Horan needed little urging to reach for the water bottle.
Quaeryt once more surveyed the lands beyond the swamp to the west, thickly forested with trees and undergrowth that could hide regiments. He had his doubts that there were regiments concealed, but the flatness of the causeway on the far side concerned him, since it was a perfect situation to use musketeers. The road would only allow three riders abreast at any speed, and it would take time to cover the mille or so beyond the bridge.
But then, they wouldn’t be all that accurate at that distance, and they’d wait until we were closer to the woods. That was another worry.
He waited for a time, then looked to Horan. “Ready for another imaging?”
“Yes, sir.”
In between periods of imaging and resting, it took Horan more than four quints to replace and raise the causeway to within two handspans of the stone paving on each side.
“That’s enough, Undercaptain,” said Quaeryt.
“I can do more, sir.”
“You’re getting pale. You need to drink some more and rest. Otherwise you’ll collapse, and we may well need you again if the Bovarians have done the same thing on the far side.”
“Oh … yes, sir.”
Quaeryt got the impression that Horan had not thought about that.
“Undercaptain Smaethyl, forward!” Quaeryt waited until the former hunter, not quite so angular as he had been when he’d first joined the battalion, rode up and joined him. “I’d like a layer of gravel, small pebbles, to cover the stones smoothly.”
Smaethyl managed that quickly, and without sweating.
Quaeryt then had Zhelan summon a squad of troopers to walk back and forth on the gravel, even jumping on it, until the gravel and pebbles would no longer sift downward. Then Smaethyl imaged finer gravel, followed by paving stones.
Finally, he rode across the stones of the repaired road and causeway, but sensed no give in the road. You can only hope that it holds. Still the stones Horan had imaged looked solid, and while they might settle some, Quaeryt doubted that they would totally give way, at least not in the next few days.
“Fifth Battalion! Forward!” As he urged the mare forward, he glanced back. The van of Third Regiment had reached the crest of the rise that marked the edge of the swampy valley holding the River Sommeil and the bridge. They’ll likely catch us before we finish image-repairing things, especially if there’s another hole blown in the causeway on the other side. There was no help for that. Imaging took time, just not as much time as having rankers and engineers repair the gaps.
When they reached the base of the bridge and Quaeryt reined up, he smiled. The Bovarians had blown out most of the middle of the stone spans, but had left the center pier. While imaging the spans back in place would take a strong imager, it wouldn’t take the piecemeal effort that repairing the causeway had. He glanced down, past the ragged ending of the approach where some stones remained and others did not, to the water of the River Sommeil less than four yards below, where he could barely see the current. That suggested that the river was deeper than it looked. Then he straightened. “Undercaptain Threkhyl, forward.”
Threkhyl rode forward.
“Just the span from here to the pier. Without the side walls.”
A frown of puzzlement crossed the face of the ginger-bearded imager.
“I want the others to get some practice, but I need the basic span to be strong. I also want to make sure the pier is sound with weight on it before you expend the energy for the second span.”
At that, Threkhyl nodded and concentrated. In moments a gently arching stone span connected the approach to the center pier. The undercaptain turned to Quaeryt. “Sir.”
“Thank you. Undercaptain Lhandor, forward.”
“Sir,” said Lhandor as he eased his mount around Threkhyl’s big gelding.
“I’d like stone retaining walls a yard and a half high, no more that two handspans in width, their outside edges even with the edge of the span.”
Lhandor managed the walls on the south side, then had to rest, drink, and eat a biscuit before he could image the second set of walls.
Quaeryt, with some trepidation, urged the mare onto the span. He could feel no give, and there was no echo from his mount’s hooves. He kept riding, then turned back. “Imagers, forward! Just imagers.”
Quaeryt reined up on the new span several yards short of where it met and seamlessly joined the center pier. From there he studied the open water and the bridge approach. Once again, he had Threkhyl do the main span, but this time he called on Khalis to handle the side walls.
Quaeryt waited for Khalis to recover, then urged the mare onto the second span. The undercaptains followed, and then the rest of Fifth Battalion, behind Zhelan, followed over the spans. As Quaeryt’s mare stepped off the second span, Threkhyl moved forward, until his mount was close behind Quaeryt’s.
“You know I could have done all that … sir,” pressed Threkhyl. “I know you said they need practice. But I could have done it.”
Quaeryt refrained from sighing. “You might recall it took more than one or two imagers for us to take Nordeau, did it not?”
“It did.”
“What do you think will happen when we get to Variana? Can you and I and Shaelyt and Voltyr do it all?”
“We can, sir. I know we can.”
Because Quaeryt could sense that there was something Threkhyl wasn’t saying, he pressed on. “That’s all well and good to say, but what happens if we can’t?”
“We haven’t seen any other imagers, sir.”
What does that have to do with anything? Quaeryt was about to reply, then saw a darkness in the causeway ahead. He took a deep breath and pointed at another, even wider gap in the causeway. “Look ahead, there. I think you’ll need to help Horan with this one.” He smiled. “Remember, there’s always something unexpected in warfare.” Always … and sometimes even more unexpected than you think possible.
In the end, Quaeryt assigned Horan, Threkhyl, and Shaelyt to fill and pave the second gap in the causeway. While they worked, taking long breaks between imaging, at Quaeryt’s insistence, he continued to study the remainder of the causeway and then the space cut for the road through the forest and heavy undergrowth beyond the end of the causeway. The forest growth between the river road and the River Aluse appeared to be close to a half mille wide, but given the path of the road, the tree-filled area narrowed so that, most likely, several milles farther along, the road was much closer to the river. From where he was, Quaeryt could make out a brown line to the left of the river road, mostly straight, running roughly parallel to the road and equidistant between the road and the woods on the south side of the road. It was some sort of drainage ditch several yards wide.
Once the repairs were complete, Quaeryt had the three rest for another half quint before he had Fifth Battalion resume riding. As he rode along the causeway arcing gently northward to meet a tongue of land that the road followed through a narrow gap in a forest that might well be swamp forest at times of the year, Quaeryt tried to catch murmurs from the imagers.
“… not too bad…”
“… didn’t image himself…”
“… has … reasons…”
Quaeryt did indeed, and he hoped that his suspicions were unfounded.
Once they left the causeway and rode on the slightly raised road flanked mainly by knee-high and browning grasses-and red flies and mosquitoes-Quaeryt kept studying the trees, looking for anything that appeared less-or more-than it should have been. Then … he stiffened in the saddle, immediately turning. “Imagers! Mark the brown stump ahead and to the left. Stand ready to image iron darts into any Bovarians who appear! At my command.”
Quaeryt was partly guessing, but there were far more wilting and yellow leaves ahead to the left. He concentrated on removing all the leaves-or what seemed to be leaves-across a space some hundred yards wide.
Instantly, he heard screams and saw wooden frames, with musketeers and
their loaders.
“Image darts! At the musketeers!” Then he extended his own shields at an angle just before a ragged volley discharged.
He reeled back in the saddle, but the impact was nothing compared to what he’d experienced in Nordeau. He contracted the shields to protect a smaller area, basically the imagers, and imaged iron darts at three musketeers.
Another volley, smaller than the first, ripped in the direction of Fifth Battalion. Quaeryt felt no impacts on his shields. He kept imaging darts. So did the other imagers, especially Voltyr, but that was one reason why Quaeryt had kept one of the stronger imagers fresh.
There were only a few musketeers who fired a third volley, and there was no fourth volley. Quaeryt saw some Bovarians crawling or scuttling back into the thick forest.
“Shaelyt! Image pepper and smoke across the whole area where the musketeers were.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Major Zhelan, forward!”
Zhelan moved up beside Quaeryt. “Sir?”
“We need to send a message back to the commander, telling him what happened and warning him that there might be a musketeer or two left.”
“You don’t want to send troopers in to clean them out?” Zhelan’s voice was level.
“I think we’ve put them to rout, and I’m not inclined to send troopers across uneven ground, maybe even with swampy spots, not to mention a wide ditch just to have them try to catch a few Bovarians in a thick forest that doesn’t look friendly to horses.” Quaeryt looked at Zhelan. “If I’m wrong, please tell me. I value your judgment.”
“Sir … you have to make the decision … but you wouldn’t catch many.” Zhelan paused. “You were busy, sir, but whatever you did at the beginning killed about half of them, ripped off arms and the like.”
Quaeryt winced. He had heard screams, but he’d only meant to remove the musketeers’ camouflage. “I didn’t realize.”
“That’s why any troopers might not find much.”
“We’ll leave it that way, but the commander needs to know.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it … and we can send out the scouts now.”
That was another thing Quaeryt had forgotten.
As he looked southward at the gash in the trees, Quaeryt swallowed again. He hadn’t done that kind of imaging before … and with any new imaging … there were often costs. That one … you just didn’t expect.
He kept riding, looking for other ambush spots, although he doubted there would be another too close. Still …
69
That evening, after the three regiments and Fifth Battalion were settled in for the night in a small town that the locals called Byun, and the map showed as Reyks, Quaeryt had just finished a short session with the new imagers when Skarpa rode up. Quaeryt and the commander ended up on a small porch of a dwelling less than fifty yards from the south bank of the River Aluse.
“How are your imagers coming?” asked Skarpa.
“Each day, most of them are getting stronger, even Baelthm, not that he’ll ever have much strength. Some of the younger ones show great promise…” After reporting on the rest of Fifth Battalion, Quaeryt asked, “Is there anything else I should know?”
“We haven’t heard from the marshal since this morning’s dispatch. He was still about a half day behind us on Lundi. His scouts reported a regiment moving westward toward Variana. The Bovarians spurred their mounts and even made their foot trot to avoid Myskyl’s vanguard.”
“Have they experienced any musketeers?”
Skarpa frowned. “Come to think of it, I don’t think they’ve encountered any musket fire.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”
“It tells me that the Bovarians are targeting you and the imagers.”
“How did they know early enough to get the musketeers into position? Moving all those stands, the camouflage, the powder, the muskets-that’s not nearly so easy as moving a mounted company.”
“They must have spies.”
“Of some sort,” said Quaeryt blandly.
“You’d best leave it at that, right now, unless there’s proof,” cautioned Skarpa.
“I intend to, but I’ll keep it in mind.” Quaeryt paused. “There’s one other thing … cannon.”
“You mean that we haven’t seen any? We might at Variana or closer to it.”
“Why not now?”
“I’d guess that they don’t have that many, and most were probably around Ephra. They’re Namer-fired heavy. Muskets are easier to move, and you can get a more rapid fire from them.” Skarpa shrugged. “Those’d be my thoughts.”
Quaeryt still wondered. “Is there anything you have in mind for us tomorrow?”
“I still want Fifth Battalion in the van.” Skarpa stretched, then glanced toward his horse, tied to a sturdy, if slightly angled post just beside the path to the cot.
“We’ll be there.”
“Good.” The commander turned and made his way off the narrow porch, pausing beside the post, his eyes going to the River Aluse. “Don’t see why they build so close to the water.”
“They don’t have to drag a boat too far or carry water for hundreds of yards,” replied Quaeryt. “That gets tiring after a while. Besides, the land’s so flat here that they’d likely get flooded even if they were hundreds of yards away.”
Skarpa looked toward into the rapidly purpling eastern sky, where the three-quarters-full disc of Erion hung well above the trees in the distance. The smaller moon’s shade was more like amber, but would turn its usual reddish tint once the sky darkened. “Might just be full when we reach Variana.” Then he looked to Quaeryt. “How did you know the musketeers were there?”
“I didn’t,” Quaeryt admitted. “I just knew that every time that there’s been a perfect place for an ambush by musketeers in the past few weeks … there has been. So when I saw all those trees and all that flat land and, most likely, a place where we couldn’t charge them without scores of horses breaking their legs, I thought it was more than likely.”
Skarpa nodded. “Said you’d make a good commander.”
“Only because I’m an imager.”
The commander shook his head. “Every man has his strengths. The best know how to use them. The worst don’t know what they are. It’s the ability to use your strengths that makes you a good officer.”
Quaeryt couldn’t help but think about all the small details he hadn’t known. “Is that why you assigned Zhelan?”
Skarpa laughed. “I didn’t assign him. Myskyl did. He’s feared you ever since Rescalyn’s death. So he gave you a senior junior officer who knew squad-level combat, procedures, and discipline and not much more. He hoped the two of you would bungle things. He didn’t understand that Zhelan knew what you didn’t. You’ve both learned from each other, and he could command a battalion now.”
“He already does,” said Quaeryt dryly. Some of the time, if not more.
Skarpa shook his head. “You command. You delegate, but you still command. Don’t forget it.”
Although the last words were spoken as evenly as those which preceded them, Quaeryt recognized them as a command, not a suggestion. “I won’t.”
“We’re little more than sixty milles from Variana. How much opposition do you think we’ll face tomorrow or the next day?”
“Who knows? They’re not defending the way I would or you would. After today, I’d be a bit surprised, but not astonished, if we faced more than delaying attacks tomorrow. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we faced a stronger attack on Vendrei.” Quaeryt laughed softly. “And that probably means we’ll get a heavy attack tomorrow and delaying harassment on Vendrei.”
Skarpa smiled. “I still think you’re right about Kharst wanting to draw us in and crush us. The question is where … and how-in one blow or two.”
“And how the marshal will attempt to have us take the brunt of it,” added Quaeryt.
“How can you believe that of our most illustrious leader?”
&
nbsp; “Ignorance, I suppose,” said Quaeryt dryly. “I must not know him well enough.”
“I won’t comment on that, but I will observe that he doesn’t know you well enough, and it’s best that way.” Skarpa untied his mount.
After the commander mounted and departed, Quaeryt walked around the section of Byun that held Fifth Battalion, checking with each company commander. He didn’t discover anything he didn’t already know, but as he was about to leave Arion, the major said quietly, in Bovarian, as always, “Had you been with us in Khel, the Bovarians would not have defeated us, outnumbered as we were. Their musketeers made the difference.”
“You didn’t mention this before.”
Arion offered a slightly embarrassed smile. “We have found that none who have not seen what the muskets could do would believe their power.”
“Lord Bhayar has worried about the muskets for some time. How many more do you think they have … waiting for us at Variana?”
Arion shrugged. “I cannot say. They had more than a thousand at Khelgror. You have destroyed almost half that many.”
But it’s been more than a few years since the battle of Khelgror, and Kharst has to have forged more muskets and trained more musketeers.
Quaeryt frowned, remembering the meeting he’d had in Solis with Bhayar more than a year before when Bhayar had been asking about whether imagers would be able to image musket parts with enough precision. Had he known about Quaeryt’s abilities then … and been probing?
Unless you ask, you’ll never know. He smiled. Even if he did, he’d likely not get a conclusive answer, and it made little difference now … although the Bovarian muskets well might, especially if Kharst had more than a regiment and used the musketeers as a massed unit.
Still … from what he knew, muskets could not be cast, not yet, at least, but had to be forged, and that took time and trained armorer-smiths.
“Could we use the muskets you captured?” asked Arion.
“We have several hundred captured muskets, but we don’t have much of the proper powder nor musket balls…” Quaeryt shrugged. “I believe Lord Bhayar had men working on this, but he did not expect war with Bovaria to come quite so quickly.”
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