Magi'i of Cyador

XXIV

UNDER THICK GRAY clouds, the mist seems to billow out of the north and across the brown grass of the endless hills. Although it is near mid-day, the clouds and mist give the impression of twilight. The mist droplets congeal on the back of Lorn’s neck and then roll in tiny rivulets down his back under the white oiled leather of his winter jacket.

Lorn shifts from one leg to the other, putting his weight on one stirrup, then the other. He half-stands in the stirrups, just trying to stretch his legs.

They are less than twenty kays north of Isahl, and in another world. The patrol travels a narrow clay path on the north side of a valley that holds little besides a small brackish lake they had passed earlier, and a handful of scattered earthbrick dwellings and barns. The dwellings are scarcely that, without privacy screens or glass in the windows. Rough cut and oiled shutters, often pieced together from old boards, are swung closed against the damp and chill. The thin lines of smoke from the chimneys are lost in the gray of the clouds and mist.

The only living creatures visible besides the lancers and their mounts are the sheep of a single small herd-grayish lumps against the brown grass-beyond the last barn on the south side of the road.

So far, the only tracks in the road are those of the patrol and of a single cart that has left span-deep ruts in the claylike mud that has almost frozen.

Lorn glances a half-kay or so ahead, where Zandrey leads the Third Company, then back along his company’s two squads. For the moment, Nytral rides with Shofirg-the Second squad’s leader. Beside Lorn is another older lancer, Dubrez, whose bearded face holds a dourness that has been unchanged since the patrol began the day before.

The road slowly curves northward at the west end of the valley, rising to pass between two slightly lower hills, where there are a handful of scrub cedars, a few bushes and mostly taller grass.

“This place have a name?” Lorn finally asks Dubrez.

“This valley? Not that I know, ser. Most don’t, not properlike. This one’s the valley with the sour lake. Next is the one with the burned-out house. That sort of thing …” Dubrez lapses into silence.

Lorn shifts the reins from his right hand to his left, flexing his fingers, trying to warm them-inside thick white gloves that keep out the worst of the chill-but not all of it.

Cold and fat droplets of rain splat against lancers and their mounts, just enough to cover both with a thin sheet of water, before the cold rain ceases, and is in turn replaced by the finer droplets of the seemingly endless mist.

“How often are we likely to run across barbarians?” Lorn asks the squad leader quietly.

“Don’t, ser. Not in winter.” Durbrez to the hills to their right. “Up there, probably a few now. Or could be. We don’t patrol, and in an eightday, there’ll be raiders in most of these valleys. Wintertime … they don’t want to fight, and it be too cold for them to stay out too long and guess where we’ll be. We patrol … they watch some. We don’t patrol-they raid. Dung-eaters … every last one of’em.” The squad leader grunts and is silent.

Lorn studies the column ahead, and the faint puffs of white coming from the lancers’ mounts, wondering if any raids take place during the winter, or if the patrols are just to keep the lancers in shape.

“Be some raids,” Dubrez adds, as if he has thought about his earlier words. “Some raiders desperate … maybe two orthree every winter … not like the spring and summer and fall, though.”

Three or four raids-and those are considered as insignificant? Lorn looks northward at the darkening clouds.