Magi'i of Cyador

XXXIII

IN THE COLD sun of late morning, the brown grass stretches unmarked for at least three kays in every direction from the narrow road on which Lorn and Nytral ride eastward. Nearly two kays ahead of them are two scouts, large black dots on the brown line of the road that slowly climbs the long swell that is not steep enough to be a ridge or hill. Behind Nytral and Lorn ride the two squads of the Fifth Company.

“Still another ten kays to Pregyn,” Nytral says.

The senior squad leader’s words are barely audible above the impacts of hoofs on the road and the rising whistling of the wind that sweeps southward across the fields that only hold last year’s browned and flattened grass. With the wind comes the odor of vegetation that has molded, frozen, and thawed-an acrid scent, sour but slightly sweet.

“The maps show that the road’s flat. Is it?” asks Lorn. He has never been northeast of this unnamed valley, let alone to Pregyn, a hamlet a good forty kays to the north of Isahl and the northernmost and most isolated of the communities south of the Grass Hills to claim allegiance to Cyad and the Emperor.

“Most ways. The climb out of Four-Holders-next valley-is steeper than the way in, but it’s flat after that, boglike until you get to the real hills that border the Westhorns.”

At the crest of the hill, Lorn slows his mount and studies the long and sinuous valley that holds four families-a clan structure almost, Lorn suspects, from the layout of the holdings with their multiple dwellings and community stock barns. Each holding has an earthen berm around its buildings and stock pens-earthen because trees are far too scarce and more valuable for shade or fruit or windbreaks than for timber.

In the depression on the northern side of the valley, a kay from where the Fifth Company descends the hill, there arelong parallel trenches. Lorn nods-peatworks. The two scouts have now almost ridden to a point on the road abreast of the peat diggings, although the road is more than a kay south of the boggy depression, and little more than a thin lane winds over the rolling grasslands from the main road to the bog.

Slightly flattened by the wind, trails of smoke rise from the chimneys of all four holdings. A good sign, reflects the undercaptain.

“Not real friendly-like here,” cautions Nytral about the time when they reach the beginning of the valley floor and the road turns more to the northeast, angling across the long and curving valley.

“Any reason?”

“Say we don’t come here enough, let’em take the barbarian attacks by themselves.”

Lorn nods, but does not comment.

As the Fifth Company nears the first earthen berm, the wind gusts around Lorn, mixing warmer damp air with cooler swirls. Lorn’s nose wrinkles, then relaxes, as he sniffs the smoke-burning peat-an odor far better than that of the dung burned in many holds.

There is a gate in the first earthen dike. Less than two hundred cubits from the right side of the road, it stands half-open, with a bearded figure in a sheepskin jacket waiting.

“Shofirg!” orders Nytral. “Send up four lancers.”

Lorn and Nytral follow the four lancers up the rutted road toward the gate, where all six rein up twenty cubits back from the holder.

“We’d be welcoming you, and your company of lancers, ser,” offers the holder. “Don’t have much, ser, but you’d be welcome to the water and to stand down and rest.”

Nytral eases his mount past the holder and partway through the gate. After a moment of studying the area, he turns in the saddle and nods curtly to Lorn.

“We thank you,” Lorn tells the bearded man, who inclines his head briefly to the undercaptain.

“Two abreast!” Nytral orders. “Straight to the troughs. In formation, by squads.”

Lorn guides the white mare through the gate and to the north side where he and Nytral watch as the lancers ride past them.

The ground inside the four-cubit-high embankment is earth churned by sheep and cattle, dark frozen mud that will turn into oozing slop within eightdays, if not sooner. The odor of manure permeates the air, mixing with the sweet-smoky odor of burning peat. The doors to the sod-walled stock barn beyond the water trough are closed and barred, although Lorn can hear the lowing of cattle.

“Water by half-squads! You be starting, Dubrez!” Nytral orders, his words ringing across the holding.

After the first squad has watered and remounted, Lorn waters his mare before Shofirg’s squad while Nytral watches. The young officer then watches as Nytral rides his mount to the trough.

The holder now steps nearer to where Lorn sits astride the mare.

“Have you seen any trace of the barbarians lately?” Lorn asks the local.

“Little early for raiders,” says the redbearded figure. “Bogs on the north side still show ice ….”

Lorn takes in the man’s words, not understanding the exact importance of when the ice might melt as a predictor, but understanding fully the herder’s feeling about its accuracy. “Have they ever attacked before the ice melts?”

“One time I recall, ser … be the year afore the last.”

Nytral remounts and guides his mount back beside Lorn’s.

“Would that we’d be able to offer more, ser ….” The holder’s voice is almost pleading.

Lorn understands the plea, but were he to pay, even a few coppers, for every watering or every meal offered to his company, his purse would be empty well before the end of each patrol. Worse, the holders would come to expect it, and Lorn knows where that would lead. “I would that you could, too, holder. I would that I could offer you some poor recompense.”He smiles. “Perhaps we will be able to remove some barbarians.”

“You do that … and you be doing more than most in these days.” The herder inclines his head, slightly.

The last of Shofirg’s men remounts, and the younger of the two squad leaders turns his mount toward Lorn and Nytral. “All the mounts have been watered, sers.”

Lorn leans forward in the saddle, toward the herder. “Thank you.” Then he nods to Nytral.

“Ride out, by squads, two abreast.” While Nytral does not yell or shout, his voice carries throughout the holding-and well beyond the earthen dike, Lorn suspects.

Although it nears mid-day when the Fifth Company is clear of the holding wall and fully on the road northeast, the light wind is but fractionally warmer, still a mixture of warmer and cooler air. The road itself remains frozen except for a few muddy spots where small bumps face directly south and trickles of water ooze from the raised and thawing ground.

Neither Nytral nor Lorn speaks until the company is well beyond the first of the four holdings in the valley.

“They don’t think we’ve done much,” Lorn observes.

“The Lancers never do as much as anyone wants, ser. Specially out here. Might be different if the Emperor … if His Mightiness’d ever been a real lancer. Or if we had more lancers. Never enough lancers, never have been, I been thinking ….”

“No.” Lorn frowns. Nytral’s speculations are not good for the sub-officer’s future, not with anyone besides Lorn.

“Best not be thinking what can’t be.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Lorn agrees. “There are only so many firewagons and so many lancers, and there’s not much we can do about it.”

For a time, they ride without speaking.

Herders from the other three holdings do not appear as the Fifth Company nears, and passes, their earth dikes. Nor are their gates opened.

By mid-afternoon, the Fifth Company nears the easternend of the winding valley, a valley empty of all herders and herds-except those within the earthen dikes that they have since passed. The scouts have ridden out of sight over the top of the hill, and the column of riders, two abreast, starts up the gentle incline.

Lorn glances up at the sound of hoofs. Two scouts spur their mounts down the road from the crest of the low pass that leads out of the Four-Holders Valley and toward the next valley, that of the Burned-Out-Stead.

“Frig!” mutters Nytral under his breath. “Frigging raiders …”

“Halt!” Lorn raises his arm, then gestures downward. Behind him, the riders of the company rein up.

Lorn and Nytral wait for the scouts, both scanning the road behind the scouts, as well as the brown grass and the few scattered bushes with their handfuls of gray winter leaves. Nothing moves except the lancer scouts.

“Raiders, sers! They’re riding up the far side, almost halfway to the crest.” The words burst forth from the younger scout before he has even fully reined in.

“A good four score. Could be more,” adds the older scout.

Lorn turns in the saddle. Behind them, less than a hundred cubits back, is a low depression, and west of that a slight swell.

Nytral’s eyes follow Lorn’s. “Best we can do, ser.”

“We’d better do it, then.”

“Column back to the rise, Shofirg!” Nytral orders.

“Squad two back to the rise, Dubrez!” Lorn’s voice, seemingly less penetrating than Nytral’s, carries to the second squad.

Dubrez nods and replies. “Second squad to the rise!”

Lorn turns the mare, and the others follow his lead, until the Fifth Company has reformed on the highest ground nearby, in a single long line, slightly convex, that for all its apparent length will still be flanked on both ends by fourscore barbarian raiders.

“We’ll let them come to us,” Lorn decides.

“Not reined up, ser?” Nytral’s voice holds a slight edge.

“No … but we won’t charge until they’re hitting the dip in the ground there.”

“Won’t slow’em much.”

“Will anything?” Lorn raises his eyebrows, then pushes back the once white garrison cap.

Nytral laughs, not quite hollowly.

In the colder afternoon wind, each moment seems longer than the one that preceded it, and the hillside and road that lead out of the valley remain empty.

“They were riding up, sers,” insists the younger scout, although neither Nytral nor Lorn has even looked toward the lancer. “They were.”

“They’ll be here,” Nytral says. “This time of year they don’t turn back.”

Lorn surveys the line of lancers once more, then checks his own firelance. He can feel the chaos stored within it-red and golden white. His eyes flick from the Fifth Company to the hill above and then back to the lancers.

One moment, the hill is empty. The next finds mounted figures riding down toward the Mirror Lancers.

“Lances ready!” Nytral orders.

Forty lancers pull their three-cubit-long white firelances from holders and level them, waiting for the raiders to close, for Lorn’s command to charge, and for the inevitable order to discharge chaos.

Lorn looks at the sweep of riders-five score, if not more, arrayed in a loose formation no more than three deep. Unlike the mounts of the barbarian bands he has encountered earlier, these horses bear no saddlebags or gear stowed behind the saddle-not that he can see. The riders carry long blades, blades bared to the sun, each weapon a half blade longer than Lorn’s own sabre. Even across the half-kay that separates the two groups, the raiders’ bared iron blades shimmer with the ugliness of death-ordered iron.

The undercaptain forces himself to wait, to measure the closing distance. He moistens his lips, watching, as the riders loom larger, bearded men bearing long blades, surrounded by another sort of chaos-the chaos of blood-lust?

As the raiders near the uphill depression, charging toward the Fifth Company, yells and unintelligible battle cries suddenly burst forth and spill across the brown grass of the gentle slope that has slowed them not at all.

“Now!” snaps Lorn.

“Forward! Forward and discharge at will!” orders Nytral. “Discharge at will!”

The Mirror Lancers of the Fifth Company move forward, ponderously, slowly at first, but when the two forces are less than a hundred cubits from each other, the Lancers are moving almost as fast as the barbarians.

“ … Slay the white demons!”

“ … Death to the demons!”

Other calls fill the air, but all are from the barbarians.

Abruptly, the barbarian line changes-gaps appearing here and there. But the gaps are not so much gaps as the result of groups of three barbarians charging toward a single lancer.

Hssstt! Hssst! … With less than fifty cubits between the leading barbarians and the lancers, golden-white chaos bolts flare from the firelances.

Lorn holds back on using his lance, though he rides forward toward the raiders, and finds himself leading the fray.

Five riders are swinging toward him as he finally lifts his lance, and triggers it. Hssst! Hsstt! Hsstt! … Not all the bursts strike barbarians, and he ducks and throws himself sideways and under one of the swinging iron bars that promises death if it strikes him full.

Then, gasping, he finds the mare has brought him through and beyond the barbarian line-practically alone. A good forty cubits to his right, Nytral has emerged, and the squad leader charges back toward the mix of men tangled with each other.

Lorn wheels the mare and rides back-more deliberately, his eyes flicking across the field. Less than twenty cubits before him, a barbarian lifts, not a long and unwieldy hand-and-half blade, but something like a sabre somewhat more curved than that of a lancer. The barbarian ducks as he nearsthe melee, and starts to slash across the unprotected left side of a lancer.

Hssstt! Lorn flicks a short bolt of chaos from the lance into the barbarian’s back, then urges the mare toward the next group of fighters, men hacking at each other, silvery cupridium blades against the order-death-infused, edged iron bars of the attackers. Absently, Lorn wishes he could use a sabre as well in his left hand as in his right.

Hsstt! The chaos transfixes another bearded barbarian.

Two more barbarian riders turn their mounts, then, inexplicably, ride toward a group skirmish to Lorn’s left. Lorn follows them, picking off the laggard with his lance. He wonders how long the chaos charge will last, careful as he has been. He can sense that a goodly fraction remains yet.

A single wavering yell echoes across the afternoon, and a good three score riders ride across the hillside, not back the way they had come but toward the hills on the northern edge of Four-Holders Valley. Beside and around the road, the Fifth Company finds itself without attackers, except those that have fallen.

Lorn takes a long deep breath, feeling sweat cooling on his forehead and the back of his neck. He counts quickly. There are six Mirror Lancers lying on the brown grass, and he can see blood on the winter jackets of half a dozen more. He hopes some of that blood is not that of the lancers. Close to a half-score barbarian mounts are without riders, and more than a score of dead or dying raiders lie sprawled or crumpled in the trampled brown grass.

The light, cold wind cannot carry away the odors of blood and death, not all of them, nor the odor of damp dead grass churned up by more than a hundred horses.

Lorn walks his mount back to where the barbarian with the odd-looking sabre has fallen. He dismounts and reclaims the blade and the scabbard, fastening them behind his saddle. Then he remounts and rides back to where Nytral is reforming the company. No one has noticed his efforts.

“Squad leaders. Report,” Nytral orders as Shofirg and Dubrez ease their mounts to a halt opposite Lorn.

Shofirg’s winter jacket is slashed open across his left shoulder, and blood smears the oiled white leather. “Lost four lancers, five wounded. Eight lances with chaos charges left,” replies Shofirg.

“Two lancers gone, three wounded. Eleven lances … most are low, though,” adds Dubrez.

“Use the barbarian mounts for the blades and any shields they left. You know what to do with our dead.”

“Sers …” both squad leaders incline their heads, then turn their mounts, heading back to their squads.

“Have they done that before?” Lorn asks after a moment. “Sending three men after a single lancer?”

Nytral frowns. “Hadn’t seen that.”

“They did,” Lorn assures the senior squad leader. “That’s why there were gaps in their attack to begin with. They figured out that a lancer has to concentrate on a single attacker at a time.”

“Didn’t look that different,” replies Nytral. “Could be they’ve been doing it for a while.” He pauses, then adds. “Lot more raiders in that party than most. Lot more.”

“How many are there usually when they attack?”

“Most times, maybe a few more than a company.”

“They had more than twice what we did,” Lorn observes, then adds, “We’re headed back. We’ve got only about two-thirds of a company, and not many chaos charges.”

“They’ll be back … afore sunset tomorrow,” predicts Nytral. “Even if we head back. They’ll follow.”

“With more horsemen?” asks Lorn.

“No … They can’t go back to the clan without wounds or trophies. The raiders rode off … they didn’t get much.”

“Will they try an ambush, you think?”

Nytral pulls at his chin. “Not so as you’d say that. Low light … some place where we’d not suspect … nor see … but no sneaking round … usually don’t pick off scouts … can’t count on that, though.”

“We’ll have to be careful, then.” Lorn has been getting the feeling that there is little predictable about the barbarians except their desire to kill lancers-and their success in doingso despite the effect of the firelances. The antique sabre, still solid, and Brystan, he thinks, raises another set of questions, ones he will not voice, about how better blades, if older ones, are reaching the barbarians, and why no senior officers have mentioned the change.

Lorn’Alt, Isahl, Captain, Mirror Lancers