Mykel went over what Dhozynt had seen as carefully as he could. Then he turned to Bhoral. “If you’d have the squad leaders join us?”
“Yes, sir.”
While he waited for the squad leaders to gather, Mykel strapped an extra cartridge belt across his chest, considering how he wanted to attack the bluecoats, although there didn’t seem to be a need for much strategy—just a quiet hidden approach, a wide field of fire, and a restraint of any pursuit, until and unless it was clear that Fifteenth Company had total control. He had the feeling that if matters went as he planned, he wouldn’t care for the results. But if they didn’t, he’d like it even less.
Gendsyr and Alendyr were the first to rein up on the road next to Mykel, but only moments later Bhoral and the other three joined them.
Mykel looked at the squad leaders. “There are two companies up ahead. They don’t expect us. We’ll be taking the back road to this estate where they’ve set up camp. There aren’t any guards, and few sentries. We’ll ride in the last quarter vingt hard and set up by squad into firing lines across the front of their encampment—at less than twenty yards. I’ll set first squad on the north end, and you’ll take intervals on us. We’ll shoot everything that moves. No pursuit unless and until I give the order—or Bhoral does. Is that clear?”
Nods and muttered replies of “Yes, sir” came back.
“Now… this isn’t going to be easy on the men.” Mykel went on. “Some of the rebels will fight hard. Others will have trouble fighting back. Some are killers, and some are tired and discouraged. It doesn’t matter who your men are facing. They need to shoot and shoot well. I don’t want this attack ruined by pity. Make it simple. Tell your men these were the same rebels who gunned down almost all of Seventeenth Company in an ambush. They’re the same people who poisoned Third Battalion. If we don’t take out as many as we can now, they’ll do the same things to us again in half a season or less. They still outnumber us overall, and we’ve got to change that while we can. Tell them one other thing. The seltyrs like to shoot prisoners who escape. They’d rather do that than fight an armed foe.” He paused. “These aren’t the poor folk of Jyoha. These are the men who will be trained as killers for the seltyrs if we don’t stop them now.” After another pause, he added. “I’m counting on you to get the message to your men.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed to your squads. We’ll ride once you pass the word.”
Once the squad leaders had left, and the scouts had noved back forward to lead the way, Bhoral looked at vlykel. “You think this will be a slaughter, sir?”
“Like I said, Bhoral, there will be some who fight and some who will look at us as they’re shot down. We have to kill either kind, because if we don’t, they’ll be trying to kill is next week or the week after… and I’m getting frigging tired of losing men who shouldn’t be here in the first place.” As he finished the last phrase, Mykel wished he hadn’t gone quite so far.
“Yes, sir. You don’t think the Myrmidons will be back soon, then?”
“I don’t know what to think about that,” Mykel admitted. “I only know that these people don’t think the same way anyone else I’ve ever met does. The only thing they respect are either golds or force, preferably both.”
“Seems that way, sir.”
Mykel could tell that Bhoral had his doubts, but he didn’t care to discuss it further. The seltyrs, as Rachyla had told him, believed it was their right to rule as they saw fit, and that the alectors and their Myrmidons—even the Cadmians—would vanish. A Cadmian captain couldn’t reason against that attitude, and Mykel wasn’t particularly happy being in a position where the only practical solution was greater firepower. He looked at the empty road ahead, then shook his head.
In less than a quarter glass, Fifteenth Company was again moving northward, with orders to ride silently. Within another quarter glass, Mykel had dropped the wagons behind, close enough to be reached quickly, if necessary, with a four man guard, two of whom had been stung by night-wasps the evening before.
Finally, Fifteenth Company reached the back of the casaran orchards to the east of the bluecoat encampment. Ahead, there was the slightest slope up through the orchards.
Mykel blinked. For a moment, he thought he’d sensed something like a road beneath the dirt, a faint black trail running along the barely perceptible high point of the gentle rise that split the orchard. He looked again, but saw nothing.
“Now,” he ordered quietly. “Forward.” He urged the chestnut into a fast trot down the lane between the nut trees.
As he rode past the last of the casaran trees and turned right, toward the north end of the bluecoat encampment, Mykel took in the bluecoats he saw. Several had started to run. Only one had a rifle immediately at hand, and he seemed frozen.
After a moment, a single cry rang out. “Cadmians! Cadmians!”
Mykel and first squad reined up in a firing line at the north end of the encampment, taking the highest ground, even if it was but a yard or so higher than that to the east.
“First squad! Rifles ready! Fire!”
Five or six of the closest bluecoats were down within the first two volleys.
“Second squad! Fire!”
Bluecoats began to scramble toward the sheds, toward any form of shelter.
Abruptly, two older looking bluecoats appeared, and one took dead aim at the Cadmian captain. The other turned as well.
Mykel had one shot left. With all his thought, desire, everything, he willed the bullet home.
The first bluecoat dropped, but the second brought his rifle to bear, taking his time, as if to indicate that he might die, but that Mykel would as well.
All Mykel could do was duck, urge the chestnut forward, and will that the bullets not strike him. Time around him seemed to slow, and he could sense the bullets moving to-rard him. Somehow, some way, he twisted his body out of lie line of fire as the chestnut carried him forward.
Still in that slow movement, he watched the bluecoat’s nouth open. For a moment, the man froze, and then Mykel and the chestnut were upon him. Mykel knew that he could lot have covered that distance so quickly, but he had. Without cartridges in the magazine, he did the only thing that he could, reversing the rifle and slamming the butt across the jluecoat’s temple. The man dropped. Mykel felt a sudden smptiness, a feeling that he had come to recognize as death.
He wheeled the chestnut back to the firing line, but the return seemed far slower. The area closest to him was empty of able rebels. He reloaded quickly, then slipped the rifle into its saddle case. “First squad! Sabres! On me!” He stood in the stirrups. “Second squad! Hold!”
Very few of the rebels had lifted rifles in the face of the attack. Even so, Mykel thought he had lost some of his men, or that some had been wounded. He urged the chestnut toward the handful of fleeing men. “First squad, forward!”
The next glass was a confused mixture of pursuit, slashing sabres, moments of silence, intermittent rifle shots… and slaughter.
Mykel finally led first squad back to the villa, where they reformed.
Led by Bhoral, the other squads rejoined them.
“Fifteenth Company stands ready, sir.”
“Thank you. What were our casualties?” Mykel asked the senior squad leader.
“One dead, three wounded, not badly.”
It could have been much worse, Mykel thought, glancing back toward the ruined tents, then toward the apparently silent villa.
“What now, sir?” asked Bhoral.
“We’ll take a half score of the best mounts, and whatever good supplies will fit in the wagons.” Mykel gestured to-ward the villa. “Burn it. Not the outbuildings or the stables. Just the villa.”
“Sending a message to the seltyrs, sir?”
“And to their retainers and the others. I hope they’ll get it.” Mykel had his doubts, but it was worth a try.
As Bhoral conveyed his orders to four rankers in first squad, Mykel surveyed the devastation a
round the villa. It had been a slaughter. Over a hundred bluecoats lay dead, left where they had fallen, in the fields, in ditches, beside the stables, on the dirt lanes of the estate.
Slowly, he took a rag from his saddlebags and cleaned his sabre and sheathed it. Then he checked his rifle, making sure that the magazine was full.
They hadn’t taken prisoners. That bothered him, because the rebel troopers weren’t really to blame, but he didn’t have any choices. If he let the troopers escape, he’d have to fight them again later. Every prisoner taken meant Cadmians who had to guard them and Fifteenth Company was already understrength and needed every man. Finally, there was no reciprocity—the seltyrs didn’t take prisoners… and wouldn’t, and they seemed to regard such mercy as weakness.
He took a deep breath. There were other bluecoats left to find—and deal with as best he could.
88
Despite his tiredness and the effects of flying two long days, Dainyl did not sleep well. Images swirled through his dreaming thoughts, images of pteridons and their fliers vanishing into dark tubes, of hundreds of landers and indigens cutting each other down with bright shimmering rifles, of an ancient soarer in midair above a peak pointing a tiny finger at him and telling him, “Change or perish.”
He woke covered in sweat on Octdi morning, for all that the officer’s chamber was more than pleasantly cool. It was a relief to get up. He washed and dressed, and made his way to the mess, where he ate hurriedly, washing the rations down with ale, as a single sleepy eyed Cadmian watched.
Then he began a thorough walking inspection of the compound, starting at the east gate, and going through each building. Several were locked. Most of the locks he could open with his Talent. One, which had a heavy hasp lock, he severed with the light cutter sidearm. He could find nothing amiss, nothing that should not have been there.
In the armory, he noted—through his Talent—that there were traces of where barrels of ancient gunpowder had been recently removed, but he did not mention that to the senior squad leader who was bemoaning just how much ammunition had been used in the past weeks. When he finished, it was past the morning muster, and he made his way to the headquarters building.
Overcaptain Dohark had taken over the smaller study, the one to which Majer Herryf had retreated after Dainyl had assumed command in Dramuria. He looked up as Dainyl appeared, then stood, quickly but smoothly. “Sir?”
“I was just checking.”
“Battalion rosters, sir. It’s really the first time I’ve had a chance to go over them in detail to assess what we have. We’ve got a little less than half a battalion left. Fifteenth Company is closest to full strength, with eighty four men, but that includes nine from Seventeenth Company.”
“Have you heard anything from Captain Mykel?”
“No, sir. I doubt that I will until he returns.”
“If he returns.”
The overcaptain gave a harsh short laugh, more of a bark. “He’ll return, Submarshal, sir. Worst he’d do would be if he only brought back half his men. If he did that, there wouldn’t be a seltyr left alive in a hundred vingts.”
“You have a high opinion of the captain.” Dainyl pressed a hint of Talent toward the overcaptain, a suggestion that Dohark needed to say more.
The overcaptain frowned, then nodded, as if to himself, before speaking. “Fifteenth Company has accounted for something like nine out of ten rebel casualties. He seems to sense where the enemy will be. He gets people to talk to him, too. He’s found out more from that seltyr’s daughter than I’d ever thought possible. The local captains, they didn’t want to talk to us much. They were polite, but not much more. Mykel—I don’t know how he did it—got them to talk. On top of that, he’s the best marksman in any of the battalions. Anything he can see, he can bring down, and some that he can’t.” Dohark stopped abruptly.
With each revelation by Dohark, Dainyl became more concerned. All of the skills that the overcaptain mentioned were potentially Talent driven or Talent enhanced. “Majer Vaclyn didn’t know this?”
“He didn’t want to know it, sir. He was the kind who was afraid that good captains would show that he wasn’t a good commander.”
“And the Cadmian colonel, what did he think about Captain Mykel?”
“He didn’t know that much, except that Fifteenth Company stopped taking heavy losses once Mykel became captain.”
“You praise the captain, yet you sound concerned,” Dainyl pressed.
“Yes, sir. Mykel’s realized that there’s only one way to win here in Dramur, and that’s to kill off most of the seltyrs’ bluecoats and greencoats quick-like, before they can replace them, and take as many of the seltyrs as possible. He’s getting real good at using Fifteenth Company to wipe out scores—more like hundreds—of rebels. I’m not sure that’s a good attitude for the rankers to develop. Leaves some of ‘em real cold, killers.”
“Isn’t that what they have to do?”
“It is here, sir, and that’s the problem. Other places in Corns, we killed rebels and folk, but the idea was to show force and control. Folks understood. Here, they don’t. Mykel sees that, and he’ll do what he has to bring his company through with the fewest casualties. Ambush, shooting down men as they rest or eat, night attacks, if he thinks they can work…”
In short, thought Dainyl, Captain Mykel is becoming as ruthless as any alector, and far more efficient than his peers—and it is clearly disturbing the overcaptain.
“… thing is, sir, Captain Mykel’s not like that, not inside, and someday, he’s going to have to live with what he’s done here.”
“Don’t we all, Overcaptain?”
“Yes, sir.” Dohark’s voice turned flat and polite.
Dainyl regretted his choice of words, but he’d never had to deal that much with Cadmian officers, and he’d forgotten the emotional overtones and issues differed. The Views of the Highest had a section on that, but it had been some time since he’d reviewed that wisdom. He wished he had, or that he could have talked to Lystrana. After a moment, he offered a rueful smile. “I think that sounded harsh. What I meant was that all officers end up having to do unpleasant duties. It’s the nature of what we do, and Captain Mykel has had the misfortune to be in a position where, to get the job done, he must undertake particularly distasteful acts. I’m sure that he will regret the necessity, as I am sure you have at times, Overcaptain. Regret… and a wish that matters could have been otherwise… those we all face.”
Dohark seemed to relent, at least slightly. “That’d be true for most of us. I worry more about Mykel because he seemed to care more, and worried about the folks here—like when we dealt with the Reillies. I think it tears at him, where he won’t even let himself see it, when other folks’ cruelty requires the same, or worse, from him.”
Dainyl nodded. “There are some who simply don’t care about the impact of their acts. If all people did, then we wouldn’t need as many Cadmians and Myrmidons as we do.”
“I suppose not, sir, but it’s a sad world at times.”
“That it is.” Dainyl offered a smile he hoped was understanding. “I’ll be in the study if you need me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dainyl spent the morning reading through all the reports that the overcaptain had left him. A number appeared to have been written most recently, and he had to wonder if Dohark had composed them hastily after Dainyl’s return.
From the reports and from what Dohark had told him, Dainyl had to admit that the situation had not only gotten too far out of hand, but that Captain Mykel seemed to be the only one who understood—or the only one willing to face what had to be done.
Dainyl also needed to check on the local Cadmians and how and whether they were getting the mine back into production, but he’d wanted to get a better feel for the military situation before he talked to Benjyr and Meryst.
Just after midday, when he was considering trying to go to the mess to choke down more ale and rations, Dainyl stiffened. From somewhere
to the north had come a flash of Talent, not ifrit-Talent, with its pinkish purple feel, but something like that of the soarer, green, but overlaid with black, rather than with the gold he had felt from the ancient.
Without a word, he left the study and walked out into the courtyard, turning to the north.
The greenish black Talent had already begun to fade from his senses. Yet, in its place, to the northwest, he could sense, if but faintly, that of the ancient—as if whatever he had felt had also summoned her. He didn’t need the an-cients around, not when they were apparently the only creatures who could summon forces to bring down a pteridon.
Had that other flash of Talent been Captain Mykel? Had he begun to understand and use his Talent? Or was another Talent-wielder loose on Dramur?
89
Mykel looked out into the darkness from where he sat on an old bench in front of an outbuilding that had seen better days. After the slaughter southeast of En-styla, Mykel had led Fifteenth Company a good fifteen vingts westward until he had found another grower’s place to commandeer for the evening. Fifteenth Company had taken all the buildings, except for the main dwelling. There, behind barred doors, the wife and children of the absent grower huddled, Mykel was certain, dreading what might happen.
So long as no one attacked, he would let the dwelling stand. He realized that he would be seen as arbitrary in what he destroyed, but those who openly supported the rebellion would pay. In a way, though, that just encouraged hypocrisy. There were no good answers, not that he saw.
As he considered the day just past, and the day yet to come, Mykel felt both drained and, in a strange way, somewhat more alive. The fighting and the killing discouraged and depressed him, necessary as he felt it was. Yet in some fashion, he felt more alert than he had in years.
The skies were clear, and Selena had not yet risen. Asterta was but a pinpoint just above the mountains to the west. There were no lamps or light-torches anywhere, yet it did not seem that dark. Mykel could see the sentry on the inner line, standing in front of a fence just in front of a short-needled pine tree, slowly chewing on something, then turning away.
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