Alector's Choice (17 page)

Mykel and Fifteenth
Company rode northwest over yet another narrow road, toward the town of Jy-oha.
Both sides of the road were without shoulders and bordered by brush olives and
other growth, but all of it was just high enough and thick enough so that
seeing more than a few yards into the growth was difficult. At the same time,
he was following a map about which he had more than a few doubts with orders
that he trusted even less. How exactly was he supposed to “capture and subdue
rebel forces opposed to the Code of the Duarches” with almost no information on
how large such forces might be or where they were.

As he rode and
studied the road, rising slowly before him to cross between two low hills more
than a vingt ahead, Mykel tried to figure out where he had erred in the mess at
Stylan Estate. Should he just have followed the Code blindly, as the majer had
demanded? Mykel still thought that his instincts had been right. If he taken
Rachyla into custody immediately, Seltyr Ubarjyr would have protested. His
daughter would have been returned, either flogged or merely admonished, and at
some time in the future, armed attacks would have occurred, either against one
of the battalion’s companies or against other growers. Certainly, the seltyr
had to have been making plans to arm his forces for some time. But why? And for
what purpose?

Why had Majer Vaclyn
gone out of his way, even put himself in danger, to make certain that the
seltyr was dead? Was that because he feared that the seltyr’s capture would
create a rallying point? If matters were so desperate, why hadn’t a ajpipany of
Myrmidons been sent in? Or was Vaclyn covering up something?

Who in the Duarchy
had betrayed the seltyr? It had to be someone high enough—a regional bursar?
Someone even higher? But why would anyone higher, an alector, even bother with
a local grower? Why would anyone want to arm locals, when the alectors went out
of their way to keep rifles out of the hands of landers and indigens? Mykel
took a deep breath. For all his questions, he neither had answers nor any way
to find them, and worrying over them would just distract him from the tasks at
hand.

He looked at the rise
in the road ahead, where it passed between the low hills. Although he couldn’t
say why, something bothered him. That was another problem. His feelings were
often right, but he’d been raised as a city boy, and he couldn’t always
explain—either to squad leaders or to his superiors—why he had done something
or not done it.

One of the scouts
reined up short, more than a half vingt ahead of the vanguard. Mykel watched as
the trooper pulled out his rifle and fired at the ground in front of him. A
plume of dust rose, more than should have. The trooper nodded and started to
turn his mount.

Crack! At the sound
of the rifle, both scouts completed the turn and spurred their mounts back
toward the van of Fifteenth Company.

“Company halt! Rifles
ready!” snapped Mykel. “Road oblique! Both sides!”

First squad swung out
to the left, and second to the right, as much as they could, in a staggered
formation that allowed more rifles to be aimed at an enemy ahead.

Another short volley
of shots chased the returning scouts, all coming from the brush-covered
hillside to the right of the road. None appeared to strike the two Cadmians.

“Take cover on the
right!” Mykel ordered.

As the scouts neared,
Mykel gestured them to him. “What did you find?”

“Pits… holes in the
road,” explained Gerant^reining up and bringing his mount as close to the brush
olive as he could. “Looked like sharpened stakes in them. Not all that deep,
maybe a third to a half yard, but deep enough to mess up a mount. If you were
riding hard…”

Mykel understood—a
broken leg or worse for the mount and a broken neck for the rider.

Over the next quarter
glass, there where were no more shots, and no sounds from ahead. In the end,
Mykel chose slowness and cover, using the first two squads to advance on foot,
using poles to probe any suspicious ground and keep-ing close to the brush
olives. Fifteenth Company took no other shots, but more than two glasses passed
before the company held the rise. They also discovered more than a score of
pits, most a yard wide and a third of a yard deep. A darkish substance had been
smeared on the stakes. Pickets had been posted in all directions, but Mykel
doubted they would see or hear anyone.

“Have them use
something to break them and fill the holes,” Mykel told Bhoral. “If we leave
those… how many riders will get hurt, including some of our own dispatch
riders? Can you imagine what the majer will have to say, especially after the
mess in Enstyla?”

Bhoral nodded slowly.
“Sorry time when mounted rifles have to fill holes in a road.”

“There’s no help for
it.”

Mykel looked at the
descending road that was barely more than a lane. It circled around the base of
the western hill until it headed almost due west, but only for another vingt.
Then it turned back north and climbed between two more hills.

He had to wonder how
many more traps and ambushes lay ahead before they reached Jyoha—where they
were supposed to establish a base from which to attack the escaped prisoners
who were part of the rebel forces. According to the map, Jyoha lay less than
ten vingts away.

Ten long vingts.

By Londi morning, the
more Dainyl considered the implications of what he had observed, the less
comfortable he felt, especially as a mere observer in Dra-mur. Yet he had very
little proof that he could bring to the

High Alector of
Justice, or for that matter, even indirectly through Lystrana to the Duarch of
Elcien himself. Not only that, but bringing forward his suspicions looked to be
most unwise. The only hard evidence was something like a hundred and fifty
Cadmian rifles without maker’s marks or stamps to indicate whether they had
been made in Faitel or in Alustre. While some landers might have been able to
manufacture their own weapons, crafting on the captured rifles was both high
and standardized—and any facility that could provide that would be hard-pressed
to remain concealed. More important, the rifles looked and felt as though they
had come from an artisan facility.

There had been a
skirmish at Stylan Estate, where the contraband had been found, but nothing to
indicate what had prompted the revolt, or the breaking of the Code on the use
of Cadmian weapons—and none of those who survived could explain why any of it
had occurred. Dainyl had no doubt that it all involved some objective of the
Highest and the marshal, but he had no idea whether that purpose advanced the
goals of the Duarchy or was a plot against the Duarches—or against other high
alectors.

All the other events
were not matters that he could safely report, not in full, or events without
enough behind them for any meaningful conclusions to be drawn. He could report
the attack on himself, but not what the attacker had said. He could report that
the lander woman would not talk to him, but he could not point out that she was
resistant to the use of Talent. He could point out that someone was smuggling
the rifles into Dramur, but not who or why. He could report the ancient tunnel,
although he wanted to wait on doing that.

And behind all that
was one other constraint, one that faced all Myrmidons, indeed, all alectors. Compared
to the total lander and indigen population of Acorus, the Myrmidons were few.
Even the total number of Cadmians was small, particularly the battalions from
Elcien and Alustre or

Dereka, rather than
locally recruited and trained Cadmians, such as those under Majer Herryf.

For all that, he
needed to do something. At the very least, he needed to find out what Herryf
was doing and saying, and to do so, he needed to risk revealing what he had
kept hidden for years, but then, he and Lystrana had kept those abilities
hidden just for a situation such as he now faced.

With a wry smile, he
left his quarters and made his way down to the courtyard and toward the
headquarters building. He walked toward the north side of the structure and
into the deep early-morning shadows. There he paused, until he was certain no
one was looking in his direction before he raised a full Talent-shield. With
the shield in place, he planned to take advantage of common misperceptions.

Because alectors were
so much bigger than landers, most landers and indigens had no idea how quietly
an alector could move—or that an alector’s Talent could provide a concealment
from the eyes of all without Talent, and that was from all indigens and almost
all landers.

He moved silently
through the shadows until he reached the main entrance, where he slipped past
the duty desk and the unseeing squad leader who sat there. Concealed by Talent
or not, Dainyl kept to the side of the corridor. Talent-hiding wouldn’t keep
someone from walking into him.

Captain Benjyr and
Majer Herryf were alone in the ma-jer’s study.

Dainyl used his
Talent, hoping that the illusion would hold, to project an image of a closed
door, while he opened the door and eased into the study. He made his way to the
corner out of the direct sunlight coming through the window.

Neither man looked
up.

“… have (hey done?”
asked Herryf. “Besides kill one of the most respected seltyrs in Dramur,
imprison his daughter, and slaughter a hundred of his retainers? They hold the
roads. They ride through the plantations and upset the remaining growers. They
search wagons looking for rifles that aren’t there. Miners are still escaping,
or disappearing, which is worse, and the guano output continues to drop. The
council, the factors, and the growers have fewer and fewer golds, and prices
for food are rising rapidly. All this, and I have heard nothing from these
outland Cadmians. I have heard nothing from the Myrmidon colonel. He just
watches as Dramur is unraveling.”

“I had thought Majer
Vaclyn might have kept you informed, sir. He and his captains haven’t said much
at all, except for Captain Kuertyl. He is the kind who trades information the
way the factors trade goods.”

“What has he said?”

“The officers and
rankers are less than pleased with you. They feel that you should have handled
the problems with the miners with our forces.”

“How? We’ve been
trying for over a year. I was forbidden to create another company. I was told I
could not work with the council to create a local militia. What choices did I
have?”

Dainyl had not been
aware of what Herryf had suggested, but he wasn’t surprised that the marshal
would have limited the forces under the majer’s direct or indirect control.

“Sir?” ventured
Benjyr. “I was asked to tell you something.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know. It was
dark, and they approached me outside my brother’s house.”

He was lying about
that, Dainyl knew.

Herryf paused, then
asked, “What was this message of great import?”

“Some of the growers
to the north think that the Cadmians are there to take their lands.”

“How would they do
that?” Herryf shook his head. “Some people will believe anything.”

“Sir, they say that
the Cadmians will keep searching until they find weapons and rebels. Then
whatever growers where they’re found will be accused of supporting the rebels
and sent to the mines, and their lands put up for sale, or maybe just turned
over to the council. The colonel spent a lot of time with the guilds and the
director…”

Herryf frowned. “That
doesn’t make sense. Alectors don’t care that much about lands or trade. Why
would they… ?”

“Sir, I didn’t say it
made sense. That’s what some of them feel.”

About that, Dainyl
could sense, Benjyr was absolutely convinced.

“I’ll have to talk to
Majer Vaclyn. He won’t listen, but I’ll have to talk to him.”

“What about the
colonel, sir?”

“There’s no point in
that, except to alert him. He’d deny anything. If the alectors aren’t involved,
he would say that they weren’t. If they are, he’ll say the same.”

‘Two more miners
escaped yesterday,“ Benjyr said quietly.

“How? There’s an
extra company of Cadmians guarding the mine road.”

“No one knows. They
were missing when they were mustered to march back to quarters. Every span of
the mine was searched.”

“They must have been
hiding somewhere, and then they escaped the stockade after dark.” Herryf glared
at the captain. “This sort of thing makes us look incompetent, and it adds to
the illusion that there is some sort of overwhelming force against us.”

“But… sir… you
reported…”

“I reported we needed
an additional company of Cadmians to deal with the escapees, and that, in time,
unless we got a permanent addition to the compound, the escaped miners would
present a problem. I wish I’d never made the report. I was told—told, mind you,
Captain—that I was reporting an insurrection and to expect a full Cadmian
battalion and a Myrmidon observer.”

Behind his
Talent-shield, Dainyl frowned. That was what he had been told by the Highest,
and he had conveyed that to Herryf in one fashion or another, but Herryf seemed
to be telling Benjyr the truth about what he had reported to the marshal—or the
Submarshal.

Herryf stood. “I need
to walk around the compound, to be seen. You might as well accompany me.”

“Yes, sir,” replied
the captain.

Dainyl waited until
they had left before slipping out of the study and the headquarters building.

From the saddle of
the chestnut, as the company headed westward, Mykel glanced across the
ramshackle sheds and run-down holder’s dwelling that served as a base for the
Fifteenth Company. They had spent almost a week patrolling in and around Jyoha,
without ever seeing a rebel or an escaped mine prisoner. That might have been
because Fourteenth Company and Dohark had captured the few that were careless
or less adept at avoiding the Cadmians.

Fifteenth Company had
seen plenty of hoofprints, but neither the horses that made them nor the men
who rode those mounts. In following tracks and patrolling the roads, they had
lost two mounts to the poisoned stakes in the concealed pits in various lanes
and roads, and two troopers had been injured when the mounts went down. Four
others had been stung by nightwasps and had turned up with fevers and welts the
size of a man’s hand.

“I’ll keep fourth and
fifth squads with me,” Mykel said to Bhoral, confirming what he had told the
senior squad leader earlier. “After I talk with some of the crafters in the
village, we’ll look at that lane that winds up toward the ruins of the old
sawmill.”

“Still don’t
understand that,” replied Bhoral. “They built the sawmill, and the Myrmidons
burned it down? Why would they do that?”

“That’s one of the
things I’m going to try to find out.”

He’d already tried
talking to some of the crafters and found out next to nothing, but he’d kept
looking and listening, and now he was ready to try again.

Short of the town,
Bhoral and the first three squads split away, and Mykel and his smaller
contingent continued westward. The fields on each side of the lane into Jyoha
were filled with plants, supposedly all sunbeans. The beans were actually
oilseeds that, when pressed, provided a golden oil that was used for lamps
across Dramur. Some was shipped to Southgate as well, according to the grower
who had leased the run-down and near-abandoned holding to Third Battalion.
Mykel had seldom seen any workers in the fields, but the sunbeans didn’t seem
to require much care, and that might have been why they had displaced other
crops.

The houses on the
east side of Jyoha were one story and of mud brick, unlike the cut-stone
dwellings in Dramuria. The roofs were of faded red tiles. Some houses had been
plastered with stucco, then washed with pastel colors, mostly blues and greens;
but that had been sometime ago, for the wash had faded, and the red showed
through, giving the walls a pinkish tinge.

The three women doing
wash by a well looked away as the Cadmians neared, and another mother scurried
out from a small one-room dwelling and scooped up a bare-bottomed toddler and
carted her back into the mud-brick hut, closing the warped plank door firmly.

Several men stood on
the dusty porch of the one tavern in Jyoha, whose doors were closed. Two stared
at Mykel. He looked back until they dropped their eyes.

Mykel reined up
outside the chandlery, then turned to Dravadyl and Vhanyr, the fourth and fifth
squad leaders. “Ride around the village and see if you can spot anything
interesting. Swing back here in half a glass.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Try not to shoot
anyone.” Mykel offered a wry grin. “We don’t need any more pits dug in the
roads.”

“We won’t—not unless
they shoot first,” replied Dravadyl.

The captain
dismounted and tied the chestnut to the hitching post, two squat pillars built
of mud bricks connected by a rusty iron bar. He crossed the narrow porch and
stepped into the chandlery, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness. For the
last few days, he’d stopped there every day and bought something, usually some
item of provisions that he turned over to one squad leader or another. After
dismounting and tying the chestnut to the rail, he made his way inside.

A man not that much
older than he was stood in one corner, rearranging some cotton shirts folded on
a corner table. In a village as small and as isolated as Jyoha, the chandlery
carried far more items than it would in Dramuria, but fewer of each. Mykel
didn’t recall there even being a chandlery in Faitel, not that he’d ever seen.

“Good morning,
Harnyck,” Mykel offered.

“Morning, Captain.”
The man’s voice was even, neither friendly nor unfriendly.

Mykel walked to the
case that served, after a fashion, as a cooler, where he selected a small round
of hard yellow cheese. Holding it up, he asked, “How much?”

“For that one, seeing
as it’s you, Captain, two silvers.”

“Since I don’t want
special treatment, Harnyck,” Mykel bantered back, “how about one.”

“You’re not talking
like a good Cadmian officer, Captain. That’s the kind of bargain a smuggler
would force on a father needing milk for a starving bairn.”

“I’m glad you think
so highly of me. A silver and two.”

“You give me one and
three, and it’s yours.” Mykel threw up his hands. “What can I do? One and three.”
He fumbled in his wallet, then extracted the coins. Harnyck took them.

“I was wondering if
you could help me.”

“What are you looking
for?”

“Information. Not
about people. About the town.”

“Might be able to
help.” The man refolded a shirt, brushing off a small cobweb and setting it
back on the table. “Might not.”

“What did people grow
out east before the sunbeans?”

“They tried the
casaran trees, but the soil’s not right. What nuts they got were too bitter.
Not even the oldest nag would eat fodder with them in it. Then they tried wheat
corn, but the rust got it. The growers like the sunbeans because they don’t
take much work until harvest, and you get two crops a year here.”

“You know what
happened to the old sawmill?”

“The Myrmidons burned
it. No secret about that. Old man Baholyn decided the pines in the hills would
make good cheap timber, and he bought out the lands to the west. Didn’t pay
more than a few coppers a stead square. Once he had the land, he built the
mill. He’d been running it a quint less than a year, sending timber to
Dramuria, and coins were flowing in here for the first time ever. Then two
pteri-dons dropped right out of the sky. One of those big alectors walked up to
him and told him to close the sawmill and to stop cutting the timber.” The
chandler laughed. “Baholyn bowed and said he would. You don’t argue with them.”

“No, you don’t,”
Mykel agreed. “But why did they burn it?”

“He closed down for a
week, maybe two, and then he started running it at night. He did everything at
night, even carted the cut timbers and planks down to another barn on the edge
of town. I guess he figured that nothing would hap-pen if the place looked
closed during the day. He got away with it for another quint. Then the
pteridons came back and turned their lances on the mill. The Cadmians from
Dra-muria were here, too, and they surrounded the town. Ba-holyn hid somewhere.
The big alector had the troopers gather everyone in the square, and he made it
real clear. The town turned over Baholyn, or there wouldn’t be any town. Gave
everyone a glass. Said that every quarter glass that passed after that, they’d
torch another house, and they’d start with the biggest.” The man shrugged.
“Took a glass and a half before Baholyn’s daughter told ‘em where he was. Her
place was next. They flogged him in the square till he was dead, and then they
burned his body to ashes.”

“How long ago was
that?”

“Not quite ten
years.”

“What do people here
think about the guano mine?”

“It doesn’t do us
much good. The soil here isn’t that good, and we could use the bat shit here,
but folks can’t pay what they will in Southgate or wherever they ship it.”

“What about the
miners?”

“They say some of
them escaped. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“Has anyone seen
any?”

“No. Don’t know
anyone who has. Leastwise, no one who’s talked to me about it.”

“We keep finding
tracks of horsemen around Jyoha, but I can’t say that I’ve seen more than one
or two people riding. Most use carts or wagons—or walk. Who are the riders?”

“Don’t know as I
could say, Captain.”

“I don’t mean names,”
Mykel said with a laugh. “I meant… Are they young bloods, the younger sons of
growers, riding around because they’ve golds and little else to do? Or are they
raiders? Or these rebel miners that everyone talks about and no one seems ever
to have seen?”

“Can’t say as I
know.”

Mykel laughed. “I
know. No one knows, but you’ve prob-ably got a better idea than most How about
a guess, Harnyck?”

“Don’t have enough
growers around here for bloods. Land’s too piss-poor for even one seltyr. Same’s
true for raiders. Same’d seem to be true for rebels, as well.”

“So… who are we
talking about?”

“Seems to me,
Captain, that you’re doing the talking.”

“You’ve got me
again.” Mykel waited.

“Lots of smallholders
don’t have coin, can’t pay their land rents. Can’t stay there, neither, or the
growers’d catch ‘em and send ’em to Dramuria for a judgment. They’d have to
work it off in the mines. Even if they paid off one, there’d be another
waiting. Law says you can’t take their land if they spend at least one night a
week there. Doesn’t say how long on that night.” Harnyck smiled, brittlely.
“What else are they going to do?”

Mykel had the feeling
that the chandler was telling the truth, but only because he’d chosen his words
carefully. The captain wasn’t sure that he’d learned much of anything when he
left the shop. Outside, he only waited a few moments before the two squads
returned.

“What did you see?”
Mykel asked after he mounted and joined Dravadyl. Followed by the two squads,
they rode away from the square and toward the stone bridge over the small creek
on the west side of Jyoha.

“Nothing we haven’t
seen before. We get the looks that tell us to go away. People keep away, and
it’s like any other small town, far as I can figure. Did you have any luck,
sir?”

“Not really. The
chandler said the Myrmidons burned the sawmill. They also flogged the owner and
burned him in the square back there. They told him to close it. He ran it at
night.”

“Stupid. You don’t
mess with alectors.”

Mykel nodded.

The arched bridge was
barely wide enough for two mounts abreast, and the sound of hoofs echoed dully
on the stones. Once past the bridge, Mykel ordered, “Scouts out! We’ll take the
lane to the left.”

“Scouts out, sir!”

The narrow lane
showed few signs of travel, except by livestock, probably the small sheep that
were among the few domestic animals besides horses resistant to the
night-wasps. Less than five hundred yards up the lane, the meadows ended,
replaced by low trees, the tallest no more than head high, and all set amid a forest
of large stumps.

After rising gently
for another hundred yards, the lane leveled and brought them out onto a flatter
area, one without trees. It had been the sawmill site. The ground still held
depressions that once might have been wagon tracks, and on the left were the
ruins of the old sawmill.

Mykel let his eyes
rove over the rains. All that was left were the stone sides of the dried-up
millrace and the mud-brick walls of the foundation, both blackened from the
flame of the skylances. The sunlight glinted off glassy parts of the rained
brickwork. Nothing grew around the foundations. The nearest clumps of grass
were ten yards from the blackened foundation.

“Ten years ago? Just
ten?” asked Dravadyl. “Looks like it happened a lot longer ago.”

Mykel thought so,
too, but he knew that the chandler had not been lying.

“Hoofprints here,
sir!” called one of the scouts at the south end of the open space.
“Squad-sized. Some group as before, looks to be.”

Mykel rode forward to
where the scout waited. “How old?”

“Not today. Hasn’t
rained since we been here. Could be a week. I’d say more like three-four days.”

“We’ll follow them
and see what we can find.”

For a glass and a
half, Mykel and the two squads fol-lowed the tracks—carefully—with the pace
slower and slower as the lane became a path that turned into a trail through
more of the low trees, growing between the stumps of old-growth pines and firs.

“This must have been
where they were cutting the trees,” mused Mykel.

“Pretty large ones,
sir,” replied Vhanyr, who had moved up to ride with Mykel and Dravadyl. “Like
those over there.”

Mykel looked more
closely. The shorter trees and seedlings ended less than half a vingt ahead.
Beyond that, the taller old-growth pines rose like a brown-and-green wall. The
smallest of those giants was thirty yards high.

“Look sharp!” he
called to the scouts.

The trail ended in a
clearing beside the creek short of the forest to the south. Whoever they had
been tracking had used the clearing as a campsite, with cookfires, long since
cold.

“They forded the
creek and headed into the forest,” reported Dhozynt, the fifth squad scout. “Do
you want us to follow them?”

“Not today,” Mykel
said. “We’ll head back.”

He wasn’t about to
take just two squads into a massive forest he didn’t know, not when they’d had
more than enough problems on relatively clear roads and trails. If Ma-jer
Vaclyn wanted that, the majer would have to show up and lead the company into
the woods.

Just looking at the
giant pines gave Mykel an uneasy feeling, as if there were something beyond. He
laughed, softly. There was—a group of rebels with mounts and hostile intentions
toward him and his men.

He forced himself not
to look over his shoulder as they started the ride back to Jyoha. He would send
a report to the majer about what the chandler had said—that the riders were
poor men who were trying to keep their lands in bad times.