Mage-Guard of Hamor (28 page)

Over the next eightday, little changed. Third Company followed the road as it wound through the endless high forests of Merowey, past and through small hamlet after small hamlet. Rahl saw little on the road itself except timber wagons, and few enough of those. The farther they rode from Kysha, the fewer the wagons, and the more often they held the rarer woods, such as black oak or cinnamon goldenwood. He did not see any lorken.

The locals accepted, if grudgingly, the script proffered by Drakeyt in return for supplies. They might have to wait for actual coins, but the alternatives were far worse. Actual progress was comparatively slow, because of the need to scout and to question locals, and because for two of the days, Third Company had taken refuge in scattered barns around the hamlet of Azakleth, rather than attempt to ride through rain that varied between coming down in sheets and coming down mixed occasionally with hail.

“Welcome to winter in high Merowey,” had been Drakeyt's comment.

The hills became more rugged, but not that much higher, as they neared Koldyrk, and in more than a few places Rahl could make out bogs and marshy ground that might once have been lakes or actual swamps. The rocky height of some of the hills revealed patches of dark gray and light gray rock where little grew. Rahl could tell that the darker gray rock was softer because it had crumbled away from cliffs and spires in many places while the light gray stone had not. The vales and valleys were narrower and twisted more.

They had just passed one of the infrequent kaystones that bore the weathered inscription
Koldyrk—10 k
when one of the rear guards trotted forward and eased his mount alongside Drakeyt.

“Captains! There's a squad of heavies following us, and their scout rode up. They're reinforcements, and they've got a couple of pack animals and some spare mounts—and some dispatches for you.”

“Just a squad?” asked Drakeyt dubiously.

“Yes, ser, and the squad leader's Fysett. Went through the Worrak thing with him.”

“Might as well let them catch up with us.” Drakeyt raised an arm. “Company! Halt! To the rear, turn! Weapons ready!” He looked toward Rahl. “Might as well get them used to it. Let's go meet them.”

Rahl rode alongside the captain as they moved onto the shoulder of the road and headed back toward what had been the rear of Third Company. After they reached fourth squad, they could see that the squad of troopers approaching was less than half a kay away.

As they drew nearer, Rahl could also sense that the mounts were tired. He cleared his throat and looked to Drakeyt. “They've been pushing their mounts hard. They'll need some rest in Koldyrk.”

“That may be.”

The squad halted less than twenty cubits from Rahl, and the squad leader rode forward, reining up before the two officers. “Captains! Squad leader Fysett reporting as the fifth squad to Third Company.”

“Welcome, squad leader,” replied Drakeyt.

“I have dispatches. There's one for each of you, and we have some extra field rations and a half score spare mounts.” Fysett fumbled in the small leather dispatch case and extracted two envelopes. He eased his mount ahead and leaned forward to extend one envelope to Drakeyt. The second one went to Rahl.

“Thank you,” said Drakeyt. “We thought we'd try for Koldyrk today. Are your mounts up to another eight or nine kays?”

“At a walk, ser. We've been pushing hard to catch you. The Mage-Guard Overcommander said it was important.”

“Good,” Drakeyt said. “You're now fifth squad. We're close enough to make it before sundown.”

“Yes, ser.”

Rahl did not open the envelope until he and Drakeyt had ridden back to the head of the company and were preparing to resume the ride toward Koldyrk.

Rahl paused in reading the dispatch. Wasn't there any means by which any of the mage-guards could figure out what was happening on a more timely basis? What about using a glass? Rahl almost sighed as he thought about it. Screeing…he hadn't even practiced that, not that he'd had a glass to use in any case. Again, every time he thought about something, he seemed to remember something else he should have been doing or trying or practicing.

He went back to reading the remainder of the dispatch.

The signature was but a scrawled “T.”

Rahl wanted to snort. He had a lot to learn, but the rebels' stratagems had already become clear. At the cost of a score of men, Golyat had severely damaged one steamer, killed or wounded almost twoscore, delayed the Emperor's forces, and forced more time spent on scouting—and that was before Third Company had even gotten close to Dawhut, let alone to Golyat's main forces in Nubyat and Sastak.

Drakeyt had finished reading his dispatch and was frowning. Then the captain looked up. “Anything of interest?”

“Probably nothing beyond what you've gotten. The extra squad is so we can send more messengers, and the first part of the Emperor's forces left Troinsta last fiveday and will try to close the gap between us. The overcommander warned me that Golyat will try all sorts of stratagems to cost us men and mounts without losing many of his.”

“Or those he can easily afford to lose.” Drakeyt glanced back at the column behind, then to Rahl. “Ready?”

Rahl nodded.

“Company! Forward!”

Rahl studied the forest ahead on both sides of the road, with eyes and senses, trying to extend his order-sensing range. The farther he could reach, the more warning the company would have.

He almost shook his head. Who would have thought he'd end up as a mage-guard and a captain in Hamor? All because that slut-sow's ass Puvort hadn't liked him.

Koldyrk turned out to be half the size of Troinsta—and perhaps three times the extent of Istvyla. Once again, no one had seen or heard any rebels, but that did not surprise Rahl because the older road was a good ten kays from Koldyrk at the nearest and ran well north of a range of low hills that began on the northern side of the town. At least, that was what the maps showed and what the few locals who even knew of the old road said.

After a day of fruitless scouting around Koldyrk, partly to allow fifth squad some rest for mounts, on twoday, Third Company rode out once more, early on a clear morning so chill that Rahl could see his breath. The air was still, and the sun climbed into a hazy sky.

Well before midmorning, the day had become almost pleasant, and Rahl had to loosen his jacket. Drakeyt did not.

After a time, Rahl asked, “Do you know what the overall plan for the campaign is?”

“That's something they don't tell captains.” Drakeyt offered an indulgent smile. “I did ask the majer before we left, and he said that they didn't tell majers that much, either. He did say that the idea was to hold the coast with the navy and cut off supplies and arms, then attack from the northeast so that the rebels had nowhere to go.”

“We're riding a long ways. Do you really think that there isn't any way that we could have attacked from the coast?”

Drakeyt frowned. “Let's say that we did attack from the sea. Let's even say that we managed it without losing a whole lot of troopers. Let's say we were successful and took over the three port cities. Then what? Where do the rebels go?”

“They retreat,” Rahl said.

“Where?” Drakeyt offered a crooked smile. “Back through the lowlands, destroying the crops and taking food? Eventually, they might even get here.” He gestured toward the side of the road and the stand of ancient firs, flanked by another stand of ancient oaks. “You think we could ever root them out of that? The locals don't even know what goes on in there.”

“Won't some of them still escape that way?” Rahl asked.

“Of course, some will, but most of the holdings and crops will be intact. The holders will have script and coins they can use to buy seed. They'll grouse about why two brothers had to fight when both had all they needed, but it won't affect them nearly so much, and the Emperor doesn't have to keep fighting in his own lands.”

“Doesn't Golyat see that?”

“I'm sure he does. He doesn't have much choice. He can't feed his forces back here, not and hold them together, and he can't maintain a large enough army to fight off the Emperor if he leaves the coast. He's wagering that the Emperor and the High Command will botch things up enough that there's a standoff. If he can do that, he becomes outright ruler of Merowey, and he's still got a claim on the throne in Cigoerne. If that happens, he'd get support from Fairhaven, Austra, and maybe even Sarronnyn. Recluce wouldn't be displeased, either, I'd wager.”

If that occurred, from what little Rahl had seen in Cigoerne, he suspected that Mythalt would not remain emperor all that long. “If he does that, things could get interesting in Cigoerne.”

“That they could. Very interesting.”

Rahl hadn't even considered that if the Emperor did not lose, but simply failed to win—to crush Golyat thoroughly—he might end up losing more than Merowey. But if matters were that important, why had Taryl sent him with Third Company? It might be just as Taryl had told him, but Rahl had learned that very little was just what was explained. Rahl could think of a number of possible additional reasons, but he didn't know. Again, he wished people would explain fully, and not just what they thought one should know. While he trusted Taryl far more than he had any of the magisters in Recluce, he still disliked being kept in the dark.

“A man could go mad,” Drakeyt went on, “trying to guess all that might happen, and a mad captain doesn't do anyone much good. I imagine it would be worse for a mage-guard.” He paused, then grinned. “Not that some mage-guards might not be mad anyway.”

Rahl merely grinned back. Drakeyt was far better company than all too many mages and mage-guards he'd encountered.

The road began to climb as it wound out of another long and twisty valley, but it was close to noon when they finally reached a rise in the road—almost a pass between a long line of hills that looked to run from the southeast to the northwest. The summit of the crag to the north was at least five hundred cubits above the road, and slightly farther to the west and downhill, a stream splashed down in a thin waterfall. All morning they had seen not a single wagon on the road and but a handful of holders heading into Koldyrk.

He surveyed the land spreading out to the west in the valley ahead. Beyond where the road began to level out in a wider valley, on the south side, a low meadow surrounded by hardwoods stretched for several kays. “I don't see anything grazing down there in that meadow.”

“You won't. The chaetyl and black heather won't support cattle or sheep. Mostly, when we get closer to Dawhut, you'll see them harvesting peat and chaetyl from the bog meadows. They use them in brewing Vyrna. This is too far out, and I'd wager there are better bog meadows closer.”

“You'd wager? You don't know?” bantered Rahl.

“I know that if someone could make golds from harvesting, that bog meadow would have women and children cutting the turf, and wagons would be headed down to the distilleries around Dawhut.”

“Bog meadow? Does it rain that much here?”

Drakeyt shrugged. “I wouldn't know. I'd guess it rains in winter and spring here. It's not raining now, and it wasn't raining in late summer, and you don't get all these tall trees without rain.”

Rahl looked to the north and the heavy clouds gathering there. He had the feeling that they'd be experiencing those winter rains all too soon. Not for the first time, he wished he knew more about the geography of Merowey than what he had learned from the few maps he had seen.

By midafternoon on fourday, Rahl could definitely see the difference in the terrain. Instead of covering almost all the ground, the forest was much more scattered and mainly on the higher areas of the hills—except for the expanses of rocky areas—and they had passed bog meadows, swamps, and some small lakes. Some of the bog meadows had been partly harvested, but not recently.

They had lost another day, because the clouds that had been gathering had descended and pummeled them all through threeday. The road might have been clay-surfaced, but it had to have been built with sand and gravel beneath, because while it was soft on fourday, it was not extraordinarily muddy—just bad enough for Rahl's boots and lower trousers to become mud-caked.

For all of the patrols and scouts sent out, none had seen tracks near the main road, which wound and twisted around hills more than it had closer to Kysha. The older road that the rebel cannoneers had used swung much farther north, and, if the maps were correct, was more than thirty kays away at the nearest point to the route Third Company traveled. The holders in the scattered steads they had passed had seen almost no travelers at all in recent eightdays, and no one who might have been a rebel.

As Rahl rode around a long curve that followed the base of a rocky hillside that held only brush and scattered trees, he could see an expanse of rushes and cattails on the right side of the road extending for at least a kay to the west and north.

“Do you think we should have sent a patrol on the old road?” Rahl asked.

“With the two roads that far apart? What's the point? Our forces are taking this road, and this is the one we need to scout. Besides, we'd have to split our forces before we knew where the rebels might be.”

Farther ahead, Rahl could see the glint of gray-blue water—a lake of some sort. On the left side, a long ridge with scattered trees climbed gradually into a high hill, largely forested, on which he could see outcroppings of dark gray rock. He had the feeling that the road swung more to the north between the lake and the rocky hill. “I suppose you're right. If there were a road, it would still take close to two days to get from the nearest point on the old road to here, and we haven't seen any lanes or roads heading north.” There had been more than a few branching off to the south over the past two days, but the handful to the north had only gone a kay or less, basically to logging camps or forest steads.

“They won't mount an attack from the old road, not from so far away and from over those hills and rocks.” Drakeyt pointed to the line of rocky crags to the north. “Certainly not this far away from the coast.”

Rahl tended to agree with the older captain, but then, he wouldn't have expected a cannon attack on the
Fyrador,
either.

After they had ridden another kay or so, with the marsh to the right and downhill from the road widening every cubit they traveled, Rahl could see that the road turned almost due north to circle around the rocky hill more than a kay ahead. In fact, the road seemed to emerge from the marshy reeds and separate the hill from the lake. The road had actually been cut out of the hillside. For a moment, Rahl wondered why, until he looked north once again and realized that the middle of the lake extended all the way to an even rockier set of hills a half kay or more away. Digging the roadbed out of the side of the base of the hill ahead had probably been easier than it would have been to construct a road in the rugged terrain to the south or along the base of the rocky crags that rimmed the lake on the north. Equally important, a level road alongside a lake was easier on wagons and mounts than a route through the surrounding hills.

“Good thing it's cold,” observed Drakeyt. “We'd get eaten alive by red flies in the summer.”

While Rahl didn't think the day was warm, it was certainly far from what he would have called cold, and the sun was out, if under a high haze that turned the normally green-blue sky silver greenish. “I could do without flies.”

“Their bites leave welts,” the captain added.

“Remind me not to travel this road in summer.”

Drakeyt laughed.

As they rode nearer to where the marsh narrowed to a thin strip between the road and the lake, Rahl began to study the hillside above where the road turned north. There was something about it, but he wasn't certain what it might be.

The roadbed at the base of the hill was a good five cubits above the narrow boggy area that bordered the southern edge of the lake and no more than ten cubits wide from the stone retaining wall set against the cut in the hillside to the edge of the road shoulder before it dropped off into the marsh. In addition to the retaining wall, Rahl could sense a rough stone wall on the steep hillside just above the section of the road that curved back westward. He frowned. The lower retaining wall was worked stone. Why would the upper wall be so sloppily done? Or had it been added later to keep rocks from falling onto the roadway and blocking the route? Why was it just over that section of the road?

He concentrated more. The upper assemblage of stones wasn't really a wall…and he sensed men up there. “Halt the column.”

“Rahl?”

“Halt it. Quietly, if you can. There's a trap ahead.” He thought it was something like that.

Drakeyt raised his arm. “Company halt!”

“Company! Halt!” echoed Quelsyn.

Rahl pointed. “Where the road swings back west, there's a big pile of boulders, and there are men up there. I can't tell how many, but it's less than a score.”

“Can we get to them without coming up from below the rocks?”

“I might be able to find a way,” Rahl said. “We'd have to go back a bit and follow the ridge. Then we could come around the hill from just above that line of dark gray rock there.”

“That doesn't look that easy.”

“Let me take first or second squad. If we can't do it, or if it's something different, we'll at least have a better idea of what else we can try.”

Drakeyt cocked his head and looked at the road ahead, then at the hillside above it, and finally at Rahl. “You lead the way, but when you get there, let Roryt handle the charge.”

Much as that thought irritated Rahl, he knew Drakeyt was probably right. He'd never commanded anyone in a real battle. “I'll turn command over to him at that point.”

“Squad leader Roryt, forward.”

Once he eased his mount up beside the two officers, Roryt looked from Drakeyt to Rahl, then back to the older captain.

“Captain Rahl believes that the rebels have set up some sort of ambush on the section of road ahead, between the steep hillside and the lake, and that they have piles of boulders up there.”

Roryt's eyes flickered westward for just a moment.

“There aren't that many rebels there,” Drakeyt continued, “and the captain will lead you there. Once he's explained where they are, you'll lead first squad to take them out.”

“Yes, ser.”

Rahl could sense the squad leader's stolid acceptance of the order and situation.

“We'll stand by here, as if we're taking a break. Captain Rahl will fill you in on the way.”

“Yes, ser.”

In the end, Rahl and first squad had to retrace the path a half kay before they found a slope the mounts could climb. After that, there was enough open space, in and around the rock outcroppings and the scattered trees, that Rahl was able to find a semblance of a trail westward and upward. As they rode up the back side of the long ridge toward the hilltop overlooking the road, Rahl explained as well as he could what they faced. “…and it just looks like a crude retaining wall from below, but there are far too many rocks and boulders behind it.”

“Roll enough big rocks down a slope, you could hurt a lot of troopers,” offered Roryt.

“And we couldn't attack back from that part of the road.”

“Nasty business.”

The sun was hanging low in the western sky by the time Rahl reined up on the eastern side of an angled slope that rose another ten cubits over perhaps a hundred. He leaned toward Roryt and spoke in a low voice. “They're just over this rise, and down about twenty cubits. I
think
there are only about ten of them, and they're not looking in this direction.”
Not yet,
Rahl thought to himself. “The slope over the rise is open, and the boulders are lined up on the right.”

Roryt gestured for first squad to form up, although the space clear of scattered boulders and intermittent low pines was only wide enough for three mounts abreast.

Then the squad leader dropped his arm, and the troopers moved forward at a fast walk. Rahl let them all pass and swung his gelding in behind them, trying to stay close. He managed that well enough until they reached the top of the rise and charged downhill.

“Impies! Pull the releases!”

THRuummm
…

Even though he was mounted, Rahl could feel the entire hillside shaking, and a cloud of sand and dust rose into the air as well as cascaded downhill.

Through the sandy dust, he could see figures in maroon jackets running toward a narrow ravine. One made it. Most of the other rebels were cut down, and by the time Rahl reached the area where the boulders had been piled, there was a single rebel standing, surrounded by mounted troopers.

“Won't tell you bastards nothing!”

Rahl reined up, slightly in back of and between two of the troopers' mounts. “Maybe you'll tell me something, then.”

“Won't tell…” The rebel stopped saying anything as he recognized the sunburst insignia on Rahl's visor cap.

“You've been out here more than half a season, haven't you?”

“Not saying anything.”

Despite the rebel's protest, Rahl got the sense that the rebels had been in the area less than half a season.

“Or was it just three eightdays?”

The man did not speak, but Rahl got a sense that his estimate was close, and he asked, “They sent out a whole company and set this up—and left a half squad of you to drop the boulders on the first full company that came down the road, didn't they?”

Rahl kept asking questions until he realized that the sun was almost touching the horizon. He turned to Roryt. “We'd better head down before it gets too dark. I'll lead the way.” He paused. “There weren't any other prisoners?”

“No, ser. One of 'em got away, and another slipped in the ravine, fell fifty cubits. The others, well…” The squad leader shrugged. “We found their mounts and some supplies.”

Twilight was shifting to evening by the time Rahl and first squad rejoined the rest of Third Company.

“You lose anyone?” asked Drakeyt.

“No, ser,” replied Roryt. “We brought back one prisoner.”

“We lost one outrider and one mount. I had some of the scouts farther forward.” Drakeyt shook his head. “He thought he was far enough back, but one of those big boulders came this way. He didn't even see it.”

“How many were there up there?” asked Drakeyt.

“Ten or twelve,” Rahl answered.

“Just ten?” Drakeyt's tone was dubious. “Ten men couldn't have set up all that rock.”

“They didn't,” Rahl replied. “They had a full company up here for several eightdays, setting this up. They left half a squad to set them off. There's a trail up top, and it leads to the west.”

“We brought back twelve mounts,” Roryt added. “Sorry beasts, but they can carry supplies.”

“Any tools up there?”

“We didn't see much. Why?”

“That section of the road's blocked for almost two hundred cubits. Some parts aren't that bad, but we'll have to clear it. It'll be a real bitch.”

Rahl just nodded. He would have liked a little appreciation from Drakeyt for keeping the company from suffering what could have been significant casualties in both troopers and mounts.