“The letter means I can draw golds on it. I assume Troral or one of the factors has arrangements.”
Styndal nodded. “He’s got arrangements.”
“Biggest problem’ll be getting quarrymen,” offered Poeldyn.
“The quarries haven’t been used lately?”
“You might say as so. That was where all the trouble started…and for all their blue-flame lances, them Myrmidons weren’t all that good at rooting out the strange ones…. They’d flame everything, even melt some of the facing stone, and afore long the creatures’d be back.”
“Tell me about the strange ones.”
Poeldyn glanced at Styndal, then finally spoke. “They were fearsome things. One was half man, from the waist down, and like one of those flying creatures the Myrmidons have on the top. Another one was like a sandox, except with a big triangular horn. There was one big black giant cat with claws sharper’n knives…”
“Has anyone seen anything like that lately?”
“No one’s wanted to go out to the quarry, not with no one building anything,” Poeldyn pointed out. “Not since Borcal…anyway.”
“Borcal?” The name meant nothing to Mykel, but there was something about the way the crafter had mentioned it.
“He was a squad leader with the Cadmians…should have been the undercaptain, from what everyone said. Real good about getting to where trouble was. Funny thing, though. Everyone else got cut up or shot. Looked like he’d been burned. Not much blood, either, not for all the slashes.” Poeldyn shrugged. “Since he got killed, no one wants to work the quarry. Never any trouble when his squad was out there. Best shot in Hyalt or anywhere around.”
Those words sent a chill down Mykel’s back, but he pushed the feeling away. “I’ll have a patrol investigate the quarry before anyone returns to work there.” He paused. “Who owns the quarry?”
“It belongs to the regional alector, but anyone in the town has the right to quarry there now that they finished their building out west.”
“What else should I know?” Mykel kept smiling. “Have the irregulars, the ones who attacked the garrison, been seen lately?”
The two craftmasters exchanged glances once more.
This time, Styndal was the one to reply. “No. Fact is, no one rightly knows who did it. One morning, like Poeldyn said, everyone was dead. Some folks heard screams the night before, and some noise. Some of the bodies were shot, and some were slashed up, like with blades. We never saw anything.”
“Not then, and not since,” added Poeldyn. “Troral told the alector, and his folks came and took care of things, and they had the flying creatures.”
That didn’t exactly square with all the reports Mykel had gotten. “What happened to all the ammunition and the supplies, then? And the mounts?”
“Majer…sir…Maybe the alector’s folk took them. If not…Hyalt’s not the wealthiest of places. Things…well…who could blame folk if stuff disappeared in the dark.”
That was even worse, Mykel reflected, because it meant it was likely that some or all of Cadmian rifles and ammunition were out among the locals—up to fifty rifles, with spares, if all the weapons of the two squads that comprised the garrison had been taken.
“And there’s been no shooting since?”
“Well…Beznanet got found dead last week. No one minded. He’d been stealing fowl for years. Other’n that…nothing.”
Mykel waited.
“Will the new place be having spaces for the pteridons?” Styndal asked, almost deferentially.
“All Cadmian compounds have at least a few stages for when the alectors fly in messages. The plans call for two. There won’t be any pteridons or Myrmidons here all the time.”
“That’ll be better. Some of the crafters…well, Majer, you know how some folks can be.”
Mykel could understand being wary of the pteridons, but not what that had to do with building a compound. “Anything else?”
Poeldyn laughed. “Let us know when you’ve got the place and when you want us to start, and then we’ll look close-like at the plans, see what changes we might have to make.”
“I’ll do that. Can I leave word with Troral?”
“That you can.”
After the two drove off, the cart wheels—or axles—squeaking, Mykel walked back through the battered and crumbling gateposts. He had known there had to have been problems in Hyalt, but he hadn’t expected that he’d have to worry about creatures around a quarry in addition to insurgents who didn’t sound like any insurgents he’d ever encountered, if they were insurgents at all. But…if they weren’t, who were they? And the comments about the squad leader who was a crack shot and who’d been burned…that sounded like an alector sidearm, and he didn’t like the possibility of a rogue alector wandering around Hyalt at all.
44
There are comparatively few alectors, guiding hundreds of thousands of other beings. This has always been so and will continue to be so. What is it, then, that distinguishes an alector from those beings, or from another alector who is no better than the masses? Size and strength are often cited, but bulls are bigger than alectors, and so are sandoxen. Intelligence is also cited, but many among the masses have intelligence close to that of alectors, and in some cases, equal to ours. Nor is Talent enough to claim distinction and leadership.
Those who lead and guide others must possess not only superior physical and mental capabilities, but the personal honor and integrity to assure that their decisions lead to the best possible lives for those they guide. Each individual should have the opportunity to employ his or her abilities to their greatest possible extent in a beneficial, peaceful, and productive manner. To seek power for its own sake, or wealth, or any other excess is but to confirm that the individual who does so lacks the integrity required of an alector who would lead.
All respect a crafter who creates an object of quality and beauty, and all are repulsed by one who would attempt to pass off an inferior product for the same price. Yet all too often respect is granted to the leader or administrator who administers in a fashion that favors one group unfairly over another, but is this not an inferior product of leadership? While equality of ability and accomplishment does not exist in any society, and any society which expects such is doomed, equality of opportunity to excel within one’s field must be granted to all. Similarly, respect must be accorded to excellence in every trade and service.
Fostering equality of opportunity and respect for honest accomplishment, and not just for the few who accumulate masses of gold or power over others, those are the virtues of worth for an alector, and only so long as those virtues are held in high esteem will we endure, for personal honor and integrity are the basis of all that we have accomplished….
Views of the Highest
Illustra
W.T. 1513
45
In the end, Mykel chose Fifteenth Company to investigate the quarry, partly because he had decided to accompany that force and partly because more than half the company had seen strange creatures in the last battle on Dramur. What with all the other arrangements, including getting directions to the quarry, Mykel and Fifteenth Company didn’t get away from their temporary quarters until mid morning on Sexdi.
Mykel and Undercaptain Fabrytal rode side by side, with a pair of scouts ahead by thirty yards, not that they would be much help if someone attempted an attack from a window of a building in Hyalt. Mykel had not seen anything to indicate that was likely, not with the streets and lanes holding women and children, and a handful of men. There had been no reports of any violence in the town, either, and people didn’t look fearful, except of him and the Cadmians. Still, he kept looking, and trying to sense if anyone might be targeting them. He didn’t feel that, and in Dramur that feeling had been trustworthy.
Ahead, just short of what looked to be a chandlery, he saw a woman, with long blonde tresses plaited into a single braid down her back. She had taken one of the four children with her by the arm. Mykel wa
tched and listened.
“Garytt! I saw that….”
Mykel smiled. He’d heard words like that when his sister Sesalia had addressed one of her brood who’d misbehaved. Before long, she’d be having her fifth. Five children? He hadn’t even found any one with whom he’d thought of having children—let alone five.
He gave a wry laugh under his breath. That wasn’t entirely true, but Rachyla was about as unobtainable for a Cadmian majer as an ancient might be for an alector. He smiled more broadly as he neared the young mother, but at the sound of the horses, she ushered the four into the chandlery without even looking toward the Cadmians.
Mykel’s eyes went back to the structures on each side of the high road. Unlike Southgate or Dramuria, the houses and buildings were of different ages and styles, although all were built of stone or brick or some combination of the two. Some few older houses had split slate roofs, but most had grayish red roof tiles. As Fifteenth Company rode southward on the main boulevard—the eternastone high road—Mykel observed the side streets and lanes. Roughly every third street was paved with redstone, and had redstone sidewalks, as did the boulevard. The alleys and lanes between the paved streets were of packed reddish sandy soil and had no sidewalks.
Except for a few larger structures clearly belonging to factors, the houses and other buildings were all of one story. The smaller dwellings had few windows, and that made unfortunate sense because wood for shutters was tariffed, and glass was not cheap.
“Hyalt seems like a poor town, doesn’t it, sir?” asked Undercaptain Fabrytal.
“I haven’t seen many poorer, not of its size,” Mykel admitted.
“Makes you wonder why they’ve got alectors here, I mean, with not that many folks or that much trade.’
“There are some mines to the south and west of the quarry. Tin and copper.”
Near the south end of Hyalt, the high road turned eastward, but Fifteenth Company continued heading south for another quarter vingt on a older road paved with redstone blocks, many of which were cracked and chipped, and some of which were missing, their space filled with packed dirt or clay. After another half vingt, the road split, the paved section turning west-southwest.
“The one to the left!” Mykel called out.
The quarry road had deep ruts that had been weathered down and filled with fine reddish sand and dirt. There were no recent tracks of either horses or wagons. Before long the road began to rise and did so for close to half a vingt before leveling out onto a stretch of scrubby grassland that ended at the foot of a low hill. From a vingt away, Mykel could see where the hill had been cut away and the redstone layers exposed.
There might not be anything at the quarry, but…being prepared made sense, and if there were not, the exercise wouldn’t hurt. Mykel turned in the saddle, looking at Fabrytal. “Order a line abreast, by squads, five across. Rifles ready.”
The faintest hint of a puzzled frown crossed the undercaptain’s face, but he pulled his mount to the side and stood in the stirrups. “Fifteenth Company! Line abreast—by squads. Five across. Third squad centered on me. Rifles ready!”
Fifteenth Company was re-formed within moments, then continued riding across the grasslands.
Less than a hundred yards from where the excavation began, Mykel looked to Fabrytal again. “Have them halt here.”
“Company! Halt!”
Mykel surveyed the area to the south. He had only seen one quarry before in his life, and that had been the massive granite quarry to the north of Faitel, where he had grown up. The quarry at Hyalt was far smaller, less than half a vingt from side to side, and extending only fifty or sixty yards into the hillside, with tiers cut out of the stone, like stair steps up the redstone. There was a muddy reddish pool less than ten yards across in the southeastern corner of the lowest level.
“Just a big hole in the ground,” said Fabrytal.
“That’s what quarries are—holes in the ground where people have taken stone out. This is a small quarry.” Mykel surveyed the quarry once more. Something about it bothered him, but he couldn’t pinpoint either a specific source or location. Finally, he turned to Fabrytal. “Forward at a walk. Rifles ready.”
“Fifteenth Company! Slow walk! Forward! Rifles ready!”
Mykel had his own rifle out as well, disregarding the unspoken adage that a commander should concentrate on tactics, rather than engage in direct combat.
The company had moved forward a good thirty yards toward the unused quarry when a dark shadow appeared just above the base of the quarry, in the western corner where the stonework ended and the hillside remained relatively untouched. Mykel blinked. The shadow looked black, but it felt like an ugly pinkish purple. Then it was no longer a shadow, but an enormous catlike creature that raced toward fifth squad, the western-most troopers of the company.
“Company! Halt! Fifth squad! Fire at will!” Mykel snapped. “Fifth squad, fire at will!”
“Company, halt! Fifth squad…” echoed Fabrytal.
Mykel watched intently for a moment, then scanned the rest of the quarry, but he neither saw nor sensed anything else that felt threatening. His eyes went back to the giant cat, its body at least a good two yards in length.
Fifth squad’s first shots did little good, and the cat creature accelerated silently toward the troopers. The creature jerked and stumbled as several shots ripped into it, but Mykel could see no wounds, although the cat slowed somewhat. Continual fire poured into the creature as it neared fifth squad. Less than a handful of yards short of the squad, it fell forward, legs twitching.
“Keep firing!” came the command from Vhanyr, the fifth squad’s leader.
More shots struck the wounded creature, and it writhed, then slumped onto the ground, but its body still twitched.
“Hold the company, rifles ready,” Mykel ordered Fabrytal. “I want to get a good look at that creature.”
“Yes, sir. Company hold! Rifles ready!”
Mykel rode along the front of the arrayed company at a fast walk.
Vhanyr had ridden out from his squad several yards, but reined up short of the fallen creature, still twitching on the reddish sandy ground that sported but sparse grass. Mykel reined up beside the squad leader, his own rifle still out and ready.
“Sir.” Vhanyr held his rifle in the general direction of the cat. “We must have put fifty bullets into it before it went down.”
Mykel would have judged far less than that, but he’d seen over a half score impact the giant black cat. As he watched, it lifted its head and struggled to rise, jaws opening and revealing teeth that seemed half-crystalline, half-yellow. Was it healing itself? He lifted his own rifle and fired—once, twice, three times, and again. His shots tore away half the creature’s head, and it dropped onto the ground.
The creature had not bled, Mykel realized—unless a purplish blue ichor staining a clump of grass was what the creature had for blood. Nor had it made a sound in the entire span of its attack.
“What is it? Do you know, sir?” asked Vhanyr.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Mykel admitted. He’d never read about anything that remotely resembled the black catlike giant.
As he watched, the clumps of grass around the fallen beast shriveled and blackened. The dead creature appeared to lose its shape, disintegrating into a long pile of a greasy-looking purplish black substance. Then, abruptly, bluish red flames burst from the disintegrating corpse, the heat so intense that Mykel eased the roan back away from the pyre.
“…what the frig!”
“…never seen anything like that…”
Mykel wrenched his attention away from the bluish flames and studied the quarry again. He could see or sense nothing. That didn’t mean another of the cat creatures might not appear again at any time.
“Fifth squad, reload! Now!”
Vhanyr’s command reminded Mykel to do the same. He did not replace the rifle in its case, but rested it across his thighs, one-handed.
“Si
r?” asked Vhanyr.
“We’ll be advancing shortly,” Mykel told the squad leader, then turned his mount back toward the center of the company. He doubted they would see another of the beasts immediately, but he could definitely understand why the quarrymen were leery of the place. That meant at least two squads on duty all the time the stone was being cut and carted away.
He reined in the roan beside Fabrytal’s mount. “Forward at a walk.”
“Forward…”
Mykel kept studying the quarry, the courses of stone, and the hill that surrounded them. Strange creatures indeed.
46
Dainyl and Lystrana sat in the darkness of their bedchamber, Lystrana reclining on the bed, and Dainyl sitting on the chair beside her.
“The quiet in Elcien is disturbing,” Dainyl said. “We know that Ifrits, and it could be scores of them, are coming through the Tables to the east of Corus. Zelyert knows as well. It’s fairly certain that the engineers of the east are constructing additional equipment of some sort, probably of a military nature. Three of the four eastern Myrmidon companies are under Brekylt’s and Alcyna’s control, and I’d wager Second Company in Ludar is aligned as well. If Brekylt can present his position as supporting the Archon, Samist will agree to whatever they have in mind.”
“What is your point, dearest?” asked Lystrana.
“Why isn’t anything being done from here?”
“It is.” She laughed, ironically. “One of the recorders who supported Brekylt is dead. One Myrmidon majer and one RA are also dead. Several engineers are dead. More than a few know that it is dangerous to oppose a submarshal directly.”
“Yet all that has changed nothing,” Dainyl pointed out.
“Why would it? Khelaryt cannot act unless he has proof that they are subverting the goals set by the Archon. Zelyert and Shastylt will not offer what they know because they cannot prove what is happening. Voicing the uncertain always risks losing power. Neither wishes to do that, if for different reasons.”
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