Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  "No, sir."

  "Do you think we ought to strike the hill camp first or the one northeast of town?"

  Jultyr considered.

  Alucius waited once more.

  "I'd say the hill camp, sir. You hit the town camp, and they'll be ready for the second attack. Be harder to get word from the hills back to the other camp. Also, you hit the town camp, and folks could run to the other one. Make the second attack harder, and we might have to kill women and children. "Jultyr shrugged. "Might have to, anyway."

  "We might."

  "Still can't figure why they don't like the Lord-Protector. Never did anything to these folks. Nothing. Garrison here was mostly those with injuries of the kind that wouldn't heal, serving last year or two before getting a stipend." Jultyr paused. "This True Duarchy thing… might not be as good as the old one. Who's to say the old one was that good? All we got is stories and legends and a few roads and buildings. Doesn't tell what living there was like."

  "Legends don't tell everything," Alurius replied mildly.

  "Folks remember what they want to. Could be good. Could be bad." Jultyr cocked his head, thinking. "My grandda… he told stories. Never told a happy one. My grandmam, she never told a sad one. Spent near-on fifty years together. Funny… lived the same life. Sure saw it different—or told it different."

  "People are like that."

  Jultyr frowned. "Except these rebels. They all act the same… do the same. Folks in their right minds aren't like that."

  "This prophet is using some kind of Talent to change their minds."

  "That's hard on folks, hard on us."

  Alucius nodded. Whatever happened was going to be hard on everyone. He scanned the road ahead once more, then the thornbush-covered rises on each side.

  Chapter 65

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  On a cool and cloudy Londi, just past noon, Alucius, Feran, Jultyr, and Deotyr stood to one side of the ashes of a cookfire, halfway down the slope of the hillside camp less than five vingts from the eastern approach to the western camp of the Hyalt rebels.

  Facing them were Rakalt and Waris, the two best remaining scouts. Given the earlier scouting problems, Alucius was both pleased and relieved that the pair had returned, although Elbard remained at the way station and was healing well. For that, at least, Alucius was grateful.

  "Sir… you know we burned all those trees around their camp—and the spiky thorns," said Waris.

  "I was there," Alucius pointed out.

  "The trees that we burned—they're still black, but there's fresh green spiky thorn everywhere that was burned—looks even bigger and thicker."

  "You're sure about that?" asked Feran.

  Jultyr and Deotyr exchanged glances.

  "Cut off a piece. Tough, too." Waris produced a half-yard length of a greenish brown thorn branch.

  Even as the scout extended it, and Alucius took the thorny length, he had to repress a shudder at the faint hint of purple and black that his Talent detected. Someone—either an ifrit or an ifrit-possessed Lanachronan—had bled off the very life-essence of people to spur or fuel the unnatural growth of the spiky thornbushes. "It's like this all the way around the camp?"

  "Looked to be, sir." Waris glanced toward Rakalt.

  "Far as I could tell, sir," added the second scout.

  "What about the palisades and the walls? Have they been reinforced?" No, sir.

  "Are the gates kept closed, or are they open some of the time?"

  "Only the same two, sir, and they were both open. Didn't look like they were ever closed, maybe except at night. Maybe not then."

  "Did you see any lancers, besides those doing sentry duty?"

  "There were some walking around, sir, but I didn't see any drills or anything," replied Waris.

  "They don't have a maneuver ground or anything like that, either," added Rakalt. "Only place that the ground is packed or dug up is the road."

  "Did you see any sign of digging, pits, stakes… ?"

  "No, sir, and the way the ground is… be hard to disguise that."

  "What about that cave?"

  "Couldn't see anything new there, sir. Just looks like a big square arch carved into the stone of the bluff. Be hard to take, if they all got inside, but they couldn't shoot from there without being exposed themselves. No embrasures or windows cut in the stone. Just that arch."

  "And a skylight slit of some sort," added Waris.

  Feran and Alucius kept asking questions, but little had changed, except for the regrowth of the thorns. That nothing had changed bothered Alucius, and he kept wondering what he was missing.

  Finally, he cleared his throat and said to the scouts, "Thank you. If there's anything else, I'll find you."

  "Yes, sir."

  Alucius waited until the two scouts were a good ten yards away before lowering his voice and speaking to the other officers. "We'll attack at dawn tomorrow, just the way we'd planned. The sun will be in their eyes."

  "What if they attack us before that?" asked Deotyr.

  "Then we'll kill them here and attack in the morning," Alucius replied. "That means that they'll have fewer defenders. They've got to be weaker than before. They've lost something like five companies, and they can't have that many more, not unless they're cramming lancers into those buildings like chickens in a coop."

  "They might, sir," Feran replied deferentially. "Some chickens have more brains than some of those lancers."

  Alucius managed not to laugh, but he couldn't help smiling. Neither could Jultyr. Deotyr just looked down at the ground.

  "Post two sets of sentries, one set a good vingt out on the approach roads. Captain Deotyr could be right about a late-afternoon or evening attack. And have your men sleep with their weapons loaded."

  "Yes, sir."

  As the other officers moved back to relay the information to their squad leaders, Alucius took out the thornbush section that Waris had brought back. He studied it with distaste, then slowly used his Talent to separate the brownish lifethread energy, already fading, from the greenery. Abruptly, the entire length turned black, then shriveled into ash.

  The majer nodded to himself. If he had to, he could remove the thorn-bushes, and with a little misdirection, no one but Feran would know exactly what happened. His guts tightened.

  "What happened to that spike-thorn?" asked Feran, walking toward Alucius. "One moment you were holding it, and the next it was gone."

  "It died."

  Feran raised his eyebrows, then frowned. "You were upset when Waris gave you that spiky thorn. Tough plant. Or was it something else?"

  "It's not the plant," Alucius replied in a low voice. "Plants regrow after fire. That's the way it is. They don't grow twice as big across whole hillsides with one small rainstorm in only two weeks. Someone used Talent, more than a little." Alucius wasn't about to tell Feran what else his own Talent had revealed.

  "Using Talent to rebuild thorns?" Feran frowned, the fine lines radiating from his eyes deepening. "Must have more than a few with Talent there. You still want to go through with this attack?"

  "Better now than later, when there might be more with Talent," Alucius replied.

  Feran's laugh was harsh. "I liked the world a lot better before Talent started coming back all over the place."

  "Makes you think about whether the Duarchy was as great as the legends say."

  "If this prophet's any example, I'll take the way things were before."

  "I don't think there's any way to go back," Alucius said dryly.

  "You're always saying things like that, most honored Majer," Feran replied. "You know what I hate about that?"

  "What?"

  "You're usually right."

  They both laughed, Alucius as much at the dry irony in Feran's tone as at the words themselves.

  Chapter 66

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  Alucius stood on the crest of the hill as if frozen, his legs anchored to the sandy soil. He tried to lift one leg, then the other, but neither would move
. The three-quarter disc of Selena cast an eerie purplish white light across the night hillside, and Alucius strained to hear the sounds of the night. There were none, just a dead silence.

  A purplish pink mist swirled across the road, which was barely more than a dirt track at the base of the hill, at first just intermittently blocking his view of the road itself, but slowly thickening until he could no longer see the road or the ground on either side. Slowly, ever so slowly, the purplish pink mist began to thicken even more, and rise, so that it crept up the hillside, obscuring the lower parts of the hill, then obliterating them from view. The higher the mist rose, and the closer it drew to Alucius, the colder he felt.

  Abruptly, Alucius woke with a start. He glanced around, but the encampment was still. Totally still. Even the horses, secured on tielines on the western end of the encampment, had not stirred, and usually there was some unrest among the more skittish mounts when things were not going well.

  After a moment, he pulled on his boots, clumsily, as if his hands and legs had been asleep, and as if neither was fully awake yet. He struggled to his feet. Even standing was an effort, but with each movement he felt less constrained. Constrained?

  He shook his head. Even his thoughts were slow.

  He had to force himself to use his Talent, something that he hadn't had to do in years. His Talent was so much a part of him that its use was usually like using his arms or his sight.

  Somewhere down below was something… something woven out of Talent, out of ifritlike Talent, with the purplish tint that he associated with them.

  His first reaction was to sound an alert, but he paused, even as he bent down and eased one of his rifles out of its case, then the second.

  He glanced to his right, where Feran lay sleeping, but the older officer was breathing so lightly that his form barely moved. With both rifles, one in each hand, he eased toward Feran's sleeping form. "Feran?"

  He bent down and repeated, "Feran?"

  The overcaptain did not stir, and Alucius could sense the faintest fog of purple surrounding Feran's head. Abruptly, Alucius focused a Talent-probe. The faintest touch of the probe, and the fog dissolved.

  "Feran?"

  "What…" The other's voice was hoarse, as if unused.

  "We're about to be attacked… everyone's been put to sleep with Talent."

  "Talent?" Feran sounded as confused as Alucius had felt when he'd awakened.

  "Talent, from the prophet," Alucius replied.

  Feran convulsed erect, kicking back his blanket and groping for his boots. "Son of a misbegotten sow…"

  "We need to get Fifth Company awake, quietly. I'm afraid that if we try to wake everyone at once, they'll rush us, and… we won't have enough steady rifles."

  "You had to do something, didn't you? Herder stuff." Feran pulled on his boots.

  Alucius ignored the question as he used his Talent to take in the riders who were dismounting out of sight on the mist-swirled road below. "You ready?"

  Feran stood. "Let's go."

  The two started with Egyl, and then Alucius just stood at the edge of the line of bedrolls and used his Talent to dissolve the purplish mist around each man, while the squad leader quietly explained.

  Then he eased downhill with Faisyn and Fifth Company's first squad.

  "They'll be coming up on both sides of the path, on foot," Alucius whispered to Faisyn. "We want to hold fire until they're close."

  "We can do that."

  While Alucius stationed himself in a prone position, with two of the lancers abreast the path, Faisyn slipped from one lancer to the next, whispering the instructions.

  Second squad arrived before Faisyn returned, and Alucius passed on the orders. Those hadn't reached every lancer when figures began to appear below them. No more than twenty rebels in dark tunics and trousers eased up the hillside in silence, slipping from juniper to juniper.

  Alucius forced himself to wait until the first man was less than twenty yards away.

  He squeezed the trigger and ordered, "Now! Fire! Fire at will."

  The hillside flared into fire.

  Almost half the attackers went down under the first few volleys, but a number of them struggled to reach rifles or blades even as they were dying. Some crawled forward, others struggled with weapons suddenly too heavy to lift.

  Alucius kept shooting. Anyone who looked to be possibly dangerous, already wounded or not, was a target.

  Within half a glass, the hillside below was quiet once more.

  Alucius reached out with his Talent, trying to determine whether another attack was likely, but from what he could sense, there was no one alive on the road below, except for perhaps a squad of riders a half vingt south, heading at a quick trot down the dirt road away from Alucius and in the general direction of the rebel encampment.

  "Faisyn… if you'd hold first squad in readiness for a bit longer."

  "Yes, sir."

  Alucius eased himself up into a sitting position and then stood, looking for Feran and finding the older officer twenty yards to the west. He walked toward Feran.

  "Didn't lose anyone here," Feran said.

  "I worry about the sentries."

  "So do I. Sent Egyl and fourth squad to check on them." Feran coughed. "Frigging sleep spell… slimy bastard…"

  "It wasn't exactly a spell…"

  "Same thing, no matter what you call it."

  Alucius shrugged. In practical terms, Feran was right. He glanced uphill, where, with the deaths of the attackers and the departure of the prophet or whoever had used Talent to create the stuporous sleep, the purplish sleep miasma began to dissipate, and the more normal sounds of a camp rustled through the night.

  Feran stood and stretched. "Do you think… ?"

  "They're gone. You can have them stand down, except for first squad, say for another half glass. If we don't hear or sense anything, they can turn back in then, too."

  "I'll let them know. Egyl's checking on the sentries."

  No sooner had Feran left than Jultyr was beside Alucius. "Sir… thought I heard shots… said you were down here."

  "You did. The rebels tried another attack. Fifth Company drove them back."

  Jultyr yawned. "Never… slept through firefight before…"

  "We might have had some help. Everyone was sleepy."

  "Talent?" asked the older captain.

  "I think so."

  "Sneaky bastards… tomorrow can't come soon enough."

  Both officers turned at the footsteps nearing.

  Egyl walked slowly out of the gloom and shadows of the scattered junipers toward Alucius. "We lost the outer sentries. They slit their throats. All four of them."

  "The others?"

  "No, sir. They're sleepy, still. Should be all right."

  "We won't post any more that far out. Not tonight."

  "Yes, sir." Egyl slipped uphill.

  Jultyr looked at Alucius. "Never fought anything like this."

  "I don't know that anyone has." Alucius bent and lifted his rifles, carrying one in each hand. "I'll see you in the morning."

  "Yes, sir."

  As he eased away from Jultyr, trying to find a little space to think, Alucius tried to consider what had happened and what he had planned. Should he still order the attack at dawn? The question was whether to attack immediately… or to wait.

  Alucius had never liked waiting, but he had to wonder if the commander of the rebels had wagered on that. Then, if he didn't attack, how many more men would he lose to something like the sleep compulsion? And how much rest would he and everyone else lose trying to make sure they weren't surprised again?

  For better or worse, he would attack in the morning.

  Chapter 67

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  Alucius hadn't slept that well when he heard the voice. "Sir? It's two glasses before dawn."

  "Thank you." He rolled out of his bedroll tiredly, then eased on his boots. After a time, he slowly stood, yawning. The night had been all too short, but
unless they stopped the prophet Adarat, every night could be like the last—and some night he'd be too tired to protect his men… or himself.

  After washing up with the water in the bucket that he'd gotten the night before, he pulled himself together for the day ahead, finishing up rolling up blankets and bedroll and walking to the tielines. There he saddled the gray and strapped his gear in place. He went over both rifles, making sure they were fully loaded. Finally, before mounting, he checked to make sure the nightsilk skull mask that he had not used in years was safely well inside his undergarments. It wasn't something he wore often, and almost never when leading lancers, but it had proven useful in cold weather and on solo scouting missions… and upon a few other occasions.

  Then he mounted and rode slowly down the gentler section of the hillside to the flat bottom between hills that held the rutted dirt road where the three companies were forming up in the predawn darkness. In the gloom on the west side of the road, amid the scent of dust and cedars, he listened as lancers and their mounts made their way into formation.

  "… hate early rides…"

  "You hate all rides, Bakka…"

  "… friggin' long night… now we're supposed to fight?"

  "… we don't fight, and you'll have more long nights…"

  "Almost wish we were freezing our butts around Harmony."

  "Not me. Matrites can shoot better."

  "… take shots any day to this Talent crap…"

  "… rebels are scary… not all there…"

  "… better that than Matrites who are all there."

  Alucius just hoped that lancer was correct. When he sensed Feran moving to the head of the column, he eased the gelding from the shadows and toward the overcaptain. "Good morning."

  "It's not morning yet, and its not that good… sir," Feran said, his voice cheerful even though his words were not.

  "We have some problems you haven't told me?"

  "Besides last night? Not yet." Feran chuckled mournfully. "You know how much I like mornings, and this is before morning. I'm not a herder. I left the family holding just so I didn't have to get up before the sun."

  "It'll be up in a glass or so."