Scion of Cyador

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Yes, ser. We’ll await your orders.” Esfayl eases both mounts back toward the still-mounted squad. “Back behind those sheds.”

  “How long will it take to fire the cannon after I give the order?” Lorn asks Ghyrat.

  “A few moments, no more.”

  “So, if I said to fire now…”

  “One… two… three… now,” Ghyrat says. “That long.”

  “Can you widen the chaos-bolt so that it is as wide as the pier?”

  “Ah… we could… but it wouldn’t be as strong.”

  “Would it be strong enough to kill men in light armor?”

  “Oh… yes.”

  “How long would it take to change the bolt back?”

  “Not much longer than to fire the cannon.”

  “Then have them widen the bolt and have it centered on the middle of the pier for now.”

  “Yes, ser.” Ghyrat turns and walks back to open cannon hatch where he leans partway inside. Shortly, he returns. “It is as you ordered, ser.”

  “Good. Now we wait.”

  The wind has risen somewhat, but gotten warmer, when the first vessel swings in toward the pier, and two seamen jump from the slowly moving ship, carrying light lines. As soon as they have planted themselves by bollards, each pulls in, hand over hand, the heavier hawser, and with practiced movements, use hawser and bollard to kill the vessel’s momentum. On the ship itself windlasses creak, and the lines are drawn tighter, easing the vessel up to the pier.

  “We’ll wait as long as we can,” Lorn says. “I’d really like them both to be tied up at the pier.”

  “Will they?”

  “I hope so. All that they can see is a vehicle and few souls. I’m trusting that won’t put them off. I doubt any have seen a firecannon that is not on a ship.”

  The second vessel swings in farther along the outer pier than the first has, and, again, linemen leap onto the pier.

  Two gangways drop onto the stone surface of the pier from the first vessel, to tie up, and almost as quickly from the second.

  “Now?” asks Ghyrat.

  “Not yet. Wait until they have armsmen formed up.” Lorn hopes that they will have such.

  His hopes, or fears, are well-founded, for green-clad armsmen scurry down the gangways and form into ranks. Lorn frowns as he sees the shimmering, near-body-length shields in the first rank, and the long cupridium - sheathed pikes being passed down.

  “Almost fourscore already…” he murmurs, noting that the two groups of twoscore each appear almost ready to march down the pier. He turns. “Now.”

  Ghyrat runs forward to the firecannon, thrusting his head inside, then turns and runs back to stand behind Lorn.

  The two wait.

  HHHSSSTTT! With a whooshing hiss, the narrow flame sprays along the pier. Even from fifty cubits behind the cannon, Lorn can feel the intense heat. The mirrorlike shields have provided no protection, and the fourscore or so green-clad armsmen stand momentarily like charred posts before slowly toppling onto the stone of the piers.

  Lorn can see nearly as many armsmen on the open decks of the ships.

  Then, suddenly, seamen are scrambling up the rigging. Lorn can see that someone is using an ax to cut the hawser on the rearmost vessel-the one closest to him and the cannon.

  “Chaos!” Lorn turns to Ghyrat. “Rake the ships. First one, then the other. Use the wide flame. Then tighten it and cut the masts! Now!”

  Ghyrat hurries to the cannon, issues an order, then hurries back toward Lorn.

  HHHSSSTTT! With another loud hiss, the narrow flame sprays the nearer ship. Almost immediately, the sails-which had just begun to billow-are half flames, half charred canvas. Some of the spars have caught flame.

  The second blast is not as well-aligned, and the forward mast of the more distant vessel escapes part of the flame discharge.

  “Ghyrat!” Lorn bellows. “Take the masts of the far ship first! The far one first!”

  The engineer officer sprints back to the cannon.

  Hssst! Hsst! It takes two blasts, but the ship farthest out on the pier is demasted and a mass of flames even before the cannon turns slightly and shears all three masts of the innermost vessel, reducing it to a flaming pyre.

  Lorn turns, and gestures. “Esfayl! My mount!” He hopes his voice carries, but Esfayl either hears or guesses correctly, for the captain appears from behind the shed, riding toward the base of the pier, leading the white gelding.

  Ghyrat walks from the cannon toward Lorn. His face is white.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Lorn says. “You and your men did a good job.”

  “Yes… ser.”

  Lorn looks back at the burning hulls, then at Esfayl, who has just reined up a halfscore of cubits away. “Have we heard from Cheryk?”

  “Yes, ser. They have mirror shields. He’s giving ground… as slowly as he can.”

  Lorn turns back to the Mirror Engineer captain. “We need to reinforce Cheryk as fast as we can get there. Captain-hold your position here. If any of the green guards attack from the city, use the cannon on them. If another ship appears, do what I did here.” Lorn mounts the gelding.

  “Those are your orders, ser.” Ghyrat swallows.

  From astride the white gelding, Lorn looks hard at the young-faced and goateed captain. “They are the orders of the Majer-Commander and the Emperor.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Lorn turns the gelding. For perhaps the first time, he truly understands, with both feelings and mind, why the loss of the fireships is such a blow to Cyador.

  “Ser… there’s little left…” Esfayl notes. “If we had one of those in the streets…”

  “With one of those in the city, I’m not sure we’d have a city left to hold,” Lorn says.

  “Oh… hadn’t thought that way.”

  “What else did Cheryk’s messenger say?”

  “Sasyk has his force moving up Second Harbor Way, where the shops are wall-to-wall. They have pikes and mirror shields, and except at the infrequent intersections, there is little way for the lancers to strike them.”

  “We’ll try an attack from the rear, then,” Lorn says.

  Esfayl’s squad rides behind him as he leads them along the seawall road and then to the west, and then onto the lower section of Second Harbor Way West near the harbor. Even from there, he can hear the hssing of firelances, the occasional dull sound of metal on metal, and men yelling, both orders and imprecations.

  “Firelances at the ready!” he orders. “Pour-abreast.”

  “At the ready,” Esfayl echoes. “Four-abreast.”

  As the small column nears the fighting from the south, Lorn can see his fears have indeed been realized. Not only has Sasyk developed a shield wall, but behind the shields, and protruding forward, are long cupridium pikes, the cupridium untouched by the chaos-bolts of the firelances.

  Cheryk has his lancers firing their lances at legs well enough, but the shields are long, and for each man that falls, another appears with a shimmering shield, and step by step the phalanx is pushing the lancers back uphill toward the Palace of Eternal Light.

  From behind the shield wall come arrows, arching over the ranks and into the lancers. Those arrows have taken a toll, for Cheryk looks to have lost almost a squad.

  Lorn watches for a long moment, but only for that. There are no pikes left on the back side of the phalanx and the shields there are few and spread.

  “Ser?” asks Esfayl.

  “First, we’re going to charge and try to flame down the archers from behind. If they don’t have any pikes, we’ll run right up their backsides. They can’t be that well trained.”

  “Ah… ser…”

  “I’m leading the charge, and I expect everyone to be with me.”

  “Yes, ser.” Esfayl smiles.

  “Six-abreast, and three trailers,” Lorn orders.

  “Six-abreast. Move up as needed! Lances ready!” Esfayl’s voice is tight, but clear above the muted din coming from the gently sl
oping way ahead.

  The lancers’ mounts pick their way over and around perhaps a score of fallen greensuits, but the rear of the ever more swiftly moving phalanx is almost open. Lorn can see that Cheryk is retreating more quickly uphill and toward the Palace. Has the older captain seen Lorn’s force, and is he trying to lure Sasyk forward so that the former lancer will not check his rear? Lorn hopes so.

  The halfscore of archers stands behind large mirror shields that require both arms for the guards who shield them. The archers continue to loft shafts toward the retreating lancers.

  “Charge!” Lorn orders.

  “Discharge at will! Short bursts!”

  So occupied are the archers in lofting arrows toward the retreating lancers under Cheryk, that only two look up, initially, as Lorn and Esfayl’s single squad bears down on them.

  Hssst! Hssst!

  “Last rank to the rear! Last rank to the rear!” comes an order from somewhere among the green figures. Hssst!

  One archer turns and tries to loose a shaft, but is transfixed by a firebolt from one of Esfayl’s lancers.

  Lorn directs one burst, then two, with his own personal chaos, felling two archers immediately, then a third.

  Within moments, most of the archers are down, but almost a halfscore of the green-suited shieldmen have banded together, and Lorn can see some of the pikemen trying to swing the polelike weapons to fend off Lorn’s attack.

  “Now!” He digs his heels into the gelding’s flank. If they do not break the shield wall while it is forming, they will not break it at all.

  “Follow the majer!”

  Lorn lays chaos in all directions before him, slashing with the sabre that cuts as no blade should, and firing power-bolts from the lance. The gelding lurches, and Lorn has to fight to hold his seat even as he slashes down with the chaos-aided sabre to cut aside one shield-bearer, and then another.

  “Major’s through! Widen the gap!”

  The words seem to float past him as sabre and lance flare. Behind him a mount screams.

  Every green tunic he sees that moves gets a bolt of chaos or a cut from the sabre, and he knows he must cut through the green tunics ahead. The tightness of Sasyk’s formation now helps, because the green-clad guards have nowhere to go, except to break formation and face the firelances and sabres before them, or risk being cut down from behind.

  Lorn wheels the gelding short of the first line of pikemen still facing uphill, and begins to chaos-slash and hack his way eastward.

  The disciplined phalanx has begun to disintegrate.

  : “Charge!” comes the command from Cheryk, and a full company of lancers sweeps downward, chaos-bolts flaring.

  Then pikes fall and the green-clad guards begin to run.

  Lorn charges after three, cutting one down with his firelance, the second with the sabre, and the third with the lance.

  He turns the gelding, using the short lance to knock aside a single pike, then aims it and dispatches the pikeman. He knows, somewhere, that he has no charges left in the lance, and that he is drawing chaos from where he can find it. He will pay for that-but pay he will… later… for if he does not use chaos now, there will be no “later” for him to consider.

  So he rides one lane, then another, then a road, then a way, leading perhaps three lancers, perhaps four, although he does not turn to count, using sabre or chaos or both, as necessary, on fleeing forms in green.

  It is midafternoon, or later, when Lorn reins up in the white stone street. He glances around, finally recognizing that he is still on Second Harbor Way West. The white granite is red-and-pink most places, those where it is not covered with blood-smeared silver shields or green tunics. Black splotches appear in places on the walls of the shops lining the street. Bodies-those of men and mounts-lie everywhere, but most are clad in green.

  “Ser!”

  Lorn wheels the gelding, sabre and firelance ready, but the call comes from Cheryk. The veteran rides toward Lorn slowly. “It’s over, ser.”

  Lorn blinks. His eyes water, and he realizes that he can barely see, so bright are the flashes of after-chaos that flare before his eyes. His head throbs, and that will get worse, he knows. Or, rather, he will feel it more.

  “Maybe a halfscore escaped. Once you broke their back… they had nowhere to go.”

  Lorn nods, slowly. “You’d better send out a few men as scouts… down to the Plaza… and to the west piers. Make sure there aren’t any more armsmen forming up.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Lorn doubts his forces could fight more than a handful of armed men after the carnage and the cost of the street battle. He winces inside, thinking about the mirror shields and pikes. How could he have missed those? On an open field, the lancers would have an advantage, but not in the streets of Cyad, and Sasyk had known that. Then, Sasyk had been a lancer, a corrupt ‘ one, but corrupt did not mean stupid. And Sasyk knew he would be working against the Magi’i and had doubtless kept himself away from the shields and pikes so that their presence would not have been detected.

  Cheryk turns his mount, and Lorn just sits on the gelding, trying to watch, his eyes watering, his head splitting, letting the remaining squad leaders supervise the collecting of weapons and the stacking of bodies in the wagons someone has commandeered.

  After a time, shivering in the afternoon chill, he eases his mount into the full sun as the wind rises.

  “Ser…” Cheryk rides back to Lorn and reins up. “No sign of any trouble anywhere. City is quiet everywhere.”

  “Everyone’s in shock,” Lorn says. “The first time ever, or since Alyiakal, when there’s been blood on the streets here.”

  “Was there any other way, ser?”

  “No one seemed to know it. I didn’t.” Lorn pauses. “I haven’t seen Esfayl… Did he… ?”

  “Yes, ser.” Cheryk looks at Lorn. “Only six of you broke through. You slaughtered close to fourscore, but…”

  “There wasn’t anything else we could do. At least, I couldn’t think of anything that would work in time.”

  “Ser… you made something work that no one else could.”

  “We haven’t done the task as well as any would like.” Lorn smiles raggedly. “How many of them… ?”

  “Our count is rough, but the men say we took down almost twentyscore here on the streets.”

  Lorn shakes his head.

  “Ser… could be more.”

  “Cheryk… I’d guess your count was right. There were close to tenscore on the piers, and that doesn’t count the sailors we fired with the cannon.”

  “Chaos-fire, ser…” Cheryk is the one to shake his head.

  “Sasyk?” Lorn asks.

  “You cut him down, ser. Don’t you remember?”

  “There were so many. I just went for whoever was giving the orders. It was a bloody mess breaking that phalanx.”

  They both look down at the stones that are no longer white.

  Lorn straightens in the saddle, conscious that his entire body aches, that his eyes water, that he has trouble seeing, and that his head is being cleft with a dull ax. “I need to report to the Majer-Commander.”

  Cheryk gestures, and two pair of mounted lancers ride toward them. “Escort the majer… wherever he goes.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Lorn rides slowly back up to Mirror Lancer Court, the four lancers he does not even know by his side. There, he dismounts by the front entrance, and hands the gelding’s reins to one of them. “If you would wait…”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Lorn turns and trudges up the steps, ignoring the squad leaders who step away from him as he walks into the lower foyer and starts up the staircase that seems all too long.

  “Ser?” Tygyl looks at Lorn as the majer reaches the topmost level and takes several deep breaths.

  Lorn looks down. His uniform is stained everywhere with blood and other, less-sightly remnants of the battle. “We won. If you consider the loss of a company, the slaughter of nearly thirtyscore g
reensuits, and the total destruction of two good merchant vessels a victory.” He takes a deep breath. “Is the acting Majer-Commander here?”

  “Yes, ser. He’s pretty weak, but he said he’d see you when you returned.” Tygyl offers a tight smile. “He said you would.”

  Lorn nods slightly and turns toward the fifth-floor study that had been Rynst’s. He opens the door and steps inside.

  “You can close it, Majer.” Sypcal sits in one of the armchairs in front of the desk. His feet are propped on a stool. He still wears a commander’s insignia, and the uniform collar is not tight. “You will pardon me if I do not stand.”

  “I doubt you should, ser.” Lorn stops five paces back from the senior officer, and bows. “For now, we hold Cyad, and Sasyk is dead. So are almost all of his armsmen.”

  Sypcal takes a long look at Lorn. “When I heard the first reports and how many armsmen Sasyk had gathered… I wasn’t sure even you could break them.”

  “We almost didn’t. According to a rough count, they had thirtyscore under arms with mirror shield men, archers, and pikes.”

  Sypcal smiles. “Vyanat’mer has already been here. He said that all the merchanters would accept whoever the Emperor’s testament named as heir.” Sypcal’s laugh is weak, but his eyes are bright. “He said that, thanks to the Mirror Lancers and Ryalor House, there were no dissidents left. The Traders’ Council will pick the heir to Dyjani Clan. Sasyk murdered all those next in line.”

  Ryalor House? Lorn will discover that later, he fears. He decides against raising that question on a day that has raised all too many. “What about the Magi’i?”

  Sypcal shakes his head once. “We have heard nothing. I doubt we will anytime soon. Possibly not until the heir is officially announced.”

  “Is there any word on who that might be?”

  “None. It may be that the heir named by Toziel is already dead.” Lorn winces. “Then what?”

  “Then… Then, matters will become more interesting.” Sypcal coughs before speaking, and Lorn can sense the weakness in the man. “I suggest, Majer, that a half-squad of your lancers… no… I am ordering a full-squad to guard your dwelling. Go to it, and rest. We may need you and your skills again.” There is another smile. “I doubt it will be again today, and probably not tomorrow. After that… who knows?”