Soarers Choice (36 page)

He
couldn’t see his shoulder, but he did use his Talent-senses for a moment to
study the wound, not that he understood what they showed him. He had to stop
almost immediately because he could feel himself getting weaker, even with that
minimal effort. He did try to wiggle the fingers on his right hand, and they
did move. That was somewhat encouraging.

There
was a perfunctory knock on the quarters door before a ranker appeared with a
tray. “Sir... you hungry?”

“I
think I could manage something, thank you.”

“Here
you go, sir.” The ranker — Mykel finally recalled his name, Einsyl — eased the
tray down in front of Mykel.

Mykel
was surprised by the
eg.
toast, perfectly golden
brown, the fried apples, and particularly by the small pitcher of berry syrup,
accompanied by two mugs, one of cider and one of ale. He doubted he’d ever had
a more appetizing breakfastprepared byCadmiancooks.”Thankyou, Einsyl... and
thank the cooks for me. It might be a day or two before I can do it
personally.”

“Yes,
sir. I will, sir.” Einsyl inclined his head, then backed out of the quarters.

Eating
left-handed, balancing a tray on his lap, was awkward, but Mykel had to admit
he felt better after he finished. He drank both the cider and the ale. The
liquids, especially, seemed to help the lightheadedness.

Outside
the window, he could hear morning muster, and what he did hear convinced him
that the entire battalion, less scouts or a few others, remained in Iron Stem.

Shortly
afterward, Rhystan entered the quarters. “You look better this morning, Majer.”
He smiled wryly. “You’re only as pale as an alector, rather than a corpse.”

“You’re
cheerful this morning. Have the Squawts and Reillies picked their new
battleleader and left the hills to wreak vengeance on me and all Cadmians?”

“No
word on that.” Rhystan bent down and took the breakfast tray, setting it on the
small writing desk, then sat on the stool beside the bed. “They’re still having
their big meeting. We have another problem.”

That
didn’t surprise Mykel. He only wondered what the new problem might be. “What is
it?”

“I
think it’s your absence.”

That
did surprise Mykel. “My absence?”

“In
the last day or so, the attacks by sandwolves and the other predators have been
increasing around Iron Stem. It’s almost as if they know you’re not there. The
head of the outholders was here last night...”

“Croyalt?”
asked Mykel.

“Right.
He said not to lose men fighting them and let the inholders take their losses.
The big danger was the Reillies.”

“That’s
easy for him to say,” Mykel replied. As he recalled, Croyalt hadn’t said
anything about the Reillies. He’d told Mykel to leave well enough alone, and to
depart from Iron Stem, if he could. “Did he say any more about the Reillies?”

“He
said that they knew how to call the sanders ... but he didn’t say who these
sanders were.”

Mykel
realized, belatedly, how that tied to the Reillies.

“They’re
the other predators, the ones that look like little stone men. They’re very
hard to kill. The Reillies probably called them up when Hersiod took on the
miners.”

“Why
is it that the more I hear about Iron
Ste.
the less
I want to be here?”

“Because
you’re a sensible Cadmian, and nothing sensible is going on here,” Mykel
replied. “None of it makes sense. The outholders want the inholders to lose
their livestock. The inholders hate the outholders. The people in the town hate
the ironworks, but want every coin they can get from it. No one likes the
dreamdust, but they don’t seem to do anything about it. Hersiod’s sent here to
protect people, and he immediately kills hundreds. The alectors want more iron
and coal, yet they seem to be going out of their way to antagonize everyone who
might help them produce it. At the time they need it most, for whatever reason,
the weather turns bad, and the rivers run high and flood out the loading piers
in Dekhron.” Mykel took a slow deep breath. “There’s probably more that I don’t
know.”

“That’s
enough.”

“What
about the ironworks and the mines? Any new problems there?”

“No
problems there at the moment, not that anyone’s brought to my attention.”

“On
the patrols where the sandwolves and sanders show up ... concentrated fire is
the answer, and they shouldn’t corner the sanders — the small sandy figures.”

“Makes
sense. Anything else?” asked Rhystan.

“If
I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”

“Take
it easy, Majer. You need to rest and let that shoulder heal.”

Mykel
remembered what he’d wanted to ask. “Did the healer ever say what was on that
bolt?”

“No,
sir.” Rhystan offered a wry smile. “She did say that no one ever lived after
they’d been wounded with one with grooves like that on it.”

“Good
fortune. There’s always a first time.”

“Yes,
sir.” Rhystan’s tone, was polite, but barely short of openly disbelieving.

Mykel
laughed. He couldn’t help it, and the pain from the laughing didn’t stop him —
just shortened how long he laughed.

“I’ll
tell the men you’re doing much better.”

“I’ll
be up in a day or so.”

“Don’t
push it, sir.” Rhystan nodded and slipped out of the quarters.

Mykel
forced himself to lie back against the pillows. He didn’t like the
i.e.
that the sandwolves and the other predators might
know about him. He couldn’t believe that they could sense that, but he could
easily believe that the soarers might know, and that suggested that they were
behind those attacks. What he didn’t know and couldn’t understand was why. The
one soarer had once told him that the Cadmians — he started to shake his head,
but the jabbing pain from his shoulder halted the gesture uncompleted — not the
Cadmians, but he, personally, was an ally of the soarers against the alectors.
What was happening suggested that the soarers didn’t like what the Cadmians
were doing. But why? How could he find out?

Mykel
had no answers, not yet.

After
a time, he found his eyes were closing.

The
patroller had been right. The station quarters were very tight, even though all
the patrollers had disappeared into the twilight by the time the Myrmidons had
finished settling their pteridons for the night. Dainyl’s sleep on Septi night
had been fitful, with visions of baleful lightcannon incinerating pteridons and
their fliers in brilliant blue-green incandescence, followed by scenes of women
and children being executed on Tables of immense size and scope. What was worse
was that in one of the dreams he was the one ordering the executions, even as
tears streamed down his cheeks, tears that burned like flames eating away his
visage.

Just
before dawn on Octdi, when he could sleep no longer, Dainyl dressed and washed
up, then walked up the low hill that sheltered the patroller post to take
another look at the RA’s complex. In the gray predawn light, he could see
nothing moving outside the structures. He turned and studied the hills beyond
the settled area, looking for the rockier locales. After a time, he walked back
down. He thought his stomach was settled enough for some travel rations.

Lyzetta
was waiting for him. Her violet eyes studied him, but she said nothing, just
nodded.

“How
was your night, Captain?” he finally asked.

“I’ve
had better, sir. I’ve had worse, too.”

“After
we eat, gather the fliers together, and we’ll go over how we’ll implement what
we discussed last night. After that, we’ll have them gather the boulders and
stockpile them. There’s a deeper valley about a vingt and a half to the north
of the ridge where the RA’s place is. The valley’s across the high road to the
east from there. We’ll put the boulders there. While you’re doing that, I’ll
heed Alynt to fly me out to the mines so that I can talk to the battalion
commander.”

“I’ll
let him know. You think this will work?”

“It
will work.” How long it might take was another matter.

Once
the Myrmidons had eaten their rations and gathered together in the sunlight
outside the barracks, Dainyl took out one of the sheets of paper he’d found in
the barracks and began to sketch, using his own grease marker. When he
finished, he had a crude side view of the low stone ridge on which the regional
alector’s buildings were set. “I’d like each of you to take a quick look.
That’s a rough sketch of the east and west approaches to the ridge. You can see
that if we fly low enough, we’re not exposed to the lightcannon until we have
to climb over the
e.g.
of the ridge. After that, if
we fly directly toward the buildings, we’ll be exposed long enough for that
lightcannon to target us. It’s less than half a vingt from the
e.g.
to where they’re dug in, but that’s too much
exposure.”

There
were several nods, especially from those fliers in second squad.

“The
tower where they have the lightcannon isn’t that high,” Dainyl went on. “That
means they can’t see when a pteridon approaches until we come up over the
edge.” He paused. “We aren’t going to fly that distance. How big a boulder — or
a rock — can a pteridon carry?”

“For
short flights, twenty to thirty stone,” offered Lyzetta.

“If
we try to drop something that big on them,” ventured Alynt, “won’t we be as
vulnerable as clipped-wing fowls?”

Dainyl
shook his head. “What happens if a pteridon flies up to the
e.g.
of the ridge out of sight, then pops up for a moment
and lets that huge stone go ... on an arc, with all the speed of flight behind
it? Then it drops back out of direct sight. No pteridon will come up in the same
spot as the one before, or any other one. It’s sort of like that lander bowling
game, except the objective is to throw the boulders at the buildings and keep
doing it until we flatten them. The buildings are stonewalled, but the walls
aren’t that thick. They were designed to last against weather, not against
pteridons bombarding them with stone missiles.” For the moment, Dainyl did not
mention his other idea.

“We’re
going to miss some. It could be most of the time,” pointed out one of the
Myrmidons whose name Dainyl couldn’t remember.

“We’ll
get better,” Dainyl said.

“What
if they turn that lightcannon on the boulders?”

“They’ll
just waste power. It’s not designed for that.” Dainyl could see that some of
the Myrmidons didn’t understand exactly how much force would lie behind a
thirty-stone boulder propelled by a pteridon that could cover over seventy
vingts a glass. “Have any of you seen what happens when a large boulder rolls
down a mountainside?”

“Yes,
sir. It happened in Coren last year, after the fires and all. It flattened one
of the cottages, and it had thick stone walls. Maybe they were as thick as the
ones in the RA’s buildings.”

“The
boulders your pteridons will be tossing will be moving about twice as fast.”
Dainyl didn’t know that for certain, but he had to say something. “We do have
to locate a number of boulders first, the rounder the better. Sharp-edged ones
will tend to dig in. Captain Lyzetta will tell you where to stockpile them.
Take care to stay well away from the target. Then, once we have enough to begin
operations, I’ll go over with each of you how I want you to approach the RA’s
complex, based on the approach of the previous pteridon.”

“Prepare
for liftoff in a quarter glass,” said Lyzetta.

While
the others moved to their pteridons, Dainyl motioned to Lyzetta. “Late this
afternoon, we’ll have to watch for First Company. We don’t want them flying
into that lightcannon.”

“You
don’t think we’ll take out the complex today?” Lyzetta raised her eyebrows.

“I’d
be surprised.”

“Ah
... sir ... what if they’ve used lifeforce the way they did in Hyalt, and all
the boulders pile up?”

“Hyalt
was different. It was built into a cliff. Here, the buildings are out in the
open on a flat surface.” Dainyl laughed. “If they try to use lifeforce, it will
take longer, but it will work out the same in the end. They can only coat the
outer walls. That will stop skylances, maybe even something like their
lightcannon, but it won’t add that much strength to the stone behind the
coating. It’s like taking a lander bullet with a shimmersilk tunic. You get
bruised with the first bullet. It gets worse with the second ...”

“I
hadn’t thought about that, but it makes sense.” Lyzetta nodded. “What do you
plan to do during the bombardment?”

“Watch
from behind a thick pile of stone, close enough so that I can see how matters
are going, and where I can signal you or the squad leaders when I need to. If I
fly with anyone, it only reduces what they can carry and their maneuverability,
and with that lightcannon, that’s not something I’d want to do.”

“I’ll
have the second seat put on my pteridon then, after you get back from the
Cadmians.”

Dainyl
didn’t argue. He wouldn’t be spending much time on a pteridon once he finished
meeting with the Cadmian commander.

In
less than a quarter glass, he was airborne, seated behind Alynt as the Myrmidon
directed his pteridon southward, across dry and sandy hills, following the
paved road that led to the mines, and then to the only occasionally used
goldenstone quarries.

From
the air, the copper mine looked more like an oval, with a road wound around its
e.g.
down to the lowest level. Farther to the west
were the works for the tin mines, which looked deserted. The barracks and other
buildings were on a low mesa to the east of the copper mine pit. Dainyl could
see two companies of Cadmians formed up to the north of the buildings.