Scion of Cyador (31 page)

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn looks around the officers. “Our tasks are simple. We want to kill any of the barbarians who might ride against us, but no women unless they take up arms. Once we’ve removed anyone who can raise a blade and we hold the town, we want to take all the blades, and all the mounts, and we’ll need supplies to get to the next town and mounts to carry them.”

“All the mounts, ser?” asks Esfayl.

“If they have no mounts, they can’t ride after us or send word somewhere else quickly after we leave.”

Cheryk nods, and he and Emsahl exchange glances.

“It sounds simple, and something will probably go wrong,” Lorn says, “but keep in mind that you want to make sure that this town won’t be able to attack Cyador for a good long time. This is only the first town, not the last… so have your men use sabres when they can-but only when they can safely.” Lorn rolls up the map. “Do you have any questions?”

Glances flick back and forth between the officers.

“Guess I’ll ask, ser,” offers Cheryk. “You’re planning a campaign, ser, not just a few raids?”

“If we can do it,” Lorn admits. “If things don’t work, then we change. The more towns and blades and mounts we can take out, though, the fewer barbarians you’ll face this year, maybe for a few years.”

Cheryk nods. “Best we take as many as we can, losing as few as we can.”

When no one else volunteers a question, Lorn steps to the side and slips the map into the long pouch behind his saddle. “Let’s form up. We’ll try a four-abreast front once we get to the other side of the stream.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn swings back into the gelding’s saddle, then waits for the officers to rejoin their companies and pass the orders. His eyes keep looking down the empty road, then back along the column that holds six companies.

“Ser?” Emsahl’s voice is polite. “Third Company’s ready.”

“Thank you. We’d better wait a few more moments.”

Lorn turns the gelding and stands in the stirrups. He watches as Gyraet rides out to the shoulder of the road and lifts his arm. “They’re ready in the rear. Column forward!”

The orders ripple back, and, as the Mirror Lancers ride to the northwest, Lorn wonders once more about what he plans. He is no better, and perhaps worse than the barbarians, for although they slaughter innocents, they were not born in Cyad.

The Cyadoran forces ride a kay or so farther, before the road swings more northward and toward the stream, but the road remains empty.

Esfayl lifts a hand in salute as his Second Company passes Lorn, and turns due west on the lane or animal track that parallels the stream on the south side. Lorn returns the salute.

“No one ahead, ser,” reports the scout who has pulled his mount around and beside the sub-majer.

“Still?”

“No, ser.”

The road curves out from behind the hills and slopes down for a hundred cubits, before twisting back around a hillock with trees spaced across it, clearly an orchard of some sort, although the limbs are near empty except for scattered and furled gray winter-leaves. As the column nears the orchard, a figure-a lanky youth in a matted sheepskin jacket-stares from behind a tree where he has been emptying a sweetsap bucket. After a moment of silence, his mouth open, his eyes taking in the lancers in their winter jackets and uniforms, he runs, yelling, around the hillside toward the small hut partway around its base, perhaps three hundred cubits to the west. Whitish smoke rises from the chimney of the hut. As he runs, the youth yells, “Demons! White demons!”

“Let him go,” Lorn says. “We need to get across the stream.” He urges the gelding into a fast walk, aware as he speaks of a sweet odor in the air. Something from boiling down the sweetsap?

He concentrates on the road, as it slopes downhill and curves back to the ford. There, the brownish water is almost fifty cubits wide, and runs swiftly, nearly knee-deep on the mounts, as the lancers cross in pairs. The water is higher than normal, running through leafless bushes on both sides. The slope on the north side bears several sets of ruts and two or three sets of hoofprints, not even recent.

The gelding sidesteps and whuffs at the top of the rise before the road resumes, and Lorn glances around, but the crossroads is empty. Lorn leads the column to the left, westward toward the town.

The first dwelling west of the crossroads and toward the center of the small town is a single-story hovel on the left side of the road, less than twenty cubits back from the rutted track. It has mud-brick walls and a thatched roof that is dark with age. A bearded man, about Lorn’s age, peers from the window as if he cannot believe what he sees.

Hsst! Lorn’s single firebolt goes through the man’s neck, and there is a scream from within the house.

“Frig!”

“Majer means to wipe ‘em out…”

“…what they been doing to our folk for years…”

Lorn presses his lips together. He glances over his shoulder, but Gyraet and his Sixth Company have already veered off from the main body and quick-trot northward on the narrow farm lane. The dust farther east and behind the column shows that Rhalyt’s First Company is moving east toward the ditchworkers.

“Quick-trot! Now!” Lorn orders, and the three captains behind him echo the orders, which are relayed by the squad leaders.

As they ride westward, toward the town, even from a half-kay away, Lorn can see that the houses are not set square to the road, or to the lanes, but almost haphazardly, with ramshackle outbuildings, and often piles of rubbish within kays of the dwellings. An odor, both rancid and acrid, hangs over the place.

Lorn unsheathes the sabre, holding it in his left hand with the reins, for the moment, the firelance out and leveled in his right, as they ride toward the first clumps of dwellings.

“Get the demons!”

From the right, charging from behind an abandoned and roofless hovel, rides a group of barbarians, perhaps a halfscore bearing the long and dark iron blades of Hamor. Ignoring the superior numbers of the lancers, they spur their mounts toward the four-abreast front of Mirror Lancers that is all the road permits.

“Short bursts!” Lorn says. “Short bursts!” He follows his orders with two quick hsssing blasts. One barbarian topples from his saddle, and another lurches sideways into the mount of the rider beside him.

Hsst! Hssst!

Lorn ducks a wildly-swung blade, then triggers a quick fireblast at a figure under a sagging porch who is drawing a longbow. The man drops, and a small fire begins in the wooden planks around his feet.

Lorn sees several figures running down a lane to the left and turns the gelding. “Third Company… first squad! Follow me!”

“First squad! Follow the majer!” Emsahl echoes.

Lorn urges the gelding forward, and within a hundred cubits he sweeps up on a running figure, using the Brystan sabre and a hint of chaos as the man tries to throw himself aside-too late. Another man tries to duck behind a low tree, but Lorn directs a chaos-bolt from the firelance through his shoulder.

“Demons! They’re everywhere!” screams a girl or a woman.

Lorn reins up to the side of the lane, glancing past the house to his left where three lancers are riding down a pair of barbarians. A gray-haired woman throws herself from a raised porch, a long dagger in hand, but the nearest lancer twists away, and levels his lance. Hssst!

The woman staggers, and his mate slashes down with a sabre.

Lorn turns. Two younger men, barely old enough to hold blades, charge from behind the side of the porch.

Hsst! The first goes down with a bolt from Lorn’s firelance. The second lifts his blade as if to hurl it toward Lorn, but another lancer rides by and cuts through the youth’s shoulder with a sabre.

Lorn leads the first squad along the lane, catching sight of three men running from what appears to be a smithy. “Get them!” He gestures for three lancers to ride them down, before turning the gelding to his right to face a gray-bearded rider with a long and ancient blade. Lorn does not attempt swordplay, but drills a chaos-bolt through the man’s chest, and rides past.

; A woman screams and runs from a hut to grab a child, scooping him up in her arms and then scrambling back through a door that she slams shut.

Lorn passes the hutlike dwelling and turns to the left, paralleling the main street, the first squad riders following him. They sweep the back lane, finding and slaying perhaps another six or seven men, before Lorn regathers the scattered squad, and rides back to the main street or road that parallels the stream, where he reins up. The main road in the town has not even a square, just several buildings clumped together, on both sides. Scattered along the roadside are bodies. One is that of a woman, a blade lying by her outstretched arm. The others are all men.

Flames are already crackling from several buildings.

At the sound of mounts, Lorn turns and looks through the growing smoke as Emsahl brings in the second squad of Third Company. “We cleared out the houses along the left side, ser. Quytyl and Fifth Company did the right side.”

Lorn glances at Emsahl. “Did you lose anyone?”

“No, ser. Few slashes, nothing serious.”

Lorn nods, and the air is silent except for the orders of officers and squad leaders, and the sound of flames. The sub-majer glances up as another set of riders approaches from the west. Esfayl reins up with perhaps a halfsquad.

Lorn waits.

“We’re holding the east road, ser. About a halfscore tried to escape or send word. One tried to go through the fields.” After a moment, the curly-haired young captain adds, “We killed them all.”

“Good.” Lorn nods almost reluctantly. “It’s hard that way, but they won’t be killing our women and children.”

In time, Rhalyt appears, leaving his company halted in a four-abreast formation. “We took out the ones on the ditch, ser. Close to a score. A bunch of herders saw us, and got their mounts. Almost another score. We killed most of them, but one rode east, and we couldn’t get him.”

“That can happen.” Lorn pauses. “Did you lose any lancers?”

“Two wounded, ser. Not bad.”

As Cheryk rides up, Lorn glances to the two undercaptains. “Rhalyt- you need to patrol the lanes on the river side. Don’t go into any more houses. If someone tries to use a bow, just use a firelance. If they hide, use the lance on something around the house that will burn it.

“Quytyl, you do the same thing on the side of the main street here away from the river.”

“Cheryk will be gathering supplies and blades.” Lorn gestures to the normally taciturn older captain. “You know what supplies we’ll need.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Take what food you can find quickly and put in on the captured mounts.” Lorn swallows. “Water all the mounts, and make sure everyone eats something. Don’t let anyone go off alone. Then burn the barns and granaries.”

“Ser?”

“We’re not coming back this way, and if they don’t have food, they’ll not be riding south into Cyador.”

Cheryk nods. Lorn can also see the nod from Emsahl.

Mounted on the gelding, the Third Company’s first squad behind him, Lorn waits and watches as Cheryk’s men set to work and as another set of buildings begins to flare into flame. He tries not to look at the scattered bodies, mostly bearded, that are strewn along the main street, and not at that of the woman.

He and the first squad slowly patrol the main street, waiting for Cheryk to gather supplies, but they see no one, and hear no one, although at one point, Lorn thinks he hears sobs from a shuttered dwelling. He does not stop.

The sun is into early afternoon when Cheryk reports. “We’ve got three captured mounts strapped with blades, and ten with provisions we can use. Also ran into a few more men with blades.”

“Did you lose any lancers?”

“No, ser. Nasty slash, but clean, for one. They weren’t expecting us.”

“No. There hasn’t been an attack into Jerans in more than a generation. They’ve forgotten what our holders and herders face every year.” Lorn pauses. “We need to tell the men that it will get tougher with each town.”

“Yes, ser.” Cheryk pauses, the glances across at Emsahl who has ridden up and waits. “Each town?”

“Each town we can manage, as I said earlier. We’re going as far as we can. We need to remove not just the barbarians, but their blades and where they get them. And no matter how fast we move, sooner or later, someone is going to discover we’re coming. We’ll take the west road, following the stream. There’s another town there, a good forty kays along. We’ll stop short, and then strike there tomorrow.” Lorn looks at the two older officers, first Emsahl, then Cheryk. “Are we ready to move out?”

“Yes, ser.”

“You, Cheryk?”

“Yes, ser.”

“Companies! Forward.”

The column of Mirror Lancers starts out the west road, riding through the swirling smoke and the odor of death and charcoal.

“White demons…” hisses a woman from the shuttered windows of the house twenty cubits to Lorn’s right.

Without slowing, Lorn looks at her and levels the firelance.

She does not move from the window, nor does she wince. “Go ahead. Turn me to ashes, brave demon.”

“We don’t kill children. Unlike your brave warriors, who gut women and small children.”

“You took our lands.”

Lorn does not answer. He has no answer, for there is none. His hands bear unseen blood, from the old woman just killed by his lancers to the olive-grower’s daughter in Biehl, yet he doubts that any course he would take that might be effective would not shed some innocents’ blood. The only real question is how he can shed the least. He also doubts that the ancients had many choices, except dying or turning into barbarians, and the barbarians will always think the lands of Cyador are theirs.

“Demons…” hisses the woman from the window he has passed.

Lorn does not look back at the smoke curling into the sky, but keeps his eyes fixed ahead, looking for men with blades, and for Esfayl’s Second Company on the road before them.

LXII

By late afternoon the clouds have thinned into a high haze, and the day has warmed considerably, enough that Lorn has taken off the winter jacket. The stream to the left of the road is running deeper and faster, perhaps because the last of the snow is melting.

Yet neither Lorn nor the scouts can see any signs of recent travel on the road itself, no new tracks that would signify someone fleeing them-only cart tracks several days old and a few hoofprints. Have those who escaped the carnage at the first town fled eastward? Does no one expect him to be heading northwest? Has he done something so unexpected that none know how to react?

The road is a good ten cubits above the water almost on a bluff overlooking a bend where the current has dug a deep pool. Lorn glances at the stream, now almost a river, and the deep pool in the bend.

Then he glances at Emsahl, riding to his right. “You think that’s deep enough down there to cover fivescore blades?”

Emsahl smiles. “Deep enough, ser. Good idea, too. Don’t want to carry ‘em, and they’ll likely rust before they’re found. If they’re found.”

“If you’d send a messenger back to Cheryk?”

Emsahl turns in the saddle. “Dwyt… the majer’d like to see Captain Cheryk up here for a few moments.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn looks down at the river bend ahead. While he’d wanted to carry the blades, it is a waste of horses and can only slow them down. He wonders what some future peasant will think when the river changes course and his plow runs into iron… or will the plow just turn up red dust as it cuts through the clay deposited over the years?

He shakes his head, riding northwest and waiting for Cheryk to join them.

LXIII

From the low hillside to the east of the second river town, Lorn studies the approach, from the saddle of the white gelding, his eyes flicking from the map to the town and back. He is flanked by Emsahl, Cheryk, and Esfayl, whose eyes follow Lorn’s in the early-morning light. Mounted behind them are the other company officers.

Unlike the first town, the second town is more regular. Some of the dwellings are white-plastered, and some have tile roofs. Lorn can see a small square and what appears to be an inn, and beyond the town, fields with evenly lines of recently-turned dark soil.

“What do you think?” Lorn finally asks Emsahl.

“Sweep through… slay those we can get. Fire the warehouses and the barns. Don’t go house to house.”

“And get the supplies and mounts we can,” Cheryk suggests.

“And the blades.” Lorn rolls the map and nods slowly. “Third and Fifth Companies come down the main road.” He glances to his left. “Esfayl, can you circle ahead and block the road to the west?”

“Yes, ser.”

“Go ahead and get your company moving. We’ll give you some time to circle out to the west.”

Esfayl nods as he guides his mount away from the others.

“Cheryk and Gyraet-you’ll take the river wharfs and warehouses. You head around the front of the hill, and then take the old road by the river.” Lorn looks over his shoulder. “Rhalyt… your company will follow me, and we’ll go where we’re needed. We’ll start with Third Company.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn and the officers turn and ride back down the narrow trail past the herder’s cottage where five lancers watch over the herder and his family to ensure that none escape to warn the town. The bearded man looks impassively at Lorn and the officers, then drops his eyes abruptly. The boy, whose head does not quite reach his father’s shoulders, stares at Lorn. The graying woman watches her son. All three project an air of disbelief, as if Mirror Lancers could not possibly be attacking so far inside Jerans.

Lorn looks toward the road below, almost wishing he had not undertaken the whole campaign, yet he knows of no other way open to him to stop the increasing attacks of the Jeranyi. His lips twist. Then, he knows of no one else in Cyador who wishes the attacks to stop, or who wishes such enough to do something. If there were no attacks, many in the Mirror Lancers would feel that they had no purpose. And the traders who supply the blades do not wish the attacks to cease, for they would lose golds. It seems that the only ones who wish the attacks to stop are the lancers who die and the poor folk of northern Cyador who are the victims.

Esfayl already has Second Company moving along the trail that circles the northern backside of the ridgelike hill by the time Lorn reins up at the head of the column of waiting Mirror Lancers.

Rhalyt reins in behind Lorn, then turns in his saddle and addresses the two waiting squad leaders. “We’re to follow the majer. Our task is to deal with any problems. Keep your lances ready and use short bursts.”

Once Rhalyt finishes, Lorn nods and says, “We need to wait for a bit to let the others pass the orders and get ready. Cheryk and Gyraet will be turning south once their companies clear the hill.” He cocks his head, listening for the orders from the other officers.

“…taking the river wharfs and warehouses… turn left at the first crossroads…”

“…short bursts! Really short bursts.”

The sub-majer and Rhalyt wait for Emsahl and Quytyl to join their forces.

“Ser… do you think they’ll have a force waiting somewhere?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t see anyone, and the town is open enough, without much in the way of trees. So it will be hard to hide a large group of armsmen.”

“Ser!” Emsahl calls forward. “Third and Fifth Companies are ready!”

“Fourth and Sixth stand ready!”

“Column forward!” Lorn raises his arm, then lowers it, and urges the white gelding forward.

Again, the road eastward between the narrow river and the hill is empty, and the dampish clay shows but a few wagon tracks and scattered and older hoofprints. A low fence of rails set between piles of stone flanks the road on the right and uphill side, then ends a hundred cubits short of the first crossroads, distinguished mainly by the lack of bushes or trees, merely a flat area, with a lane winding around the west side of the hill on the right side of the road, and a rutted way on the left.

As he and First Company near the crossroads, Lorn looks over his shoulder and can see Cheryk and Gyraet lead their companies southward, splitting the Cyadoran forces. He turns to Rhalyt, “Have them go to four-abreast. The road is wide enough now.”

“Four-abreast. Four-abreast!”

Just past the crossroads, a kaystone on the right shoulder notes: Disfek, 2k. A single thatched dwelling is nestled in a hollow to the right of the road a half-kay or so beyond the road marker. Behind it is a long and low building around which are gathered a handful of chickens that begin to scatter as the column of riders approaches. Someone slams the gap-planked front door of the thatched house, and then the shutters are closed from inside, long before Lorn and Rhalyt reach the eastern end of the stone and rail fence that separates the unkempt brown grass from the damp clay of the road.

Less than two hundred cubits beyond the house with the chickens, a thin white-haired man turns toward the sound of hoofs, gawks for a moment, and then runs, spindly-legged, toward a white-plastered dwelling on the north side of the road that leads toward the central square. “White demons! White demons! Run! Hide! White demons!”

“Demons…!”

Shutters and doors close along the wide road, and shouts echo between and beyond the houses, rising well over the sound of hoofs.

Somewhere a bell begins to ring, clanging loudly and discordantly. From where, Lorn cannot say, for he remembers no belltowers or, indeed, any form of tower from viewing the town either from the hillside or earlier in his chaos-glass.

Lorn studies the makeshift lanes between the houses that they pass. Abruptly, he catches sight of barbarian warriors-nearly a score-trotting northward away from the center of the town and away from the Third and Fifth Companies.

“Follow me!” Lorn wheels the gelding down the lane parallel to the road and urges his mount forward into a pace faster than that of the barbarians.

“Follow the majer!” Rhalyt orders.

If Lorn can get enough ahead, then he can slow the barbarians with his firelance, enough for First Company to catch up and attack. He also would far rather deal with armed warriors than unarmed men who might be such.

Lorn can see the Jeranyi riders only intermittently, over gardens and between scattered trees, houses, and outbuildings. The riders appear to be looking backward, but not to the lane a hundred or so cubits east, where Lorn and First Company are paralleling their progress and slowly moving up.

After almost a kay, he turns the gelding westward down another track that slants to the northwest, angling toward the road carrying the barbarians. He is perhaps fifty cubits from the road on which they ride when the first riders appear.

Lorn levels the firelance and triggers it at the barbarian on the side of the column closest to him, a fresh-faced rider barely a man. Hssst!

The young rider’s upper shoulder flares into blackness, and he falls away from Lorn, his mount shying into the rider to the west of him. At the attack from the side, the bearded barbarian beside the man who fell, yanks the huge broadsword from his shoulder harness and turns his mount toward Lorn. So do two other riders.

“Leave them!” bellows a voice.

The Jeranyi riders turn toward Lorn, ignoring the orders. Behind him,

Lorn can hear First Company nearing. Lorn triggers the firelance and lets fly with two more short bursts. Hsst.‘ Hsst! One strikes the rider beside the warrior with the enormous broadsword who bears down on Lorn.

Hhssst! A longer burst fells the big rider, and the broadsword tumbles into the clay, but the riders following are so close that he is suddenly using the lance more as a shield, and the sabre to slide away the heavier and longer iron blades, absently wishing he had both sabres out.

Still, he cuts through the Jeranyi force, then sees two men starting to ride northward, away from the battle.

Hssst.‘ The lance blast drops one, but the second man guides his mount to the side of the road, where he is shielded by a spreading, broad-branched tree. Lorn turns the gelding, and drops another rider from behind.

Then he is blade-to-blade with a wiry and bearded man. As a dagger knifes toward him, Lorn desperately throws pure mage-fire at the man, who collapses as his dagger slashes the leather of Lorn’s jacket.

The sub-majer wants to wipe his forehead, but concentrates on the swirling mass of mounts and men, except that the swirls subside, and all the riders who remain are Mirror Lancers. Two or three other Jeranyi riders have slipped away from the melee, but most of the Jeranyi are dead.

Lorn blots his forehead, then looks down at the slash in his jacket, and the red on his tunic. The slash across his ribs has barely broken the skin, but has resulted in enough blood to give the impression of a more severe wound.

“Are you all right, ser?” asks Rhalyt.

“I’m fine. Careless and stupid, but fine.” Lorn pauses. “How many did we lose?”

“Two, ser, looks to be,” the undercaptain says. “Two others wounded.”

“Strap the dead to their mounts for now. We’ll have to bury them tonight. We can’t carry them all the way back to Inividra. Gather the blades, and any other weapons. We don’t want to leave any around.”

Lorn finds a clean rag, gathers a touch of the black order, ignoring the headache it creates, and lets it suffuse his scratchlike wound, then slips the cloth under his runic to absorb any last drops of blood.

The Jeranyi living farther from the borders do not appear nearly so good with weapons as those who raid Cyador regularly, or they do not do as well when surprised, and if either is so, he indeed has a chance to complete his campaign.

Once First Company has gathered the fallen blades and lancers, Lorn rides back toward the center of the town at a fast walk, Rhalyt and his company following, with perhaps fifteen blades strapped to a captured barbarian mount. Lorn glances from dwelling to dwelling, but most are barred and shuttered, as if to resist a siege or the like. Most are single-storied with plastered walls, plaster over withies in many cases, although one or two of the larger structures are of whitewashed bricks.

Emsahl and Quytyl hold the square, with three of the four squads stationed at intervals, firelances out and leveled. Several lancers are carrying out food from the chandlery, and loading it on packs fastened to a halfscore of horses commandeered, Lorn suspects, from the stable adjoining the inn.

“Ser?” Emsahl looks at the sub-majer as he reins up.

“There were some raiders-a squad’s worth or so-trying to escape. We got most of them.”

“Riding away?” asks Emsahl.

Lorn nods.

“Almost a shame you have to run them down,” ventures Quytyl from thirty cubits away.

Lorn laughs bitterly. “Amazing how brave they are when they’re killing people in our lands and when they have more blades and mounts, and how they aren’t interested in fighting when they’re outnumbered.”

“Most people are like that,” Emsahl suggests.

“Is everything going all right here?” asks Lorn.

“Locals cleared out almost before we got here. Might have been that bell.”

“Load up as quickly as you can. I’m going to check the wharf area.”

“Yes, ser.”

The river is less than half a kay from the square, and, once more, Lorn passes shuttered houses, wondering how many men who might bear arms are hidden within. Yet there are too many houses for his men to break into each, not without risking losses he can well do without.

Lorn reins up by the river wharf, where five bodies of men in gray - and - brown tunics lie across the wharf, as if they had died trying to stop the lancers from reaching the single flatboat tied there. As Lorn surveys the wharf, Cheryk rides forward.

“What’s in the flatboat?” Lorn asks.

“Bundles of wool, some tanned hides, two boxes of scented candles, a dozen amphorae with some sort of oil, and a strongbox with a hundred or so golds in it.”

“We’ll need to keep the golds.” Lorn laughs. “We might need them to pay the men.”