Scion of Cyador

LXI

Lorn continues to wear his oiled white-leather winter jacket, but leaves it open for the hint of breeze that occasionally rises. He is warm, but not quite sweating, as he rides northwest on the narrow trail-like road that leads out of the Grass Hills. The high clouds have remained with the Cyadoran forces for all three days since they have ridden out of Inividra, but the rain has been light and intermittent. None has fallen on the Cyadoran forces since shortly after dawn, but mist rises off the hills to the northwest, where the warmish rain has been melting the last of the snows. Roughly five kays beyond those hills, if his maps are correct, lies the first barbarian town on his route through Jerans.

Lorn rides at the head of the column, beside Emsahl, on a road which is damp clay, but with few puddles or muddy sections. Directly behind them is Emsahl’s senior squad leader, and the junior squad leader for Third Company’s first squad.

“We’re headed away from Clynya, are we not, ser?” asks Emsahl.

“The raiders who strike Assyadt come from the northwest, mostly from the towns along the branches of the River Jeryna,” Lorn says. “That’s where we’re headed.”

“You’ve been planning this for a time, ser.” Emsahl’s words are a statement.

“At least since Rhalyt asked why we just sat and watched.” Lorn frowns as he studies the hills. “The first town ought to be on the far side over there, through that odd-looking pass. There’s a stream on the other side, the first real one north of the Grass Hills.”

“You know you were coming to Inividra, ser?” asks the older captain.

“I knew I’d be sent somewhere to fight barbarians,” Lorn answers.

“You’ve been collecting maps and stuff on the barbarians for a long time. Have to be, with all you know.”

“When you’re not born a Mirror Lancer, you know you’ll fight barbarians,” Lorn points out. “It makes sense to learn as much as you can.”

“Folks don’t always do what makes sense.”

“True enough.” Lorn laughs. “Let’s hope that what the scouts find makes sense as well.”

The bearded Emsahl grunts an assent.

Still, it is midmorning before Lorn sees the scouts riding toward them. He turns toward the captain. “Emsahl, would you have one of your lancers summon the officers?”

“Yes, ser.” The older captain turns in the saddle. “Dwyt, send a messenger. Majer wants the officers quick-like.”

“We’ll rein up here, and let the men stand down for a bit.” Lorn turns in the saddle. “Companies! Halt!”

“Companies halt!” The orders echo back down the long column while Lorn rides forward another fifty cubits or so to wait for the scouts.

Emsahl rides up to join him, followed by the other officers, one by one, coming as they do from farther back in the column. Gyraet, bringing up the rear with Sixth Company, is the last to rein in his mount with the others, only moments before the two scouts arrive.

“Go ahead and report,” Lorn says.

“Yes, ser,” offers the square-bearded and older lancer scout. “We took the back side of the hills, ser, like you ordered, and looked down. There be no one even looking at the roads. Men in the fields are plowing, and others be doing ditchwork and such.”

“How many people?”

“Twentyscore, I’d judge, from the dwellings, but that be including women and children.”

“Probably eightscore men of all ages,” Lorn muses aloud. “The ditchwork is along the river?”

“Yes, ser.”

“The far side?”

The younger scout nods. “Mayhap a halfscore there, could be a few more.”

“Are there many herders or others farther out in the fields?”

“Could be some. Didn’t see any, ser.”

“What about flocks or herds?”

“None more ’n kay from the town, then, ser.”

“Thank you. If you’d stand down for a few moments…” As the scouts move away, Lorn dismounts, almost slipping on the damp clay, and waits for the others to do likewise, and for the scouts and two other lancers to hold their mounts. Then he unrolls the map and hands one side to Rhalyt to hold while he points out the landmarks and begins to explain. “Here’s the town. The road comes in here. There are the ditches, and here’s the center of the town. Rhalyt-your company crosses the stream at the ford here, and heads east. Your task is to take out all the men working on the ditch. Use sabres or short bursts, and make it quick. Then come back down the road to the north of the ditches. You can kill any man old enough to bear a blade, but don’t touch the women or the children.”

“Yes, ser.”

“We’ll also send one company around the town to the road that leads northwest. That company will be Second Company.” Lorn looks at the young captain Esfayl. “Your task is to make sure no one rides out of the town-no one. We don’t want word being spread that we’re here-at least not if we can help it. You ride west on this side of the river-there’s a lane ahead, I think, and then cross the stream and hold the road west out of the town.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn looks at Gyraet. “Captain-you’ll stay with the main body until we reach the crossroads here on the other side of the ford. Then you take the lane out this way, to the north, and sweep through that area.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn looks around the officers. “Our tasks are simple. We want to kill any of the barbarians who might ride against us, but no women unless they take up arms. Once we’ve removed anyone who can raise a blade and we hold the town, we want to take all the blades, and all the mounts, and we’ll need supplies to get to the next town and mounts to carry them.”

“All the mounts, ser?” asks Esfayl.

“If they have no mounts, they can’t ride after us or send word somewhere else quickly after we leave.”

Cheryk nods, and he and Emsahl exchange glances.

“It sounds simple, and something will probably go wrong,” Lorn says, “but keep in mind that you want to make sure that this town won’t be able to attack Cyador for a good long time. This is only the first town, not the last…so have your men use sabres when they can-but only when they can safely.” Lorn rolls up the map. “Do you have any questions?”

Glances flick back and forth between the officers.

“Guess I’ll ask, ser,” offers Cheryk. “You’re planning a campaign, ser, not just a few raids?”

“If we can do it,” Lorn admits. “If things don’t work, then we change. The more towns and blades and mounts we can take out, though, the fewer barbarians you’ll face this year, maybe for a few years.”

Cheryk nods. “Best we take as many as we can, losing as few as we can.”

When no one else volunteers a question, Lorn steps to the side and slips the map into the long pouch behind his saddle. “Let’s form up. We’ll try a four-abreast front once we get to the other side of the stream.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn swings back into the gelding’s saddle, then waits for the officers to rejoin their companies and pass the orders. His eyes keep looking down the empty road, then back along the column that holds six companies.

“Ser?” Emsahl’s voice is polite. “Third Company’s ready.”

“Thank you. We’d better wait a few more moments.”

Lorn turns the gelding and stands in the stirrups. He watches as Gyraet rides out to the shoulder of the road and lifts his arm. “They’re ready in the rear. Column forward!”

The orders ripple back, and, as the Mirror Lancers ride to the northwest, Lorn wonders once more about what he plans. He is no better, and perhaps worse than the barbarians, for although they slaughter innocents, they were not born in Cyad.

The Cyadoran forces ride a kay or so farther, before the road swings more northward and toward the stream, but the road remains empty.

Esfayl lifts a hand in salute as his Second Company passes Lorn, and turns due west on the lane or animal track that parallels the stream on the south side. Lorn returns the salute.

“No one ahead, ser,” reports the scout who has pulled his mount around and beside the sub-majer.

“Still?”

“No, ser.”

The road curves out from behind the hills and slopes down for a hundred cubits, before twisting back around a hillock with trees spaced across it, clearly an orchard of some sort, although the limbs are near empty except for scattered and furled gray winter-leaves. As the column nears the orchard, a figure-a lanky youth in a matted sheepskin jacket-stares from behind a tree where he has been emptying a sweetsap bucket. After a moment of silence, his mouth open, his eyes taking in the lancers in their winter jackets and uniforms, he runs, yelling, around the hillside toward the small hut partway around its base, perhaps three hundred cubits to the west. Whitish smoke rises from the chimney of the hut. As he runs, the youth yells, “Demons! White demons!”

“Let him go,” Lorn says. “We need to get across the stream.” He urges the gelding into a fast walk, aware as he speaks of a sweet odor in the air. Something from boiling down the sweetsap?

He concentrates on the road, as it slopes downhill and curves back to the ford. There, the brownish water is almost fifty cubits wide, and runs swiftly, nearly knee-deep on the mounts, as the lancers cross in pairs. The water is higher than normal, running through leafless bushes on both sides. The slope on the north side bears several sets of ruts and two or three sets of hoofprints, not even recent.

The gelding sidesteps and whuffs at the top of the rise before the road resumes, and Lorn glances around, but the crossroads is empty. Lorn leads the column to the left, westward toward the town.

The first dwelling west of the crossroads and toward the center of the small town is a single-story hovel on the left side of the road, less than twenty cubits back from the rutted track. It has mud-brick walls and a thatched roof that is dark with age. A bearded man, about Lorn’s age, peers from the window as if he cannot believe what he sees.

Hsst! Lorn’s single firebolt goes through the man’s neck, and there is a scream from within the house.

“Frig!”

“Majer means to wipe ’em out…”

“…what they been doing to our folk for years…”

Lorn presses his lips together. He glances over his shoulder, but Gyraet and his Sixth Company have already veered off from the main body and quick-trot northward on the narrow farm lane. The dust farther east and behind the column shows that Rhalyt’s First Company is moving east toward the ditchworkers.

“Quick-trot! Now!” Lorn orders, and the three captains behind him echo the orders, which are relayed by the squad leaders.

As they ride westward, toward the town, even from a half-kay away, Lorn can see that the houses are not set square to the road, or to the lanes, but almost haphazardly, with ramshackle outbuildings, and often piles of rubbish within kays of the dwellings. An odor, both rancid and acrid, hangs over the place.

Lorn unsheathes the sabre, holding it in his left hand with the reins, for the moment, the firelance out and leveled in his right, as they ride toward the first clumps of dwellings.

“Get the demons!”

From the right, charging from behind an abandoned and roofless hovel, rides a group of barbarians, perhaps a halfscore bearing the long and dark iron blades of Hamor. Ignoring the superior numbers of the lancers, they spur their mounts toward the four-abreast front of Mirror Lancers that is all the road permits.

“Short bursts!” Lorn says. “Short bursts!” He follows his orders with two quick hsssing blasts. One barbarian topples from his saddle, and another lurches sideways into the mount of the rider beside him.

Hsst! Hssst!

Lorn ducks a wildly-swung blade, then triggers a quick fireblast at a figure under a sagging porch who is drawing a longbow. The man drops, and a small fire begins in the wooden planks around his feet.

Lorn sees several figures running down a lane to the left and turns the gelding. “Third Company…first squad! Follow me!”

“First squad! Follow the majer!” Emsahl echoes.

Lorn urges the gelding forward, and within a hundred cubits he sweeps up on a running figure, using the Brystan sabre and a hint of chaos as the man tries to throw himself aside-too late. Another man tries to duck behind a low tree, but Lorn directs a chaos-bolt from the firelance through his shoulder.

“Demons! They’re everywhere!” screams a girl or a woman.

Lorn reins up to the side of the lane, glancing past the house to his left where three lancers are riding down a pair of barbarians. A gray-haired woman throws herself from a raised porch, a long dagger in hand, but the nearest lancer twists away, and levels his lance. Hssst!

The woman staggers, and his mate slashes down with a sabre.

Lorn turns. Two younger men, barely old enough to hold blades, charge from behind the side of the porch.

Hsst! The first goes down with a bolt from Lorn’s firelance. The second lifts his blade as if to hurl it toward Lorn, but another lancer rides by and cuts through the youth’s shoulder with a sabre.

Lorn leads the first squad along the lane, catching sight of three men running from what appears to be a smithy. “Get them!” He gestures for three lancers to ride them down, before turning the gelding to his right to face a gray-bearded rider with a long and ancient blade. Lorn does not attempt swordplay, but drills a chaos-bolt through the man’s chest, and rides past.

A woman screams and runs from a hut to grab a child, scooping him up in her arms and then scrambling back through a door that she slams shut.

Lorn passes the hutlike dwelling and turns to the left, paralleling the main street, the first squad riders following him. They sweep the back lane, finding and slaying perhaps another six or seven men, before Lorn regath-ers the scattered squad, and rides back to the main street or road that parallels the stream, where he reins up. The main road in the town has not even a square, just several buildings clumped together, on both sides. Scattered along the roadside are bodies. One is that of a woman, a blade lying by her outstretched arm. The others are all men.

Flames are already crackling from several buildings.

At the sound of mounts, Lorn turns and looks through the growing smoke as Emsahl brings in the second squad of Third Company. “We cleared out the houses along the left side, ser. Quytyl and Fifth Company did the right side.”

Lorn glances at Emsahl. “Did you lose anyone?”

“No, ser. Few slashes, nothing serious.”

Lorn nods, and the air is silent except for the orders of officers and squad leaders, and the sound of flames. The sub-majer glances up as another set of riders approaches from the west. Esfayl reins up with perhaps a halfsquad.

Lorn waits.

“We’re holding the east road, ser. About a halfscore tried to escape or send word. One tried to go through the fields.” After a moment, the curly-haired young captain adds, “We killed them all.”

“Good.” Lorn nods almost reluctantly. “It’s hard that way, but they won’t be killing our women and children.”

In time, Rhalyt appears, leaving his company halted in a four-abreast formation. “We took out the ones on the ditch, ser. Close to a score. A bunch of herders saw us, and got their mounts. Almost another score. We killed most of them, but one rode east, and we couldn’t get him.”

“That can happen.” Lorn pauses. “Did you lose any lancers?”

“Two wounded, ser. Not bad.”

As Cheryk rides up, Lorn glances to the two undercaptains. “Rhalyt-you need to patrol the lanes on the river side. Don’t go into any more houses. If someone tries to use a bow, just use a firelance. If they hide, use the lance on something around the house that will burn it.

“Quytyl, you do the same thing on the side of the main street here away from the river.”

“Cheryk will be gathering supplies and blades.” Lorn gestures to the normally taciturn older captain. “You know what supplies we’ll need.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Take what food you can find quickly and put in on the captured mounts.” Lorn swallows. “Water all the mounts, and make sure everyone eats something. Don’t let anyone go off alone. Then burn the barns and granaries.”

“Ser?”

“We’re not coming back this way, and if they don’t have food, they’ll not be riding south into Cyador.”

Cheryk nods. Lorn can also see the nod from Emsahl.

Mounted on the gelding, the Third Company’s first squad behind him, Lorn waits and watches as Cheryk’s men set to work and as another set of buildings begins to flare into flame. He tries not to look at the scattered bodies, mostly bearded, that are strewn along the main street, and not at that of the woman.

He and the first squad slowly patrol the main street, waiting for Cheryk to gather supplies, but they see no one, and hear no one, although at one point, Lorn thinks he hears sobs from a shuttered dwelling. He does not stop.

The sun is into early afternoon when Cheryk reports. “We’ve got three captured mounts strapped with blades, and ten with provisions we can use. Also ran into a few more men with blades.”

“Did you lose any lancers?”

“No, ser. Nasty slash, but clean, for one. They weren’t expecting us.”

“No. There hasn’t been an attack into Jerans in more than a generation. They’ve forgotten what our holders and herders face every year.” Lorn pauses. “We need to tell the men that it will get tougher with each town.”

“Yes, ser.” Cheryk pauses, the glances across at Emsahl who has ridden up and waits. “Each town?”

“Each town we can manage, as I said earlier. We’re going as far as we can. We need to remove not just the barbarians, but their blades and where they get them. And no matter how fast we move, sooner or later, someone is going to discover we’re coming. We’ll take the west road, following the stream. There’s another town there, a good forty kays along. We’ll stop short, and then strike there tomorrow.” Lorn looks at the two older officers, first Emsahl, then Cheryk. “Are we ready to move out?”

“Yes, ser.”

“You, Cheryk?”

“Yes, ser.”

“Companies! Forward.”

The column of Mirror Lancers starts out the west road, riding through the swirling smoke and the odor of death and charcoal.

“White demons…” hisses a woman from the shuttered windows of the house twenty cubits to Lorn’s right.

Without slowing, Lorn looks at her and levels the firelance.

She does not move from the window, nor does she wince. “Go ahead. Turn me to ashes, brave demon.”

“We don’t kill children. Unlike your brave warriors, who gut women and small children.”

“You took our lands.”

Lorn does not answer. He has no answer, for there is none. His hands bear unseen blood, from the old woman just killed by his lancers to the olive-grower’s daughter in Biehl, yet he doubts that any course he would take that might be effective would not shed some innocents’ blood. The only real question is how he can shed the least. He also doubts that the ancients had many choices, except dying or turning into barbarians, and the barbarians will always think the lands of Cyador are theirs.

“Demons…” hisses the woman from the window he has passed.

Lorn does not look back at the smoke curling into the sky, but keeps his eyes fixed ahead, looking for men with blades, and for Esfayl’s Second Company on the road before them.