Magi'i of Cyador (13 page)

"Lorn."

"I noticed you didn't say much about ferric poisoning, but you have to know something about it, don't you, if you were a magus."

"I know something about it," Lorn admits.

"Was I right about it? That it's got to be used in a weapon?

"Mostly." Lorn pauses. "And you have to have been using firelances, and directing them for a long time. Otherwise, you'll probably only get a burn in addition to a slash or a cut."

"Why do the Magi'i warn us so much? Burns, those I can handle."

"The Magi'i handle more chaos than firelances, much more."

"Ah..." Helkar frowns. "You'll have to worry more about iron then?"

"I shouldn't."

"Good." Helkar laughs. "You'll have enough to worry about with Brevyl anyway."

"Is he that hard?"

"Is cupridium tough? Does a firelance burn?" The captain shakes his head. "He's fair, but best you do as he orders, or you'll find yourself leading a half-score of troublemakers who don't know one end of a lance from the other against four score raiders." Helkar laughs. "And if you make it through that, he'll decide you're the one to train and lash all the troublemakers in the whole outfit into formation."

Lorn nods, stifling a yawn. He is still tired from three days' travel in firewagons and wonders if one good night's sleep will be enough to recover. "Is this your duty assignment now?"

"Me? Working for Commander Thiataphi? Not likely. I'm here like you, picking up replacement lancers, except I'm headed back to Pemedra tomorrow. A few less barbarians there, and a lot more snow. You can see the Westhorns from there, and that wind comes off them in winter, and it'll cut right through you."

"How many lancers are you taking back?"

"Four score, with two squad leaders." Helkar shrugs. "Takes near-on four days, and there's always a chance of a raiding party, but it's less early in the winter. The barbarians get bored or run out of food before spring, and they'll start raiding while there's still snow everywhere." Another laugh follows. "Trailing them through snow and mud, we all enjoy that."

Lorn nods.

"You look order-dead." Helkar half-thumps Lorn's shoulders and turns. "Good luck with Sub-Majer Brevyl."

"Thank you." Lorn walks slowly up the two flights of stone steps, concentrating so that his white boots do not scuff and so that he does not trip. A night's sleep will be good. Very good.

XXI

Lorn bends forward in the saddle and pats the shoulder of the big white mare, then straightens and looks ahead along the road that curves its way between yet another set of hills. The grass that covers the hills is brown, but it does seem endless, with each hill that the detachment rides over giving way to yet another, and then another. After the first morning, for two days all Lorn and the lancers have seen are grass hills. Part of that sense of endlessness is because they are not crossing the hills directly, but angling northwest from Syadtar.

Every so often there are small copses of bushes or low trees bearing their gray winter leaves, generally along streams so small as to be almost invisible from more than a hundred cubits away. The wind is cold, but not bitter, and blows out of the northwest, almost into Lorn's face, carrying a clear odor of wet grass and the hint of mold.

At the top of the hill on the north side of the road are two lancers Nytral has sent out as scouts. One remains reined up, watching the column of riders, while the second vanishes beyond the hill crest, shadowing and following the road from the heights as it winds generally northwest.

Lorn glances over his shoulder at the forty-odd new lancers riding behind them. Most appear painfully young, even to Lorn, and some struggle managing the firelances in the holders, even though the lances are little more than three cubits long. Lorn scarcely notices his any more.

"You ride pretty well, ser. You come from a lancer family?" asks Nytral.

Lorn turn in the saddle and looks at his squad leader. "I had to learn it on my own, Nytral. Spent a lot of extra time in officer training working with mounts. Seemed a good idea."

Nytral frowns.

"I came from a Magi'i family. I didn't take to being kept in a granite tower playing with chaos. The Magi'i didn't want me dabbling in trade. So it was strongly suggested that I become a lancer."

"Ah... being a magus family, ser... ?"

"When the head of the Magi'i, who sits at the right hand of the Emperor, suggests that a young man become a lancer officer, it's generally a good idea to agree. Besides, it got me out of the towers," Lorn points out.

Nytral glances at Lorn. "That be making more sense, ser."

"Because Isahl is one of the places that the barbarians always raid, and we lose a lot of lancers and officers here?"

"They tell you that, ser?"

"No." Lorn laughs cheerfully. "They sent me here."

Nytral shivers and looks away.

Lorn shrugs. Best that Nytral knows Lorn's background early on, and understands that Lorn doesn't intend for it to bother him, or adversely affect him. He turns and studies the riders behind him again. Then he turns his mount and rides back along the column, looking at each lancer as he passes.

Only a handful meet his amber eyes.

Near the end of the column, where the wagons rumble along, he turns the mare again, and lets her keep pace so that he rides beside the lead teamster.

"How are the wagons going?" he calls.

"Be fine, ser," answers the gray-bearded lancer with the crossed green sheaves on his sleeves, his right hand on the leather leads for the four-horse team. "A mite heavier than I'd like, but the roads stay dry, for another day, and all be well."

Lorn nods, raises his hand, and urges the mare back toward the front of the column, riding almost on the shoulder of the road and letting her move just slightly faster than the lancers, so that he can study each as he rides past, without seeming to do so.

When he reaches the front of the column, the road has begun to curve between yet another set of hills, and Lorn can see that it slopes gently upward at an angle along a ridge that extends a kay or more both east and west.

"Have to climb this one, ser."

Lorn nods as he eases the mare closer to the squad leader's mount.

"Sent out another pair of scouts," Nytral says quietly. "Been a few attacks here, 'cause you can't see the road."

Lorn follows Nytral's gesture. A pair of scouts has reined up at the ridge crest, where they pause before one turns his mount and rides down the road at a quick trot.

"Trouble..." mumbles Nytral. "Knew it!"

The scout has barely reined up before the words of his report tumble out. "Barbarians, ser. On the rise a kay northeast of the top there."

Lorn glances past the scout at the half-kay of road that remains before the first of the column reaches the crest. "How fast are they moving?"

"They're not riding, ser. They're waiting."

"A kay away and they'd have to ride down and then up?" asks Nytral.

"Yes, ser."

"We'd be better to get to the top," suggests the squad leader.

"Order it," Lorn says.

"Quick trot! Quick trot!"

Lorn keeps the mare abreast of Nytral, letting the squad leader set the pace as the column hurries toward the ridge top, raising heavy dust that the teamsters and the trailing riders will have to breathe. After reining in the mare at the crest of the hill, beside Nytral and the two scouts, Lorn looks out, squinting against the sun that barely warms the mid-afternoon.

"Barbarians..." Nytral says. "Don't look like raiders, but you can't ever tell, crazy as they are."

The score of mounted figures on the opposite hilltop are less than a kay away. The riders are bearded, with large blades in shoulder harnesses. Several have shields fastened somehow to their saddle in front of their left knees, and some have shields strapped over the bags behind their saddles.

"They won't attack... not now," Lorn observes.

Nytral raised his eyebrows. "With them... you never know."

"Do they use those shields?"

"Yes, ser." Nytral looks toward the barbarians. "They could have those out in a moment."

"Let's just wait and see if they do."

Nytral turns his mount. "Form up-eight abreast. Lances ready! Four abreast. Lances ready!"

Lorn watches the barbarians as Nytral chevies the raw lancers into formation. Abruptly, the barbarians turn their mounts and begin to ride back northward along the ridge line.

"They won't do that in the spring," Nytral prophesies as he turns his mount and eased up beside Lorn. "And they'll have more."

Lorn has few doubts about that.

"We should wait, ser. Make sure they're well along."

"Good idea. That will let the wagons catch up, too."

"Wagons... wish the firewagons and the paved roads came out this far," murmurs the squad leader. "We'd get more supplies faster."

Lorn laughs. "No, we wouldn't. They'd just move us farther north, then."

"Probably right about that." Nytral shakes his head, his eyes still on the riders headed northward.

After a moment, Lorn says, "Oh... Nytral. There's a lancer back there, about the third back on the left. Tall fellow, but he's swaying in the saddle. Might be sick... or something worse."

Nytral looks at Lorn. "That be Beryt. Used to be a squad leader. He likes the malt too much, ser."

"But he fights well out where there isn't any ale or brew?"

Nytral smiles. "Yes, ser. One of the best."

Lorn nods, then readjusts the white garrison cap, still watching the barbarians as they dwindle from sight.

XXII

The road climbs over a low rise between two hills, running westward. From the saddle of the white mare, Lorn can see a long and shallow valley ahead, one with more than a handful of Cyadoran-style brick dwellings dotting the eastern end of the valley, all with thin plumes of smoke rising through the cold air toward the cloudless green-blue sky overhead. The only trees are the infrequent and scraggly scrub cedars.

"There you are, ser," said Nytral. "Isahl's at the far west end. Be a bit afore we can see the outpost."

"We haven't seen that many farms until now," Lorn says, hoping Nytral will offer more information or opinion.

"Ha! Wouldn't see any here, except that they're all welcome in the walls if the raiders did come. They won't though. Not while Sub-Majer Brevyl's here."

"How many lancers are assigned here?"

"Don't tell me that, ser, not in figures, but we got five companies, and that's ten squads. When we're all lined up in formation-happens once in a while-I counted near-on tenscore, and that didn't take in the cooks and such."

"That should allow plenty of patrols."

"Not that many. Figure you need a company for a recon patrol; and a company to deal with a small raider band, and near-on everyone if all the barbarians in a tribe join a raid."

"Does that happen often?" Lorn leans forward and pats the mare on the neck.

"A full-tribe raid? Nah... not more than once every few years, if that. Once three summers afore last, but it was dry in the north. Figure they were hungry... or something."

"The raids, have they been happening for years? Or just in recent times?"

"Long time. Once heard Commander Thiataphi say he'd been an undercaptain out here. You tell me how many years that is, ser." Nytral laughs.

"More than a few." About fifty cubits back from the road, on both sides, Lorn notes the even irrigation ditches, brick-lined, and the miniature dams and sluice gates designed to channel the water to the fields, though the ditches are empty under the winter sun. "The barbarians try to tear the irrigation systems?"

"No. Mostly, they're after women and weapons, and horses-and whatever lancers they can kill while they're at it." Nytral lapses into silence.

Lorn looks northward as they pass a homestead, one with a house that could have been dropped into the outskirts of Cyad or Syadtar, with its green ceramic privacy screen before the front door, privacy hedges in the rear of the dwelling, and green shutters. The two outbuildings are of brick, but larger than those Lorn has seen elsewhere in Cyador. The one barn is nearly a hundred cubits long and twenty high-at the top of its tiled roof.

Even after riding two kays into the valley, Lorn has to squint against the glare of the late afternoon sun for a time before he can make out the general outline of the outpost, far larger in the ground it covers than the compound in Syadtar or the officers' training base in Kynstaar.

After another kay or so, Nytral offers, "There, ser, you can see it better."

The outpost has been built around a hillock at the west end of the long and shallow valley. The outer sunstone walls are a good eight cubits high and enclose corrals, barns, and an inner wall that holds an armory, and several long barracks-all built of stone and roofed in tile. On the lower part of the hillside, Lorn can see both a raised water cistern and what appears to be a spring with protective walls running from the spring to the armory.

"Have the barbarians ever breached the walls?" asks the undercaptain.

"Stories are that they killed most of the first garrison, generations back. Emperor said it wouldn't happen again... so they built Isahl to stop any attack. Patterned after Assyadt, except the west Jeranyi haven't caused as much trouble in a few years. Anyway... no attacks... leastwise, haven't happened since."

Lorn nods.

A kay from the outpost, they turn northward onto a short road leading to the gates in the approximate center of the southernmost east-west wall. There are four guards stationed at the closed gates at the end of the road. Two stand outside the closed gates and two above them on the low parapets. All four watch as the Lorn and the replacement lancers approach.

Nytral glances at Lorn.

Lorn rides toward the gate alone, offers the seal ring for inspection to the square-faced and older guard who steps forward. "Undercaptain Lorn'alt... reporting to Sub-Majer Brevyl with supplies and replacement lancers."

"Good to see you, ser." The sentry steps back, and the gates swing open.

Once inside the extensive outer walls, which could only stop a small raiding party or discourage a larger band of barbarians, Lorn can see more clearly the second inner wall that surrounds the main compound, set at the base of the low hill perhaps a third of a kay northward.