Corean Chronicles 3 - Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Four more women stepped inside the chamber, ushered by four lancers.

  An older gray-haired woman studied Alucius from the moment she entered the hall. So did a blonde woman, although her observations came from a lowered head and half-averted eyes. A black-haired, good-looking woman with ruby lips surveyed Alucius and smiled. Unlike the others, she looked well fed.

  Alucius cleared his throat. "Whatever happened here in Hyalt is over. What remains is to rebuild the town and maintain order. Under the authority of the Lord-Protector, I am talking to anyone who might be useful in this." He paused, looking for reactions.

  "We're so fortunate to have your assistance," began the attractive woman.

  Alucius almost winced at the feeling of hypocrisy and greed that radiated from her, but he inquired politely, "Your name?"

  "Sanaval, sir."

  Alucius turned to the lancer guards. "Take Sanaval and lock her away with the others we're sending north."

  The woman's mouth opened, almost wordlessly, as two of the lancers moved to flank her.

  "Every syllable you said was false and deceptive," Alucius replied. "Hyalt doesn't need your kind right now. Take her away."

  "Who are you to judge?" asked the stern-faced, gray-haired woman.

  "I'm judging because someone has to administer Hyalt, and we need to find people who can, because that is not our task."

  "Was your task just to bring down death on our men and sons?" asked the thin red-haired woman, almost hissing the words at Alucius.

  He turned, and his eyes flashed. He tried to keep from exploding with a rage that had appeared within him, seemingly from nowhere. "Your men were so weak that they gave up their families, gave up their work, and gave up their brains. They attacked the Lord-Protector's scouts. They killed traders bringing in goods, perhaps even food. We did not ride here to bring death. We rode here to discover why the people of Hyalt were driving out merchants and crafters and killing strangers. When we got here, we, too, were attacked. Unlike the others, we could fight back." Alucius's eyes fixed on the angry woman, and he projected both power and assurance, trying to keep anger out of the sending. "There has been enough killing. There has been too much. I am choosing—from among your people—who will administer Hyalt. Do you want to run in fear from every man on a horse with a sword or a rifle?"

  The woman shrank back, and Alucius turned his attention back to the gray-haired woman.

  "They were fools," she admitted. "Did that give you the right to kill them?"

  "Not until they tried to kill us and every other stranger," Alucius replied. "Not until they refused to talk and only attacked. Do you think that was right? Was it smart?"

  "No. I am only a woman who sells vegetables and fruits from a cart."

  "Do you still have vegetables and fruits to sell?"

  "Yes." The admission was wary.

  "Then you have more sense than most in Hyalt," Alucius said dryly, "What is your name?"

  "Isaya."

  Alucius nodded to Bakka, who inscribed the woman's name.

  "Where do you live?"

  "Off north road. You'd know. Your men near-dragged me here."

  "Can you run the market square? Make sure what's sold is good?"

  "Depends. Can't tell someone how many coins to charge…"

  "No. What's charged has to be between buyer and seller. But Hyalt doesn't need spoiled meat or weeviled grain being sold as good."

  "Might be able to do that… if we've got that patrol you promised…"

  Alucius nodded. Probably half of what he was trying to do wouldn't work, but if he could put together some sort of organization, maybe the women could sort it out themselves as fall progressed into winter. He only knew that he had to try, and that if he sorted out the truly rotten apples, or as many as he could, they might have a chance.

  His eyes turned to the nervous blonde woman. "What do you do?"

  "I'm a seamstress… Leastwise, I was."

  Alucius wondered how many more glasses and days he'd have to work on trying to give the ruined town a chance at putting itself back together. It could take seasons to do it right, but he didn't have seasons. Besides, in the end, what was done rested on the survivors in Hyalt.

  But he was still angry about how matters had turned out.

  Chapter 76

  « ^ »

  By Sexdi, Alucius was feeling somewhat better, enough for a ride back out to the western camp of the prophet and the site of the ruined temple. Feran insisted on accompanying Alurius with the fourth and fifth squads of Fifth Company. Behind the squads came a wagon, one filled with axes, bars, rock hammers, and other tools, as well as some barrels of powder.

  As they passed the open and abandoned south gates of the encampment, with a cool and blustery wind whipping around them, announcing the arrival of a cold fall season, Feran glanced at Alucius. "You really think that you'll find useful supplies under all that rock?"

  "I hope so," replied Alucius.

  "I know you. You have to be more than hoping."

  "There's one thing we haven't resolved, and I should have thought of it earlier," Alucius mused, his eyes taking in the rubbled base of the hillside that had held the temple.

  "Just one?" asked Feran, his tone dry.

  "What happened to all the golds in Hyalt? No one seems to have any, and yet people left things hurrying to leave. There were others who said they gave everything to the prophet. But no one left Hyalt after the first weeks, and we haven't found any strongboxes, nothing."

  "Oh… you think…?"

  "I don't know, but it's worth looking into, and I really didn't want to say much. If the acting council has some golds, they can buy some food."

  "You wouldn't send it to the Lord-Protector?"

  "Why? What good would that do? If we find anything, we'll dole some of it out to the most needy families who are left. Not that the coins won't end up in certain pockets before long…" Alucius snorted. "But it does more good spread around. If we can find anything."

  "If you find much, some of the men would think they should have some."

  "I'm sure they would," Alucius replied.

  "You don't think so?"

  "We'll worry about that if we find anything. I'm hoping we can at least find some supplies, perhaps some ammunition or some flour or dried or salted meat. That's always useful."

  "You'd give that away, too?"

  Alucius shook his head. "Lancers have a right to eat. They deserve that."

  "Aren't you splitting hairs?"

  The majer laughed. "You really think that there's a huge treasure out here, don't you?"

  "I could hope," Feran replied good-naturedly.

  "Let's see." Alucius had his doubts, but there had to be something.

  They rode past the barracks and past the small building where Feran had placed Alucius after the explosion and toward the ruined hillside. Alucius reined up the gray almost at the base of the rubble of irregular chunks of sandstone and redstone.

  As the lancers in fourth squad unloaded the gear from the wagon, Alucius studied the rubble with his Talent. As he had suspected—or hoped—with his Talent he could sense an area to the south of the main temple that seemed to hold goods. He rode southward another ten yards, then motioned for a lancer to climb up onto a smaller pile of stone.

  "If you can lever away the slab on top…" Alucius studied the rock, then nodded. "You see that dark patch there?"

  The lancer with the rock hammer and chisel nodded.

  "Put the chisel just below it… no… a little to the right. There's a fracture there somewhere."

  The lancer worked at it for almost a tenth of a glass, then leapt up and stepped back. With a long and slow craaackk, the sheet of sandy rock split, and the lower half slid off the rounded redstone below, breaking into smaller fragments.

  Just underneath the remaining slab, Alucius could see the square corner of a passageway. "There!" He gestured.

  "How'd he know that… ?" came a murmur from somewh
ere.

  "You don't want to know…"

  "Clear the rock away from the doorway," Alucius ordered.

  While he wanted to help, he forced himself to watch as lancers cleared away the remaining rock. That took more than three glasses, and he was grateful that the day was cool and breezy. The efforts also reminded him that finding out things and coming up with ideas were far easier than the grunt work necessary to implement those ideas.

  Once the last bits of rubble had been removed, it was clear that the tunnel deeper into the hillside had not been touched by the effects of the blast set off by Adarat.

  Alucius dismounted, then gestured to the lancers with the pry bars and hammers. "You all did the work. We'll go in together." He pointed to Kasaff, who had single-handedly moved large chunks of the rubble. "Do you want to lead the way?"

  Kasaff grinned. "Just so you're right there, sir."

  "Smart lancer," Alucius quipped.

  Laughter rumbled across the squad.

  Alucius stepped into the passageway, stone smoothed years before, certainly not at all recently, and walked toward the door on his left.

  The first room was but half-full and contained several barrels of dried and salted beef, almost ten huge wedges of hard cheese, and more than a score of barrels of flour. There was one barrel of dried fruit and what looked to be a barrel of wine.

  The second room held, unsurprisingly, cases of ammunition, but not a single rifle.

  The third room, well to the back, was locked, with the large lock attached to a heavy hasp.

  "Need a hammer, like as a whole forge, to cut that," offered Kasaff.

  Alucius slipped out his belt knife and stepped toward the lock. "Maybe not." He stood so that no one behind him could see what he was doing and pretended to work at the keyhole with the point of the knife, as he wrestled with the internal workings of the lock with his Talent.

  How long that took, he wasn't certain, but his face was dripping sweat when the lock popped open. He stepped back, handing the open lock to Quesal. Before trying the door lever, he cast a Talent-probe into the room behind the door, but he could sense nothing in the nature of an obvious trap. Then, he opened the door and let it swing wide.

  The room was small, a strong room no more than three yards on a side, with but three chests side by side on a crude waist-high bench. The chests were closed, but not locked.

  Again, pausing, Alucius extended his Talent, but aside from a lingering trace of ifrit purple, there was no sign of anything besides wood and metal.

  He opened the first chest. Less than half-full, it contained golds, but not an extraordinary number for the treasure taken from a city—certainly no more than a thousand coins, if that. The second chest held the silvers, and there were perhaps slightly more than a thousand. The last chest was almost empty, holding only a hundred or so coppers.

  Alucius stood by the chests, letting every lancer who wanted to come down the passageway and look at them. Then, once the chests were loaded onto the wagon, he assembled the two squads and began to speak to them.

  "I had all of you look at the chests. I wanted you to see what was there. I'd like to tell the others what we found, but I also want you to understand what we did not find," He paused. "We did not find all that was stolen from Hyalt. Nor will we. It is spread across Corus. Think of this.

  "What we found is what is left. It seems large, but it is not, not for the wealth of a large town. It is not enough to pay the payroll of the Northern Guard for a season. I doubt if it would pay the Southern Guard for a month. Without these coins, the people of Hyalt will starve this winter. Even with them, many will die. The coins will go back to the people from whom they came because the coins were stolen from them, and taking them from here would only make us no better than those we defeated. Worse, it would make us thieves as well. That's all."

  He turned the gray and gestured to Feran.

  "Column! Forward!"

  After they had ridden out through the abandoned gates, Feran looked at Alucius. "Some of them still won't like it."

  "I know they won't."

  "They'll say you're a rich herder, and you can afford it, and they can't."

  Alucius's laugh was bitter, but there was little he could say that anyone would understand. He was well-off, but not wealthy. He'd been blackmailed into commanding a force on an unpopular mission, leaving his family to fight off Talent-creatures without him—but saying all of that would convince no one. He just knew that starving people in order to line lancers' pockets was wrong. The people well might perish anyway, but he wasn't about to make matters worse than they had to be.

  Chapter 77

  « ^ »

  Alucius walked into the Hyalt council chambers in mid-afternoon on Octdi. The two women and the wiry white-haired man who sat along one side of the long table looked up at him.

  "I just thought I'd see how you were doing," Alucius said politely.

  "The coin will help," offered Asala, the younger woman, perhaps the age of Alucius's mother.

  "That was all?" asked Birtraf. "Much more was given to him, I would judge."

  "That was all. I'd guess that he had to pay high prices for the weapons and ammunition, and for the uniforms. Were there any traders who came here with large wagons?"

  "There were several. They came on the road from Syan, and their wagons bore the symbol of a silver wheel. I had not seen them before the last spring."

  "They probably have most of the coin." Traders from the east, or the north? Ones that no one had seen before? Could they have come all the way from Lustrea? Or could they have been the traders who had become more active in Dekhron? Kustyl had said that they had become far more adventurous and effective. Were they somehow tied in with the ifrits? But why would ifrits need coin?

  "Majer… how long do you intend to remain in Hyalt?"

  "I would judge that it will not be long. I sent my report to Tempre a week ago. That's one reason why we have tried to get as much done as we could."

  "For a conqueror, Majer, you have wielded a tight lash. I wish that I could say more," offered Asala.

  "I'll take that as a compliment," Alucius said. "I only wish that none here had followed Adarat."

  "So do we," replied Birtraf, "but where was the Lord-Protector when we needed protection against a false prophet? Waging an unnecessary war in Madrien?"

  Alucius had to struggle to bite back a harsh retort. He paused, then replied, "There are always false prophets, and no ruler can protect his people from foolishness." He forced a polite smile. "If you have no more questions…"

  None of the three offered a word.

  "Then, good day. I will let you know when we will be departing." Alucius nodded, turned, and left the chamber.

  Why did people always resent a ruler, despite expecting him to protect them from their own stupidity? Then, he reflected, Adarat had used Talent to get people to act against their wills. But what ruler could detect that, let alone fight it?

  Alucius walked back to the unofficial officers' quarters as fast as he could. Not that there was any rush, but because it was yet another way of working out his sore muscles, although the majority of his bruises had faded into a pale yellow and purple.

  Two Southern Guard lancers stood waiting inside the foyer of the dwelling. Both stiffened to attention as Alucius entered.

  "Majer, sir!" snapped the older, extending an envelope. "A dispatch from Marshal Frynkel, sir."

  Alucius took the envelope, forcing a pleasant smile. "Thank you. Our quarters, for now, are in the inn on the square. Once I've read this, I'll have a response. It's not likely to be immediate."

  "Yes, sir." The dispatch rider cleared his throat. "We're to wait for a response."

  "I'm sure that waiting at the inn will prove far more comfortable. You've had a long and a hard ride. I'll make sure you know as soon as my reply is ready."

  "Yes, sir."

  Neither dispatch rider said a word even after they had stepped outside. Alucius took the s
till-sealed envelope through the archway into the front parlor and study. There, he used his belt knife to slit the end of the envelope. There were two pages inside. The first sheet was a dispatch addressed to Alucius. He began to read.

  Majer Alucius—

  Congratulations and our deepest appreciation for your most effective efforts. Your report on the resolution of the unrest in Hyalt was most welcome news to the Lord-Protector, and he has asked me to convey his great and deep appreciation for your efforts…

  Alucius stiffened. When someone else was conveying appreciation, there was trouble ahead, or words that he needed to peruse most carefully. He continued reading.

  He was also most pleased at the comparatively low casualties, for which you are also to be most highly commended, for qualified lancers are most urgently needed.

  I must regretfully inform you that the Regent of the Matrial has undertaken a massive assault against our forces surrounding Southgate and that Marshal Wyerl has perished in battles to the north of Southgate in the defense of the city and the port. Marshal Alyniat has taken over the defenses and has rushed all available lancers westward to combat her forces and crystal spear-throwers.

  In this time of crisis, when all the lands east of Madrien are threatened, the Lord-Protector requests that you complete what you can within the next two days in setting Hyalt back on the proper path toward rebuilding. Upon that timely conclusion, he would ask your sufferance to take your force to Zalt and from there to Southgate, to place yourself and your companies under the command of Marshal Alyniat or the commanding marshal, of course, as you see fit as a loyal officer of the Northern Guard.

  If you choose to accept this request, the attached formal orders are yours to use as necessary.

  The dispatch was signed by Marshal Frynkel, Acting Arms-Commander of Lanachrona.