Arms-Commander

XI

Fiveday dawned bright, with frost across everything, and a rime of ice on the still waters at the edge of the stream. The thin layer of slushy snow in the shade had a crunchy crust of ice on it that would soften by midmorning. All that was usual for spring on the Roof of the World, and morning duties were quickly completed, so that Saryn and second squad were riding eastward long before the sun cleared the taller peaks.

As they started up the gradual incline in the road that Saryn had scouted the night before, she turned in the saddle toward Murkassa, riding to her right. “You’ve got five bows. How many are good with them?”

“All, ser. I’ve trained everyone, but the five who carry them are as good as anyone in the guards. All of them can put the shafts through plate, sometimes at a full gallop. Zanlya can hit a moving target the size of a pearapple at fifty yards, sometimes close to a hundred.”

Westwind shafts, thought Saryn, with arrowheads forged by Nylan before he left. Those arrowheads were the ones that the guards spent glasses searching for after they’d used them against brigands…or poachers. That was something on which both Ryba and Saryn agreed. The replacement arrowheads forged by Daryn, Huldran, and Ydrall were good…but not so good as those done by Nylan. Everyone knew it, and no one ever said so.

Sometimes, the guards sang the song Ayrlyn had written about Nylan, but never when Ryba was around. Saryn smiled briefly as she recalled the engineer’s embarrassment at the opening lines: Oh, Nylan was a smith, and a mighty mage was he…She also wondered if the former comm officer had composed the song just to assure Nylan’s legacy.

“How long will we be riding, Angel?” asked Adiara.

“All day,” replied Saryn. “You’ll have to ride with some of the others soon.”

The girl nodded solemnly.

A glass or so later, Saryn turned the girl over to Raena, one of the junior guards, and joined the outriders. That way, she could sense any dangers as soon as possible.

For a time, Saryn and the two outriders rode silently along the high stretch of road between the evergreens and shaded snowdrifts. The air was chill enough that the only scent was the faintest hint of pine and spruce.

“Do you think they’ll have attacked more travelers?” Abylea finally asked.

“I hope not. It’s early in the year for travelers, except for traders, and I don’t think they’d want to attack traders.” Saryn shrugged. “They might not be that smart, though. If the traders start avoiding Fenard especially, that won’t make the Prefect happy.”

“But he’s the one who had to have ordered the armsmen-”

“We don’t know that, not yet. Besides, rulers don’t always understand what happens as a result of what they order. They just think they do.” Saryn couldn’t help but think about the UFA marshals who had ordered the Winterlance into a battle that ended up throwing the ship into another universe. There were always unintended consequences…even for those like Ryba, who could glimpse a corner of the future. Unlike the senior UFA officers, or the traders of Suthya, Ryba understood that.

By midmorning, Saryn and the outriders were leading second squad down the long and winding slope into the crossroads valley.

“There’s a thin plume of smoke,” reported Chyanci. “Over there, back by the knoll on the southwest side. That’s the high ground.”

“The only tracks on the road are theirs,” said Abylea.

“The only recent ones,” corrected Chyanci.

“Hold up here. They can’t see us,” said Saryn. Just as important was the fact that she couldn’t sense any of the Gallosians. “I need to talk to the squad leader.”

Saryn turned the big chestnut back uphill. As the commander neared the squad, Murkassa ordered a halt and rode to meet Saryn. “You’ve found them? How far ahead are they?”

“Another two or three kays. It looks like they’re in the crossroads valley, on that knoll to the south of the roads, by the stream where most travelers camp. There aren’t any other recent tracks on the road. We can ride down the road for another kay or so, but then we’ll have to move into the trees and move southwest to the base of the knoll. First, we’ll see where the sentries are. I’d like to take them out with the bows, without alerting the others. Then, half the squad will proceed up alongside the trail from the road to the knoll but hold short of where they’re camped, far enough back so that the others aren’t alerted.

“The bow-guards need to move in through the trees to the south. I’ll lead them in to take out the sentries and position them. If we don’t alert the main force, I’ll take them to the north side of the knoll, and once we’re there, they’ll start loosing shafts, as silently as possible. The moment that the Gallosians recognize they’re under attack, I’ll sound the horn, and you sweep up the trail. As soon as you cross into the encampment, we’ll come in from the trees.”

“What if they spot us first?” asked Murkassa.

“They probably won’t. If they do, we’ll move back to give the bow-guards chances at picking them off. Then we’ll withdraw and do it again…until they either catch up, and we take them on, or they retreat, and we just keep loosing shafts and picking them off until they turn to fight. Or until they’re all dead.” Saryn added, “Oh…just before you start the attack, you’ll have to find a hidden spot to put Adiara. Tell her not to move. We might need every guard.”

“Yes, ser.” The squad leader nodded. “That should work.”

From what she’d seen, Saryn knew it should, but more often than not, “shoulds” never happened. “Call up the bow-guards. I’ll take them and Chyanci. You and Abylea lead the rest of the squad after us. I’ll send Chyanci back to give you the word when to split off.”

Murkassa nodded. “Bow-guards forward!”

A quarter glass later, Saryn was leading the line of guards through the evergreen woods, mostly pine with some spruce and a handful of junipers. She concentrated on sensing a clear pathway to the wooded slopes of the knoll on which the Gallosians were encamped. The going was slow as she avoided two gullies and several low and bushy pines that blocked a direct route. When she could truly sense the first armsman, she nodded. She let a half smile of relief cross her lips when she sensed the second clearly, as well as vaguely feeling the larger numbers up the knoll to the west. The first sentry was stationed under a small pine growing from between the boulders at the top of a hillock that offered a view of the crossroads. The second sentry was on the other side of the trail, slightly farther downhill, and positioned to watch the western road to Lornth. Although the two were about a hundred yards apart, and within earshot of each other, neither could see the other.

“Quiet riding,” ordered Saryn.

After easing the chestnut through half a kay of pines, sometimes through snow close to half a yard deep, she reined up, then motioned for Zanlya, the lead bow-guard, to join her.

“The sentry is about a hundred yards ahead, at the same level on the slope as we are, but he’ll be to your right once we come up on him, under a pine looking down on the valley.” Saryn pointed through the pines in the direction of the northernmost Gallosian sentry. “I want him taken out without a sound. Let the others know, then have Chyanci pass the word to the squad leader to have her hold up until we head back this way.”

Zanlya nodded.

Once Zanlya had passed the word, Saryn eased her mount forward, slowly. Covering the last fifty yards or so seemed to take longer than had the previous half kay through the pines.

Finally, she reined up and gestured to Zanlya for the bow-guards to move into positions where all could loose shafts at once. The wind was light, but it was blowing from the northeast, and that wasn’t good. Not when there was the faintest snuffle or muted whinny from the sentry’s mount, tied to a smaller pine lower on the slope to his south, and between him and the short trail leading from the road to the encampment.

The Gallosian stood and eased forward from where he had been sitting on a boulder. From there he scanned the area to the northeast, where the three rough roads met. He was still looking when the first shaft took him in the back of the shoulder. Another took him lower in the back, and he staggered.

“Oh…”

Two more shafts struck him, one in the neck, and he slumped forward.

Saryn thought his muted cry had not carried, but she concentrated on sensing the second sentry, across the trail to the south. When the other sentry did not show any alarm, she urged the gelding forward, along the lower north side of the knoll, then through the trees just below the first sentry’s position until she and the bow-guards were almost at the edge of the trees bordering the trail, just a few yards higher than the second sentry.

He was pacing back and forth along a narrow space above the lower bushes and trees that grew out of a charred area, possibly a campfire that had gotten out of hand years earlier.

Zanlya glanced to Saryn, raising her eyebrows, and gesturing.

Saryn understood. The sentry was some fifty yards away. Still, there was no way to get closer without breaking cover. “Go ahead.”

Zanlya waited until the sentry was pacing back in their direction before saying, “Fire.” Her words were just loud enough for the other four to hear, and the hiss of five shafts being released at once was softer than the rustle of wind through the needles of the pines.

Only one struck the sentry directly, but it slammed through him just below the breastbone. A second lodged in his arm. In the moments when he looked around, his mouth opening to call a warning, three more shafts struck. He staggered, then slowly sank from sight.

Saryn could sense his pain. While he was dying, and would not be able to warn the others, he would not die quickly. She pushed that thought aside. The women who had been abused had not died quickly, either.

“This way,” she ordered quietly.

The five bow-guards followed her back the way they had come, then westward along the side of the knoll. Murkassa rode out from between two massive pine trunks, then halted.

Saryn reined up for a moment just yards from the squad leader. “The sentries are down. We need to hurry. Take up a position on the trail. When you hear the horn, ride up and sweep through. We’ll stop firing before you enter the encampment.”

“Yes, ser.”

As Saryn flicked the reins to urge the gelding forward, she could feel her head throbbing from all the concentration on sensing where people and weapons were. After the long winter, she was definitely out of practice. Tracking game wasn’t the same thing, even through frigid snows. As almost an afterthought, she leaned back and slipped the small trumpet-like horn from the saddlebag and tucked it inside her riding jacket.

After riding another hundred yards, she could sense clearly the Gallosians scattered around the encampment ahead and to her right. Most were gathered to the south side, roughly in the middle, but they were not in any sort of formation.

She turned in the saddle again. “Zanlya…we’re getting close. When I stop, take positions in a line abreast right at the edge of the trees. The clearing will be on our right. Silent signal. Once I drop my arm, loose shafts. Make every shaft count, but use every one.”

The lead bow-guard nodded.

Saryn slowed the gelding to a slow walk through the thin layer of slushy snow, easing him closer and closer to the edge of the pines, but at an angle so that the six of them would not be close to being able to be seen until they were in position to loose shafts. She was also counting on the thickness of the overhead canopy to keep them in deep shadow.

The trees ended less than twenty yards from the northern edge of the encampment. Most of the armsmen were gathered near one of the fires, listening to a taller man. All the Gallosians were looking in his direction and away from the trees on the north side.

A few words drifted out to Saryn, words that only she could hear, and only because of the heightened senses that had come when she had found herself on the Roof of the World. Nylan had claimed that all the officers had gained various strange abilities because they had used the Winterlance’s neuralnet. Saryn didn’t know the reasons, but at times like these she was glad enough for them.

“…take the northwest road in the morning…halfway to Middlevale…”

Saryn eased the gelding partly behind the trunk of one of the giant pines and positioned him so that she could ride directly into the camp when the time came. Then she waited.

Zanlya raised her arm.

Saryn raised hers, then dropped it.

Shafts hissed from out of the woods.

For several moments, nothing happened, even after shafts cut into and through several of the armsmen.

“The bitch-demons!”

“To arms! Every man to arms!”

“Mount up!”

Saryn lifted the trumpet and bugled out an off-key call. The only thing useful about it was that the sound was loud, loud enough to carry to the trail to the west of the encampment.

An armsman jumped from the fire and turned, then grabbed his blade and charged toward the trees and the bow-guards. A shaft took him right in the chest.

The bow-guards kept loosing shaft after shaft, enough that the Gallosians sprinted toward the southwestern edge of the encampment, where the horses were picketed on a tie-line. The clustering of men provided an even better target for the archers.

The rumbling of hoofs signaled the arrival of the rest of second squad.

“Cease fire!” snapped Saryn. “Stow bows. Blades out. With me.”

She urged the chestnut forward, one of her three short swords in her right hand.

One Gallosian had managed to mount and had his big blade out as he charged her.

Saryn flung her blade, sense-guiding it into his chest, then pulled her second blade into play, running down a lagging Gallosian and slicing down across the side of his neck.

For the next few moments, all she could do was hack and parry, before she wheeled clear of the handful of armsmen remaining on their feet.

From the corner of her eye, Saryn caught sight of a Gallosian riding along the south side of the clearing, spurring his mount in the direction of the northwestern trail. “Murkassa! Spare one for questioning!” Then she turned the gelding and gave him his head. She didn’t want anyone to escape. If Arthanos’s men vanished, he wouldn’t be able to say much in public, especially if Ryba sent him and the other local rulers a message noting that brigands who had murdered innocent travelers had been hunted down and killed.

After a few moments, the fleeing armsman glanced back over his shoulder. Saryn could sense the man’s apprehension, even before he jabbed his heels into his mount’s flanks, trying to force more speed from the flagging mount. That did not help him, because Saryn’s gelding was closing the gap with every stride.

Suddenly, the armsman urged his mount into a gap between the trees on the north side of the trail, well below where the bow-guards had attacked the sentry. Saryn followed, not without some trepidation, ducking immediately so that a low-hanging branch didn’t remove her head-or her-from the saddle.

After less than fifty yards the Gallosian turned, short of a wall of evergreens, and pulled out a hand-and-a-half blade from his shoulder harness. He grinned.

Saryn didn’t even give him time to bring the heavy blade into position before throwing her second short sword, using her senses to smooth its flight while drawing the third blade from the saddle sheath before her. The last blade wasn’t necessary. The thrown blade sliced into the Gallosian’s chest so quickly and cleanly that he didn’t have time to look surprised before he slumped forward in the saddle. After a moment, the heavy iron weapon dropped from his lifeless fingers. A slight clank followed as the metal hit a patch of rocky ground.

It took Saryn far more time to recover the weapon and corner the skittish mount than it had to chase and kill the false bandit, but before all that long she was leading the captured mount with the body of the armsman across it back toward the valley at a fast trot. She hadn’t dared take any more time to strip him, not until she was back with second squad.

She needn’t have worried. By the time she reached the top of the knoll where the Gallosians had been, the only figures on horse back were the Westwind guards, although two were having wounds dressed, and a third-the young Gerlya-lay unmoving on the sparse grass beside the trail leading down to the road.

“The squad leader’s over there, ser,” called Chyanci, pointing in the direction of the eastern end of the clearing. “Abylea’s got the girl.”

“Thank you.” Saryn kept riding through the encampment, where gear and bodies lay strewn in every direction.

More than half had died from the shafts loosed by the bow-guards. Several had clearly been struck down before they had been able to raise a defense. A grim smile crossed Saryn’s lips. She had no doubts that her attack would have been called something uncharitable by the Gallosians, except that Westwind would write the history.

At the end of the clearing, Murkassa and three guards half circled a large pine, under which was a man. Saryn could see that the man-little more than a youth, really, with but the barest hint of a blondish beard-had neither a blade nor a scabbard at his waist, nor a harness for a broadsword. Despite a leg that was clearly broken, he had propped himself up with his back against a pine trunk, and he held a dagger in his left hand.

Saryn could sense the agony as he glanced from one guard to the next. “Hold off!”

“Ser?” questioned Murkassa.

“I’d like some answers, squad leader, and there’s no one else able to give them, from what I can see.”

Murkassa glanced around, then lowered the blade she could easily have thrown. “Vynna! Keep that bow ready. If he so much as twitches that knife, pin him to the tree…but in the shoulder so that he can still answer the commander’s questions.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Put down that sticker if you don’t want a shaft through you,” Murkassa ordered the young man.

Slowly, he slipped it into the belt sheath. The faintest wince crossed his face.

Saryn could sense some of the pain, and she was thankful, once again, that she did not possess the sensitivity that Istril and Siret did. She rode closer, but halted her mount a good five yards away. “What’s your name?”

“Dealdron, Commander.”

“Where in Gallos are you from, Dealdron?”

“Fenard. Outside the walls.”

“Why were you and the other armsmen pretending to be brigands?”

“That was what the undercaptain ordered, ser.”

“Who ordered him?”

“He didn’t say, ser. He wouldn’t have done it if the majer hadn’t told him…or someone higher up.”

“Who might that have been?”

“I don’t know, ser.”

“How many people have you killed, Dealdron?”

“Not a one, ser. I was here to take care of the mounts.”

While Saryn sensed the truth of his words, she had to press him. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

“I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t. I didn’t hurt anyone, either.”

“Why did you let them kill innocent travelers?”

“I didn’t know…that was what they were going to do.” He swayed slightly on his good leg.

“And I suppose you had nothing to do with the women?”

“No, ser.” The young man’s eyes glistened, but Saryn wasn’t sure how much was from the pain of memory or the pain of his broken leg. “I didn’t do anything except unharness the cart horse. I didn’t.”

Saryn could sense the truth of those words, as well as the faintness coming over the young man, but before she could say anything, he staggered, then pitched forward.

“Murkassa…we need to get his leg splinted. He’s coming back with us.”

“Yes, ser.” The squad leader’s voice was neutral.

Saryn could sense the displeasure beneath the calm words. She gestured for Murkassa to ride closer before asking, “No one else escaped, did they?”

“No, ser. You got the only one who tried to ride away.” The squad leader’s eyes dropped to the unconscious man. “He’s still one of them.”

“He was telling the truth. He didn’t kill anyone. They didn’t even trust him with a blade. I want the Marshal to hear what he told us.” Saryn paused. “Don’t you think she should?”

Some of Murkassa’s displeasure faded. “Then what?”

“That’s up to the Marshal…as always.”

After a moment, Murkassa nodded. “She should hear what he has to say.”

“Get his leg splinted. He has to survive the ride back.”

“Yes, ser.”

Saryn could feel that Murkassa was satisfied with Saryn’s reasons, but the instinctive desire to kill any man associated with the murders and rapes, even indirectly, told Saryn, again, how hard it was going to be to work any more men into Westwind. The attempt by the Suthyans to poison Ryba hadn’t helped that attitude, either.

Yet…it had to be done, she told herself. About that, Istril was right.