He could sense death…the shriveling of lifeforce. As the Talented Reillie died, the Talent screen vanished, and Mykel could sense more than thirty riders in the trees.
“Rhystan. A squad and a half of Reillies ahead of the scouts! Sixteenth Company! Forward!” As he gave the order, Mykel urged the roan forward, flattening himself against the gelding’s mane and neck. At least the slope was gentler, taken from the east, than it would have been had he waited until they were directly north of the hill.
“After the majer!”
A ragged volley of shots spewed from the trees. Behind him, Mykel could sense injuries and at least one ranker’s death. He managed to get the rifle back in its case and get his sabre out before he reached the trees, where he used his Talent-sense to guide the roan around the thinner pines at the edge of the woods and then to his right.
The snow, light as it was, had flattened the undergrowth, and he could see two Reillies ahead, on foot behind the trees, swinging their rifles toward him.
He urged the gelding to the left, around a larger fir, and then forward—only to see a fallen trunk. The gelding recovered enough to jump the trunk, but all Mykel could do was hang on. The Reillies’ shots went over his head.
One scrambled to the left and out of sight. The other one tried to bring his rifle up.
Mykel was on top of him before he could fire. One slash was enough, awkward as it was, to cut deeply into his neck. Mykel barely managed to hang on to the blade as the roan kept moving past the dying man.
Behind him, Sixteenth Company followed, scattering into the trees.
“Sabres!” came Rhystan’s command.
Mykel caught a flash of red and brown to his left and turned the gelding. The Reillie jumped to the side and tried to bring the rifle to bear, but Mykel was faster, although he had to lean to his right to avoid a heavy tree branch, and slashed with the sabre, using the momentum of his mount to augment the force of the blade.
As the Reillie went down under the sabre, Mykel’s stomach turned. He’d realized, after he’d delivered the fatal cut, that the Reillie had been little more than a girl. She was shooting at you and your men, he reminded himself.
He saw green and red ahead, but reined up when he realized that the Reillie slumped against the ancient pine was dead. He could only hope his Talent had been accurate, and that there were no more Reillies. Fighting more than a squad of Reillies in the frigging trees was stupid. He just hoped Sixteenth Company casualties weren’t too high.
He reined up, looking around. From what he could sense, only Cadmians remained in the woods.
“Sixteenth Company! Back to the road! Re-form on the road.” Mykel turned his mount back northward. He repeated the command as he rode, whenever he saw one of his men. In less than a tenth of a glass, he was on the hillside slope overlooking the high road, where the rest of Third Battalion and Nineteenth Company remained, holding the road. Behind them were the supply wagons and the rear guard.
Fortunately, there were no more shots. Unfortunately, it was more than half a glass before all Sixteenth Company was back in formation on the road. Mykel could only feel a slight soreness in his shoulder, but it was in the back of his shoulder blade, more from the twisting impact of the bullet against his Talent shield than from an impact or an actual wound.
Rhystan reined up on the south side of the road. “Squad leaders. Report!”
“First squad, two dead, two wounded, one seriously.”
“Second squad, two dead, one wounded…”
“Third squad, one dead, no wounded…”
All in all, Sixteenth Company had lost only five men, and neither fourth nor fifth squad reported any casualties. Mykel hadn’t expected many, since the fighting had largely concluded before they had reached the area where the Reillies had set up the ambush.
After they resumed riding, Mykel looked to Rhystan. “Do you have any idea how many we killed?”
“Ten, maybe fifteen, but that’s a guess. How many did you take out, Majer?”
“Three.” Mykel grimaced. “One was still a girl.”
“They shoot as well as their brothers and fathers, sometimes better.”
“I know, but I don’t like it.”
“Women fly with the Myrmidons. That captain of the Myrmidon Seventh Company is tougher than most of the alectors she commands. That’s how I saw her, anyway.”
“She’s formidable.” Mykel hadn’t cared at all for the way in which Captain Lyzetta had studied him, not in the slightest.
“I still don’t see why those Reillies didn’t fire a full volley when we charged,” said Rhystan. “They could have dealt us far greater casualties if they had.”
“Two reasons, I’d guess,” Mykel replied. “First, they were planning to shoot directly down on the road, so they had to turn, and it was a longer shot, and they weren’t really prepared for it. Second, old habits die hard. They’re used to single-shot weapons. You need staggered fire with them or you’re defenseless if everyone’s reloading at once. They probably haven’t practiced that much with their new Cadmian rifles, and they might not have that much ammunition.”
“We won’t be that lucky again.”
“They’ll still be slower than we are for a while,” Mykel said. “That’s another reason why we need to clean them up as quickly as we can.”
Rhystan shook his head. “You did Hamylt a favor, you know?”
“What? Giving the Reillies the idea that we’d come after them into the trees?” Mykel had almost said “stupidly,” but he’d realized before he spoke that there was no point in undermining himself when the casualties had been low, probably no higher than they would have been had he and Sixteenth Company not charged into the trees. “I’ll have to tell him not to do it, because he won’t have a battalion behind him in case things don’t work out.” He paused. “Then, they might do more to provoke him.”
“True.”
They rode westward for another glass, and the clouds overhead began to break, providing intervals of sunlight, but there was no sign of any more Reillies.
“You think the main body is still west of Wesrigg?” Mykel finally asked.
“They could be anywhere around here,” Rhystan replied, “but I’d say so because there’s an old road that leads back toward that town that’s off the road between Dekhron and Iron Stem. Sudon—that’s it.”
Mykel nodded. “So they can take it to Sudon or take the south fork to the bridge across the Vedra to Borlan. And they won’t have to fight through us to get to the road.”
“Right.”
Somehow, Mykel doubted that anything would be that simple.
42
First Company had left Harmony before sunrise on Sexdi and flown for over a glass before the orange-white light of the sun had cascaded across the forests and the scattered holdings that flanked the high road north to Klamat. Under a clear silver-green sky, below the pteridons, everything was white—except for the high road, which was already a dark gray as the snow had begun to melt. Dainyl had always marveled at how the eternastone intensified the light and heat of the sun, so that the roads were clear long before anything else had begun to melt.
With the help of a tailwind, by slightly before midday they reached Klamat, where they stopped briefly, then left the guidance of the high road behind, flying directly across the whiteness of the snow-swept Moors of Yesterday.
“Much better today, sir,” Halya called back.
“Much,” Dainyl agreed.
He’d sent a message by sandox from Harmony, saying that the weather had delayed their flight to Blackstear, and Alcyna would probably receive it late in the day. Dainyl hoped that First Company would hold Blackstear by then, but in case they didn’t someone should know the reason why they were running late.
The night before, Dainyl and Ghasylt had discussed their planned approach to the Table and the options they would use. From what he had seen so far, it appeared as though the sky over Blackstear was going to be clear, and that Firs
t Company would fly in from the west-southwest.
Another three glasses or so passed, and in the distance ahead, Dainyl could make out a change in terrain, where the moor gave way to the band of forest south and east of Blackstear.
Before that long, Dainyl could see the area more clearly. The plateaulike hill on which the Table building sat was covered with snow. He could barely make out the depression in the snow where the stone road wound toward the harbor. Only the snow-covered flatness between the hills to the west of the Table structure revealed where the river ran. The roof of the warehouse and the tops of the bollards on the harbor piers provided the sole indication of where the edges of the small harbor ended and the frozen ocean began. From the handful of dwellings clustered behind the pier warehouse rose thin trails of white smoke. East and south of the Table building was the evergreen forest Dainyl recalled, stretching into the distance, although so much snow had fallen that it was hard to make out the green under all the white. The open tundra to the north was an expanse of white that melded with the darker white of the frozen ocean.
“Edge closer to the captain!” he called to Halya.
“Yes, sir.”
The pteridons closed, and Ghasylt looked up.
“Head west! For the approach!” Dainyl called out across the space between the pteridons.
Ghasylt nodded and banked into a gentle left turn, straightening on a course slightly north of west. The fliers of First Company followed. After a good five vingts Ghasylt began a wide turn back toward the northeast, straightening up so that the pteridons were aimed directly at the Table building, with the white sun falling directly on the backs of the Myrmidons.
The approach minimized the glare for the Myrmidons and would make it difficult, if not close to impossible, for the Ifrits holding the Table to see the approaching pteridons against both the sun and the glare off the new-fallen snow.
Dainyl neither saw nor sensed anything out of the ordinary until they were less than a vingt from the Table building when several figures in green and gray scrambled out onto the north portico.
A line of intense blue-green light flashed past him. It had to be some kind of lightcannon, but he’d never seen anything like it. Clearly, it was something the fleeing Ifrits had brought with them—probably the weapon Delari had described.
“Skylances! Fire at will!” Dainyl yelled.
Ghasylt echoed the command, and the blue flare of skylances crossed the scattering of blue-green rays coming from the north portico of the Table building.
“Drop altitude and take evasive action!” Dainyl called to Halya. “That’s a lightcannon! Bring us in as low as you can!” He realized after he gave the command that the weapon was probably better termed a light-rifle, but he wasn’t about to change command terms in the middle of an attack.
Halya said nothing, but the pteridon sideslipped and dropped off to the left, then dived in toward the ground, leveling off less than twenty yards above the snow.
As late as it was in the afternoon, with the sun low in the sky, Dainyl hoped that glare and sunlight would make it even harder to aim the handheld lightcannon, but even as he thought that, blue flame filled the sky to the right, above, and behind them. He sensed the loss of a Myrmidon, but not of a pteridon.
Halya’s skylance flared toward the portico, and blue flame flared, then splashed away from one of the stone pillars. Another line of blue-green angled off Dainyl’s shields, and he staggered in the harness, just before Halya pulled up, barely clearing the roof of the Table building.
Dainyl looked back to see how the remainder of First Company was faring. Skylance beams outnumbered the light-rifle beams, and he could no longer catch a glimpse of any of the gray and green uniformed Ifrits.
By the time Halya and Ghasylt had completed their turns and were flying inbound once more on another pass, the light-rifle fire from the portico had died away.
Dainyl called to Ghasylt. “Have first squad set down on the side of the building, where they can’t fire at us without exposing themselves. Have the rest of the company circle and provide cover.”
“Yes, sir! First squad…”
Halya didn’t even ask, but set her pteridon down less than three yards from the marble wall that was the west side of the building.
“You stay here with your skylance ready. Fire at anyone who so much as sticks his head out.”
“Yes, sir!”
Dainyl eased out of the harness and slipped off the pteridon. He immediately found himself in waist-deep snow, yet he was almost beside the building. No one was firing at him. The outside north portico was empty.
The four remaining pteridons of first squad had landed, and the Myrmidons had their skylances covering the north portico. From what Dainyl had seen and could now confirm, the Ifrits had ripped out stones from an outer terrace—or somewhere—and hurriedly blocked windows and the entrance to the south portico. They had retreated inside, and getting in—or getting them out—was going to be more than a little difficult. Absently, he wondered why inactivating the Table had not killed some of them, as had happened in Hyalt. Was it that he had not totally destroyed the Table, and there was a residual link?
Had he known that, he might have destroyed it—but then that would have created a whole set of other problems.
Slowly, still holding his shields and lightcutters, he moved through the snow toward the stone base of the portico, trying to keep himself shielded by the stone from a direct shot by the light-rifle. A skylance flared, and blue flame wreathed one of the stone columns.
Dainyl could sense pain…injury…but not death. His right shoulder was almost against the marble as he moved through the snow, still powdery, but heavier than he had thought. He was thankful that the air was still. As he neared the edge of the portico, he staggered and nearly fell as the toe of one boot struck the first of the stone steps hidden by the snow.
He extended his Talent-senses, trying to determine who might still be hiding or waiting behind the pillars on the portico above. From what he could sense, no one remained out in the open air, but at least two were close to the entrance, although Dainyl was not sure whether they were in the entryway arch or just inside. Still, he should be able to get up to the portico, taking cover behind one of the columns, without exposing himself.
As he started up the snow-covered lower steps, he found himself joined by three rankers from first squad. He hadn’t even heard the orders.
“Take cover,” he ordered, keeping his own head low as he edged up the steps and came up directly behind the column to the right of the open space flanking the center of the steps leading down to the snow-covered road to the harbor.
Dainyl strengthened his shields, then eased the barrel of the lightcutter around the stone, and fired, using Talent to direct the blast at the entry arch and the Ifrit flattened on the left side.
The Ifrit’s shields held, but barely, and Dainyl fired again.
The second blast went through tattered shields, and the alector fell. The second alector retreated inside the building.
“Cover me!” snapped Dainyl, moving as quickly as he could across the stone tiles that held patches of packed snow in places.
A single flare of green-blue flashed by his shoulder, then broke off as the blue beam of a lightcutter returned fire.
The heavy doors clunked shut.
With the doors closed, Dainyl made it to the side of the archway without coming under more fire. He passed three sets of boots and tunics, and there might have been others.
“We need a pteridon at the front of the portico! They’ve closed the doors.”
Almost as soon as he called, Halya appeared. Her pteridon used claws and tail to balance so that Halya could point her lance directly at the doors. “What do you want?”
“At my signal, full fire at the door.”
“Standing by.”
Dainyl moved along the wall to the far west edge, holding his shields, and creating a Talent funnel toward the lock plates. “Now!”
Hsssttt! The odor of burning wood and hot metal filled the chill air.
“Do you need another blast, sir?”
Dainyl extended a Talent probe, checking the door, and feeling it move. “No…that’s fine. Move to the side, so that they can’t fire at you when I open the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
The pteridon’s wide blue wings spread, and with a brief burst of Talent, it lifted itself a good ten yards to the east.
He looked back in the direction of the three Myrmidons behind columns at the edge of the portico, then called, “Join me, but stay clear of the center here.” He moved back to a position beside the doors.
One of the Myrmidons—Saedryk—made his way from pillar to pillar along the west side, coming to a halt against the marble wall to Dainyl’s right.
The other two Myrmidons eased into position on the east side of the archway.
“Now what, sir?” asked Saedryk.
“We open the doors and go in, yard by yard, until we finish them off, or they surrender.” They wouldn’t surrender, Dainyl knew, but he had to allow for the possibility. “I move forward, and you provide covering fire, and then I cover you while you catch up.”
The Myrmidon nodded.
Dainyl reached out and took one of the door handles, pulling the right-hand door as far open as it would go, roughly to a forty-five-degree angle from the wall. Then he stepped around it, but kept himself shielded from direct fire from inside the building. From there, he extended another Talent probe, past the archway and into the square foyer. It was empty, but two Ifrits were using doorways farther down the corridor as cover.
Dainyl fired two quick blasts down the corridor, then rushed through the archway, taking cover against the south wall of the inner foyer, to the right of the square arch that separated the foyer from the corridor beyond. Belatedly, a single blast of a lightcutter—not the light-rifle—flared past the foyer archway.
Once more he eased the muzzle of the lightcutter barely around the edge of the wall, and fired a quick blast down the corridor, using his Talent to direct it at the nearer Ifrit.
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