Magi'i of Cyador (14 page)

The inner gates, while guarded by a halfscore of lancers, are open. One steps forward.

"Ser?"

"Yes?" answers Lorn politely.

"Being as you're new, the sub-majer'd be seeing you afore you go to quarters." The young orderly's voice is firm, if high.

"Where do I go?" asks Lorn politely.

"The corner tower in the right... where there's a guard at the door. There's a hitching post there."

"Thank you." Lorn nods his head, then urges the mare forward.

A lancer with the double slashes of a senior squad leader on his sleeves appears from the barracks building closest to the gate, his eyes lighting on Nytral. "Nytral's back! Even brought some wagons."

Lorn glances at Nytral. "You can settle things while I report to the sub-majer?"

"Yes, ser. They'll be fine."

"Thank you."

"My job, ser."

Lorn guides the mare to the right, toward the tower that indeed has a single guard standing by the square-arched doorway. There, he dismounts and ties the mare to the unused hitching post, then steps forward toward the lancer.

"Through the door, ser. Kielt will see to you, ser."

"Thank you." Lorn steps out of the mild but chilly wind and into the narrow corridor. A dozen cubits down the corridor yet another lancer sits at a small table beside a closed door.

Lorn steps forward and offers the seal ring to the lancer. "Undercaptain Lorn'alt reporting for duty." The formality of the words sounds almost pompous to Lorn, but he waits.

"One moment, ser." The bearded older lancer slips through the door and closes it.

He returns almost immediately. "Sub-Majer Brevyl will see you now, ser." The lancer holds the ancient but spotless white oak door for Lorn to enter the sub-majer's study.

"Thank you, Kielt." Lorn ignores the slight flicker of the lancer's eyes and steps through the door.

The study is not large for an officer who commands an outpost as large as Isahl, for the room is less than fifteen cubits by ten, and contains but a table-desk, a single scroll case, the wooden armchair from which Brevyl rises, and four armless straight-backed wooden chairs that face the desk. There are two other chairs in the corners. High windows on the wall behind the desk offer the sole source of outside light, although two wall sconces contain unlit oil lamps.

Sub-Majer Brevyl is a short and slender man, half a head shorter than Lorn, with a thin white brush mustache. His short-cut white hair is thick, and his green eyes dominate fine features and an even nose.

"Ser, Undercaptain Lorn'alt." Lorn offers the order scroll to the sub-majer.

Brevyl lays the scroll on the corner of the desk, unopened. "Please sit down, Undercaptain. It is a long ride from Syadtar." He pauses, then asks, as Lorn seats himself. "Did you see any barbarians along the road?"

"One group, ser. They were about a kay away, and they turned north when they saw us."

"Too bad they didn't get closer." A wry smile crosses the sub-majer's face as he picks up the scroll, unrolls it, and sits down to read through it. After a moment, he looks at Lorn, all traces of a smile vanishing from his face. "Do you know why you're here, Undercaptain Lorn'alt?"

"Because there's nowhere else I can be," Lorn says evenly. "Except perhaps Pemedra or the Accursed Forest."

"Or Inividra in the spring or fall," adds the sub-majer. "And you'll see all four before you make majer. Without returning to Cyad except on leave between assignments." He pauses. "Doesn't seem exactly fair, does it?"

Lorn waits, attentively.

"I'd like an answer, Undercaptain."

"What's considered 'fair' has to defer to what is necessary for the well-being of Cyad, ser."

A frown replaces the bluff humoring look on the sub-majer's face. "I didn't ask for a student answer, Undercaptain."

"Absolute loyalty is required of both lancers and the Magi'i, ser. Any lancer seeking to become a magus or any student magus seeking to become a lancer comes from outside and has to demonstrate both ability and absolute loyalty."

"You're testing my patience."

Lorn represses a sigh. "Ser, it's not fair. It can't be fair, and you know that, and I know that. Ser... what do you want from me?"

Brevyl smiles, crookedly. "Just that. The reasons don't matter. The politics don't matter. Your background and obvious education don't matter. All that matters is that you know that you'll get the nastiest assignments you can handle. They won't be more than you can handle because that wastes lancers and endangers other officers. Are you up to that, Undercaptain?"

"I don't know, ser. I think I am, but what I do is what counts."

"You're honest, Undercaptain Lorn. Let's hope you're as good as you think you are. You'll ride patrols for the first four eightdays with Zandrey. You'll be the second-in-command, and that means you do exactly what he says-unless the barbarians get him. You'd better make sure they don't, because you don't know dung about the way they operate."

"Yes, ser."

"You listen and you ask questions, quietly and when there aren't any rankers around. You carry out Zandrey's orders and learn all you can. It won't be as much as you should know, but it might be enough if you work hard and learn fast. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ser."

"No..." Brevyl shakes his head. "All undercaptains just think they understand. On your way out, tell Kielt to set you up on the officers' level of the barracks, and then go find Zandrey. He's not on patrol today. He'll be here somewhere."

"Yes, ser."

"Formality is fine, Undercaptain. Ability and luck count more."

Lorn waits, deciding against another polite response.

"At least you listen." Brevyl snorts. "Go get yourself settled. Zandrey's next patrol is the day after tomorrow."

"Yes, ser. By your leave, ser."

Brevyl gives a dismissive nod, and Lorn stands, offers a slight bow, and turns. He closes the door behind him.

Outside, Kielt waits, standing beside his table.

"The sub-majer said that I was to ask you about being set up on the officers' level of the barracks."

"Very good, ser." Kielt rings the handbell on the table, turning as another lancer appears. "If you would take over, Rueggr?"

Rueggr nods once.

Lorn follows Kielt out of the brick-walled tower. Now that the sun has dropped behind the hills, the wind sweeping out of the north is chill, and he is glad of the winter jacket.

XXIII

The officers' study at Isahl contains several flat tables that can serve as desks, as well as a good half score of battered armless oak chairs. The polished stone floors are largely covered with worn green wool rugs that take the chill from the stone and muffle the sound of boots. The south windows are high, but large, and on a long table against the smooth stones of the north wall are eight large strongboxes, each with a cupridium lock. Each has a bronze plate on it with the name of a company. Lorn's company is Fifth Company, and the bronze key to his lock is fastened inside his green web officer's belt.

He sits on the opposite side of a table from Captain Zandrey. Zandrey is black-haired, brown-eyed and stocky. Like most lancer officers, he is clean-shaven, but in the afternoon light, his dark beard is beginning to show. "Sub-Majer Brevyl has decided that Nytral will be your company squad leader. Each squad is a score, and there's a squad leader for each."

Lorn nods, wondering if it had taken a promotion for Nytral to agree to serve under Lorn. He almost shook his head. Nytral could have been ordered to serve. Was the promotion to encourage Nytral?

"You look skeptical, Lorn."

"No, ser. I just wondered about Nytral's promotion." Lorn tries to make his voice as guileless as possible.

"He was overdue, actually." Zandrey snort. "Rumor has it that he asked to serve under you, and Brevyl was so surprised that the man volunteered for anything that he promoted him on the spot."

"He seems to know a lot," Lorn ventures.

"He does, more than most of the senior squad leaders, but he says what he believes, and some officers and other squad leaders are less than pleased with his attitude."

"Right now, that's fine with me." Lorn nods. "What about the patrol tomorrow? What exactly do we do?"

"Patrol." The captain laughs. "We'll ride northward, looking for barbarians or signs that they've been around. We might see some, and we might not, but they'll know we've been looking. The one thing that is certain is that when we don't patrol, there are more raids."

"Nytral said that the barbarians were mostly after women, weapons, and mounts."

"He's mostly right, but they'll sometimes take children, and sometimes silvers and golds, if a homesteader has any."

Lorn frowns.

"You wonder why anyone lives out here? Simple. They don't have any choice. Thieves, swindlers, and people who've failed the Empire-if they haven't killed anyone, they can choose to homestead beyond the great highways for a score of years. Some like it and stay. Others leave, but sometimes they work a deal with someone in Syadtar-turn it over to a younger son or a troublemaker who's headed for worse. Anyway, we're here to protect them as well as the towns and cities farther south. Strange, when you think about it... protecting folks who've forfeited the Emperor's justice." Zandrey shrugs. "Can't question too much here, or you'll end up questioning your own mind."

"Is there anything about the barbarian tactics?"

"Tactics? Most wouldn't know a tactic if it walked up with a cuprid-ium blade and cut them out of the saddle."

"That would seem to make them unpredictable."

"I wouldn't say that," replies the captain. "They're direct-like a big iron hammer. And there is one thing you can count on with the barbarians. They don't believe in doing anything that's not honorable." Zandrey's word were dry. "In two years here, I've never seen an ambush. They don't attack at night, or in the rain or snow. They ride at you, but they don't cluster, and they don't try to pick off officers. They also don't back off attacking officers. Any Cyadoran is like any other, and they hate us all."

Lorn wonders why. From what he knows of history, the hatred makes no sense, and that means he doesn't know enough of history or that the barbarians are irrational. Somehow, he thinks that the history is more suspect than the barbarians' rationality.

Zandrey stands and stretches. "Go over your squad rosters until you know the names. Last thing you need to be doing on patrol is trying to remember names. It's hard enough to match names to faces at first."

Lorn stands and replies. "Yes, ser."

"And you'll need to check the firelances in the morning, each one as it's issued."

Lorn nods.

"See you at dinner."

Lorn waits until Zandrey turns before letting an ironic smile cross his face. Are all the outcasts on the northern border? He shakes his head before turning to head toward the stable to check on both his mare and his company's mounts.

XXIV

Under thick gray clouds, the mist seems to billow out of the north and across the brown grass of the endless hills. Although it is near mid-day, the clouds and mist give the impression of twilight. The mist droplets congeal on the back of Lorn's neck and then roll in tiny rivulets down his back under the white oiled leather of his winter jacket.

Lorn shifts from one leg to the other, putting his weight on one stirrup, then the other. He half-stands in the stirrups, just trying to stretch his legs.

They are less than twenty kays north of Isahl, and in another world. The patrol travels a narrow clay path on the north side of a valley that holds little besides a small brackish lake they had passed earlier, and a handful of scattered earth-brick dwellings and barns. The dwellings are scarcely that, without privacy screens or glass in the windows. Rough cut and oiled shutters, often pieced together from old boards, are swung closed against the damp and chill. The thin lines of smoke from the chimneys are lost in the gray of the clouds and mist.

The only living creatures visible besides the lancers and their mounts are the sheep of a single small herd-grayish lumps against the brown grass-beyond the last barn on the south side of the road.

So far, the only tracks in the road are those of the patrol and of a single cart that has left span-deep ruts in the clay-like mud that has almost frozen.

Lorn glances a half-kay or so ahead, where Zandrey leads the Third Company, then back along his company's two squads. For the moment, Nytral rides with Shofirg-the Second squad's leader. Beside Lorn is another older lancer, Dubrez, whose bearded face holds a dourness that has been unchanged since the patrol began the day before.

The road slowly curves northward at the west end of the valley, rising to pass between two slightly lower hills, where they are a handful of scrub cedars, a few bushes and mostly taller grass.

"This place have a name?" Lorn finally asks Dubrez.

"This valley? Not that I know, ser. Most don't, not proper-like. This one's the valley with the sour lake. Next is the one with the burned-out house. That sort of thing..." Dubrez lapses into silence.

Lorn shifts the reins from his right hand to his left, flexing his fingers, trying to warm them inside thick white gloves that keep out the worst of the chill-but not all of it.

Cold and fat droplets of rain splat against lancers and their mounts, just enough to cover both with a thin sheet of water, before the cold rain ceases, and is in turn replaced by the finer droplets of the seemingly endless mist.

"How often are we likely to run across barbarians?" Lorn asks the squad leader quietly.

"Don't, ser. Not in winter." Durbrez to the hills to their right. "Up there, probably a few now. Or could be. We don't patrol, and in an eight-day, there'll be raiders in most of these valleys. Wintertime... they don't want to fight, and it be too cold for them to stay out too long and guess where we'll be. We patrol... they watch some. We don't patrol-they raid. Dung-eaters... every last one of 'em." The squad leader grunts and is silent.

Lorn studies the column ahead, and the faint puffs of white coming from the lancers' mounts, wondering if any raids take place during the winter, or if the patrols are just to keep the lancers in shape.