Scepters (17 page)

“There
are still possible lamaials—Tyren in Alustre and the herder—and if they find
the scepters…”

Tarolt
silenced Sensat with a gesture. “The only one with any hint of true Talent
about whom we need worry is the herder. He is on the way to Hyalt. Adarat has
been warned that the northern officer with the dark gray hair is the lamaial.
That will fire the believers even more, and the herder will have more than
enough to handle, because he has not been in service for years and never in
such a situation.”

“But
if he hears of the scepters…?”

“How
would he even know about the scepters and what they are? Also, it is most
unlikely that the ancient ones can support him there in Hyalt—or that they will
try. Still, it would be good to uncover the scepters, but not at the expense of
preparing for what must be.” He looked hard at Sensat. “Just how much progress
can you report on your primary duties?”

“Adarat
has the Hyalt area organized and under firm control. There are already five
companies of Cadmians in training. The believers of the True Duarchy have been
told that a northerner is being sent against them, a lamaial who will kill them
to stop the return of the One Who Is and the peace of the Duarchy to come. They
have been assured that they are the chosen ones to restore the Duarchy and to
destroy all who would oppose them in returning hope to Corns,” offered the
pale-faced and stocky man in the maroon tunic. “Adarat has also sent weapons to
Syan as well, but we have fewer believers there.”

“Whose
fault is that?” asked Tarolt.

“There
are few of us yet here. All this has taken some considerable planning and
effort, since there are no longer Tables in Tempre and Hyalt… and since we have
not yet been able to reactivate the one in Soupat. It will be much easier when
one more translation is complete.”

“It
is always easier with more Efrans, but full translations are still difficult
and risky… and few on Efra wish to take that risk. Too few, and they do not
understand the greater dangers. Like all those in comfort, they do not wish to
understand. But… that was why you agreed and why you were translated here,”
replied Tarolt. “To assist as required to create the unrest and chaos that will
make a new Duarchy seem paradise by comparison. And to facilitate the events
necessary to rebuild the grid. Never forget that.”

“Yes,
fieldmaster.”

“Tarolt…
always Tarolt.”

Sensat
swallowed before replying. “Yes, Tarolt.”

Two
and a half days had passed since the four officers and the two horse companies
had left Borlan and taken the eternastone road south to Krost. Although it was
early afternoon, a gray overcast blocked the sun and had since midmorning.
There was no wind, leaving a sullen feel to the day, one that, to Alucius,
promised little good. Yet, what could happen now? The two companies rode
southward through low, rolling hills with prosperous steads on each side and
occasional small towns. There was almost no possibility of encountering hostile
lancers, not when the nearest forces were those of the Regent more than three
hundred vingts to the west—as an eagle might fly—and twice that by even the
high roads.

Then,
from nowhere, a crimson emptiness flared through Alucius’s wristguard. He
glanced down involuntarily. Wendra? What had happened?

But
the guard remained warm and gave no other indication.

He
frowned and studied the road ahead of him. He tried to use his Talent to probe
the wristguard’s crystal, yet all it revealed was that Wendra was alive and
healthy—all it could reveal. He could only take that as a sign that she and
Alendra were well.

Suddenly,
Alucius found himself almost shivering, yet he wasn’t really cold. He was
wearing nightsilk undergarments and a riding jacket, and it wasn’t winter, but
harvest. Harvest was warm in Lanachrona, even on an overcast day, especially
without any wind.

Another
quarter vingt went by, and the wristguard revealed nothing else. Then Fifth
Company followed Eighth Company through a road cut made ages earlier. Even the
walls were of eternastone, rising a good three yards above Alucius’s head at
the point where the roadbed was in the center of the ridge. As Alucius neared
the southern end of the cut, he glanced over his shoulder, noting that the
ridge, unlike the other hills, seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see,
both to the northwest and to the southeast.

As
the road shoulders dropped level with the road itself, another crimson
emptiness, far more overwhelming, washed over and around him, and not from his
wristguard. This was a Talent-sensed void—the same emptiness that he had felt
on the high road back from Dereka. He turned to Feran, riding beside him. “Order
ready rifles.”

Feran
started, but only for a moment, before replying, “Yes, sir,” then turned to
Egyl. “Ready rifles! Pass it back.”

“Ah…
yes, sir. Ready rifles. Fifth Company! Ready rifles!”

Alucius
then added, “If you’d order your four best marksmen up here.”

“Egyl…”
Feran began.

“Waris,
Makyr, Solsyt, Tonak, forward!”

“Put
two of them on each shoulder, about three yards ahead of us.” Alucius had no
idea what exactly was coming, but it had the feel of a reddish purple Talent,
all too much like the wild pteridons, and he wasn’t about to wait to see what
it might be. If nothing showed up, he’d pass it off as a drill. He didn’t think
they’d be that fortunate. He infused the cartridges in his own rifles with
darkness, then did the same to those in the loops in his belt. He waited to say
more until the four lancers rode up.

“I’d
like you four to take a position ahead of the company. Be prepared to fire, at
my direct command.”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Two
on each side,” Feran added.

“Yes,
sir.”

As
the four rode past Alucius, Feran, and Egyl, Alucius reached out with his
Talent and began to infuse the cartridges in each of their rifles with the same
kind of darkness that he had used.

The
chill and unseen red-purple darkness became more and more oppressive as the
company continued southward. Alucius felt as though an unseen avalanche was
building behind the gray clouds above, a sweep of
something
ready to crash down upon them. Yet… what more could he do? Tell the marshal
that they were facing a danger he could not describe, could not identify, and
could not even explain?

All
he could do was to ready his first rifle and slowly infuse the cartridges of
the lancers in the first squad with darkness. More than that he could not do,
except study the skies ahead and the terrain beside the high road as he rode.
Even so, he felt shaky after drawing on so much darkness.

They
had ridden only a few hundred yards farther when the entire sky flashed
purple—but only to Alucius’s Talent, and then on both sides of the eternastone
road the sky shivered, with lines of black lightning flashing down and then
vanishing. To the east Alucius took in ten creatures from a nightmare—or from
wherever the ifrits came. Each was more than four times the size of a draft
horse, with massive shoulders, a long triangular horn, and scales that
shimmered purple. The oversized mouths boasted crystal fangs a yard long.

“Friggin’
monsters!”

“Sow’s
belly!”

“…
same as back then…”

Alucius
glanced to the west, where another set of identical creatures had appeared,
then swung up his own rifle. “Fifth Company! Halt! Out oblique and hold!
Prepare to fire. Fire!”

“Fifth
Company! Out oblique and hold! Fire at will!” echoed Feran and Egyl.

Aiming
to the east, because that grouping of Talent-creatures seemed closer, Alucius
put his first shot through the forehead of the horned creature in the middle.
As the creature collapsed with a
thud
that shook the
ground, then flared into a column of flame, another lithe creature sprang from
behind the monster. The second looked vaguely like a dustcat, except that it
was a shimmering black, and far swifter—and with longer fangs and claws.

Alucius’s
second shot missed the black dustcat, and the third only struck it in the
hindquarters, but it flailed forward, hissing, until a shot from someone else
turned it into a small blue-flame pyre.

The
remaining horned Talent-beasts—or wild sandoxes—lowered their heads and rumbled
forward, their bulk sending vibrations through the ground itself. Alucius fired
the last shot in his first rifle at the foremost of the sandoxes, bringing it
down as bluish flames erupted from the wound, but from behind the fallen sandox
sprang a pair of the black dustcats.

Before
him, the four marksmen fired deliberately, and one of the dust-cats exploded in
the same bluish flames, but the remaining dustcat streaked toward Tonak with
incredible speed. Somehow, the lancer managed to get off a shot at point-blank
range, but so close that for a moment he appeared enveloped in blue flame.

“Eighth
Company! Forward!”

As
the Southern Guards tried to ride away from the attack, three of the horned
sandoxes swept through the rear squad. Bodies flew in all directions, each
encased in blue flames.

Because
he could do nothing for the Southern Guards without firing directly into them,
Alucius switched rifles and looked westward, targeting another of the wild
sandoxes, then the dustcat that followed the fall of the massive beast. He
paused for an instant to squeeze more darkness into the cartridges of the rifle
Waris carried as the lancer reloaded, then raised his second rifle to aim at
the nearest beast. While the shot struck, and bluish flames issued from the
beast’s shoulder, it swerved and stumbled toward the last rank of Eighth
Company, exploding in a gout of flame that engulfed two Southern Guards.

Alucius
fired at another of the beasts—and hit it. A blast of blue flame washed toward
the left side of Fifth Company’s first squad. While Alucius could feel the
heat, the flames died short of the lancers. He targeted two more of the cats,
but it took three shots to get the second.

“Watch
the cats!” Alucius ordered, trying
to
infuse the
cartridges of the marksmen and of the lancers around him with blackness as he
reloaded the second rifle.

Another
horned beast flared into blue flame, just at the edge of the eternastone, but
at the rear of Eighth Company.

Alucius
snapped off another shot and was rewarded with another blue explosion. Then he
concentrated on three cats that streaked toward first squad.

The
last one skidded to a halt less than a yard from the western edge of the road,
flaring into a sudden blue flame. Even before those flames died away, more of
the black cat-creatures appeared, striking the column from all angles, coming
in low and slashing at the legs of mounts and men.

Alucius
forced himself to concentrate on two things—his own shooting and supplying
darkness to the cartridges of those around him. In time—how long it was Alucius
didn’t know—he shot the last cat, then lowered his rifle.

For
all the chaos and the slashing attacks, there were fewer bodies strewn on the
shoulder of the highway and amid the column than Alucius had feared—at least
among Fifth Company. He looked ahead and could see charred bodies of both
Southern Guards and their mounts, perhaps as many as two full squads along a
half-vingt stretch of eternastone.

Alucius
surveyed the fields on both sides of the road. In places, the wooden rail
fences had been burned through, and in others merely broken. There was no sign
of any of the creatures, save for large patches of burned ground and the black
smoke that rose in thin trails from the seared ground on both sides of the eternastone
road.

“Have
Egyl find out our casualties and report back,” Alucius told Feran. “I’m sure
the marshal will want to know—when we catch up to them.”

“Egyl?”

“He’s
already headed back, sir,” called Elbard.

“Thank
you.” Feran looked at Alucius and said in a lower voice, “This was worse than
coming out of Deforya.”

Alucius
nodded, his face bleak. “More of the sandoxes, and I’ve never seen anything
quite like those cats.”

“Quite
like?” Feran’s eyebrows lifted.

“They
looked like jet-black dustcats.” Alucius forced himself to reload both rifles,
overriding the trembling in his fingers. Only then did he holster the rifles
and take a long swallow from his water bottle. He realized that he felt
light-headed… and very tired. He pushed the tiredness away.

“I’d
hoped that all we’d have to deal with would be angry peasants and religious
zealots,” Feran said, “not more Talent-creatures from the time of the Duarchy.”

“The
marshal said they wanted to bring back the True Duarchy,” Alucius said. “I hope
these weren’t what they had in mind.”

Feran
snorted. “People don’t know when they’re well-off.” After a moment, he added, “You
don’t really think this had anything to do with the rebellion in Hyalt?”

“I
don’t know. I don’t know how it could, but they’ve got priests of some sort,
and Aellyan Edyss found a way to call up pteridons. Maybe these rebels could
too…” Alucius shrugged, turning in the saddle to look back northward along the
road. He could see Egyl riding toward them.

“Majer…
you know I never liked it when you said things like that the last time you had
an impossible assignment.”

“I
know, Feran. I don’t like having those thoughts, either. But why would anyone
bring Talent-creatures against us in the middle of Lanachrona? If the Regent
could summon those, I’m certain she’d use them against our forces actually in
Madrien.”

“Same
thing’d be true of the Deforyan Council or the Praetor,” Feran pointed out.

Alucius
did not mention the other possibility—that the ifrits were to blame—because he
couldn’t prove that they even existed, let alone that they had sent the
creatures against the two companies. Yet that possibility was as likely as the
priests of the True Duarchy having unleashed the beasts.