Legacies (27 page)

The snow fell in fine white sheets, like an ice fog, around the covered crystal-thrower as Hyalas checked the lashings on the tarp that covered both device and the wagon that held it. He straightened, then looked around the converted stead that had been the enemy's outpost, a place truly too small for the forces of Madrien, but cramped shelter was far better than no shelter against the ice and snow and the winds that blew straight from the Ice Sands of the north.

“Engineer!”

Hyalas turned to find arms commander Vergya looking down at him from her mount. He bowed. “Yes, arms commander?”

“Why did your machine stop?”

“Because, honored arms commander, we ran out of sand with which to feed it. I had to use it as a spade to level that hill in order to flush out their riflemen.” He bowed deeply. “You ordered me to do whatever I could.”

“The wretches were slaughtering the Third Foot, and your machine does not leave survivors for us to turn into recruits.”

Hyalas bowed again. “I know it has its faults, and I have suffered already for mentioning them to the Matrial. It was built to kill, and it does that well. It digs less well, and it captures men alive not at all well.”

Vergya shook her head. “I do not fault your machine. How long before it will be ready for use?”

Hyalas bowed once more, then shrugged. “Honored arms commander, if I had sand, it would be ready within the glass. But with the snow, and the cold, and no rivers—”

“Rivers?”

“All rivers have sand somewhere,” Hyalas said. “Here, there must be sand, but in the cold, and with snow across everything, it might take days to find it and break it free.”

“Days?”

“I cannot change what is, arms commander. I have men looking everywhere.”

“Best you find that sand before days have elapsed, engineer.” Vergya did not wait for a response, but turned her mount and headed toward the stable, inadequate though it was.

“Yes, arms commander.” Hyalas did not blot away the dampness on his forehead, a dampness already freezing in place.

Alucius looked from Geran, riding beside him, up the high road in the direction of Soulend. The withdrawal to Pyret had been accomplished, through a blizzard, and now the remnants of Third Company, less than two thirds its original strength, waited their for reinforcements, while the two scouts patrolled to make sure the Matrites were not headed south.

For all that the wind had blown and the snow fallen on and off for more than two days after the retreat, only a thin layer of fine icy powder lay across the eternastone pavement, and some sections of the road were totally clear. Where there was snow, neither hoofprints nor wagon tracks marred the sheet of white. Part of that was because the old high road and its shoulders were often as much as a half a yard above the surrounding terrain.

While the late-morning sky was still gray, the clouds were high and thin, and the wind had died away once more suggesting another change in the weather was coming. Alucius felt that the next days would dawn bright and clear, and, for the first time, he wasn't sure he wanted a bright and clear day, not if that meant the Matrites could march south.

“They haven't even been sending road patrols,” offered Geran. “Not this far south.”

“You think we'll have to go all the way to Soulend?”

“Wouldn't be surprised. Captain said he wanted to know what the Matrites were doing. He wanted a lot of information. We just stop, and all we can say is that they're not here.”

Alucius could sense that more lay behind Geran's words. “They'll probably be garrisoned at our outpost and all over Soulend.”

“We'll see.”

Not until they reached a point on the road less than two vingts south of Southend did they catch sight of hoofprints in the snow on the road and the shoulder. The prints had been made within the past few glasses because they were crisp in most places, except at the edge of the road where blowing snow had obscured some prints.

“Now what?” asked Alucius.

“We keep going,” Geran said, “on the road. They're headed away from us and back to their post. If we do run into them, we can just turn around.”

Less than a vingt later, Alucius began to sense the grayness of Matrite troopers, more than one, and probably one of their eight-man patrols. “Matrites coming.”

“We'll go east,” said Geran. “Follow me.”

“They'll see us.” Alucius gestured to the almost flat expanse of quarasote plain to the east.

“They might. You think they're going to chase us through it? And if they did, I'd say we have a good chance of either losing them, or picking them off one by one.”

“So we go east and then come in from the north or northeast? After dark, if we have to.” Alucius added, “And I suppose we pick off a few sentries if we can?”

“Might make them think we've still got a presence around Soulend, but I wouldn't do it just to shoot or to let them know,” Geran said. “Senseless killing's still senseless killing, even of a Matrite. Besides, our job is to get information, and it's easier if they don't know we're here. You got any better ideas?”

“Not at the moment.”

“I didn't think so.”

The two scouts were more than a vingt to the east in the flats when the Matrite patrol finally came far enough south on the main road for Alucius to see them when he looked back over his shoulder. Whether or not the Matrites saw Alucius and Geran, they made no effort to follow, but continued southward on the main road.

“You see? They don't care about two lonely troopers,” said Geran.

The two circled to the northeast, slowly easing toward the dwellings and huts set amid the ancient piles of rubble, stopping once at a frozen stream where they managed to break the ice enough to water their mounts. They saw no other Matrite guards or patrols, even when they had come within a vingt of the inhabited section of Soulend.

The two reined up in the short and late afternoon behind a pile of earth and stone slabs—partly covered with red sandy soil and an occasional quarasote bush—that rose almost three yards against the hazy gray sky that was beginning to darken.

Geran looked at Alucius. “I'll skulk around Soulend. You see what you can find out about the outpost.”

“Do you want to meet up somewhere?”

“That makes both of us more vulnerable,” Geran pointed out. “Best place to meet up is back at Pyret.”

The two separated, and, after leaving the rubble, Alucius continued to wend his way through the quarasote flats to the north and then west of town, finally ending up on the west-running road that second squad had taken on the ambush attack Delar had led. There were no traces of riders in the intermittent sections of thin snow drifted across the back road.

After a vingt or so of riding, he turned southward, picking his way through the spiny growth and eventually over a low rise. To his right, roughly southwest, was the former militia stead, barely visible in the twilight.

While listening and using his Talent-senses, he eased the gray down the rise far enough so that he would not be outlined against the sky. What he could hear, see, and sense told him that the sentries were posted only about a half vingt out from the stead. It took him a good half glass to find something to which he could tether the gray—an ancient stead marker pole back on the far side of the rise, out of sight of the stead. There he dismounted. In the cold, it seemed to take nearly as long to worry on the skull-mask as it had to find a place to tether his mount.

Carrying only his rifle—all too heavy, but he recalled his grandsire's lessons too much to rely on knives alone—he slipped through the deep twilight toward the former militia outpost, walking back toward the Matrite outpost, using what cover there was.

A good two hundred yards out, from behind a large quarasote bush and on his stomach, he watched as a mounted trooper rode along the north side of the camp—only one guard on the entire north side. There were no sentries walking the grounds out from the buildings. Instead, the Matrites had set up six boxlike little huts, each with several guards inside. Each hut was about a hundred yards out from the main compound.

For another half glass, Alucius watched, but he saw nothing except the outside of the guard huts and the mounted sentry—and three empty wagons. The larger wagon he had seen earlier was not in view. He eased forward through the scattered quarasote until he was less than fifty yards from the post being ridden by the Matrite trooper. That close, and Alucius could sense the man's discomfort, both with the cold and his duty.

Alucius wasn't exactly comfortable, either, and he didn't really know much more than he had two glasses earlier. He definitely needed to get closer, but there was no way to get into the Matrite camp without somehow removing or getting by the sentries. He didn't like the idea of killing the sentries. It hadn't done much good before, and the way the guards were set up, killing any one of them would alert all the others.

Could he use his Talent to get them to overlook him—or keep them from looking at him? It was worth an attempt—after he decided what he wanted to see and where. Recalling how Geran had operated, he thought he might try the stable first. It was on the west end, and he could try his Talent idea while he was far enough away so that, if it didn't work, he could sprint back into the quarasote. In the darkness, he doubted that the Matrites would send anyone after him—not until they had a full force, and not after their experience the last time the militia had attacked their camp. By the time they had a large enough force, he'd be long gone.

He could slip by the mounted sentry easily enough, and if he moved another hundred yards westward, he could get within fifty or sixty yards of the stable before he'd really come into even a half-clear view from the northwest guard hut.

After timing the mounted patrol for several turns, Alucius counted, and then slipped downward and into the flat, directing his perceptions toward the guards in the huts, projecting the image of a stray dog slinking toward the stable, a mangy, scruffy stray, wary of humans. He kept his own doubts buried, even as he realized that he could not reach the stable without crossing a wide patch of snow, but he dared not hesitate, keeping the slinking gait he had imagined for the stray dog he had become to the sentries. Then he eased into the darker shadows between the manure pile and the stable. Once out of sight of the sentries he eased toward the second stable door, the seldom-used door to the ostler's work room.

As he stood in the darkness, panting slightly, all he could say was that no one called out, and no one shot at him. So his stratagem had worked. He was pleased when he slipped inside the empty ostlers' room, not much bigger than several of Kyrial's largest barrels, put end-to-end. He had to stifle a sneeze immediately. There were several troopers still in the stable, unsaddling and brushing down mounts, probably having just returned from road patrols.

Alucius waited until they left, then slipped into the dim stable, counting mounts. Most were double stalled, and there were no empty stalls. He did not find the missing wagon with the strange weapon. Nor did he find any weapons lying around loose. Or much fodder.

After more than a half glass in the stable, he went back into the ostlers' room, then used his Talent-sense to make sure no one was directly outside the stable before he slipped out into the night, and the cold that he had forgotten. At that moment, a purplish shock ran through him. He turned toward the spot from where he thought it emanated—and found himself looking toward the stead dwelling that had once housed the militia officers. There, he could sense something he had never felt before, a cold, almost crystalline, purple malevolence…a feeling of evil that he could not explain, only sense. With it came the sensation of breathlessness. Then…the breathless feeling was gone, and the purpleness subsided enough that it felt far more distant than merely coming from the stead house—except it was.

He frowned beneath the skull-mask. He'd never sensed anything like that before. Sanders were red-violet, sandwolves grayish violet, and soarers silver-green, and the Matrite troopers grayish…but an evil purple that varied so greatly from one moment to the next? With the strength and the projection, it had to be some form of Talent, but not one he had ever encountered.

Slowly, he edged his way around the west end of the stable and then back along the south side. He stayed in the darker shadows and against the dark gray stone walls as he moved toward the end of the stable across from the west end of the barracks. At the southeast corner of the stable he paused. Someone was reprimanding someone else in a high voice, and far from gently.

Alucius froze, then peered around the corner. An officer was pointing to the ground, toward a patch of snow that Alucius had no doubt held his boot tracks. While Alucius couldn't understand all the words, he could pick up some, as if they were half familiar, and the gestures were clear enough. The officer was telling the guard something to the effect that a dog didn't leave boot marks in the thin snow, especially not tracks that seemed to have come from the north.

Another trooper emerged from the guard hut, and the two troopers and the officer followed the boot tracks toward the stable. When another trooper appeared with a lamp, Alucius decided to try and project being a cat as he made ready to sidle along the eastern side of the stable.

He was well away from the stable and close to the picket line when he heard a shout, and then a single shot that felt very close to his head.

He jumped sideways, then dropped lower and ran in an irregular zigzag path out to the north. He dodged through the quarasote, keeping as low as he could while scattered rifle shots peppered the air and quarasote all around him.

A high-pitched voice yelled, and the shots stopped—because the sentry turned his mount and began to pick his way through the quarasote. Another order followed, and the rider tried to urge the horse to move faster. The mount reared, probably because it had been run into a quarasote spine.

Alucius moved at almost a run, somehow hanging onto the rifle that felt like a leaden weight, the cold air rasping at his lungs. Once up over the rise, he darted down the back side, feeling his trousers rip as he lurched too close to a quarasote bush, and feeling thankful for the shielding effect of the nightsilk undergarments—better than armor for that sort of protection. Gasping for breath, he reached the marker post where his gray was tethered, waiting.

After untying the gelding, he mounted, forcing himself to be careful, walking his mount through and around the quarasote, fearing that, any moment, troopers or mounted troopers would burst over the low rise with their rifles firing. Nothing of the sort happened.

He had a long ride back—and not nearly so much information as either he or the captain would have preferred. All he really knew was that there were close to two hundred mounts in the stable, and that the mysterious weapon hadn't been there, and that the Matrites had changed their guard and patrol patterns—scarcely very much for the time, effort, and risk.

As for the purple malevolence…what could he say? He dared not say anything, and yet that might be the most important—because it meant some sort of Talent was being used.