Scion of Cyador (19 page)

Three barbarian warriors trailing the main party look back and uphill at the charging lancers. All three wheel.

Lorn levels his firelance.

Hssst! Hsst! One of the men drops; the one on the far right twists in the saddle.

Hssst! Hsst!

“Short bursts! Short bursts!” Lorn orders.

“Short bursts!” echo Tashqyt, Swytyl, Whylyn, and Drayl.

Ahead, shouts come from the barbarian warriors.

As he rides toward the end of the barbarian column, Lorn watches as the barbarian force seems to separate-the leading riders spur their mounts and swing northward off the road, while perhaps twoscore of the trailing riders wheel to attempt to stop the Mirror Lancers.

With the Bristan sabre in his left hand, and firelance in his right, Lorn finds he is still leading the charge. He also senses the presence of a chaos-glass, then pushes that thought and feeling away.

Hssst! Hssst! The short bursts of lances flare through the already-hot midday air, and more than half the defenders are dead even before the first two squads of lancers plow through them-though not without casualties.

Lorn parries a big blade with the sabre, ducks, and backhands the raider who has tried to bring the large blade to bear on the overcaptain.

Still, the defenders have created enough of a delay-as has another group farther westward along the road-that the barbarians have reformed in a bowed semicircle in the bend area to the south of the road.

Lorn also doesn’t like the ragged breaking-up of his own forces, and he barks out the orders. “Halt! Halt and re-form! Five-abreast! Five-abreast!”

His orders are echoed, and within moments… across a space of two hundred cubits, two forces face each other.

The sound of hoofs tells of the arrival of the brown-clad District Guards, their cupridium lances gleaming in the noonday sun.

Lorn-still in the front center of his re-forming Mirror Lancers-snaps, “Half the Guard on each flank! Half the Guard on each flank!”

Surprisingly, to Lorn, the barbarians do not charge, even as the red-trimmed brown tunics of the guards move into position on each side of the two Mirror Lancer companies. That they do not charge bothers Lorn, but he waits, ready to order a charge at any moment, but wanting to make sure that the guards cover the flanks.

In the hot stillness, four barbarians ride forward, reining up a good hundred cubits from Lorn. The lead rider-a bearded blond giant-holds a figure before him in the saddle-that of a small girl. He holds a dull dark blade at the girl’s throat.

“See, white demons! We have your women, more than a score. You let us return, white demon, and we will not harm these…”

Lorn stiffens inside. He glances to his left, then his right. The guards to his right are not quite in position, but all his other forces look to be. “You have invaded our land, and I should let you leave untouched, after all those you have killed?” He calls back to the blond warrior, easing the chestnut forward as he does, so that he is a good twenty cubits forward of his forces, where he can be seen. He has not spied any archers, and he hopes there are none. He keeps his lance low, although he has raised it some.

“These lands you took from our forefathers. They are not your lands. They were never yours, and soon they will again be the lands of the Jeranyi.” The Jeranyi leader jerks his head sideways. To his left is another rider holding a child, and Lorn can see women bound to mounts farther back in the barbarian forces. “We have your women, you see.”

Lorn eases the chestnut farther forward.

“Do not raise your devil lance, or she will die. So will the others!”

Lorn forces himself and his lance swings up. Hssst!

The chaos-bolt drives through the bearded blond’s chest. Almost as quickly, the big blade of the warrior beside the leader and the captive slashes through the girl’s neck.

Hssst! The barbarian who has slain the woman slumps across his mount’s mane.

“Charge! Discharge firelances at will!” Lorn orders. “Charge!” Lorn urges the chestnut forward, hoping the charge will force at least some of the barbarians to choose between righting lancers and killing captives.

“Kill them!” shouts a barbarian, and the tall warriors charge to meet the Mirror Lancers.

Hssst! Hssst! Firelance bolts flash across the less-than-hundred cubits separating the two forces.

A high-pitched scream disabuses Lorn of the delusion that a few hostages might survive even before the firebolts from his lance rake across two barbarians. Then he is alternating slashes and parries with the sabre and triggering short blasts of chaos-fire on those few occasions when he can find enough space to take on a barbarian without striking a lancer or guard.

Dust swirls up, and horses scream. Men yell.

Lorn finds he is behind the barbarians, somehow alone for a moment. He lifts the lance.

Hssst! Hsst! Two bolts in succession drill through the back and neck of two barbarians.

Lorn turns to his right and looses another bolt, to bring down yet a third barbarian from behind. He gets in three more bolts before a giant of a figure with a blade nearly so long as Lorn’s firelance comes charging past a dying lancer and toward the overcaptain.

Lorn barely manages to slide the other’s blade off his sabre. The firelance crumples as he uses it to parry the barbarian’s backswing, but the big blade remains caught in the thin cupridium of the lance long enough for Lorn to jab the point of the sabre through the other’s neck, and wrench it back out. At times, the point he had added to the Brystan sabre has made the difference. He drops the lance and manages to yank clear the second sabre, smiling mirthlessly. Then he urges the chestnut toward a lancer beset by three barbarians.

Lorn takes the first from behind, and the second from the side with the official lancer sabre, and then he is past and fighting off another huge figure.

The dull sound of metal on metal becomes more common, and the hssting of firelances dies away.

Abruptly-or so it seems-there are but lancers and guards looking blankly at each other, eyes darting this way and that, seeking another barbarian.

Lorn reins up, and looks across the grassy grass, grass now splashed with splotches of blood and other substances, and littered with bodies, some of horses, but mostly of men-and a handful of children and women. He tightens his lips and sheathes his lancer sabre, switching the Brystan one to his right hand. He is aware that whichever magus has been using a chaos-glass to view the battle is no longer doing so. “I hope you saw enough blood…” he murmurs under his breath.

After scanning the field, he reins up by a fallen barbarian, his eye caught by the shimmer of the blade beside the body, and dismounts. He takes the blade and studies it slowly.

“Ser! Ser!” Tashqyt guides his mount up beside the overcaptain’s.

Lorn glances up at Tashqyt.

“It’s over,” the squad leader reports. “We even checked the edge of the bluff, but no one escaped that way.”

“I know.” Lorn lifts the big blade, Hamorian-forged and -ground, from the workmanship. “I want all the blades collected and saved. Put them on the spare and captured mounts. The Majer-Commander will need proof.”

“Proof?”

“That Hamorian traders are sending blades to Jera, and that those blades are being used to kill lancers.” Lorn mounts slowly. His legs are tired, and his eyes stab. Then he glances down at the body of a woman, sprawled on the grass. He does not see how she died, but she is barely younger than Ryalth or Myryan. Or the grower’s daughter he had killed.

After a long moment, he looks up and meets Tashqyt’s eyes. “This time… it’s over.” He clears his throat. “What about our men?”

“Ah… we took some losses, ser.”

Lorn waits.

“A good score - and - a - half from the lancers, almost a score from the guards. And Whylyn, and two of the Guard squad leaders.”

“Threescore…” Lorn’s smile is tight. “Too many, but not bad for a first battle for most of them, and not at all bad against fifteenscore.”

“Eighteenscore, ser. Ah… I thought we needed to know.” Tashqyt looks down. “They killed most of the captives, ser. Almost a score. Five survived.”

Eighteenscore dead-more than in some small towns in Cyador. Lorn nods slowly. “Do we have any captive barbarians?”

“Halfscore, a bit more. They’re all wounded.”

“Where are they?” Lorn remounts the mare.

“Over by the bluff. There.” The sharp-featured Tashqyt gestures.

In the late-afternoon light, Lorn rides toward the captives. He dismounts and hands the chestnut’s reins to Tashqyt. He walks forward. There are fifteen men, all bearded, all with their hands bound behind them. One lies unconscious, on his side, in the dusty grass. The captives are surrounded by Drayl’s squad-half dismounted with sabres drawn; the others mounted, also with blades drawn.

One of the captives lurches toward Lorn. “White demon!”

“You killed women and children who could not have harmed you.” Lorn draws the Brystan sabre.

“You are all demons.” The bound captive spits toward Lorn.

Lorn’s face is like ice as he steps forward, and there is a dull clunk as the chaos-enhanced blade separates the barbarian’s head from his torso. Both drop onto the blood-stained dust.

“My blood is on them all,” Lorn looks up at Drayl, mounted. “Not yours. Kill the others.”

“Ser?”

“If we release them, they’ll think we’re weak. Also, they killed those captives as certainly as if they had held the blades-and some probably did. We’re not killing captives. We’re killing the people who did.” Lorn takes the chestnut’s reins back from Tashqyt. “Do you want me to kill each of them myself?”

Drayl looks down. “No, ser.”

“Then do your duty.” Lorn mounts, then turns the chestnut and leaves the squad leader and the lancers who had been guarding captives. He ignores the scattered curses and yells of the captives as they die.

His guts are tight, but his movements are graceful. His head throbs, and he can feel the tiredness in his arms and legs. Tiny knives stab at his eyes, a reminder that he has apparently used chaos in fighting, although he does not specifically remember doing so.

“…say one thing… doesn’t ask… what he won’t do…”

“…butcher…”

“…they any better?… saw those steads… what they did here…”

Lorn has no answers, for every answer he had before the battle was wrong, and so is every one after it. He can but hope, once more, that he has chosen the lesser of evils, and the one that will cost Cyad the least in the years to come. But he knows that the wars with the Jeranyi have come to Biehl, fueled by old hatreds and new Hamorian blades, and before long, no matter what he could have done, there will be more raids and more destruction, and more deaths.

Is he but a puppet of the times? One reacting to old hatreds? Or is his evil worse, because he has the freedom to act, and has chosen to annihilate an entire force of barbarians in hopes of preserving Cyadoran lives, when he has no way of truly knowing whether his actions will? And whether he can make the times different from what they would have been without him?

XXXVIII

Lorn’s Mirror Lancers and the District Guards ride along the north bank of the River Behla, westward toward Ehyla. They had traveled so far south and west in pursuing the raiders that the dusty river-road is a far shorter return than retracing their tracks to the northeast and along the beaches would have been.

Lorn studies the muddy river, a good hundred cubits across, but still not much deeper than four or five cubits in most places, except for the occasional narrows where the depths may reach twenty cubits. The willows are taller, and more abundant, and a scattering of other trees mixes with them along the bank. There are now some woodlots along the north bank, although the land beyond the south bank remains flat grassland interspersed with ever more frequent fields.

As he passes particular landmarks, he adds them to his maps, lightly and carefully with a charcoal stick, although he doubts he will use them again. While losing threescore-and-ten is not unreasonable against eighteenscore, the losses are more than have been seen in Biehl in generations. Despite the Hamorian-forged blades packed on the spare and captured mounts, he has no doubts that the outcry will be equally loud, and provide ample reason for his swift replacement. For if he is believed-that there is a true Jeranyi danger-the Majer-Commander must dispatch a more senior officer-and if Lorn is not, then he will be relieved to face some form of discipline.

Behind him the lancers still murmur, as they have for the last two days, almost as if they cannot believe what has happened, and must keep talking about it.

“…still don’t believe… overcaptain… must have slaughtered more ‘n score himself…”

“…did all right yerself…”

“Just let ‘em kill her, he did. Pretty little thing…”

Lorn winces, but continues to watch the river.

“Got ‘em all, didn’t he?”

“…know… but don’t seem right…”

“…let ‘em loose, and they’d kill more… couldn’ta caught ’em all. You know that.”

“…you saw that hamlet… want ‘em doing that to yer folk?”

“…still don’t seem right…”

After a battle such as the last, Lorn doubts anything is right. He glances to the northwest. After two days of riding from Nhais, they still have more than a day’s ride to reach Ehyla, if not two. And then his newest set of problems will begin.

XXXIX

As the Mirror Lancers and the District Guards form up outside the guard building in Ehyla, a light drizzle falls from the low gray clouds moving in off the
Northern
Ocean
and over the River Behla. While the clouds are dark, and getting blacker, so far, the rain has not even wet the dust on the road. Lorn rides to where the guard squads have reined up, and halts the chestnut before the grizzled Wharalt.

“Ser?” The senior guard looks steadily at the overcaptain.

“You and your men did a good job-a very good job, and we could not have stopped the barbarians without you. Some of them-and you-may ask in the future whether what we did was necessary.” Lorn’s eyes hold Wharalt’s. “I spent three years in the Grass Hills, and I would judge so. I am returning your command to Commander Repyl, but I will also tell him how valiantly you all behaved. Also, under the Emperor’s Code, death golds are paid to the families of District Guards who die under the command of the Mirror Lancers, It is not enough, and they will be slow in coming, but they will come, and that is why I asked for their names. I would not deny them what they paid for with their lives. I would that you would watch for such and ensure that the families receive those golds.”