Scholar

78

Surprisingly, Quaeryt did sleep for several glasses on Meredi night, despite worries about another attack … and having only a thin blanket between him and the ground. If an attack happened, he didn’t hear it. No one said anything about one when he rose in the pale gray light before sunrise, stiff and sore, enough so that he was limping more than usual when he went to check on the mare before eating more biscuits and cheese.

“You did sleep, I see,” offered Meinyt.

“Enough that I’m sore all over.” Quaeryt took another bite of the hard biscuit, followed by a modest swallow from his water bottle, because otherwise he wouldn’t be able to eat the biscuit.

“Better sore than tired.”

“What happens next?”

“We either go north or south or follow the road until we get attacked.”

Quaeryt knew that much already. He ate another biscuit.

“North would take us through a swamp,” Meinyt finally said. “South would take another day. Then, when we got back to the main road again, we’d still have to worry about being attacked from both sides. I’d get your gear rolled up. Whatever the governor has in mind, it won’t be long. I’m about to find out.” With a wry smile, he hurried off.

Quaeryt barely had taken out the overlarge green uniform shirt and then finished fastening his gear behind his saddle, and readjusting the leathers to hold the staff, when Meinyt returned from wherever he’d been.

“The rebels hold the heights on the last ridge on the east side of the valley. We’re to circle to the south, just far enough to get out of sight, and then ride back up through the trees. It’s a gradual rise. The trees aren’t that close together.”

“We? All of Sixth Battalion?”

“And Fourth. The rest of the regiment will follow the road. The governor’s keeping it simple. We’re to keep them from retreating south.”

“And they’ll end up backed up against the swamp if they go north?”

Meinyt nodded.

“They can still go west.” Quaeryt pulled the uniform shirt on over his browns, glad that the morning was comparatively cool.

“They could … and there’s enough ground between the eastern hills and Boralieu that they might escape … but that would also give Commander Zirkyl a chance to strike them on one side while we press the other. Or something like that. The governor’s the one who makes those decisions, not me. We need to mount up.” Meinyt paused. “Good idea with the shirt.”

“I’d prefer not to stand out too much.”

The captain just nodded and headed for his mount.

Quaeryt mounted and then followed Meinyt as the company formed up by squads. Then they rode south and slightly west. Quaeryt let the mare trail the captain slightly, so as not to interfere with the officer’s line of sight.

After about two milles, Meinyt raised his arm, and ordered, “Five-man front!”

When the company came to a halt some fifty yards short of where the trees began, intermittently spaced, Quaeryt glanced to his right toward the next company, noting that it was the one commanded by Gauswn, although the undercaptain did not glance in Quaeryt’s direction, not that Quaeryt noticed.

“We’re not to give quarter in battle, but we’re also to leave the fallen alone.” Meinyt snorted. “The major made that clear.”

Quaeryt understood. Stopping to deal with the fallen simply weakened the attack, and Rescalyn wanted to destroy the hill holders as a force for generations to come-if not forever.

“Fourth Battalion will be to our right, just beyond Gauswn’s company. We’ll move when the governor orders the horn signal to break camp. That might confuse the hill folks, since they do know our signals.”

Almost another quint passed before the notes of the horn-off-key-drifted southward.

“Sixth Battalion! Weapons ready! Forward! Standard walk!”

As the first light of sunrise spread from the east, Quaeryt again took station on Meinyt, who rode about a half length back of the leftmost ranker in the front line. There were no sounds of birds or insects, only those of underbrush occasionally crackling and crunching under hoofs. Quaeryt kept his eyes moving, but he saw nothing but tree trunks and low-hanging branches. The trees thickened as he rode northwest with the others. Since most of the trees were evergreens that had left a carpet of needles on the ground between the trunks, there was comparatively little undergrowth, and he could see between ten and twenty yards ahead most of the time. Every so often there was a massive oak or maple that looked to have been there far longer than the pines and spruces.

What bothered him, even carrying his shields, was that anyone waiting or watching could also see the riders of the two battalions.

After a quint, or perhaps slightly longer, another horn signal, far closer, sounded.

Within moments, there were yells and then the sound of a wounded horse. Meinyt and the company kept moving.

Then … there was that pattering sound, like rain, followed by a grunt, and one of the riders ahead and to the right of Quaeryt doubled over in the saddle.

“Deliberate speed!” ordered Meinyt. “Deliberate speed!”

Quaeryt wanted to follow the captain, but couldn’t because of a fallen tree trunk he hadn’t seen quickly enough, and he edged the mare to the right, around another massive trunk. He glanced forward, and slightly up, as another volley of shafts swept past him. Ahead was a young, scared-looking man, wearing what looked to be a leather shirt and britches and straddling a wide oak branch some three yards above the forest floor. He held a crossbow, aimed directly at Quaeryt.

The quarrel’s impact on the scholar’s shields threw Quaeryt back in the saddle. He struggled forward to regain his balance. The youth leapt from the oak toward Quaeryt-a pair of glittering knives in his hands-then slammed against the scholar’s shields, dropped to the ground, and staggered back. Before Quaeryt could even think of stopping the mare, the weight of the horse and the shields threw the rebel into the thick trunk of a pine. There might have been a crack, but Quaeryt didn’t hear it. What he saw was the young man’s neck snap forward, hanging loosely, before his dead body slid down the trunk.

“Keep moving!” ordered Meinyt, not necessarily to Quaeryt. “You slow down and you’re a potted pigeon.”

Quaeryt remembered, belatedly, that he did have a half-staff and struggled to get it clear of the leather straps as another leather-clad rider plunged through the trees in his direction. When he raised the staff, the rider veered toward Meinyt, apparently not seeing the captain, whose sabre slammed into the hill rider’s neck.

Quaeryt tried to keep up with the others, but he was more abreast of the second line than just behind Meinyt, and he urged the mare forward.

The strain of holding the shields as far out from him as he had been was getting to Quaeryt. He contracted them until they were more like a skin. That would also allow him to use the half-staff. As he did, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of the closer shields earlier. Because the kind of imaging you knew how to do needed distance? How many other things haven’t you thought of because-

“That one!”

Quaeryt glimpsed two riders ahead, one looking over his shoulder, and the other lifting what looked to be a short lance.

If that lance hits you, shields or not …

At the last moment, he flattened himself against the mare’s neck, but grasped the staff firmly with both hands and braced it against the front edge of the saddle pommel, letting it stick out.

The lance missed him-and his shields-but the staff struck something, and the other rider lurched backward in his saddle. Quaeryt’s hands felt bruised and mangled, and without the reinforcement of the shields, he would have lost the staff as well. He barely managed to hang on, and he had no idea what had happened to the man he thought he’d struck.

He straightened in the saddle and had managed to bring the staff forward when he had the feeling that, suddenly, the woods seemed to fill with thunder and the sound of hoofs. With those sounds he saw what looked to be scores of riders, seemingly one or two or even three riding abreast filling all the spaces between the trees, charging down the gentle slope. All seemed headed directly at him, and several had short, but pointed, lances.

Quaeryt reined the mare up just short of two pines, with enough space for a rider on either side of him, then projected his shields forward and around the pines, so that they were anchored to the trees.

Let’s hope this works.…

He raised his half-staff, as if in futile defense, and two of the charging hill riders charged directly at him.

The impact of the two mounts and riders on the shields still lifted Quaeryt up from his saddle, then dropped him hard on the leather. Both horses lay in a heap. One screamed, horribly. Neither rider moved, and neither looked as if he ever would again.

Quaeryt’s head was a splitting mass of pain, and he tried to shrink the shields back to cover his body alone. That hurt so much that it felt as though knives were jabbing into his skull through his eyes and ears, and he had to release the shields. That reduced the pain somewhat, but he could still barely see, although he could sense the other riders passing him.

He eased the mare back enough to get around the pine to his right, and then urged her forward. With no shields, he’d have to be even more careful-except, from what he’d experienced already, being too cautious was more deadly than being too rash.

Ahead of him, he saw yet another hill rider angling from behind a copse of low evergreens, almost galloping toward a gap between the ranker forward of Quaeryt and to his right and the rankers of the company farther to the west. Then he realized the ranker didn’t see the attacker, and he urged the mare forward, yelling as he did, “Ahead! Right!”

The ranker paid no attention.

Quaeryt jabbed his heels into the mare’s flank, and she bolted forward. This time, Quaeryt held the half-staff forward at an angle, again braced against the front edge of the pommel.

The hill rider didn’t seem to see Quaeryt until the last moment, just before the half-staff took him at the edge of his chest and then caught his arm, twisting him in the saddle. After that, Quaeryt had to hang on because the mare definitely hadn’t appreciated the boot heels in her flanks-or maybe that had told her she was free to run.

For the next half quint or so, Quaeryt was more worried about staying in the saddle and dodging trees than defending or attacking the enemy. Yet … when he slowed the mare, and took stock, he was within a few yards of the western outrider of Gauswn’s company … at least, that was what he thought he saw through eyes still tearing and stabbing with muted pain. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any more hill riders around.

He turned the mare more to the west, angling behind the staggered remnants of the first lines of Meinyt’s company and riding until he could make out the figure of the older captain, barely, given his blurred vision, who had reined up at the edge of a wide clearing bordering the south edge of the road to Boralieu. On the road were other Telaryn riders, roughly ranked. Quaeryt could see a battalion ensign, but couldn’t read it the way his eyes were twitching. He glanced to the west, looking for the sun.

Somehow … it was approaching noon. He reined up, not knowing what else he was supposed to do.

“Are you all right, scholar?” asked Meinyt.

The pain in Quaeryt’s eyes was so great that even squinting he couldn’t make out the captain’s expression.

“You’ve got blood on your sleeve,” added Meinyt.

Quaeryt looked down at his left arm. There was indeed a large smear of blood, but there was no cut in the cloth. He gingerly felt the forearm … sore already and probably bruised, but it didn’t feel like there was any wet blood or stickiness beneath.

“Someone else’s blood, I think. I’m bruised all over.”

The captain turned his head, but said nothing.

“I wedged the staff under the pommel of the saddle and stuck it out sideways … well, up a little. It worked, but it strained every muscle in my arms and shoulders. Then I blocked lances and a sabre somehow, but I’ve got bruises everywhere.…”

“I saw it, Captain, sir,” called a ranker. “He wedged himself sort of between two trees and stopped two mounts and their riders. Both went down so hard … never get up.”

“Why…?” Meinyt never finished the question.

“They had very sharp lances, and they were aimed at me. You said we weren’t supposed to let them pass. I did what I could.”

Meinyt looked back to the ranker.

“He stopped ’em, sir. Stopped dead. Didn’t see how … had to worry about some others.”

Meinyt nodded to the ranker, then, abruptly, laughed. “Trees and staffs … never heard of such.”

Quaeryt just hoped that none of the other rankers had seen any more. And, as sore as he’d been that morning, he had no doubts that he’d feel worse the next morning.