The elder smiles. “You did enough that he will recover.”
This time. “Thank you for presenting the knife to me. I appreciate that … after…”
“She would have wanted me to.”
Lerial nods. He understands that, recalling again what Alaynara had said to him. He reaches out and grasps Klerryt’s hand for a moment. “Take care.”
“You as well, Lord Lerial.”
“As I can.” Lerial offers a last smile, then turns and walks to where one of the Lancers holds the gelding’s reins. Before mounting he slips the knife, scarf, and agreement into the top of his saddlebags.
They have ridden for several hundred yards before Altyrn speaks. “You know, don’t you, that you’re committed to support them?”
“By accepting the knife and scarf?” Lerial shakes his head. “I was committed before that.”
“After the stream battle?”
Lerial nods.
“Loyalties outside family are dangerous,” Altyrn says quietly.
“Having none is even more dangerous, I think.”
Abruptly, the majer laughs. “Let’s get back to the hostel and make certain everything’s ready for you to leave in the morning.”
To Cigoerne
LXXXI
Six days later, Lerial glances up at the sky and then back at the two packhorses and the last of the Verdyn Lancers in his comparatively small party—just nine Lancers, Bhurl, and himself—the smallest group of Lancers he has led in more than a season. There are no clouds, but a faint haze imparts a silvery sheen to the green-blue sky, and the air is warm for a spring day. But then, Lerial realizes, while he has been thinking of the season as spring, two days earlier, spring had given way to summer.
Now, kays east of the Verd, he cannot help but keep going over the thoughts that circle in his mind. What did all of this accomplish? Casseon never really held the Verd, and he still doesn’t. He lost more than four thousand men and something like six white wizards trying to get something he never really held. The people of the Verd lost thousands, young and old alike, and one of their most talented elders, and it will be years before Verdheln recovers … and it’s likely never to be the way it was.
How did it all come about? We were supposed to train Lancers. Lerial shakes his head. Somehow, after training the Verdyn Lancers, he and Altyrn and the squad leaders and rankers ended up leading them. It seemed so logical.
His fingers drop to the hilt of the knife from the elders, and, again, he can feel that there is something slightly different about the order contained in the blade and tang, although he cannot explain what that might be, but it is somehow almost reassuring, like the lodestone from Rojana that has provided him with so much understanding and inspiration.
In time, he thinks about Alaynara … and then Essiana, not that he knew the elder at all, except through one brief meeting, and about her successor … and the fact that, for all that Khalya radiates chaos, that chaos is not a part of her, and yet he could detect no pattern, no mechanism that attracted or diverted chaos … as if that ability were indeed a part of her.
His mouth opens, and he shakes his head.
“Ser?” asks Bhurl.
“Nothing. I just realized something.” That is why you can’t create defenses that are always there. They’re not a part of you … and they have to be.
He is still thinking about that when Bhurl gestures and says, “Believe that’s Tirminya over that rise ahead.”
Lerial knows they have made better time on the return, largely because they have not had to worry about wagons, just the supplies on the two packhorses, but he still wonders if they are really that close to the post, although they have passed groupings of growers’ steads over the past day, and he does not recall that many steads that close together, except near Tirminya.
He extends his order-senses … and discovers that Bhurl is indeed right. The post lies less than two kays ahead over the low rise ahead and to the south of the dirt road that they have followed for days, seeing only occasional herds of sheep and one small herd of cattle. “You’re right. There’s no one on the road over the crest, either.”
“You could worry a man, ser, seeing where eyes aren’t.”
Lerial grins. “As I recall, that came in useful more than once.”
“Still worrisome.” But Bhurl grins in return.
What’s worrisome to Lerial is that, for all his quiet attempts over the journey, he is not that much closer to having figured out how to create continuous shields, or what he thinks of as permanent defenses. He has been able to create what amounts to a continuing “chaos-diversion” shield, in a way, by linking the pattern to his sabre or his belt knife, but if he doesn’t renew the pattern every few glasses, and sometimes more often, it slowly disintegrates. On the one hand, he worries that he is overlooking something simple that he should know … and on the other he wonders if making such shields a part of himself are just beyond his abilities.
The post gate guards scarcely blink when Lerial, Bhurl, and the assorted Lancers ride up to and through the gates. Lerial has barely reined up outside the stables when Seivyr, wearing captain’s insignia on his collars, hurries up.
“Welcome back, ser.”
“Thank you. It’s been a long ride. I see you’re a captain,” observes Lerial before dismounting. He really wants to stretch his legs.
“Better late than never.” Seivyr’s smile vanishes. “Before I forget, I wanted to tell the majer that I did appreciate the caution about the post gates. You’ll let him know, won’t you, if you see him before I do?”
Lerial nods. “Of course.”
“He was right about that for sure. After I took over as acting post commander, I watched especially close. Sure enough, one night, I found a ranker slipping the bar. We tied him up and waited. A squad of Afritan armsmen was sneaking around, and they tried the gates. We killed about half of them. The others got away. I gave the men some of their arrows as souvenirs.” Seivyr looks blandly at Lerial, almost as if he knows something. “They weren’t even broken.”
At that moment, Lerial recalls that Altyrn had never mentioned the assassin who had tried to kill the majer the first time they had passed through Tirminya, except as an idiot with a bow. That is, he’d never mentioned it to Dechund, but Seivyr’s words suggest that the majer had told the then undercaptain. “Do Afritan arrows have something that identifies them?” Lerial asks guilelessly. “As Afritan, I mean?”
“There’s a mark on the arrowhead,” replies Seivyr, “and a red band painted around the shaft above the fletching.”
“I wonder if Captain Dechund knew that,” muses Lerial.
Seivyr shakes his head. “He never mentioned anything about it.” After a slight hesitation, he adds, “Whalyn didn’t know, either, not until after the raid.”
There is something … but Lerial needs to think about it, especially before saying anything, and he asks, “Is Whalyn the only undercaptain here now?”
“He’ll be going soon as we get two fresh undercaptains. Be a captain before the turn of harvest, I’d wager. Stands a bit higher in Majer Phortyn’s eyes than some.”
“That can happen.”
“We can talk about it over supper. Whalyn and his two squads won’t be back till late. You and the majer ever get into it with the Meroweyans?”
“That will take dinner and more to tell,” replies Lerial with a laugh.
“Then I won’t keep you.” With a smile, Seivyr turns and leaves Lerial and Bhurl to deal with the Lancers and the packhorses.
A good glass later, Lerial and Seivyr are seated in the post’s small officers’ mess.
“I’m afraid that supper is plain mutton,” says Seivyr apologetically.
Lerial looks at the platter before him—just cheesed and sliced potatoes and mutton with gravy, with pickled beets—and he smiles broadly. “After ghano-acorn hash and a few other Verdyn staples, this looks wonderful.” He stabs a slice of the mutton and cuts it. “You just don’t kno
w…”
“The way you’re eating, I don’t know as I’d want to,” returns the captain.
Even the lager, which Lerial once would have called bitter, but passable, tastes so much better than the watered greenberry with which Lerial has had to content himself for so many days. Finally, after enjoying the plain food, he looks up, almost embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I should tell you about Verdheln.”
“It’s clear that the fare wasn’t to remember.” Seivyr laughs. “The majer said something about that once. How is he?”
“He’s well. He’s training more companies of Verdyn Lancers. We had six companies partly trained when the Meroweyans attacked. The majer taught us to use their skills with bows to whittle away their numbers. We lost every skirmish and every battle until the last two, and when it was all over, there were only a hundred or so of their wounded left.”
“Begging your pardon, ser, but I think you left a bit of that tale on the table.”
“I suppose I did.” Lerial takes another swallow of the lager, then clears his throat. “Well … first he sent out Juist and his company to shoot arrows into their column, the one riding toward Verdheln, from the west. Then he sent me and second company to attack from the east. When they finally got to the ridge just south of the Verd they set up a long line. We did several night attacks with fire arrows and whittled away some more of their forces. Then they moved up and started attacking the Verd with their chaos wizards. We’d slip out from other places and attack companies on the fringe. That went on for an eightday or so before they burned through the tree-wall and started marching up the main road toward Verdell…” Lerial continues in a similar vein for a time. “… and then the elders set a fire that trapped the western army between a river and the fire, and that burned up the town, the Meroweyans, and the chaos wizards with them. That left the bigger army, except it wasn’t so big by then—”
“You never did say how many men Casseon sent.”
“The majer thought it was eight battalions, around forty companies.”
“And he managed to defeat them with six green companies?”
“That was with the help of the Verdyn elders, the people, and the ordermages that were in the Verd. One of the elders—the one who called the fire at Faerwest—was killed by bringing up that much chaos.”
“What about the bigger army?”
“We met them just south of Escadya. We had trenches across the open meadow. We’d cut down a few of them and put a gap in their shieldwall, but they were about to overrun us when the ordermage with us called on some lightnings, and that killed a bunch of them and disorganized the rest of them, and we were able to take most of them. One company or so fled, and I had to take second company and follow them. We caught them on the grasslands outside the Verd.”
“What happened?”
“None of them survived to make it back to Nubyat.” Lerial shrugs. “That was about it.”
“You make it sound easy. It wasn’t, not knowing the numbers and the majer.”
“No,” says Lerial quietly. “It wasn’t easy. Not at all. You’d know that.”
“What did it cost?”
“More than two companies worth of Lancers, several thousand Verdyn killed—maybe a lot more, but who will ever know?—three towns and maybe a dozen hamlets burned or destroyed, one of the senior elders killed … who knows how much of the Verd burned.”
“And Verdyn is now part of Cigoerne, and likely to stay so.” Seivyr nods. “Sounds like the majer. When he sets out to do something, it gets done.”
Lerial stiffens for a moment. But did he set out to do that? He manages to swallow as he realizes that, in fact, Altyrn has schemed and strategized to turn what might have been an armed annexation by Casseon into an all-out war … sacrificing the people of the Verd, or some of them, in order to so weaken and destroy a significant portion of Casseon’s armsmen that it essentially removed Merowey as an immediate threat to Cigoerne. By attacking the Meroweyans before they reached the Verd, he had ensured that they would attack in force … and everything else followed.
What if the Meroweyans had won? Some of the same things would still have happened, except they would have taken longer. Even had the Meroweyans defeated the Lancers, they would have taken significant losses, and because of the size of the Verd, they would have been tied up for years in trying to hold and rule it, keeping them from threatening Cigoerne.
“He does have that ability,” Lerial finally says.
“Dechund didn’t understand that. Majer would do just about anything to preserve Cigoerne. But Dechund didn’t serve directly under the majer.” Seivyr takes a small swallow of lager. “How long will you be here?”
“I’d thought a day to rest the horses.” Lerial grins. “And maybe stock up on some decent travel food.”
“You think it’s decent, and you’re welcome to it.” Seivyr laughs.
“What can you tell me about Majer Phortyn?”
Seivyr raises his eyebrows.
“Besides the fact that he likes officers with clean uniforms and well-polished boots, and that he’s skeptical that Duke’s sons can handle a blade or perform in battle?”
The captain shakes his head good-naturedly. “You know that, and that’s what you’ve got.”
Lerial doesn’t press, and the two talk about Tirminya and the post, and the sightings of Afritan patrols for almost a glass before they leave for their respective quarters.
Lerial is sitting on the edge of the narrow bunk, pulling off his boots, when all the pieces fall into place, triggered by what Seivyr had said earlier about the Afritan arrows. By the Rational Stars! Dechund didn’t die of a flux … Lerial tries to recollect what exactly had happened in the mess the night before they had left Tirminya. There was more than one reason why he wanted you out of the mess! And spilling that carafe when you came back was no accident.
But that meant Altyrn had suspected Dechund might be a traitor from before leaving Teilyn. Otherwise …
Lerial shivers.
Seivyr had said that the majer would do anything to preserve Cigoerne.
LXXXII
By second glass on oneday, after six long days after leaving Tirminya, even with quick glances at intervals at the jagged spurs of red rocks jutting along the Wooded Ridges to the south of the road, Lerial can easily recognize the landmarks and the most impenetrable-looking sections of the forest, although, after seeing the thornbushes of the Verd, the Wooded Ridges look far more open than he had once thought, and more familiar. They should, after all the time that the majer had you learning the terrain.
He still hasn’t figured out a way to create lasting order-defenses, although he’s gotten quite proficient at creating a variety of defenses in instants, some of which he can also instantly link to his belt knife or sabre. Which is fine for when you know that you’re being attacked, or going to be … but that won’t always be the case.
He smiles wryly. As in everything, it seems, being able to anticipate is vital.
Under the late afternoon sun of early summer, the mud-brick houses of Teilyn appear a faint orangish-pink as he and Bhurl ride through the town toward the Mirror Lancer post to the south. At the gate, the guards look from Lerial to Bhurl and then to the brown-clad Verdyn Lancers behind the other three Mirror Lancers in green.
“Verdyn Lancers detailed to escort duty,” Lerial explains. “That leaves more Mirror Lancers to assist with training in Verdheln.”
“Yes, ser,” replies the gate guard, his tone suggesting he’s not quite convinced.
Word must travel quickly, or the lookout has already reported, because Captain Graessyr stands waiting by the time Lerial rides to the stables and reins up. Behind him looms Undercaptain Shastan, as massive as ever, also looking concerned.
“Returning from Verdell with dispatches and Verdyn Lancers as additional company,” Lerial announces.
“Not that we’re not glad to see you, Lord Lerial,” declares the captain, “but I was hoping that we’d also be see
ing the majer.”
“He’s fine, but he says he needs another season training the Verdyn Lancers. We took some heavy losses in defeating the Meroweyans.”
Graessyr frowns. “I thought you were just training them.”
“The Meroweyans didn’t wait until we’d finished training the Verdyn Lancers. The majer took command. We fought. We won. It was a mess, and it was costly. I’ll be happy to fill in the details after we settle the men. I also need to carry a letter from the majer to his family.”
Graessyr smiles, if slightly sardonically. “Spoken like a Lancer. I’ll be in my study.”
Settling the Lancers doesn’t take all that long, and since the duty ostler volunteers to groom and feed the gelding, in little more than a half glass, Lerial is sitting in front of Captain Graessyr’s desk, explaining what had happened in Verdheln, in much the same way as he had to Seivyr in Tirminya. When he finishes, he waits for any questions Graessyr may have.
“You took a single company after the fleeing Meroweyans … and didn’t leave any survivors.”
“That was partly because things got out of control with their last chaos wizard,” Lerial replies, “but I didn’t want there to be any effective fighting forces returning to Nubyat.”
Graessyr nods slowly. “Most would say that was carrying matters to excess.”
“They might. But with so few trained Lancers remaining and even fewer ordermages, it seemed prudent to do everything possible to reduce the possibility of another attempt to take the Verd any time soon.”
“There’s one other thing I don’t understand,” says the captain, smiling as he adds, “or maybe more. If the Verdyn had all those ordermages, why did they need the majer and you to train Lancers?”
“They didn’t have that many, and they lost at least one that I know of, and I’m not certain how long the senior elder, who is also an ordermage of some kind, will live after the strain the war put on him. What made the difference was the way the majer deployed the Lancers we had. Even before the Meroweyans managed to burn through the tree-walls to get into the Verd, we’d killed or wounded almost five companies worth of their armsmen … well … maybe four. Every skirmish or battle, they lost at least five or six times what we did. And the people, they killed or wounded quite a few with their traps and their hunting arrows. But none of it would have worked without the majer holding it all together.”
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