“Yes, sir. That’s if you and your men destroy or disable the spear-thrower.”
“That’s correct. You can watch Overcaptain Feran.”
“What about you?”
“I’m part of the team assigned to destroy the spear-thrower. It takes a herder, and I’m the only one left around here.”
Hubar nodded slowly. “We’ll form up now.”
“Thank you.”
Hubar nodded brusquely, then rode back toward the ranked companies. Shortly, they began to angle down the slope on the western side of the road.
Alucius turned to Jultyr and Deotyr. “You see what Colonel Hubar’s doing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There’s a similar rise out to the east, but it’s forward of where we are. You’re to place your companies in staggered firing order there. As soon as the Matrites come within the edge of your range, I want you to start firing on them. At that distance, I know you won’t hit many, but I want you to keep firing until it looks like they’re about to turn the spear-thrower on you. Then pull back about half a vingt and take what cover you can behind that next rise. If everything goes as before, something will happen to the spear-thrower, and that’s when you’ll join with Fifth Company and charge the survivors. Is that clear?”
“Sir…did you mean that about slaughtering them all?”
“I should have been more clear. If someone’s down, disarmed, and disabled, don’t bother with them. But no quarter for anyone who’s fighting. There’s no need to slaughter anyone who can’t fight or isn’t fighting.”
“Yes, sir.” Deotyr looked relieved.
“I told Hubar that because without those kinds of orders he won’t understand the kind of battle we’re in. Captains, go ahead out to that rise and form up.”
“Yes, sir.” Jultyr and Deotyr replied almost simultaneously, then turned their mounts back toward their companies.
“Now,” Alucius continued, “I need two spades. Dhaget, get the spades and join Fewal and Roncar and me farther south on the road.” He turned to Feran. “Overcaptain, can you get the trenches dug here? Do you think that two lines will be enough? Staggered so that the lancers firing won’t get hit by the ones behind them?”
“We can do that, sir.”
“You’ll start firing, slowly at first, once the Southern Guard companies pull back. I want the Matrites worried about rifle fire. But make sure you pull back before that spear-thrower can reach you.”
“Yes, sir,” Feran replied. “How long after that…?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know its range. It’s less than a vingt, but how close it will have to get, that I don’t know.” Alucius looked southward past the stone sentry boxes. “We’d better find what we need.”
He urged the gray forward, riding roughly half a vingt farther south before reining up. From the inner shoulder of the ring road he studied the ground, using his Talent, finally finding a spot on the slope about twenty yards to the west of the road, and as the ground slanted, perhaps three or four yards lower than the edge of the ring road. He dismounted, handing the gray’s reins to Fewal and walking down the slope. Finally, he nodded.
He only had to wait a few moments more before Dhaget rode up with the shovels.
“There’s some rock here, but dig right behind it, only about a yard and a half wide and two yards long.”
“How deep, sir?” asked Roncar, who, along with Dhaget, had dismounted and brought a shovel down to where Alucius stood.
“I’d like at least a yard.”
As his messengers dug, Alucius watched the road to the south, where in the distance he could see riders and a darkish blob above a wagon, most probably the spear-thrower. Occasionally, he heard the sound of a rifle, but that could have come from anywhere.
It was almost half a glass later before the slit trench was finished to Alucius’s satisfaction. He pulled out the top rifle from the saddle case and looked at the three messengers. “Same as before. Once the spear-thrower’s gone, and it looks halfway clear, see if you can get to me with a mount.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, you need to get back before the Matrites get close enough to see exactly where you are.” Alucius settled into the trench, listening as the sound of hoofs receded.
For a quarter of a glass, he watched the sky, but the hazy silver green looked the same everywhere, and the thunderclouds to the south had seemingly never crossed the coast. Then he used his Talent to explore the ground around him. As he’d discovered earlier, there was a “dead” layer perhaps three or four yards beneath him, suggesting that whatever had killed everything in that section of ground had occurred before the ring road had been built, perhaps hundreds if not thousands of years before.
Then he extended his Talent senses once more, noting that his Southern Guard companies were in position, as were Colonel Hubar’s forces, and that the Matrites were little more than a vingt to the south. Shortly, the rifles of the Twenty-eighth and Thirty-fifth Companies opened fire, a solid series of volleys.
The Matrites did not return fire, but Alucius also could not sense any power in the crystal spear-thrower. He frowned. Were they using it as a bluff? Or trying to avoid using it too much?
The volleys from the two Southern Guard companies continued, and Alucius could feel the occasional wound or death from the Matrite companies flanking and following the spear-thrower.
Volleys began from Hubar’s Southern Guard companies, and still the spear-thrower had not been powered up.
The heavier bullets from Fifth Company began to fly over Alucius’s head, and Hubar’s lancers began to pull back.
Craaackk…Energy began to build rapidly within the approaching spear-thrower.
Alucius swallowed, hoping that Jultyr and Deotyr would drop back before the spear-thrower reached full power, and the Matrites turned it northeast toward them.
He could sense the lancers of his two Southern Guard companies pulling back, but the spear-thrower also seemed to be casting its deadly weapons toward them. Alucius took a breath as he sensed the spears falling short—mostly. He could also sense a death or two.
Hubar’s Southern Guards continued to pull back, and Alucius hoped that they hadn’t been too late in retreating.
He had to ignore those and concentrate on the weapon itself, extending his own Talent-probe in a way to avoid the shielding nimbus of unseen pinkish light that englobed the spear-thrower—except at the point where the spears formed and were accelerated outward.
There he twisted his Talent-probe toward the glittering Talentlike diamond nodes that rotated around the spear-formation point. Recalling his promise to Alyniat, he tried to tease out one of the threads he knew were within the node, but the node remained solid. This time, he tried to trace out the forces that propelled the nodes, but there were no threads there, at least none that were unprotected by the pinkish shield.
Then he tried twisting one of the nodes, but his Talent-probe couldn’t budge it. He tried opening it with dark lifeforce, spinning it, but the nodes kept moving, and every so often a swath of crystal spears flew somewhere.
By then Alucius could sense that the spear-thrower was less than five hundred yards away and beginning to scythe its spears toward Fifth Company. With the lancers just back of it, it wouldn’t be long before a Talent-officer spotted him. Alucius certainly couldn’t assume that there wouldn’t be one.
With a deep breath, he returned to what he knew worked, lending his strength to speeding the diamond nodes in their rotation. As before, after a rotation and a half or so, the tiniest thread spun out from one diamond node. Alucius Talent-grasped it and tugged. The node began to unravel, then vanished in a flashing spray of thread. The following node shifted forward, and all the nodes began to trail threads. Alucius grasped them all and tugged with all his Talent-force.
The hard and previous impervious crystal of the discharge formulator sagged, and pinkish force built behind it, followed by an even greater surge of power from somewhere beyond
poured into the spear-thrower.
Alucius flattened himself on the bottom of his trench and dropped a greenish Talent-shield around himself. The ground, the shield, and he were shaken violently. A blast of flame roared overhead, with metal and crystal scything through the late-afternoon air.
More death and destruction followed. For a time, Alucius just lay in the bottom of the trench, half-covered with dust and dirt that had fallen on him—or his shield. He stayed flat until he was certain that the rain of metal and crystal had stopped.
Then he began to inch himself upward, letting his senses range outward.
There were still almost two companies of Matrite lancers a half vingt south of where the crystal spear-thrower had been. Alucius could also tell that a good half company of Hubar’s lancers had been struck down.
With all the dirt around him, he had to half dig his way out of the trench, and it took him two attempts to struggle out of the dirt and onto his knees beside the trench. He looked northward. Fifth Company was formed and riding toward him.
He stood, and as he held his rifle and watched Dhaget leading the gray toward him, he tried not to think about Frynkel’s observation on leading from the front.
“There’s the colonel!”
Alucius mounted quickly, but Fifth Company was well past by the time he was back on the road, surveying the carnage. Twenty-eighth and Thirty-fifth Companies were moving up smartly from the east, with Thirty-fifth a good hundred yards ahead of Deotyr and his men. To the south, from what he’d seen and sensed, the Matrite forces were more disorganized than those in the west had been—but there were also more of them.
Hubar’s lancers were still milling around to the northwest of the fight, as if there were no officers to give orders. “Idiots!” he mumbled quietly. “Just sit there like targets.”
Sheathing the rifle and drawing his sabre, Alucius urged the gray forward, moving just behind Fifth Company’s fifth squad. He felt as though he should have been leading the charge, rather than following it. He could sense the impacts as the Northern Guard lancers slammed into the near-motionless Matrites.
Alucius swung the gray out to the left and found himself attacked by two Matrites. A wave of red fury surged over him at the mere sight of the two attackers, and he pressed the gray toward them. He slipped the first wild slash and countered with enough force that his sabre slammed the Matrite’s weapon from his hand and cut deeply into the man. Alucius finished him with a quick cut and twisted in the saddle to parry the violent cut of the big woman who had attacked while he was dealing with the first Matrite. Almost contemptuously, with a strength he had not known he had, he deflected her blade and slash-thrust through her neck.
He moved forward, taking another Matrite from behind with a single cut, just before the man was about to take down a Northern Guard, also from behind.
In a moment of calm, Alucius glanced to the southeast, where a full Matrite company charged up the hill toward the rear of Thirty-fifth Company, engaged in hand-to-hand with the remnants of the last Matrite companies. He looked north where two or three of Twenty-eighth Company’s squads were re-forming—a command of which Alucius approved.
He rode partway down the slope and called out, “Twenty-eighth Company! On me!”
“On the colonel!” Deotyr echoed.
“Forward!”
Alucius once more urged the gray forward as the Twenty-eighth Company lancers fell in behind him. He found himself alone at the point of attack, and the red fury took him as his sabre became a shimmering circle of death, with lancers scrambling back from his berserk rage. Behind him and to both sides, Twenty-eighth Company crashed into the Matrites who had thought to surprise Thirty-fifth Company and had been themselves surprised, if only by the speed and fury of Alucius and those who followed.
A horn doublet sounded.
Alucius glanced around, finding himself nearly alone—except, five yards to the east, a Matrite squad had appeared, halted, and raised rifles.
Even before Alucius sensed the line of fire flaring toward him, he urged the gray forward, then, instinctively, raised his sabre, as if to block whatever it was, knowing that the gesture was futile as a huge unseen hammer struck him and flung him from the saddle.
His last thought, with the blackness sweeping over him, as he struggled to stay in the saddle, was that Frynkel had been right. Leading from the front could get him killed.
90
North of Iron Stem, Iron Valleys
The three sat in the main room. Wendra leaned back slightly in the rocking chair, her feet on the lower hassock. Lucenda had taken the end of the couch closest to Wendra. A book lay in Lucenda’s lap, closed with a leather marker in it.
Wendra looked blankly at the wall to the right of the hearth.
“Can you tell how he is?” Lucenda.
Wendra shook her head. “I should have gone south. I should have.”
“You’re due in a few weeks. Then what would you do?” asked Lucenda. “You can ride. No one can gainsay that, but having a babe on the road…that’s not wise.”
“What’s wise, anymore?” Wendra’s lips tightened into a near-cynical smile. “Alucius was doing what he thought best. Now…”
“If he’s alive after three days, and the crystal’s not fading, he’ll recover,” Lucenda said.
“I worry that he’ll be…Alucius isn’t a man to sit around…”
“He won’t sit,” interjected Royalt, standing in the archway from the kitchen. “Herders don’t. Hulius lost both legs. Still herded until he was near ninety. Fudalt…”
“Father…we know you’re all indestructible, but Wendra doesn’t need to think about things like that. Besides, Alucius will be all right. That’s that.” Lucenda straightened.
“Kustyl’ll be bringing the goats tomorrow, Septi at the latest,” Royalt announced.
“We don’t need goats,” Lucenda said.
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Kustyl’s insisting. They’re a gift.”
“But…” Lucenda glanced at Wendra.
“His Mairee had trouble nursing,” Royalt said. “He figures Wendra won’t, but Mairee insists, just in case. Says we can always use them if we get another lamb that turns motherless or if one has twins.”
“Grandmother’s always been like that,” Wendra said. “That’s why her cellar has everything in it. Grandfather says it’s less trouble to store the extras than to argue about it.”
“Wise man,” observed Lucenda.
Wendra stiffened.
“Alucius?” asked Lucenda.
“Just a little cramp…the kind that sort of exercises things,” Wendra said. “She’s just fine.”
“You still think you’ll call her Alendra?”
“That’s what we’d agreed on, and I still like it,” replied Wendra, shifting her weight in the chair. “I feel like a ewe with twins.”
“You’re small. I was out to here with Alucius.” Lucenda placed her hand a third of a yard in front of her still-slender waist.
“I know that. But I don’t feel small. Especially when she kicks.”
“She’ll be a healthy one, no matter,” Royalt observed.
“She’ll be big, we think,” Wendra said, “more like Alucius.”
“She’ll be beautiful, whatever size she is,” added Lucenda.
Wendra’s eyes dropped to the black crystal of the herder’s ring. “He’s still strong.”
“Alucius was meant for great things,” Lucenda mused. “He’ll be back, strong and healthy. He’s a soarer’s child.”
“But he’s suffered so much already,” Wendra said quietly.
“The great ones do,” Royalt said in a low voice.
Lucenda shot a glance at her father, but Wendra only smiled sadly, her eyes focused far beyond the wall before her.
91
A reddish pink haze enveloped Alucius. At times it was redder and more painful, and at other times a trace of cooling golden green crept in. Then the haze was barely pink, and he merely felt as
though he had been staked out in the summer sun, rather than placed on a bonfire. Every time he started to feel even slightly cooler, the redness and heat and pain returned, and when he tried to lift his arms to ward off the unseen sun, he could not.
He could sense water or liquid going down his throat, and even that hurt, and the water cooled him not at all.
In time, the haze faded enough that he could make out a figure looking down at him.
“Colonel…? Can you hear me?”
“Yes…” Alucius half mumbled, half croaked.
“That’s good. You were badly injured, but you’re going to be all right. It’s going to take some time. Just try to relax.”
Relax? When he alternated between burning and merely being over-heated?
Even that simple thought was enough to plunge him back into the pinkish fog, the pink that he’d come to dislike so much.
When he woke again, he could see more clearly. He was in a moderately wide bed in a small room with a window. A heavy splint was strapped around his right forearm. There was gray and rain, he thought, beyond the window, but the white walls of his room helped in keeping the gray at bay.
Within a short time, a heavyset, gray-haired woman in pale gray appeared beside his bed. For a time, she looked down at him. Then she smiled, almost sadly. “You will recover. It will take time.”
Alucius couldn’t place her accent or her speech. It was somewhere between Madrien and Lanachronan. “How long…?”
“You have been here more than a week. They did not think you would live. You have two broken ribs, two cracked ribs, a broken arm, and your chest was so badly bruised that it was bloody from your neck to your waist. So was your right thigh. Even nightsilk cannot save someone who has lost that much blood to bruising.”
“You’re cheerful,” Alucius rasped.
“Much of the bruising has already healed. I have not told anyone how badly you were injured.”
“Thank you.”
“You are a child of the ancients. We have not seen one in many years.” She extended a mug. “You should drink. This will help with the healing.”
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