Darknesses

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  24

  Northeast of Iron Stem, Iron Valleys

  Wendra reined up the chestnut mare and listened. Her eyes went eastward toward the front of the flock, where Royalt rode, and the Aerlal Plateau well beyond. After a moment, she turned her head toward the straggler ewe and her lamb—less than fifteen yards to her south. Her brow wrinkled. Then she turned the chestnut farther south.

  The faintest shimmer of reddish tan glinted in the low morning light from behind a thicker clump of quarasote.

  Reining up quickly, she slid the heavy rifle from its holder, cocking it and bringing it to her shoulder in a smooth motion that was practiced but not yet quite instinctive. She watched, waiting.

  After long moments, the sandwolf streaked toward Wendra, a blur of tannish red, and the long crystalline fangs glinted in the morning sun.

  She squeezed the trigger. Crack! She recocked the rifle and fired again, missing. Her third shot tore into the chest of the beast, and the sandwolf staggered, then fell, less than two yards from the mare.

  Wendra recocked the rifle, holding it ready as she continued to survey the quarasote plains around her. She could hear the hoofbeats of Royalt’s mount, but she kept checking the terrain until she saw the second sandwolf, more than thirty yards away, behind a more distant and larger clump of quarasote. Again, she waited.

  The second sandwolf peered from the side of the quarasote, then turned, and bounded to a second clump of quarasote, before vanishing into a gully so small that Wendra could barely make it out.

  “I don’t see any more,” Royalt said as he reined up.

  “I can’t either,” she replied. “But only two…?”

  “Sometimes, the younger ones hunt in smaller groups.” Royalt, his own rifle ready, glanced at the dead sandwolf on the red and sandy soil. “That’s a young one.”

  Wendra measured the dead animal with her eyes. “It’s more than two yards long, and that’s not counting the tail.”

  “Full-grown, they can run to almost three yards.” Royalt smiled. “You did well. They’re harder to hit than a sander.”

  Wendra glanced back toward the flock, then aimed her eyes at the straggler ewe. “Get moving.” She tried to project the kind of authority that Royalt and Alucius did.

  After a moment, the ewe nosed the lamb, and the two began to trot toward the main body of the flock.

  “You’ve got the touch, Wendra.”

  She smiled faintly. “If we could just do that with people. Some people…anyway,” she added quickly. “Like the Council.” She flicked the reins gently, and the mare began to walk toward the flock, still moving eastward toward the plateau.

  “Aye. That could get worse.” Royalt eased his mount up beside Wendra’s mare as the two herders moved closer to the flock. Both continued to scan the quarasote, even as they talked.

  “If Clyon doesn’t recover from his illness?”

  “If it is an illness.”

  “You think someone on the Council would go that far?”

  “At times, I wonder if there’s anyone on the Council who wouldn’t. They’re all more concerned about how many golds they can put in their strongboxes this year than whether they’ll have any at all next year. We could shear every nightsheep down to the bare skin and make more nightsilk this year…but half of them would die over the year, and then where would we be? Herder who doesn’t look to the future doesn’t have one. They’ve never liked Clyon ’cause he keeps reminding them about the future.”

  “How can they be that stupid?”

  Royalt laughed, roughly. “Look around, Wendra. Most people are like that. Oh, they talk about planning for tomorrow, working…but then they get an extra silver and it goes for more ale, or a fancy scarf, or a shinier knife…” He shook his head.

  Wendra glanced back at the fallen sandwolf.

  “Leave the sandwolf. Can’t use anything.”

  She nodded, looking toward the flock ahead and the Aerlal Plateau beyond.

  25

  In the indirect light of late spring, Alucius studied the map spread on the mess table. After a time, he took the ancient calipers and measured the distance on the map—from Emal to the high road between Salaan and Dereka. He wrote down the figure, then measured the distance as a raven might fly, from Aelta to Emal, writing that down as well. As he did, he wondered how Feran was doing on his travels to Fiente, since Fifth Company had left the day before.

  Thrap. At the knock on the door—or the doorframe—to the officers’ mess, Alucius looked up to see Zerdial standing there. “Yes?”

  “Captain…there’s a fellow here, says he needs to speak to you. He’s an old farmer. He says it’s important.”

  Alucius stood. “Did he say why?”

  “He’s from across the river…He asked for the herder captain. He said he had to talk to you. I think he talked to one of the bridge guards, too, but he knew that it was you he wanted.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Alucius gently folded the old map and weighted it in place with one of the histories he had brought back to Emal Outpost from the stead. He’d read the history—The Wonders of Ancient Corus—once already and was rereading it more thoroughly.

  When Alucius stepped out into the warm and hazy spring sunshine, he saw a man standing beside the wall with Zerdial. The stranger was a gaunt figure of a man, with thin gray hair, wearing a worn and patched sheepskin jacket and equally worn brown trousers. His boots had been stitched and restitched, and his face was wrinkled and weathered. Because he wondered why a stranger would seek him out, Alucius studied him for a moment with his Talent, but nothing seemed odd, and the man’s lifethread was a deep brown, rooted somewhere close to the southeast, clearly that of a man deeply tied to the land nearby. Alucius wasn’t sure, but those with deep commitments appeared to have lifethreads that were a solid color—herders were almost always a solid black.

  “You are the herder captain, sir?” The older man’s eyes lingered on Alucius’s dark, dark gray hair, and he nodded.

  “Yes, I am.” Alucius slipped back his tunic sleeve to reveal, if but momentarily, the black crystal wristband, just below the form-fitting nightsilk undergarment that was more effective than mail against sabre slashes. “The squad leader said that you wished to see me. How can I be of help to you?”

  “You look like a captain, and you feel like one. Yet you would see me?” The older man had an unspoken question.

  Alucius could sense that, impoverished as the peasant farmer might be, he was proud. Alucius smiled as gently as he could, then said, “Few would ask to see a captain if they did not have something to say. You have traveled far. How could I not see a man who has done me that honor?”

  Abruptly, the farmer lowered his eyes.

  Alucius hoped he hadn’t gone too far, but the man’s pride seemed to be all that he had. He waited, not pressing.

  Slowly, the older man looked up, and his eyes met those of Alucius. He nodded. “You are young for a captain. Yet you are far older than those with more years.” He swallowed. “I have little, but I have worked hard. I have never asked for anything except the fruits of my land and my hands.”

  “You have worked hard. I can see that,” Alucius replied, ignoring the impatience radiating from Zerdial. “You do not like to ask of others, but I will hear what you have to say, and if I can, I will do what should be done.” Again, Alucius was operating on his interpretation of the other’s feelings, which included a sense of righteousness, and anger, but an anger not directed at Alucius, for all that the farmer’s accent proclaimed him Lanachronan.

  “You have already done that, Captain.” The farmer paused, not quite meeting Alucius’s eyes as he continued. “I am the one who owes you. I owe you for the vengeance I could not take, Sir Captain,” replied the gray-haired man.

  Amazed as he was by the man’s statement, Alucius could sense the absolute truth in the man’s words. “I’m glad whatever I did you found acceptable, but since I am not aware of the details, would you mind telling me
?” Alucius tried to project warmth and assurance.

  “I will. You would not know, for all this happened on the south side of the river, where I live. Where we lived. My daughter, and her husband, and their children…we are from Saubyan. The raiders who were not raiders, the ones who wore gray, who hid in gray. They crossed the ice, and then they raided our hamlet. I had a daughter. They thought she was comely, and she was.” The man stopped, swallowed, then went on slowly. “Her husband protested, and they shot him, and they struck me with a rifle.” He pushed back the worn hat to reveal a scarred gash that ran across the top of his forehead. “They used my daughter ill, most ill. None thought I would live. My daughter did not, and Busyl did not. My wife is long departed, and my son went to find his fortune in Borlan. I must work the fields alone and raise two bairns, and the eldest is but six.” He held up his hand. “I do not ask more of you, Captain. None in Lanachrona lifted a blade or a rifle. You had them all slain, did you not? And you slew a half score yourself.”

  “I killed some of them,” Alucius admitted. “None of them survived.”

  “I cannot give you what I would wish. I am a poor man. I owe you, and my only payment is what I can tell you. There are more raiders. They wear red, red tunics all alike, of a kind I have never seen, and some have strange long rifles, and I have listened. They think I am old and feeble and deaf, but I am not. They talk about the herder captain, and they are waiting for the runoff to go down. They have built rafts to carry provisions…”

  Alucius nodded. “I did not know this, and I thank you. Might you be able to tell me how many of them there are and where they intend to cross the river?”

  “I have counted almost two hundred. They have talked about crossing the shallows. That is but two vingts to the east of the bridge, where the river widens. They will use heavy ropes and swim their mounts across in the night before dawn. I cannot say on what day this will happen, but I do not think it will be long.”

  Alucius inclined his head to the farmer. “It is I who owes you. So do the people of Emal, though none will tell of this.” He looked over the shoulder of the farmer at Zerdial, and said, “None.”

  “Yes, sir,” murmured the squad leader.

  Alucius turned to the farmer. “You rose early and traveled far. Could I at least offer some bread and some cheese for your daughter’s children, so that they will not suffer more?”

  “I could not…for myself.”

  “I know that,” Alucius said. “But for them.”

  The man looked down and gave the faintest of nods.

  Alucius looked at Zerdial. “If you could find some loaves and a wedge of cheese…from the cooks. Tell them I’ll take care of it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Zerdial slipped away.

  “Do you just tend the fields, or do you have livestock?” Alucius asked.

  “The raiders, they slaughtered the two ewes, but they left the cow, and they were so noisy that they could only catch one of the hens.” The older man laughed. “That was one reason I knew they were not true raiders.”

  Alucius nodded. “A true raider would have had the hens in the pot first.”

  “You are a herder, are you not?”

  “Yes. My stead is to the north, and my wife and my mother and my grandsire tend it now. We have a flock of nightsheep.”

  “Yet you are a captain now?”

  “For a time yet. My grandsire was a captain, and so was my sire. He was killed by raiders when I was a child.”

  “Would that there were more who know the land who carry the rifle and the blade.”

  Both men looked up as Zerdial crossed the courtyard with a cloth bag.

  Alucius slipped a pair of coppers from his belt wallet and extended them to the farmer. “These are a token, just a token, one for each child, for when times are hard.”

  “I could not…”

  “They are but a token,” Alucius repeated. “Were I to offer truly the worth of what you have provided, neither of us would be pleased.”

  The farmer laughed harshly. “You, too, are a proud man.”

  “Yes,” Alucius admitted. “It is a fault of mine.”

  The farmer took the coppers, slipping them into slots on the inside of his stained leather belt. “May all officers have your faults, Captain.”

  Alucius took the bag from Zerdial. As he presented it to the farmer, he could tell that the cooks—or Zerdial—had been generous. “Perhaps you should tell the others in your hamlet that you received these as payment for helping a herder.” He grinned. “It is true.”

  The farmer bowed. “Only for the children.”

  “Only for the children,” Alucius agreed. He nodded to Zerdial to accompany the farmer past the gate and the guard.

  The captain stood and watched as the two crossed the courtyard. He waited until Zerdial returned.

  “He’s across the bridge, sir.”

  “Good.”

  “You gave him two coppers. Just coppers.”

  “Anything more, and he would have been insulted. Also, he can explain two coppers. How would he ever explain a silver?”

  Zerdial looked toward the outpost gate, then southward before turning his eyes back to Alucius “Sir? How did you know?”

  “Because almost everyone dislikes troopers, or stays clear of them, in any land I know. Anyone who would seek me out either wished me well or great ill. He was too humble to wish me ill, and too shy. So I had to make him feel less uncomfortable and more at ease.” That, reflected the captain, had been the easy part. Figuring out how to handle a force equal to two horse companies—and then doing it—would be far harder.

  Although Alucius went back to the mess, and his maps, he had the feeling that whatever was about to happen wouldn’t be that far away, because the troopers in Deforyan red were being paid, and someone in the Southern Guard was looking the other way. The pay wouldn’t last, and the Lord-Protector couldn’t afford to keep his eyes averted long.

  Yet whatever Alucius did, he’d have to do alone. Even if Feran were in Emal, Alucius could imagine what Feran—or any officer—would have said about his heeding information from the unnamed farmer. “A farmer told you this? A Lanachronan farmer? And you’re going to believe him?” Then too, there was the possibility that the farmer had been deliberately misled.

  Once again, to conceal his Talent, he would have to find a way to deal with the problem in a logical fashion.

  By the glass after the midday dinner for the troopers, he was ready, and had summoned his squad leaders to the officers’ mess.

  Alucius glanced around the room, looking first at Longyl, and then at each of the squad leaders, one after the other—Zerdial, Anslym, Faisyn, Egyl, and Sawyn.

  “I’ve been thinking…” He paused. “We haven’t done any full company maneuvers since last fall. The most troopers we’ve had together at a time is two squads. As I’ve told most of you, I don’t know what’s likely to happen this year, but if we do have to fight any pitched battles, against the Southern Guard, especially, we’d better be prepared to do it. We probably won’t have much notice. It often doesn’t work that way.” Alucius smiled. “And I’d be very surprised if they came across the bridge.”

  “How would they come, do you think?” asked Zerdial.

  Alucius gave the young squad leader credit for asking the right leading question.

  “I’m not their commander, but they’d either come in winter, across the ice, or now, across the shallower sections of the river. That could be the shallows east of the bridge. The water there is only a bit more than two yards deep, and only in the middle of the river. Or they could come on the back trails through the marsh five vingts west of the bridge, then move across the low isles there. They’d only have the main channel to cross, and that’s less than twenty yards wide.” Alucius paused, cleared his throat, and went on. “They might even do both, trying to split Twenty-first and Fifth Companies. They’d also have more troopers than we would, at least two to one, maybe more.”

  “
You think this is really going to happen?” asked Sawyn.

  Alucius smiled. “Think of it this way. It happens, or it doesn’t. If it happens, and we’re ready, then we’ll ride away. If it doesn’t happen, all that we lose is some time and effort. But if it happens, and we’re not prepared…do you want to be the squad leader at that time?”

  Sawyn didn’t have to think long about that, Alucius was relieved to see.

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Longyl, ever the practical one.

  “This afternoon, I’d like you to send your scouts to the eastern crossing point. They’re to observe the area and to draw rough maps of where the Lanachronans could cross, either by raft or by swimming their mounts. The squad leaders are to go with them, but no one else, and I’d like you to watch the river in a way that you’re not seen from the far side. If…if they have ideas, they may already be watching. They may not, but it’s good practice. If they know we’re watching, then they might change their plans.” Alucius paused. “We’d have more time, and the bluff as a defense point, if they came from the west. All of you are to think about where you would place the company for the best effect—either above the shallows or to the west of Emal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “There’s one other matter,” Alucius said. “We’ll probably have to post a sentry on our side of the shallows. So give a thought to where that post should be.” He glanced around the small room once more, before concluding. “We’ll meet here with the scouts right after supper.”

  After the six left the room, Alucius went back to his maps and calculations.

  26

  Alucius was up early on Octi, well before sunrise, riding alone along the river road, eastward toward the shallows. Although he had the observations of five scouts and their squad leaders, as well as Longyl’s thoughts, he still felt he needed a better feel for the river at the shallows, the land, and what might already be happening. He also did not wish to draw attention to his concerns by riding out during the day, and although Vinkin would doubtless not say anything, Alucius doubted that the duty sentries would be so circumspect. But for him to ask for their silence would guarantee that everyone would know he was deeply concerned.