The squad drew up at the ridge crest, with Orlant and another scout posted out from the squad, while Alucius spent several moments checking his maps and studying the two narrow trails. Then he nodded. "The left one. It should bring us up on the north side of the camp, and if Waris's reports were right, we could come out on a low bluff."
The trail wound down, then back up and farther to the north before turning back to the southeast. To cover perhaps a vingt as an eagle flew took close to three vingts on the trail, and it was late midmorning when they stopped again.
To the south beyond the thicker junipers where Alucius had ordered the stop and just over the ridgeline above them, Alucius could sense both people and something that was similar to an ifrit, but wasn't, a vague dark purpleness. What could be like an ifrit, but not? He decided that question could wait. As he scanned with his Talent, he looked at the maps once more, not that he needed them, but he wasn't about to explain that he didn't. He raised his eyes to Zerdial.
"The camp is almost due south, over that ridge. We'll ride up through the trees and stop just short of the top. Then I'll move forward and study the layout quickly and come back with instructions on who will use their burn bags where."
"Yes, sir." Zerdial turned in the saddle. "Follow the majer, and keep it quiet."
Alucius eased the gray from behind the junipers and started up the uneven slope. He reined up about twenty yards from the crest. There he dismounted and handed the gray's reins to Orlant. Carrying one rifle, he made his way up the slope, moving sideways as well, until he reached the crest at a point just behind an ancient cedar. Keeping low, he eased up behind the cedar's trunk and studied what lay below.
Several grayjays squawked, but then flew westward.
The camp was almost exactly the way that Waris had described it—or rather, Waris had described it accurately. Alucius studied the lines of vegetation and the trees and spiky thorns particularly. All but one area could be reached from cover, and the wind was from the west, which should fan the flames downhill into the areas of dry spiky thornbush. Alucius set down his rifle and took out the map, marking the spots for each two-man team.
Then he spent more time using his Talent. He could detect no one in the heights above the camp—not a single patrol or sentry. That suggested a lack of solid military training, or something else. The darkish purple that was visible only to Talent seemed to be centered in the cave area that was to his right and farther south, but there was a thin miasma over the entire camp. For Alucius, that was as good as an announcement that the ifrits were involved. It was also useless as an explanation of anything to anyone else. He couldn't exactly explain the evil behind beings that no one else had seen and no one else alive could explain—except for Wendra and the ifrits and their allies and servants.
Finally, he slipped back down to the waiting squad.
"Gather round." As the squad circled around Alucius, he began. "We're just to the north of the camp, and it's below us, set against a curve in the bluffs. Each of you is to fuse your burn bags and place them so that the areas of brush and thorn catch fire. That will take away part of their defenses so that we can attack later from more points. It might also keep them guessing. Once you get things burning, return to the juniper grove down below here. We'll reassemble there. Anyone who's not back in a glass will have to find his own way back. Is that understood? Now… I'll explain to each team where your targets are…" Using the map and his own study of the camp, he described each target area to each two-man team. When he was finished, he looked at Zerdial. "Let's go."
He remounted the gray and rode eastward, keeping below the crest of the ridge but still scanning with his Talent. He picked up more rodents, including tree-rats, and the grayjays, and several larger animals—a mountain cat, he thought, and several deer—but no sentries or patrols. That absence continued to worry him.
Alucius had given himself the farthest and the trickiest assignment, the one to the east, just above the broadest section of spiky thorn—but the area most vulnerable to an attack by lancers if there were no thorns. It was also the closest to the camp, and the one area most likely to have patrols.
A good vingt to the east and south, Alucius reined up below the ridge-line, although it was more of a plateau running to a drop-off holding the spiky thorns than a ridge. From what he could see and sense, the only guard was one stationed at the end of the palisade running out from the gate at the narrow east road entrance.
Alucius dismounted and tied the gray to the only tree nearby, a bent juniper. He took the three burn bags from behind the saddle and slung them over his shoulder. Then, rifle in hand, and moving in a low crouch, he eased along the gentle slope toward the drop-off. He crawled the last few yards until he was stretched behind a low bush. From there, he looked at the spiky thorn below. It was farther away than he had realized, a good fifty yards to the south of the base of the low bluff, and the area was open and exposed enough that to drop down the two-yard irregular rocky and sandy slope, then move close enough to make sure that the spiky thorn caught fire, would leave him totally exposed to the sentry—and anyone else who might be alerted.
The sentry was not especially alert, but he did scan the area where Alucius lay.
Alucius looked westward and uphill, watching.
One thin trail of smoke appeared, then another. Shortly, there was a third.
"Fire!" The call was faint, but Alucius could make it out.
He lifted his rifle and waited.
Finally, the guard turned to look to the west, moving enough away from the wooden pillars of his sentry box so that Alucius had a clear shot. At that distance, it took him two shots, but with the yelling from the camp, no one noticed—for the moment—the sentry slump out of sight.
At that instant, Alucius left the rifle and scuttled over the edge of the drop-off, scrambling down the sandy and rocky slope, then ran toward the wall of spiky thorn.
Striker in hand, he lit the fuse of the first burn bag and hurled it to the south. The second went straight in front of him, to the southwest, and the third flew to the west-southwest. He paused for a moment, using his Talent, but he could feel that all three bags were burning fiercely. He also sensed no one nearby.
He ran back toward the bluff, scrabbling up the slope, grabbed his rifle, then hurried across the near flat until he reached his mount. A quick glance to the west showed that more fires were appearing around the rebel camp. From the south, Alucius could hear a bell clanging as he untied the gray and mounted.
He rode back westward at a quick walk. There was a wind, light and out of the southeast. Alucius wasn't sure what, if any, effect the wind would have, but he could see the smoke welling up from the south in more and more places, and the air around him began to smell smoky as well.
As he neared the rendezvous point, Alucius began to sense other men coming from the south. They had to have been climbing straight up from the camp below, but near the rendezvous point, that climb was close to a hundred yards of near-vertical face.
"Zerdial! Is everyone here?" Yes, sir!
Alucius almost ordered them to depart. Instead, realizing that a half squad or so of rebels had reached the top of the bluff and that those rebels were almost at the ridgeline, he snapped. "Oblique firing line to the south! Now!"
Despite the irregular command, fifth squad formed up.
"Rifles ready!"
Alucius watched the ridgetop until, within moments, nine men in maroon charged over the top on foot and down toward fifth squad, raising their rifles as they ran.
"Fire at will!"
Twenty rifles fired almost as one. Four men dropped where they stood. Two others, blood streaming across faces and tunics, staggered forward. Three others sprinted toward the lancers as if nothing could touch them, shooting wildly. Fifth squad continued to fire.
Alucius held his own fire, looking to the ridgeline. Two more armsmen in maroon appeared, and they too hurried downslope, both of them headed directly toward Alucius.
Alucius had thought about taking captives or prisoners, but the way the rebels fought so far, trying that would have been near-suicidal for any lancer who tried. He turned the gray toward fifth squad. One lancer was on the ground.
Zerdial shook his head.
"Get him over his mount," Alucius ordered. "We need to get out of here before any more of them show up." He could sense others climbing the escarpment behind the rebel camp, but they would not reach the top for another quarter glass, he judged. Already, the sky was filling with the hazy smoke from the fires below, and he could smell the burning thorn plants.
In moments, the dead lancer—Hylik—was fastened over his saddle, and fifth squad was on the trail back to meet up with the other companies.
As they rode westward along the trail, Alucius frowned, thinking. What was going on in Hyalt? It was one thing for a single armsman to try an ambush or to fight back when cornered, but to try a suicidal charge against mounted lancers on an open trail? To climb a hundred yards up an escarpment and attack a larger force without even trying to use cover?
Behind him, the fires continued to burn, sending smoke higher and higher, and from what he could see looking backward, it appeared as though some of the fires had spread from the spiky thorn patches into the cedar and juniper groves as well.
Midafternoon came and went before Alucius and fifth squad rode across the last few hundred yards to the road, passing Waris, standing scout on the trail.
"Anyone come this way?" asked Alucius.
"No, sir. No one on the trail but you, and no one at all on the road. Spooky, if you ask me."
The more Alucius saw of Hyalt, the spookier it was.
As Alucius rode up, Feran gestured toward the east. "You were successful, I see."
"We got the fires set. We didn't stay to see if they burned the way we planned. We took out close to a squad of defenders. They attacked exactly the same way—just a blind rush at us, firing their rifles. We lost Hylik. An unfortunate and lucky shot. The rebel was running full speed downhill."
"They weren't good shots?"
"Except that one shot… no."
Alucius looked back to the east, where the hilltops were a mass of fire. Gray and black smoke rose into the hazy sky. With the harvest dryness of the spiky thornbushes, when the fires burned out, the thorn cover that had protected the approaches from the west and northeast would be gone. So might some of the log walls and palisades, although Alucius doubted that the heat would be intense enough for long enough to fire heavy logs.
Chapter 54
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On Septi night, the three companies had made camp some five vingts directly southwest of the rebel encampment, but a distance closer to fifteen by the roads, if the maps were accurate. Even so, there had been a glow in the sky for a time after sunset.
Octdi morning dawned hazy, and the scent of smoke remained in the air, carried by a gentle breeze out of the north. Shortly after dawn, the lancers were back on the road that had turned southeast and would eventually circle Hyalt to the south, then to the east—that was, if the maps were correct. So far they had been, and the reports from the lancers scouting the road ahead had confirmed that for the next few vingts, at least, the road and the map agreed.
The road dust and dirt showed signs of patrols, but only by a few riders and not by squads or larger groups. As he rode at the head of the column beside Captain Jultyr, Alucius wondered how soon it would be before that changed.
"You think the rebels will come after us?" asked Jultyr almost idly, as if to open conversation.
"After what you've seen so far… what do you think?" countered Alucius gently.
"They seem like hornets. You know what I mean. You hit the nest, and they all take off, all at once. Never seen an outfit charge like that squad the other day. Not even the Matrites. Have you, sir?"
"No." Alucius shook his head. "Even the grassland nomads didn't do that, not where every man charged superior weapons and positions without taking some evasive action or using cover."
"Word is that there's Talent here."
"There is. I'm a herder, and I think any herder would feel what I've felt. Nothing like it anywhere I've been." Alucius offered a laugh, partly forced. "It hasn't stopped them from getting killed." He would have said more, except he could see a lancer scout riding toward them, almost at a gallop.
Alucius kept riding, waiting until the scout—Hikal, used only for road scouting—pulled in and swung his mount into a walk beside Alucius.
"Sir…"
"Lancers headed our way?" asked Alucius.
"Yes, sir. Looks to be a full company ahead—same maroon uniforms—and they're riding hard this way."
"How hard?"
The youngish Hikal flushed. "Quick trot, but they've got their rifles at the ready."
"How far are they?"
"Two vingts, sir. No more than three."
"What else?"
"They're quiet, sir. Real quiet. No talking. No singing. They're just riding. Seems strange."
"They see you?"
"Don't think so, but I moved back quick."
"Any wagons or any foot with them?"
"No, sir. Just looked to be a company of horse. That's all."
Silently, for a moment, Alucius studied the terrain. To the left of the road were lowlands, ground that would have been marshland with more rain and perhaps once had been. To the right were the same rolling hills, with only a gentle slope and the heavier grass that seemed to grow closer to Hyalt. A line of thorn olives that might once have been a windbreak blocked a clear view of the road to the south, but there was no sign of the stead that might have planted the windbreak.
Alucius turned to Roncar, one of his messengers, riding just behind Jultyr and him.
"Call the other officers forward."
"Yes, sir."
While he waited for Roncar to get word to Feran and Deotyr, Alucius went over the lay of the land again, matching what he saw against what he had in mind.
Once Feran and Deotyr had ridden up, Alucius ordered the column to halt.
Then, facing the other three officers, he began to explain. "We've got a rebel company headed toward us. They're in battle dress and looking for a fight, according to the scouts. We'll give them one." Alucius paused, letting the words sink in before continuing.
"We'll form an arc. Fifth Company will take the forward part—right behind the trees over to the right. Then Thirty-fifth Company, running from the flank of Fifth to within twenty yards of the road. Twenty-eighth will cover a span of about fifty yards, centered on the road. Staggered formations so that every lancer can fire. And targeted shooting—each man in each company aiming at his counterpart. I don't want a hundred rifles aimed on the first rank. When the rebels come around the curve, all companies will open fire at my command. We'll take down as many of their men as we can until they get abreast of the trees. I'll order 'Cease, fire,' and Fifth Company will charge through. If a second charge is necessary, I'll call on Thirty-fifth Company. Twenty-eighth Company is to hold the road and allow none of the enemy through. I'll be with Fifth Company." Alucius looked from Feran to Jultyr, then to Deotyr. "Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Form up as directed."
Alucius and Fifth Company continued on the road for another hundred yards before swinging southward over the rough land that had once been pasture, but now looked merely neglected.
"Column halt! Left oblique! Stagger spacing!" Feran called out. "Ready rifles!"
Fifth Company re-formed swiftly into a staggered double file firing line by companies. Alucius looked back to see that the other two companies were also formed up as he had ordered. Then he looked to the southeast to
the point where the road curved more to the east, just past the windbreak of thorn olives. There was no visual sign of the rebels, although he could sense riders farther away through his Talent.
A quarter glass passed. The feeling of the oncoming riders was stronger, and that feeling held the vague purple overtones detected by his Talent, but the riders had not yet appeared on the small section of road visible from where Alucius waited on the gray gelding.
Abruptly a pair of riders appeared at the end of the curved section of the road, riding westward. Within moments, the forward part of a column of maroon-uniformed lancers also came into view. Neither of the outriders looked to the side as they rode forward.
Then, one of the riders stopped just short of the windbreak, and the other turned and rode back toward the column.
"You think we'll need to charge them?" asked Feran, his voice low.
"They'll regroup and charge us," Alucius predicted.
Yet, for almost a tenth of a glass, nothing happened. The single outrider remained in the middle of the road, looking straight in the direction of Twenty-eighth Company, seemingly ignoring Fifth Company and Thirty-fifth Company, and the column of rebel lancers continued to ride closer, but neither faster nor more slowly, until they were within yards of the eastern end of the thorn olive windbreak.
Then there was a single barked command that Alucius could not make out, and the entire column, still in two files, began to gallop pell-mell down the road toward Twenty-eighth Company, totally ignoring Fifth Company and Thirty-fifth Company.
"Prepare to fire!" Alucius judged the distance, waiting.
The rebels were within fifty yards of the nearest lancers in Fifth Company when Alucius ordered, "Fire at will!"
"Fire at will!"
The command echoed down the ranks of the companies, followed immediately by the sounds of rifles, first the heavier weapons of Fifth Company, then the sharper sounds of the Lanachronan rifles.
At the first volley, close to twenty rebels sagged in their saddles or toppled onto the dusty road, but the rebel column charged past Fifth Company.
Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters Page 23