Legacies (22 page)

The Matrial stood before the long windows, glancing at the two marshals still seated at the far side of the circular conference table.

“You are certain that the Iron Valley Militia has but one company of horse in Soulend?”

“Yes, Matrial,” answered the blonde marshal. “They have one company of foot, and their Council has agreed to add one more company of horse by spring. If we attack, they may add one or two more companies, but with the new Lord-Protector reinforcing the Southern Guard along the Vedra, they will not be inclined to move many companies north.”

“Even under attack?” The Matrial's eyebrows arched.

“They cannot provide what they do not have, and they do not have the golds to raise and supply additional militia forces. Certainly, neither you nor the Lord-Protector would lend them the golds.”

“The Landarch of Deforya might, if only to keep the Lord-Protector occupied elsewhere.”

“That is possible,” agreed the graying and older marshal. After a long moment, she went on, “I beg your pardon, Matrial, but I must ask once more. Do we need to pursue this attack against the Iron Valleys? While they are not our friends, they will never present a threat to us, unlike the Lanachronans. Could we not lend them the coins and let them serve as a buffer between us and the Lord-Protector?”

“I understand your concerns,” the Matrial replied, “but the Iron Valleys present a great threat. That threat is their very weakness. If we send them coins, we will not change the situation, and we will end up impoverishing ourselves. Their Council will take the coins and do little to strengthen their own forces. If they do spend more on their militia, they will place the new companies on our borders, not on the Lord-Protector's, because they worry more about raiders than about him.” She turned from the window and walked back to the chair she had vacated where she seated herself gracefully. “As Marshal Aluyn said a few moments ago, the Council of the Iron Valleys cannot raise the coins to expand the militia. The Council is so short-sighted that its lack of preparation has made certain that the Iron Valleys will fall to someone. That would happen even if we sent coins. We all know that the Iron Valleys under the Council are not a threat. The Iron Valleys once taken by the Lord-Protector are a great threat. If we take the Iron Valleys, then Madrien will hold Dekhron and control the upper reaches of the River Vedra. That is a natural barrier that is far easier to defend—and far shorter than one running through the Westerhills. We will also be able to place forces across the river from Borlan or Tempre—or both. The seltyrs of Southgate will fall in the next few years. If we take Southgate, then we can control western Corus. If we do not, but if we hold the Iron Valleys, we are balanced. But if the Lord-Protector holds both…” The Matrial looked at the older marshal.

“We would be hard-pressed,” the woman admitted.

“It will take the young Lord-Protector some time, perhaps as long as a year, to consolidate his power in Tempre and throughout Lanachrona. He will not wish a war with Madrien during that time. Nor will he want to attack the Iron Valleys now. He would rather have them weakened, and he will wager that we cannot take them, since none have ever done so. But none have ever attacked in the way we have, and with the troopers and devices we have. The crystal spear-thrower is a fearsome weapon, already tested and proven against the barbarian Reillies. Also, we have three good high roads to use in attacking from the west and north. By the time he is ready to act, we will already have acted.”

“You wish to take captives?” asked Aluyn.

“As we can. They will be useful against the Lanachronans.” The Matrial smiled—coldly. “The Lord-Protector will attack in time. There is no doubt of that. A dustcat always uses its claws. That is why we are acting first, and while we can.”

To that, both marshals nodded.

Theo entire Third Company lined up by squads—on foot—in the front inside area of the barracks, right after the second bell of the morning. Even inside the barracks the air was chill. The Third Company commander was Captain Heald, dark-haired, shorter than Alucius, and broader, with shoulders that would have better fitted a man two and a half yards in height. The senior squad leader was Ilten, a graying and rangy man with deepset eyes.

“Squad leaders, report!” Ilten ordered.

“First squad, all present.”

“Second squad, all present,” reported Delar.

When the reports were completed, Ilten turned to the captain, “All present or accounted for, sir. Third Company stands ready.”

“Thank you, senior squad leader.” Heald stepped forward. “Take ease, men.”

The arrayed cavalry relaxed—slightly.

“We're finally at full strength for the first time since last spring, and we're supposed to get another company here by winter's end. That's why the masons are working on the other shed off to the back of the stable. They'll get to break in a new barracks, just like you veterans here did…”

Alucius could sense a certain humor in both the captain and the older men.

“That's the good news. The other news is that we're seeing more fires in the Westerhills. The Matrites are sending out their own raiding parties and burning every stead and hut they can find. So far, they're not moving in permanent camps for either foot or horse. With luck, they won't try that until spring. We can't count on luck, and once the replacements are settled in, we're supposed to intercept those raiding parties and destroy them. Depending on how everything goes, I'd judge we'll start in two weeks. We'll know more in a week.

“Fourth squad has the midroad patrol today, and first squad has the northside patrol. That's all. The rest of you have drills.” Heald smiled. “You new men, take them seriously. They might save your life—or your flanker's.” The captain paused, then snapped, “Dismissed to your squad leaders.”

As simple as that, Alucius reflected. The Matrites were coming, first uprooting the Reillies and other brigands, and later to consolidate their hold on the Westerhills.

Delar cleared his throat. “Second squad. We'll be doing drills…one thing we'll be working on is the wheel from a column to a line abreast to bring the full firepower of the squad to bear on the enemy. That's real useful here, and we need to do it quick. All of you are dismissed to mount up—except Alucius and Geran. I need a few words with them, but they won't be long.”

Both Velon and Kypler glanced at Alucius as they left to get their gear.

Geran was at least several years older than Alucius, a small bearded man with bright blue eyes and ginger hair.

Delar motioned for the two to step forward. “Geran, this is Alucius. Alucius, Geran. Geran's been our scout for the past year, but he'll be going to one of the new companies as a squad leader by spring.” Delar looked at Alucius. “You mind being a scout?”

“No, sir. Not so long as I can do it myself, once I learn what's needed.”

Geran grinned. “Another herder.”

“How many sanders have you killed, Alucius?”

“Just three, sir.”

“Sandwolves?”

“I'd guess a good ten-twelve.”

“You killed one of the Reillies yesterday. Gurnelt said you kept your head and handled yourself well. I'd have expected that, but it's good to see in the field.” Delar smiled. “You and Geran are going to do the scouting. That means you two lead the column, so that I can send you out when I need to, without wasting time because you have to move around or ahead through the column. It also means that I'm going to ride your ass, Alucius, on these drills, because you won't know enough. You understand it won't be personal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Delar nodded. “After the drills, and after we eat, we'll meet again. Then Geran will take you out and show you a few things. Now, you two mount up.”

Alucius stiffened for a moment, then turned and hurried for his gear. Geran did the same, but without the impression of haste. Alucius noted the difference, hoping he could keep it in mind.

The mounted drills were just that—drills, set on the open ground to the east of the stead proper. Delar concentrated on basic formation moves, time after time, until the entire squad got them. First came the wheel to a firing line, then a wheel back to a double column, then an attack on the oblique. True to his word, Delar landed on Alucius.

“Alucius! You're on the outside. You have to move faster. You have more ground to cover.”

“Alucius! You're slower than sander shit! Move that nag!”

“Alucius! The entire right flank lines on you! Set the interval right!”

“Alucius!…”

Despite the chill and the cold wind, by the time Delar called a halt to the drills, Alucius was sweating and soaked inside his undergarments and glad to get back to the stable.

Kypler looked over the stall wall. “Delar was hard on you.”

“He was. I have a lot to learn.”

“You were doing better than I could have.”

“I feel like I'm back in camp at Sudon.”

“Delar wants us all to feel that way.”

Alucius laughed.

After their mounts were taken care of, the two walked from the stable to the mess. As Delar had said the night before, the midday dinner—a mutton and potato stew—was better than at Sudon, but not much. They had barely finished when Delar appeared with Geran.

Alucius carried his platter to the messman and tried to hurry back to Delar and Geran without giving the impression of haste.

Kypler smiled at Alucius as the three walked away from him and into the corridor outside the mess, where Delar stopped and addressed Alucius and Geran.

“I'm not a scout. I never will be. Good scouts save lives. Bad scouting costs lives. I have to leave
how
you scout to you two, but I hold you responsible for the results. The more you can tell me—or Ilten or the captain—about what's out there, the better we can do.” The squad leader nodded. “Geran gets the job done. I've leaving it to him to make sure you can, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

With a nod, Delar was gone, leaving Alucius and Geran.

“Let's go back to the mess, and sit down,” the older man suggested.

Alucius nodded. He was happy to do that. They took an empty table in the corner.

“You're a herder, and you've got that dark gray hair. That means you've got Talent,” Geran said.

“Some,” Alucius admitted cautiously.

“Enough that you can sense people?”

“If they're not too far away. A hundred yards, maybe farther. I've sensed sandwolves from farther, but I've never tried with people.”

“That's good, and it's bad,” the older scout said. “What I mean is that some herders just use their Talent. It's not enough. You have to look at the ground, the trees—when we're farther west and there are trees. Talent's best for sneaking around at night or in a storm when it's hard to see. A good scout without Talent will live longer than a Talented scout who doesn't learn.”

That made perfect sense to Alucius. “I can see that. You'll show me what to look for?”

Geran grinned. “We'll do just fine if you keep thinking like that.”

Alucius hoped so, but he was well aware that there was all too much he didn't know.

The winter morning on Londi was like so many in Soulend, gray and cold, with a thin wind whistling outside the mess, and chill air that had seeped through the old stone walls.

“You think we'll see any Reillies today?” asked Kypler.

Alucius looked across the table from his nearly finished egg toast, toast seemingly springier than coiled nightsheep wool, if more edible. “I don't know what we'll see.”

“You've been the one scouting the roads and the steads with Geran,” pointed out Kypler.

“That was teaching me what to look for. Tracking raiders and people is different from watching for sandwolves and sanders.” Alucius took a last swallow of the hot cider, then stretched and rose from the table.

“How are you doing?” Kypler stood as well.

“Let's say that Geran thinks I might learn enough by the time he leaves for Seventeenth Company. There are too many little things I don't know.”

Kypler laughed. “You don't like admitting you know anything.”

“I have a lot to learn.”

“Don't we all?”

At Kypler's dry tone, Alucius chuckled.

The two managed to get their mounts ready and to make it into formation outside the stable ahead of most of the new troopers, and about the same time as the fourteen veterans.

Once everyone was present, Delar rode up one side of the double column and down the other, offering a quick inspection, before ordering, “Squad forward!”

The wind more like a cold breeze than the harsh and bitter gales of previous days, and the smoke from the outpost chimneys rose directly up, rather than in the horizontal lines created by the fiercer winds. Still, Alucius was grateful for the warmth of the nightsilk against his skin.

“Less wind,” offered Delar, riding for the moment at the head of the column, just in front of Geran and Alucius. “Might see some raiders today.”

From the outpost, second squad turned right onto the eternastone midroad, called that because it was the middle road of the three high roads running east through the Iron Valleys. They rode due west across the open and gently rolling quarasote plains. Another seven or eight vingts ahead, was the last—and only—inhabited stead left near the midroad and on the eastern edge of the Westerhills. Just beyond the stead, in the first real hills, occasional junipers mingled with the quarasote that grew ever more scattered as the hills became higher and steeper.

“Scouts! If you'd ride van, about a vingt up front.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Squad! Guide on Vaskel!”

Alucius and Geran rode forward away from the main body of the squad.

For the next several vingts, as the road began to cut through the lower rises that were not quite hills, Alucius studied the ground and the road. Neither he nor Geran saw anything except the tracks of other militia patrols.

“Wager it'll be colder tomorrow,” Geran ventured.

“Why do you think so?”

“When the wind's light, usually comes before a shift.” Geran grinned. “In the winter, most shifts are colder.”

Alucius could occasionally sense the red-violet of a sander, but the feeling was different, as if the sanders were deeper underground or somehow shielded. He could also feel but passing traces of the grayish violet of sandwolves. Even the scattered blue-gray flashes of grayjays were few.

Close to midday, on the midroad between the lower hills beyond the last true herder stead, where some of those slopes were treed thickly with pine and juniper, Alucius caught a whiff of acridness, not like the scent of the plateau with its metallic bitterness, but of fire. He glanced to Geran. “Something's burning…or burned.”

“I smell it, too. Wood. You want to tell Delar that we're headed out to see if there's another burned hut? I'll wait.”

“Will do.” Alucius turned the gray back along the road toward second squad.

Delar rode forward to meet him. “What is it?”

“Something burned. Geran suggests that we should investigate and report to you.”

“Where?”

“On the north side of the midroad, probably northwest. I'd guess within a vingt of the road, but we don't know.”

“Go ahead. We'll close up after you.”

Delar didn't have to add any cautions about being careful. Alucius could sense them as he replied, “Yes, sir.”

When Alucius reached Geran, the older scout had reined up beside a track that led north, beginning between two junipers, positioned as if they were gateposts to the barely worn trail.

“Tracks here,” Geran noted. “They're not ours. Not that new, either.”

Alucius followed Geran's gesture. “They're headed north. The wind's from the north.”

“We might as well check,” Geran said, looking back over his shoulder. “Squad's less than half a vingt back. They can hear a rifle shot.”

Alucius tried to sense if anyone was nearby, but neither eyes nor senses showed him anyone amid the scattered evergreens on the north side of the midroad. Both scouts had taken out their rifles as they rode along the gentle incline of the narrow trail as it wound between the trees. Even after several hundred yards, Alucius could still see sections of the gray stones of the midroad, and, occasionally, second squad as Delar neared the turnoff.

The smell of burning gradually grew stronger, but was far from overpowering.

As they rode around a thicker clump of bushy pines, a hut appeared. It had been little more than a two-room dwelling with a stable that had been more of a lean-to than a good shelter for a mount. The fires in both structures had long since burned out, except for a few lingering and smoldering embers, and the roof had collapsed inside the charred log walls of the hut.

Both men studied the hut, and the area around it, silent except for the faintest whisper of wind in the pines. The crude plank door lay where it had fallen on a rough stone stoop. The leather hinges had burned through, but there was no sign the door had been forced.

Geran eased his mount closer to the door, then shook his head. “Doesn't look or smell like anyone was killed here.”

Alucius frowned. “Why would someone burn a hut if no one happened to be here? Matrites…just to force people out?”

“Could be. Most likely, but…” Geran paused. “More tracks. They head that way.”

Alucius still could sense no one, but the two rode slowly, following the scattered hoofprints in the hard and near-frozen soil.

They rode less than half a vingt and found the bodies just past another denser clump of trees. They were sprawled in the open red-sandy soil between two junipers. There were a youth and a lean bearded man. Both were fully clothed, if in tattered rabbit-fur jackets and coarse brown trousers. Both men sprawled forward, as though they had been running and shot from behind.

“Notice anything?” Geran did not look at Alucius but continued to scan the area.

“Ah…there's nothing living within a vingt, Geran. Not besides rodents and snakes and birds.”

“You can sense that?”

Alucius nodded. “Rather you didn't tell anyone but Delar.” He already wished he hadn't revealed that, but seeing the bodies had momentarily left him off-guard.

“I won't. Now…what about the bodies?”

Alucius swallowed back the bile in his throat. “They're clothed…shot from behind.”

“This was a Matrite raid,” Geran said. “You see…no women. There were footprints of more than two. Matrites captured the women, sent them west, I'd guess.” Geran gestured to the fallen figures. “They knew they'd be killed if they couldn't get away. Locals here wouldn't run unless there was a big Reillie raiding party, and you don't see many of those in the winter. Saw a bunch of clear hoofprints near the hut. All the shoes look the same. Military types, and that means either Lanachronan or Madrien.”

Alucius nodded. A lot of the shoes of the militia troopers would still be different.

“Delar and the captain—they won't like this. Not twenty vingts from Soulend. Nothing else we can do here.”

As Alucius turned his mount, he could feel the silver-green of a soarer. He glanced back over his shoulder. Geran's eyes followed those of Alucius. For a moment, they both looked at the hovering soarer, the green-tinged silver wings spread and moving so quickly that they blurred.

Alucius could feel something like sadness emanating from the soarer, but before he could feel more, the feminine-looking soarer vanished.

“What do you make of that?” Geran shook his head.

“I don't know,” answered Alucius. Why would a soarer appear? And feel sadness? He'd never sensed that before, not that he'd seen more than a handful of soarers over his lifetime.

“Captain won't be happy with that, either. Don't need both soarers and Matrites showing up this close to Soulend.”

“Soarers don't bother people. Not unless you bother them,” Alucius said.

“That may be. Captain still won't be happy.”

Alucius nodded. They still had to report to Delar, and the squad leader would want to see the bodies himself.