Alector's Choice (35 page)

“Warm afternoon,
sir,” said Chyndylt, from where he rode beside Mykel.

“Like summer in
Faitel,” replied Mykel. “Hate to think what summer here will be like.”

The captain and third
squad rode downhill, a half vingt ahead of the prisoners returning to the mine
compound. The troopers had their rifles ready, if casually.

“Maybe they’ll be
sending us back by then.”

“Not a chance.”

“Haven’t seen
anything here today.”

“No.” Mykel doubted
they would see many more of the escaped miners who had been sniping. They
couldn’t have been that numerous to begin with, and Fifteenth Company had
killed close to a score. He was far more worried by armed horse companies from
the west. While Fifteenth Company was more than a match for any single company
raised in Dramur, Third Battalion was down to four companies, all understrength.
He’d taken third squad back out earlier than usual for the afternoon road
sweep, and had them ride down toward Dramuria for half a vingt before heading
back past the camp to the mine. He hadn’t seen any signs of riders, but that
only meant that no one was riding at that moment—or not riding swiftly.

Mykel cocked his
head. He’d heard something ahead, from near the mining camp. It might have been
horses, or the report of a rifle. Yet it was early for the other squads to be
returning from their various patrols. j

“Eyes sharp!” he
called out.

They rode another two
hundred yards southward along the graystone road. Mykel could sense something
was not as it should have been. He studied the walls of the prisoners’ camp.
The outer gates, which should have been open for the returning captives, were
closed.

Then, as he watched,
a line of riders in blue uniforms rode toward the walls, firing at the guard
towers. The Cad-mian guards fired back. Several of the blue-clad riders twisted
in their saddles, and one slowly pitched back over the rear of his mount.

Mykel turned in the
saddle. “Third squad! Close up on me!” As he spoke, he could see the attackers
re-forming. It wouldn’t be long before they started up the road toward third
squad.

“We’ll keep riding,”
he told Chyndylt. If third squad attempted to retreat, they’d end up pinned
against the stockade at the mine. He doubted they could get through the
prisoners, in any case. “Send back a scout to get as many of the local Cadmians
up here as you can. We’ll take the west side. Let them have the east.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Third squad! Quick
trot to the level flat ahead!”

Mykel kept watching
the riders below, swirling under the camp walls, with an occasional rider being
picked off by the tower Cadmians.

A horn sounded a
triplet, then a second.

The swirling mass of
blue coalesced into a rough formation.

“Third squad! Halt!”
Mykel reined up on the flatter section of the mine road, below which was a
slight incline down to the mining camp. The attackers would have to climb the
rise, such as it was, but it was the best that he could manage.

The attackers began a
charge, at close to a full gallop.

“Firing line! On the
oblique!” Mykel barked out. “Bring down the lead mounts!”

His own rifle was up
even before he had finished shouting out the commands. He forced himself to
sight on the mount of one of the first riders in blue, squeezing the trigger
with an even pressure, and willing the shot home.

Crack!

The lead mount
lurched, then went down, at enough of an angle that the mount to the left also
fell.

Mykel targeted
another mount, more to one side, and fired, twice, before that horse stumbled
and collapsed.

The continuing fire
of the Cadmian rifles began to take a toll, and the blue-clad riders slowed
behind a mass of fallen mounts and men caught in the space between the road
walls.

To his left, Mykel
saw Meryst and his rankers also laying down a curtain of fire. The attackers
tried to bring their ri-j fles to bear, but seemed hampered by their numbers
and a lack of a clear formation and leadership.

As he reloaded, Mykel
glanced back over his shoulder. A good ten prisoners, five pairs, each pair
linked by chains, were running down the center of the road, between third squad
and the local Cadmians, taking advantage of the local Cadmian troopers’ concentration
on repelling the attack of blue-clad riders.

“Save us! Save us!”
The prisoners raced toward where the attacking horsemen had broken into groups
behind all the fallen men and mounts.

A squad leader
wheeled his mount toward the prisoners, then reined up and aimed his rifle over
the fallen men and mounts. The first shot took the leading prisoner through the
chest, and he sprawled onto the road dragging down the man chained to him.

More shots filled the
space between the road walls. Several more prisoners went down.

A horn sounded twin
doublets, twice.

The blue mass of
riders seemed to swirl, then turn and retreat downhill.

Mykel fired the last
shots in his rifle, watching as another trooper in blue sagged in the saddle,
and as the rider beside the wounded man grabbed the reins and guided the
disabled man’s mount down the road toward Dramuria.

A scattering of shots
continued, chasing the attackers downhill toward and past the walls of the
mining prison camp. Two of the trailing riders were hit, one slumping over his
mount’s neck, the other flying backward and sideways off his horse, his body
being jerked along for a good ten yards by the single boot caught in the
stirrups before he struck the stones, unmoving.

The attackers had
close to two companies, although it had been hard to tell exactly because they
had not kept in much of a formation or in any real order.

“Cease fire!” he
ordered, although most of the firing had died away. “Reload and hold!”

From the other side
of the road, Meryst echoed the command.

Mykel glanced
downhill at the wounded and dead prisoners sprawled across the graystones of
the road. He looked sideways across a space of four yards at the other captain,
catching Meryst’s eyes. “The prisoners? Why did they shoot them?”

“The western seltyrs
don’t believe that a man can change,” replied Meryst. “Once he has become
tainted with evil, he can only be a slave or dead.”

“So they shot the
prisoners?”

“Slaves and prisoners
cannot be allowed to escape.”

Mykel winced. He
looked at the dead mounts, and dead and wounded attackers strewn on the road.
Then he glanced back around him. There were at least three empty saddles from
those among third squad. Only three? That was in itself amazing, or a testament
to the poor shooting of the attackers.

Where had the blue
riders come from? Had they merely evaded Seventeenth Company? Or had they
overwhelmed it?

After a late supper,
and well after Sentya and Zistele had gone to bed—and to sleep—Lystrana and
Dainyl sat in the darkened sitting room, each in an upholstered chair with a
square table set in the corner between them. Lystrana had turned off the
light-torches earlier. With their Talent, they needed little light to see. Each
held a goblet of golden brandy.

“Neither the marshal
nor the Highest want me back in Dramur anytime soon. That’s clear.” Dainyl
fingered his chin, too square compared to that of most alectors.

‘They’re afraid that
you’ll put a stop to whatever they have in mind.“

“They don’t want me
crossing them, the way Tyanylt did? Have you ever found out any more about
that?”

“No. It’s as though
he never existed.” She raised her eyebrow. “That’s the way they have always
dealt with those who will not follow their plans. Would you expect otherwise?”

“No. One could hope…
but no.”

“Some matters do not
change.” Lystrana lifted her goblet and sniffed the brandy. “This is good.”

“Better than what
Kylana remembers of Ifryn,” replied Dainyl sardonically. “I wish that I could
figure out what they have in mind. They want an armed revolt. What I don’t
understand is why. It’s not merely preempting trouble. Things wouldn’t have
gotten this far for decades. Do you believe they’re thinking that much ahead?”

Lystrana laughed.
“They might be, but that doesn’t explain why they don’t tell you. There’s
something else.” Her husky voice died away before she spoke again. “All of
these i revolts, these problems, are all in out-of-the-way places— Dramur,
Hyalt, Iron Stem… Coren…”

“Coren? I asked the
marshal. He said that the locals were protesting the logging rules and setting
fires, and that it was weeks before word got to Elcien. What happened?”

“Someone started
setting fires in the forests there last fall. Local patrollers began tracing
the arsonists. Last month, there was another fire. They tracked the arsonists
through the snow. The patrollers never came back. Another set of patrollers
found blood on the snow, but no bodies. Three of them were shot and killed. One
escaped. When he got back to Coren, he found that patroller headquarters had
been blown up. The whole town revolted. It took weeks to get word back because
the patroller had to hide until he could flag down a sandoxen coach.”

“Why did the locals
revolt?”

“What the marshal
said was essentially right. The life-force alectors in Lyterna calculate how
much should be logged on what schedule. There’s some room for local needs and
such, but some loggers always want more coins. Late last harvest they started
logging more trees and sending them downriver in rafts. Somewhere west of
Vysta, in the south part of the Mitt Hills, on the north side of the river, a
trader opened a mill and began selling timber and planks to locals there. He
wasn’t paying his tariffs, and he was dumping all the wastes into the stream
that drained into the river. He was caught and executed in Novem. That was when
the fires started.”

Dainyl shook his
head. “Always the golds.” He sipped his brandy.

“We all have our
weaknesses, dearest.”

“Maybe whatever this
Asulet tells me when I get to

Lyterna will make
things clear.“ Dainyl had his doubts that any alector suggested by Shastylt
would be of much help in figuring out what was behind the mess in Dramur.

“I checked the
records. Asulet has been a senior alector in lifeforce management for more than
a hundred years. It could be longer, but I’d have to get a seal-warrant to open
the archives.”

“Lifeforce
management? What does that have to do with the Myrmidons?” Dainyl thought for a
moment. “The Highest seemed to think it was important. He was dissembling about
the ancient ones—the soarers—but not about that.”

“They’re keeping
something about the ancient ones hidden. I checked again. There aren’t any
records anywhere about them. There’s not a single real fact or a single
specific location where one was sighted, or where any ruins or artifacts have
been found.”

“That’s because
they’re more powerful than anyone wants to admit.”

“I’d say it’s because
they’re intelligent, and what we’re doing is causing them to die out.”

“There’s no question
they’re intelligent,” replied Dainyl. “You think that our management of lifeforce
mass is causing them to die out?”

“They were already
dying out. There were ruins when the first alectors arrived. If we’d had any
conflicts with them, there would have been records of fights, legends, that
sort of thing.”

“But we’re making
Acorus warmer. If they need the cold…”

“Then we’re causing
them to die out,” Lystrana said. “But if we don’t, then what do we do when the
lifeforce on Ifryn is gone?”

They sat in silence
for several moments.

“Do you think the
marshal and your Highest know you have more Talent than you’ve shown?” Lystrana
finally broke the silence.

“I don’t think so.
What do you think?”

“I think that, if
they knew, you’d still be a colonel—or requested to resign.”

“Or dead?”

She nodded, her face
somber.

“I’ll have to be most
careful.” He paused, then added, “Tell me about the Dual Scepters.”

Lystrana looked up,
both concerned and surprised. “Who—”

“The Highest. He said
that pteridons were created here, but more couldn’t be once the Dual Scepters
were placed.”

“I didn’t know that.
I know that the Dual Scepters are somewhere in Corus in different places, that
they have something to do with why the Tables work, and that without them we
couldn’t live here, because they’re key to the link to Ifryn. Every time I’ve
asked or hinted to know more… no one will say anything.”

Dainyl nodded,
slowly. “What about Table travel? How does it work?”

Lystrana raised an
eyebrow.

“That’s one reason
why they’re sending me to Lyterna. I’m supposed to be briefed on things that
only the submar-shal and the marshal—and I suppose the Highest—know, and I’m to
be taught how to use the Table to travel.”

“It’s not that hard.
They make it seem—” Lystrana stopped. “I shouldn’t say that. If you can
concentrate on the location vectors, it’s very easy. If you can’t, you’ll die
in the translation tubes or turn into a wild translation—and die very quickly
thereafter.”

“What are location
vectors?”

“When you step onto a
Table, you drop into darkness, and you see with Talent, not with your eyes.
Your mind and Talent are what guide you; but wherever there’s a Table, there’s
a location vector. To me, they look like long triangles, arrowheads. The one
for Tempre is blue. The one for Elcien is white, edged with purple. Dereka is
golden red.”

“Is there any reason
for the colors?”

“If there is, I don’t
know what it is,” replied Lystrana. “Beyond identifying the location of the
Table, that is.”

“How do you use your
mind and Talent?”

“It’s something that
you have to feel. I don’t think you’ll have to worry.”

Dainyl could tell she
was concerned. “Then why are you worried?”

“You’ve learned too
much. You couldn’t have Talent-read that when we were married.”

“Why are you
worried?” Dainyl asked again.

“Because… because you
should do well with the Tables… but you never know. When I first tried it, I
almost froze in the blackness. It was days before I felt warm. Clanysta was far
more Talented than I was, but she stepped into a Table and never reappeared.”

“Why do I have to
learn in Lyterna?”

“You could learn
anywhere there’s a Table. I’d wager your Highest has several reasons.” She took
another sip of brandy and shifted in the chair so that she was facing Dainyl
directly.

“He wants me out of
the way. It gives him a way to keep me there longer. Someone else can teach me,
and if I fail, it’s not on his head.”

“That covers it, I’d
say.”

“A revolt in Dramur…”
mused Dainyl once more. “But why?”

“We won’t solve that
mystery tonight, dearest.” Lystrana set down the goblet and rose, stretching
sensually. “It’s not too late, and you are leaving tomorrow.”

Dainyl left his
goblet on the table and stood, taking her outstretched hand.