Scepters (37 page)

“Whereas
you merely have to fight off Talent-creatures the likes of which haven’t been
seen since before the Cataclysm—another legacy of the Duarches.” Lucenda
snorted.

“The
times are changing,” Wendra said.

“You
sound like Alucius.”

“He’s
right.”

“He
was almost always right,” Lucenda said, her voice holding a mixture of sadness
and wistfulness. “I can remember when he saved Lamb. He looked up at me, and he
said, ‘He’ll get well. You’ll see. He will.’ Then he went to sleep.”

“That’s
Alucius.”

“As
a mother, it’s frightening. He always saw so much more. He didn’t always know
what it meant, but he saw it.” Lucenda’s eyes fixed on Wendra. “Your daughter…
she’ll be like that, and then you’ll understand.”

“I’ve
thought that,” Wendra admitted. “Especially at those times when I’ve wakened
and seen Alucius sleep, and he looks so childlike.”

Lucenda
looked as though she might say more. Then she laughed softly. “I need to check
on supper. Come on in when you can.”

After
Lucenda left, Wendra continued to brush the chestnut, her eyes open but focused
far to the south.

Octdi
found the column of lancers riding back southward on the high road away from
Ceazan and toward Hyalt. Although he did not expect to find traces of the
rebels until the next day, Alucius was still using both his Talent and his
eyesight to scan the road and the terrain to either side, seeking any trace of
the purpleness that marked the rebels or any sign of dust in the dry harvest
season that was but days away from fall. Soon the weather would turn colder,
even in southern Lanachrona, if not nearly so cold as autumn days would be in
the Iron Valleys.

Through
the morning Alucius rode with Twenty-eighth Company, and midmorning came and
went. At noon, he ordered Thirty-fifth Company forward and rode with Jultyr.
They had ridden more than a glass, passing but a few pleasantries, before
Jultyr cleared his throat. Alucius waited.

“The
marshals sent that ammunition real quick, sir.”

“My
dispatch explained the problem, at least as well as I could.”

“I’ve
seen colonels, sir, didn’t get supplies that fast.”

“The
Lord-Protector has a problem. The sooner we get the ammunition, the sooner we
can deal with it.”

“You
don’t think there’s any other way?”

Alucius
laughed softly. “I don’t know that the rebels gave us much choice. They
attacked us first on several occasions. Do you think there was anything else we
could have done?”

“No,
sir.”

“Do
you think we ought to strike the hill camp first or the one northeast of town?”

Jultyr
considered.

Alucius
waited once more.

“I’d
say the hill camp, sir. You hit the town camp, and they’ll be ready for the
second attack. Be harder to get word from the hills back to the other camp.
Also, you hit the town camp, and folks could run to the other one. Make the
second attack harder, and we might have to kill women and children. “Jultyr
shrugged. “Might have to, anyway.”

“We
might.”

“Still
can’t figure why they don’t like the Lord-Protector. Never did anything to
these folks. Nothing. Garrison here was mostly those with injuries of the kind
that wouldn’t heal, serving last year or two before getting a stipend.” Jultyr
paused. “This True Duarchy thing… might not be as good as the old one. Who’s to
say the old one was that good? All we got is stories and legends and a few
roads and buildings. Doesn’t tell what living there was like.”

“Legends
don’t tell everything,” Alurius replied mildly.

“Folks
remember what they want to. Could be good. Could be bad.” Jultyr cocked his
head, thinking. “My grandda… he told stories. Never told a happy one. My
grandmam, she never told a sad one. Spent near-on fifty years together. Funny…
lived the same life. Sure saw it different—or told it different.”

“People
are like that.”

Jultyr
frowned. “Except these rebels. They all act the same… do the same. Folks in
their right minds aren’t like that.”

“This
prophet is using some kind of Talent to change their minds.”

“That’s
hard on folks, hard on us.”

Alucius
nodded. Whatever happened was going to be hard on everyone. He scanned the road
ahead once more, then the thornbush-covered rises on each side.

On
a cool and cloudy Londi, just past noon, Alucius, Feran, Jultyr, and Deotyr
stood to one side of the ashes of a cookfire, halfway down the slope of the
hillside camp less than five vingts from the eastern approach to the western
camp of the Hyalt rebels.

Facing
them were Rakalt and Waris, the two best remaining scouts. Given the earlier
scouting problems, Alucius was both pleased and relieved that the pair had
returned, although Elbard remained at the way station and was healing well. For
that, at least, Alucius was grateful.

“Sir…
you know we burned all those trees around their camp—and the spiky thorns,”
said Waris.

“I
was there,” Alucius pointed out.

“The
trees that we burned—they’re still black, but there’s fresh green spiky thorn
everywhere that was burned—looks even bigger and thicker.”

“You’re
sure about that?” asked Feran.

Jultyr
and Deotyr exchanged glances.

“Cut
off a piece. Tough, too.” Waris produced a half-yard length of a greenish brown
thorn branch.

Even
as the scout extended it, and Alucius took the thorny length, he had to repress
a shudder at the faint hint of purple and black that his Talent detected.
Someone—either an ifrit or an ifrit-possessed Lanachronan—had bled off the very
life-essence of people to spur or fuel the unnatural growth of the spiky
thornbushes. “It’s like this all the way around the camp?”

“Looked
to be, sir.” Waris glanced toward Rakalt.

“Far
as I could tell, sir,” added the second scout.

“What
about the palisades and the walls? Have they been reinforced?” No, sir.

“Are
the gates kept closed, or are they open some of the time?”

“Only
the same two, sir, and they were both open. Didn’t look like they were ever
closed, maybe except at night. Maybe not then.”

“Did
you see any lancers, besides those doing sentry duty?”

“There
were some walking around, sir, but I didn’t see any drills or anything,”
replied Waris.

“They
don’t have a maneuver ground or anything like that, either,” added Rakalt. “Only
place that the ground is packed or dug up is the road.”

“Did
you see any sign of digging, pits, stakes… ?”

“No,
sir, and the way the ground is… be hard to disguise that.”

“What
about that cave?”

“Couldn’t
see anything new there, sir. Just looks like a big square arch carved into the
stone of the bluff. Be hard to take, if they all got inside, but they couldn’t
shoot from there without being exposed themselves. No embrasures or windows cut
in the stone. Just that arch.”

“And
a skylight slit of some sort,” added Waris.

Feran
and Alucius kept asking questions, but little had changed, except for the
regrowth of the thorns. That nothing had changed bothered Alucius, and he kept
wondering what he was missing.

Finally,
he cleared his throat and said to the scouts, “Thank you. If there’s anything
else, I’ll find you.”

“Yes,
sir.”

Alucius
waited until the two scouts were a good ten yards away before lowering his
voice and speaking to the other officers. “We’ll attack at dawn tomorrow, just
the way we’d planned. The sun will be in their eyes.”

“What
if they attack us before that?” asked Deotyr.

“Then
we’ll kill them here and attack in the morning,” Alucius replied. “That means
that they’ll have fewer defenders. They’ve got to be weaker than before. They’ve
lost something like five companies, and they can’t have that many more, not
unless they’re cramming lancers into those buildings like chickens in a coop.”

“They
might, sir,” Feran replied deferentially. “Some chickens have more brains than
some of those lancers.”

Alucius
managed not to laugh, but he couldn’t help smiling. Neither could Jultyr.
Deotyr just looked down at the ground.

“Post
two sets of sentries, one set a good vingt out on the approach roads. Captain
Deotyr could be right about a late-afternoon or evening attack. And have your
men sleep with their weapons loaded.”

“Yes,
sir.”

As
the other officers moved back to relay the information to their squad leaders,
Alucius took out the thornbush section that Waris had brought back. He studied
it with distaste, then slowly used his Talent to separate the brownish
lifethread energy, already fading, from the greenery. Abruptly, the entire
length turned black, then shriveled into ash.

The
majer nodded to himself. If he had to, he could remove the thorn-bushes, and
with a little misdirection, no one but Feran would know exactly what happened.
His guts tightened.

“What
happened to that spike-thorn?” asked Feran, walking toward Alucius. “One moment
you were holding it, and the next it was gone.”

“It
died.”

Feran
raised his eyebrows, then frowned. “You were upset when Waris gave you that
spiky thorn. Tough plant. Or was it something else?”

“It’s
not the plant,” Alucius replied in a low voice. “Plants regrow after fire. That’s
the way it is. They don’t grow twice as big across whole hillsides with one
small rainstorm in only two weeks. Someone used Talent, more than a little.”
Alucius wasn’t about to tell Feran what else his own Talent had revealed.

“Using
Talent to rebuild thorns?” Feran frowned, the fine lines radiating from his
eyes deepening. “Must have more than a few with Talent there. You still want to
go through with this attack?”

“Better
now than later, when there might be more with Talent,” Alucius replied.

Feran’s
laugh was harsh. “I liked the world a lot better before Talent started coming
back all over the place.”

“Makes
you think about whether the Duarchy was as great as the legends say.”

“If
this prophet’s any example, I’ll take the way things were before.”

“I
don’t think there’s any way to go back,” Alucius said dryly.

“You’re
always saying things like that, most honored Majer,” Feran replied. “You know
what I hate about that?”

“What?”

“You’re
usually right.”

They
both laughed, Alucius as much at the dry irony in Feran’s tone as at the words
themselves.

Alucius
stood on the crest of the hill as if frozen, his legs anchored to the sandy
soil. He tried to lift one leg, then the other, but neither would move. The
three-quarter disc of Selena cast an eerie purplish white light across the
night hillside, and Alucius strained to hear the sounds of the night. There
were none, just a dead silence.

A
purplish pink mist swirled across the road, which was barely more than a dirt
track at the base of the hill, at first just intermittently blocking his view
of the road itself, but slowly thickening until he could no longer see the road
or the ground on either side. Slowly, ever so slowly, the purplish pink mist
began to thicken even more, and rise, so that it crept up the hillside,
obscuring the lower parts of the hill, then obliterating them from view. The
higher the mist rose, and the closer it drew to Alucius, the colder he felt.

Abruptly,
Alucius woke with a start. He glanced around, but the encampment was still.
Totally still. Even the horses, secured on tielines on the western end of the
encampment, had not stirred, and usually there was some unrest among the more
skittish mounts when things were not going well.

After
a moment, he pulled on his boots, clumsily, as if his hands and legs had been
asleep, and as if neither was fully awake yet. He struggled to his feet. Even
standing was an effort, but with each movement he felt less constrained.
Constrained
?

He
shook his head. Even his thoughts were slow.

He
had to force himself to use his Talent, something that he hadn’t had to do in
years. His Talent was so much a part of him that its use was usually like using
his arms or his sight.

Somewhere
down below was something… something woven out of Talent, out of ifritlike
Talent, with the purplish tint that he associated with them.

His
first reaction was to sound an alert, but he paused, even as he bent down and
eased one of his rifles out of its case, then the second.

He
glanced to his right, where Feran lay sleeping, but the older officer was
breathing so lightly that his form barely moved. With both rifles, one in each
hand, he eased toward Feran’s sleeping form. “Feran?”

He
bent down and repeated, “Feran?”

The
overcaptain did not stir, and Alucius could sense the faintest fog of purple
surrounding Feran’s head. Abruptly, Alucius focused a Talent-probe. The
faintest touch of the probe, and the fog dissolved.

“Feran?”

“What…”
The other’s voice was hoarse, as if unused.

“We’re
about to be attacked… everyone’s been put to sleep with Talent.”

“Talent?”
Feran sounded as confused as Alucius had felt when he’d awakened.

“Talent,
from the prophet,” Alucius replied.

Feran
convulsed erect, kicking back his blanket and groping for his boots. “Son of a
misbegotten sow…”

“We
need to get Fifth Company awake, quietly. I’m afraid that if we try to wake
everyone at once, they’ll rush us, and… we won’t have enough steady rifles.”

“You
had to do something, didn’t you? Herder stuff.” Feran pulled on his boots.

Alucius
ignored the question as he used his Talent to take in the riders who were
dismounting out of sight on the mist-swirled road below. “You ready?”