The hum from the machine was rising in tone and pitch, and a line of crystal fire slashed through the twilight toward militia horse coming in from the north side of the encampment.
Alucius jabbed his heels into the gray's flanks, and the gelding dashed for the small stone shed. No sooner had Alucius pulled up behind the shielding of double stone walls than he sensed a strange surge of red-violet stronger than he had ever seen. To the north, the soil was boiling, and sanders surged out of the soil.
Overhead, the sky darkened, as clouds Alucius had not seen before thickened. Around him clashed the sounds of Matrite rifles, the thin shrieking hum of the spear-thrower, the screams of troopers and mounts.
Alucius turned the gray… when an enormous fist struck him in the back of the shoulder. For an instant, he could feel himself toppling forward before silver-tinged blackness—and a green radiance—swept up over him and swallowed everything.
West of Soulend, Iron Valleys
Hyalas kept turning the aiming wheel, spinning it as fast as he could, so that the discharge formulator would swing around to the west to bear on the attacking horsemen in black. Already, a half company had fallen to the heavy rifles and the sabres of the attackers, and the stable where more than half the Matrite mounts had been was an inferno whose heat the engineer could feel from more than a hundred yards away on the mound where his device had been hurriedly pulled.
Hyalas gave several more twists to the aiming crank, then pulled down the lever with the green knob. A whine rose swiftly into a high-pitched shriek. As the shriek rose into inaudibility, a line of crystalline amber fire flashed from the crystal barrel toward the northwest corner of the encampment—slicing through mounts and men alike. Hyalas used the elevation crank to lift the line of fire slightly.
Screams and curses echoed across the twilight.
A different kind of chill swept over the encampment, and the engineer glanced around. He saw nothing. The crystal flame faltered.
'Keep shoveling the sand!" the engineer snapped to his assistant at the hopper from the sand-wagon. "Keep shoveling, or they'll overrun us!"
The man resumed shoveling with a redoubled intensity.
Hyalas turned the aiming crank, slowly sweeping across the closest line of attackers, ignoring the pinkish mist that filled the twilight as the amber line of crystalline light struck the attackers.
The chill intensified.
Hyalas frowned, then swallowed. The frozen soil around the death sprayer was boiling. Boiling! From somewhere a green radiance seemed to sift across the land—and man-shaped figures were emerging out of the turbulent soil.
Two sanders rushed toward the sprayer. One stretched out a hand and touched the discharge formulator. Instantly, the crystal barrel sagged.
Then the device began to turn reddish. The heat from the turret was instantly hotter than the summer sun in Southgate, and rising with every moment. Almost without thinking, Hyalas threw himself out of the wagon and sprinted behind the sandwagon to the rear of the crystalline death sprayer.
Crump… Instants after the dull-sounding explosion, sand and tiny fragments of quartz rained down upon the engineer huddled behind the sandwagon.
Screams of dying horses, and the groaning of men beyond aid rose around where the death-sprayer had been—now a rough circle of molten quartzite glass and fragmented and bent metal on the hillside.
Hyalas shivered, then staggered erect, his fingers going to the torque at his neck.
Another company of Matrite troopers swept in from the south, from behind Hyalas, followed by yet another company.
Suddenly, the only riders in the encampment were those in forest green, and the attackers had vanished beyond the perimeter. The sounds of rifles diminished, then died away, and for a long moment, the only sounds were those of dying and wounded men and mounts—and the cracking of the burning stable.
“Hyalas!”
Hyalas turned to see the arms-commander, looking down at him from her mount.
'What happened?" Vergya demanded.
'There were some figures—the things they call sanders—"
'Myths! Legends of a superstitious bunch of herders! Them and their sanders and soarers. They're even more ridiculous than the idea of the lamaial. And now you're saying that they are real?"
Hyalas could feel the torque at his neck tightening.
'They were there… something I'd never seen… Not as big as a man, and one was beside the discharge formulator—"
'The barrel?"
Hyalas did not correct the arms commander. "The formulator melted. I saw it and felt the heat, and I just threw myself behind the sandwagon."
The arms commander looked to the officer who had reined up.
'Arms commander, the attackers have all withdrawn."
'With heavy casualties, let us trust." Vergya looked to the over-captain. "Did you see the… things… the engineer says destroyed his device."
'Yes, commander. They were manlike, but not so big. They killed several of my troopers. A rifle isn't much help. Not ours."
Vergya frowned, then nodded slowly. "That explains it."
Both the overcaptain and the engineer waited.
'Why their militia carries rifles with those huge cartridges and bullets. They're designed for those sander things. They can't afford to have two kinds of rifles, one for war and one for sanders."
The overcaptain nodded.
'Arms-commander?" asked Hyalas. "I fear I cannot rebuild the death-sprayer here."
Vergya shrugged. "No matter. It will take longer without the death-spray, but we will take the Iron Valleys, as we have taken everything else. We will send you back with the captives, if there are any."
Hyalas, still trying to catch his breath, merely nodded.
There were low moans, cougns, and rasping breathing. The smell of fire was everywhere. Alucius lay still, his eyes closed, trying to listen. His head was splitting, and his right shoulder was one massive ache. The fingers on his right hand were half numb, half tingling. Words, half familiar, swirled around him, but they did not make any sense.
Finally, he opened his eyes. He had to squint because he saw two images of everything. He lay on the stones in the open area of what had once been the Third Company barracks. Several other militia troopers lay there. He started to turn his head, and even more pain radiated from his shoulder.
He swallowed, breathing heavily. Finally, he struggled into a sitting position. Only then did he realize that something had been fastened around his neck. He lifted his left hand to touch whatever it was. His fingers stopped short. He was wearing a Matrite collar. Below the collar, he could feel crusted blood. Gingerly, his fingers brushed the back of his head. He winced as an even more intense pain flashed through his skull. The huge lumps and matted blood made him wonder how he'd even survived. How long had he been unconscious? What had happened?
His sleeves had been rolled back, which seemed odd, but there were no cuts or scrapes there. And his parka had been opened, but not removed.
He glanced slowly to his left, but did not recognize the man lying there with a gash across his forehead, and his arm bound in a sling—except he knew he'd seen the veteran at some point. On his right was Haldor—a trooper he'd seen a few times.
Haldor had turned and propped his back against the wall. His leg was splinted with what looked to be broken rifle barrels. He smiled ruefully. "Wondered if you were ever going to wake up. Quite a lump on your head."
'I got hit from behind with something." Alucius gingerly felt the front of his skull. He had another lump, right above his forehead, in addition to those in the back. "What about you?"
'Right after their machine exploded… thought we'd do all right. Someone shot my mount from under me. Almost got clear. Then one of the Matrites rode over me, busted up my leg."
'Then what?"
'Rounded us up, asked our names, wrote them down, and left us here. Asked three of us your name. I guess to make sure we told the truth." Haldor st
opped, then whispered, "Look out. Here they come."
The machine had exploded? How? And why were they asking names? Alucius turned his head. A tall blonde woman walked swiftly toward the small group of militia wounded. She was followed by a trooper, and without his riding jacket the dull silver torque around his neck was partly visible above his collar. The woman wore the forest green tunic of the Matrites, but with accented crimson piping on the sleeves, and a silver four-pointed star insignia on her collar. Even with his aching head, Alucius tried to sense what the woman was doing, although he needed no Talent to feel the arrogance she radiated as she stopped a yard away from him. He shivered as he realized that he could sense nothing with his Talent. Nothing at all.
Was his Talent gone? Or was it the collar around his neck, blocking his abilities?
The woman stepped up to Alucius. "Ask him how he is." Although she spoke in a tongue Alucius had never heard, he thought he understood her words. He looked blankly at her, wondering if she were the source—or one source—of the purplish sense that he had felt as evil, and could no longer feel. The loss of his Talent left him feeling more empty, made the splitting pain in his head seem as nothing, even though it was severe enough that almost any movement of his head made his eyes water and everything dance before him.
'How are you feeling?" The trooper spoke in the dialect of Lanachrona, similar to that of the Iron Valleys, thick, but understandable.
'My head is splitting, and my entire back is sore," Alucius admitted.
'His head hurts; his back is sore," the trooper said in the other tongue, which Alucius assumed was Madrien.
'Tell him he's lucky to be alive. Tell him about the collars."
'You're fortunate. You're alive. You have a collar around your neck. If you try to escape, it will kill you. If you try to remove it, it will kill you. If you disobey orders, you will be punished. If you fail in your duties you will be punished. Do you understand?"
What was there to understand? Alucius nodded.
'He shows no respect," the officer says. "Tell him he will be punished, and that is why."
The Matrite trooper looked to Alucius. "You must show respect. You must bow, and you must not look her in the eyes."
'I understand." Alucius looked squarely at the woman.
The officer fingered something at her belt, and Alucius could feel the torque around his neck tightening. He continued to look at the woman blankly until the blackness overwhelmed him and he pitched forward into it.
When he woke a second time, he was lying on something hard. A continued squealing and squeaking seemed to pierce his ears. For a time, he lay on the hard surface before opening his eyes. Above was a gray sky. A single thin blanket had been draped over him. He still had on his undervest and tunic, but his winter parka had been stripped from him. He looked around, then discovered it had been folded under his head—by someone. His belt knives and bootknife were gone, and, of course, his sabre. His nightsilk undergarments were still in place, but he guessed he'd only been searched for weapons.
'You all right, fellow?"
The words were in the hill dialect spoken by the Reillies and, supposedly, the Squawts, although the Squawts lived in the south hills east of Dekhron bounded mainly by the River Vedra, and Alucius had never seen or heard one. He'd heard only a handful of Reillies, women usually, at the market square in Iron Stem.
Alucius sat up slowly, steadying himself with his left hand on the sideboard of the wagon. His head still ached, slightly less than when he'd awakened the first time. He remained somewhat dizzy, but he only saw double images every so often. "I'm no worse." "I'm Jinson. Used to live west a' Soulend." "Alucius."
'They got some sort of thing, it's linked to the collars. You don't do what they want, they punish you. Send pain, or just choke you."
'How do you know what they want?"
'You learn real quick." The whispered words were sardonic. "You don't know, best you go right down on your knees and grovel. They like to see men grovel. They don't like you valley boys much. We don't either, but rather deal with your militia any day than this bunch. They got something bad against us—most of the time, they kill any one of us—especially men—just on sight. Only thought they killed me. Made me a captive after that."
'Where are we?"
'On the road back to Hieron. That's what one of the troopers said."
Alucius glanced around. From what he could tell, they were in a short column, guarded by no more than two squads of troopers. He saw no officers nearby.
'Don't try it," the Reillie said.
'Try what?"
'Escaping. See that silver box in the cage there?" The man pointed to an enclosure of steel bars, within which was a silver box roughly the size of a man's head, mounted on the front of the wagon between two posts.
Alucius followed the gesture.
'You go more than half a vingt from that, and you can't breathe. The officer in charge doesn't like you, and she'll tie you to a tree or a post and keep moving. When the box gets far enough away, you'll choke to death, slowly, as the wagons get farther away. Or maybe they'll leave you free, and not feed you when they're on the move… and you have to stay far enough away not to get shot and close enough not to stop breathing, and, sooner or later you die. Oh… and you even touch one of the officers—you stop breathing."
Alucius couldn't help frowning, even as he shivered in the cold. He unfolded the parka and struggled into it. His right arm would barely move, and any motion of the shoulder sent lines of pain through his entire body.
The Reillie—a burly man with his left arm heavily bandaged and bound—laughed softly. "Don't listen to me. One of your militia types—they already killed him. Actually got his hands on the captain—blonde and skinny, eyes like blue ice. He dropped over dead."
Alucius swallowed, then recalled his grandsire's advice about staying alive long enough to know what to do. He nodded. He had much to learn—and quickly.
Low thick gray clouds swirled barely above the mid-road, touching the tops of the taller crests of the hills and cloaking them in gray. The snow on each side of the road was almost a third of a yard deep. There was less than half that on the eternastone paving itself, something that would have created more wonder in Alucius had he not been walking through the snow behind the wagon with the other captives, pushing it when necessary to keep the small convoy moving westward through the Westerhills. Fine icelike snow swirled down, needling the right side of his face. His head continued to pound, more so on the few times when he had tried to call forth his Talent—in vain.
His right wrist was chained to that of Jinson, and all the prisoners were chained in pairs. The chains were thin, thin enough that, with a solid rock and some time, or some tools, Alucius probably could have broken them—but he had neither rocks nor tools nor time. With the dull silver torque-collars, escape was out of the question, at least until Alucius could figure out how to disable the collar—if he could, with no Talent.
He still wondered who the militia trooper had been who had stood up to the Matrite officer and been killed. Had it been Haldor? He hadn't seen the man.
Except for his face, cold wasn't a problem—not yet, although some of the other captives were suffering. Alucius still had to wonder why he hadn't been stripped of his gloves and especially his undergarments while he was unconscious, but then, without special equipment, tailoring the nightsilk was virtually impossible. Or was it that once the Matrites had taken the weapons from the captives, they regarded them as beneath notice?
'Weren't for the chains… done harder work on my own place…" mumbled Jinson.
The Reillie had removed whatever binding there had been on his arm, and Alucius was surprised that the man seemed to have healed so well—or that he showed so little discomfort.
'I'm surprised that they let us have that much food and water," Alucius murmured. "And actual shelter at night."
'They're not being kind," retorted Jinson. "You feed and water your stock, don't you?
Or are you a townie?"
'I'm not a townie, and I've fed a lot of stock."
'We're stock to them. Or rifle-fodder for their attacks on… whoever." Jinson's voice was barely above a murmur, but still conveyed bitterness.
'They're letting us ride in wagons some of the time," Alucius whispered back. "Why did they send wagons just for prisoners?"
'Didn't," Jinson said quietly. "These were some of the provisions wagons they sent. Got a regular line of them, least once a week. No sense in sending 'em back empty. Make better time if we ride some."
'No talking!" snapped the Matrite trooper—male, as all the rankers seemed to be—with the chevrons on his green riding jacket. He was riding to the left and back about three yards.
Alucius bowed his head, enough to acknowledge the command without obvious contempt. Ahead of them, the low rumble of the wagon slowed, as did the wagon, its wheels building up slush under the iron rims, and then beginning to slide sideways on a patch of ice.
'Move ahead! Give a push!" snapped the trooper. "Put some force behind it, now."
Alucius provided as little force as he could. His shoulder was still sore, and putting any pressure on his right hand and lower arm sent shooting pains from fingertip to shoulder, and even up his neck. The very worst of the aching in his skull was gone, but both lumps were still more than a little tender, even after three days' travel, and he'd definitely noticed it when he managed to use a little snow on the one on the back of his head. The cold had helped, but for the first few times, the snow had come away with the watered-down dark tinge of dried blood, more than a little dried blood.
'Show a little more effort there! Unless you want the captain to put the squeeze on your worthless necks!"
The six captives behind the wagon pushed it over the hump of slush ice, and, as the horses took up the full load again, resumed trudging through snow and slushy ice. Alucius had the feeling they were in for a long trip—and he had no idea where they were headed—except to Hieron—if the rumors were correct.
Legacies Page 27
