Magi'i of Cyador

LXVIII

IN THE GRAYNESS of dawn in late winter, Lorn leads his white gelding from the stable in the first waystation on the northeast side of the Accursed Forest-exactly thirty-three kays southeast of the compound at Jakaafra.

Olisenn is waiting, standing by the oversized mount that will bear him.

“It looks like another cool morning, Olisenn,” Lorn offers.

“Yes, ser. It won’t be long before the Forest truly stirs.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Lorn waits for whatever the senior squad leader has in mind.

“You intend to keep riding with the second squad and Kusyl, ser?” asks Olisenn.

“It seems like a good idea for now,” Lorn temporizes. “You have the experience to command the first squad, indeed all of Second Company, should anything happen to me. Kusyl does not.”

“But I cannot offer easily any insights.”

“That is true, but perhaps you can continue to share them in the evenings at the waystations. In that fashion, all can benefit.” Lorn smiles easily.

“I will as I can, Captain.”

“I’m sure you will, Olisenn, and we all appreciate your knowledge and experience.” With another smile, Lorn mounts and then guides the gelding to his right, to where Kusyl has begun to form up the second squad.

“Ser?”

“I’ll be riding with second squad today, possibly for the entire patrol.” Lorn shrugs. “We’ll have to see how things go.”

Kusyl nods.

Once both squads are formed up and mounted, waiting in waystation courtyard under the heavy but formless gray clouds, Lorn gestures for Kusyl and Olisenn to bring theirmounts nearer. He waits until they have reined up before he speaks. “This morning, second squad will ride the wall position; first squad will do the perimeter.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Let’s go.”

The sound of hoofs on stone echoes for a brief time as Second Company rides through the gates and toward the ward-wall, each squad deploying into the spread line-abreast formation used for surveillance of the border of the Accursed Forest.

Lorn rides about twenty cubits to the right of Kusyl, closer than the normal spread of fifty. Despite the lingering dampness, the ward-wall is dry and sparkles in the indirect light filtering through the low-lying clouds.

The sun continues to struggle to burn through the mist left from the rain of the night before, but without complete success, so that the second squad rides along the ward-wall under a sky that shifts from dark to bright gray, then almost brilliant white, before it turns darker once more.

One stretch of wall looks precisely like another, whitegray blocks evenly matched, topped with crystal wards that flicker chaos. The wall stretches southeast, seemingly an endless line to the horizon.

ZZZZzzzzpt! Lorn frowns as he turns toward the sound above the wall. At a second loud zapping sound, he glances toward Kusyl. “Kusyl?”

Noting Lorn’s expression, Kusyl calls back an answer. “One of the big flowerflies, ser, the bloodsucking ones. Some reason, they can’t cross the wall. Heard an engineer explain it once, something about the bloodsuckers coming with the firstborn, and that there aren’t any in the Forest.”

“I’m not sure how that makes sense,” Lorn says slowly, his eyes still on the wall along which the gelding carries him. “The chaos barrier is there to keep the Forest in. So why would it choose an insect that’s not part of the Forest?” Why would and how could the chaos barrier choose anything? He frowns. Does the Forest choose to destroy foreign insects?Why? Or would it destroy any foreign body that crosses the ward-wall?

Kusyl shrugs with both hands. “That, I’d not be knowing, ser.”

The two continue to patrol, silently, since the distance between them makes conversation uncomfortable.

The second squad patrols another kay of wall and deadland, then another.

“Ser! … Ser … Ser!”. The yell comes from near the end of the line, a good six hundred cubits to the northeast, relayed by nearer lancers.

“Line halt!” Kusyl orders.

As the lancers rein up to a halt, Lorn guides his mount away from the wall to the lancer with the raised firelance. “Yes, lancer?”

The lancer points to the ground. On the deadland soil is a single bone, and a line of giant cat tracks. The bone-look-ing like it might have come from a sheep or goat-has been there for a time. There are no other signs of the giant cat’s prey, and the tracks are indistinct, blurred by the light rain of the night before.

“Just keep an eye out. It looks like that happened yesterday.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn turns his mount back toward the ward-wall, gesturing for Kusyl to give the order for the patrol to resume.

The morning warms until the air is almost uncomfortably damp, and sweat collects under the edge of Lorn’s white garrison cap.

The clop-clop-clop of hoofs offers a regular, almost soothing rhythm as the second squad continues in a spread formation that stretches from the road wall in a double line abreast, each rider a good fifty cubits from the next.

Lorn suppresses a yawn. He can understand why officers can get killed on Forest patrol duty, lulled into boredom by the endless sameness and suddenly confronted with the danger of a great cat or a giant stun lizard.

He has individual bits of information that should allowhim to form a better image of the situation he faces. He just needs to look at them differently, but it is difficult to think after a day of painstaking and mind-numbing patrol, looking for any trace of the Forest’s breakout.

Suddenly, he straightens, fully erect in the saddle. That, too, is another bit of information. He thinks about what the Engineer Gebynet had said, something about patterns … of immense breakouts following a shoot as vigorous as the one he and his squad had destroyed on the southwest side of the Accursed Forest.

Patterns? What are the patterns? He shakes his head. The other question is who knows what the patterns are? Who has all.the Patrol records?

Lorn nods grimly.