Magi'i of Cyador (18 page)

XXXI

In the late afternoon, before dinner, Lorn sits at the corner table in the officers' study, his fingers carefully clasping the bronze pen whose nib will bend too easily should he exert too much pressure. He dips the pen into the inkstand and continues the scroll to Ryalth, ignoring the chill in the room where the heat from the always-inadequate but long dead fire has much earlier died away.

...have not received a scroll from you lately, but I hope that is from either oversight or the lack of interest in my stilted writing, and that you are well and prospering in your trade. If you have any spare coins, a few might go to copper futures on the exchange

...only a few, though.

He half-smiles, half-frowns, his eyes going to the folio of maps set by his left elbow. He should be studying those maps, for he knows his understanding of the terrain he patrols is still not instinctive-and it should be, for the time will come when he will not have the luxury of looking at a map.

He purses his lips and continues with the scroll.

...most presumptuous of a lancer to offer mercantile advice to a merchanter, but you know I have never lacked presumption.

...our patrol schedule is being increased now that spring is about to arrive in the Grass Hills... and I may be the one with little ability to write or to have my missives sent southward to you.... You would be pleased to know that I have heeded your advice about reading, and have taken care with that with which you entrusted me.

After affixing the closing and his signature, Lorn folds the letter flat, then glances around the still-empty study. With no one near, he holds the stick of green seal wax over the paper edges and focuses the slightest flare of chaos he has drawn from around him on the tip of the wax. Almost as the droplet of green wax strikes the paper, Lorn presses his seal ring to it.

"Much easier..." murmurs to himself.

He still must write Myryan, a task he always postpones because he is still unsure whether his words to his father about Ciesrt will have made any lasting impact. Since he has received but a single scroll from his younger sister, and that far too many eightdays ago, he worries.

Finally, he takes a smaller section of paper, then gently cleans the bronze nib of his pen. He looks at the blank paper, then pauses.

Chyorst-the sole overcaptain at Isahl-walks into the officers' study, surveying the entire room before his eyes come to rest upon Lorn. The overcaptain turns towards the junior officer, deliberatively.

Lorn slips the pen and paper under the folio of maps and stands as the overcaptain walks toward him.

"Maps?" Chyorst's eyebrows lift.

"Yes, ser. I try to match them with what I've patrolled and study where I may be assigned."

Chyorst nods. "Can't hurt. Might help so long as you remember that maps are only an incomplete representation of what's out there." The overcaptain looks around the study once more before asking, "Have you seen Jostyn, undercaptain?"

"No, ser. Not since last night."

"Thank you." Without another word, the overcaptain steps away from Lorn, and then leaves the officers' study.

Lorn waits for a time before he returns to his letters.

XXXII

After entering the square tower that holds the sub-majer's study, removing his winter jacket and brushing the dampness from the oiled white leather, Lorn hangs it on one of the pegs on the wall rack set forward of Kielt's table.

"Go ahead, ser," says the senior squad leader. "He's waiting."

"Thank you, Kielt." With a nod to the lancer ranker, Lorn opens the white oak door and steps into the oblong room on the first floor of the square tower. As usual, Sub-Majer Brevyl looks up from the table desk with the hard green eyes that are half-bemused, half-impatient. The submajer's thick white hair has been trimmed shorter than normal, shorter even than that of a new lancer recruit. He motions for Lorn to take one of the armless chairs facing him.

Although the late afternoon is cloudy, with the indirect light from the high windows weak, only one of the lamps in the pair of wall sconces is lit, and the single lamp does little to dispel the gloom. Sleet patters on the glass of the windows, briefly.

Lorn eases himself into the proffered chair, then waits for his whip-thin commanding officer to speak.

"Undercaptain," says the sub-majer dryly, "your next patrols will be the most dangerous for some time."

"Ser?" Lorn eases forward in the chair, knowing that reaction is exactly the opposite of what Brevyl intends.

"It's simple. You've survived a raid or two. You're beginning to know the land and your men and squad leaders, and it's almost spring. You think you know something." The white-haired officer barely pauses. "Don't you?"

"More than when I came, but I have more to learn, ser." Lorn can sense that an answer of some sort is required.

"So much more that you might as well say you still know nothing. If you think the winter patrols were nasty, you don't know what a tough patrol is. If you thought freezing to and from Ram's End was disagreeable..." Brevyl shakes his head. "In another eightday, the barbarians will begin their spring raids. Everyone has been telling you how tough that will be, but I'd wager that no one has told you why. Do you know why?"

"No, ser."

"Because a raider's life isn't worth dung until he's killed three lancers-or more. He can't take a woman from his own clan-they do know about inbreeding-and he can't take a woman from another clan without those kills. So he has to kill lancers to get laid, because their women are property, and playing around with a proven warrior's daughter could cost him his personal jewels or his life. And if he takes a Cyadoran woman, she's fair game to be stolen or raped by any blooded warrior. Same thing if he takes a woman from one of those dirty hamlets or villages they call towns."

Lorn nods slowly.

"Their women aren't any great prizes, and the few good ones go to the proven warriors or the young ones crazy enough to take on a Mirror Lancer company... or smart enough to get away with it." Bervyl shakes his head. "All you are is an obstacle in the way of some young barbarian buck's crotch-ambitions, a game counter to add to the stack so he can stop having damp dreams and start in on the real thing."

"You make it sound like they don't think life is worth much, ser." Lorn says quietly.

"Until a barbarian gets to be a full-blooded warrior, it isn't," Brevyl replies dryly. "I tell this to every young undercaptain who comes through. They all hear me out, and then more than half of them die in their first spring or summer." A snort follows a brief pause. "I don't care about the stupid ones dying. Better that way than letting them grow up and getting entire outposts all killed off. But stupid officers can kill good lancers, and good lancers are getting hard to come by these days."

"Yes, ser."

Brevyl draws a deep breath.

The mannerism is deliberate. Lorn can't imagine Brevyl being that dramatic naturally. The undercaptain waits for the next verbal riposte.

"One other thing... Undercaptain."

Despite his resolve, Lorn stiffens ever so slightly within himself.

"No lancer officer with magus blood leaves Isahl until I say he does, just like none leave the Geliendra outpost until Maran says he does. No lancer with magus blood gets to be a majer until we both let him go on, not that there have ever been many of you." Brevyl smiles. "Tomorrow, you're headed east. The attacks are later there, and the raider bands smaller. Plan on being out an eightday, and being attacked twice. At least. So be careful how you use your firelances."

Lorn nods respectfully.

Brevyl stands to dismiss the undercaptain. "Just try to remember half what I told you, and you'll live longer and save more of your lancers. And they're the ones who will keep you alive." Brevyl inclines his head toward the study door.

"Thank you, ser."

"Don't thank me, Undercaptain. Just remember."

Lorn leaves the study, nodding to Kielt as he closes the door behind him. He takes his jacket and dons it before walking from the square tower out to the courtyard and into the sleet that has returned to pelt roofs, stones, and lancers like.

XXXIII

In the cold sun of late morning, the brown grass stretches unmarked for at least three kays in every direction from the narrow road on which Lorn and Nytral ride eastward. Nearly two kays ahead of them are two scouts, large black dots on the brown line of the road that slowly climbs the long swell that is not steep enough to be a ridge or hill. Behind Nytral and Lorn ride the two squads of the Fifth Company.

"Still another ten kays to Pregyn," Nytral says.

The senior squad leader's words are barely audible above the impacts of hoofs on the road and the rising whistling of the wind that sweeps southward across the fields that only hold last year's browned and flattened grass. With the wind comes the odor of vegetation that has molded, frozen, and thawed-an acrid scent, sour but slightly sweet.

"The maps show that the road's flat. Is it?" asks Lorn. He has never been northeast of this unnamed valley, let alone to Pregyn, a hamlet a good forty kays to the north of Isahl and the northernmost and most isolated of the communities south of the Grass Hills to claim allegiance to Cyad and the Emperor.

"Most ways. The climb out of Four-Holders-next valley-is steeper than the way in, but it's flat after that, bog-like until you get to the real hills that border the Westhorns."

At the crest of the hill, Lorn slows his mount and studies the long and sinuous valley that holds four families-a clan structure almost, Lorn suspects, from the layout of the holdings with their multiple dwellings and community stock barns. Each holding has an earthen berm around its buildings and stock pens-earthen because trees are far too scarce and more valuable for shade or fruit or windbreaks than for timber.

In the depression on the northern side of the valley, a kay from where the Fifth Company descends the hill, there are long parallel trenches. Lorn nods-peatworks. The two scouts have now almost ridden to a point on the road abreast of the peat diggings, although the road is more than a kay south of the boggy depression, and little more than a thin lane winds over the rolling grasslands from the main road to the bog.

Slightly flattened by the wind, trails of smoke rise from the chimneys of all four holdings. A good sign, reflects the undercaptain.

"Not real friendly-like here," cautions Nytral about the time when they reach the beginning of the valley floor and the road turns more to the northeast, angling across the long and curving valley.

"Any reason?"

"Say we don't come here enough, let 'em take the barbarian attacks by themselves."

Lorn nods, but does not comment.

As the Fifth Company nears the first earthen berm, the wind gusts around Lorn, mixing warmer damp air with cooler swirls. Lorn's nose wrinkles, then relaxes, as he sniffs the smoke-burning peat-an odor far better than that of the dung burned in many holds.

There is a gate in the first earthen dike. Less than two hundred cubits from the right side of the road, it stands half-open, with a bearded figure in a sheepskin jacket waiting.

"Shofirg!" orders Nytral. "Send up four lancers."

Lorn and Nytral follow the four lancers up the rutted road toward the gate, where all six rein up twenty cubits back from the holder.

"We'd be welcoming you, and your company of lancers, ser," offers the holder. "Don't have much, ser, but you'd be welcome to the water and to stand down and rest."

Nytral eases his mount past the holder and partway through the gate. After a moment of studying the area, he turns in the saddle and nods curtly to Lorn.

"We thank you," Lorn tells the bearded man, who inclines his head briefly to the undercaptain.

"Two abreast!" Nytral orders. "Straight to the troughs. In formation, by squads."

Lorn guides the white mare through the gate and to the north side where he and Nytral watch as the lancers ride past them.

The ground inside the four-cubit-high embankment is earth churned by sheep and cattle, dark frozen mud that will turn into oozing slop within eightdays, if not sooner. The odor of manure permeates the air, mixing with the sweet-smoky odor of burning peat. The doors to the sod-walled stock barn beyond the water trough are closed and barred, although Lorn can hear the lowing of cattle.

"Water by half-squads! You be starting, Dubrez!" Nytral orders, his words ringing across the holding.

After the first squad has watered and remounted, Lorn waters his mare before Shofirg's squad while Nytral watches. The young officer then watches as Nytral rides his mount to the trough.

The holder now steps nearer to where Lorn sits astride the mare.

"Have you seen any trace of the barbarians lately?" Lorn asks the local.

"Little early for raiders," says the redbearded figure. "Bogs on the north side still show ice...."

Lorn takes in the man's words, not understanding the exact importance of when the ice might melt as a predictor, but understanding fully the herder's feeling about its accuracy. "Have they ever attacked before the ice melts?"

"One time I recall, ser... be the year afore the last." Nytral remounts and guides his mount back beside Lorn's.

"Would that we'd be able to offer more, ser...." The holder's voice is almost pleading.

Lorn understands the plea, but were he to pay, even a few coppers, for every watering or every meal offered to his company, his purse would be empty well before the end of each patrol. Worse, the holders would come to expect it, and Lorn knows where that would lead. "I would that you could, too, holder. I would that I could offer you some poor recompense." He smiles. "Perhaps we will be able to remove some barbarians."

"You do that... and you be doing more than most in these days." The herder inclines his head, slightly.

The last of Shofirg's men remounts, and the younger of the two squad leaders turns his mount toward Lorn and Nytral. "All the mounts have been watered, sers."

Lorn leans forward in the saddle, toward the herder. "Thank you." Then he nods to Nytral.