as I can—to give you time to get the hurt away. There are wagons …”