Scepters

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Feran and Fifth Company had already formed up farther uphill, and the other two companies were moving into position east of Fifth Company.

  “Forward, and form on a line with the majer!” ordered Feran.

  Alucius glanced toward the road. The trailing cloud of dust was closing on the scout, but it looked as though the scout would reach the camp before his pursuers could attain a position to allow any accurate rifle shots—and any shots would be almost a matter of luck with the twisting of the road and its uneven surface.

  “Fifth Company in position, sir!”

  “Thirty-fifth Company, sir!”

  “Twenty-eighth Company, sir!”

  Alucius turned in the saddle toward Feran. “Stagger and angle them to get a clear line of fire from all files.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then he turned to Jultyr and repeated the command. By then, Deotyr had Twenty-eighth Company in even ranks.

  Alucius addressed Deotyr. “Captain, put them in a staggered right oblique formation.”

  “Yes, sir.” Deotyr turned in the saddle “Twenty-eighth Company! Staggered right oblique.”

  The senior squad leader echoed the command, and Twenty-eighth Company shifted into a mounted firing position. Alucius rode over closer to Deotyr. “If they turn or break, I’ll order Twenty-eighth Company into pursuit. Be ready for that if it comes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alucius eased the gray back to the west, reining up just at the point where Fifth and Twenty-eighth Companies joined. He looked westward, studying the empty section of road below and waiting. He reminded himself that the Lanachronan rifles carried a ten-shot magazine and had a longer range than the Northern Guard’s weapons. He continued to watch the road, even as he extended his Talent senses. There was no sign of any Talent, but the trailing riders were too far away for him to detect fainter Talent-usage.

  Another quarter of a glass passed. Finally, a single rider emerged from the last turn of the road before the straight section that extended to the base of the hillside where Alucius’s forces were arrayed.

  “All companies!” Alucius ordered. “Rifles ready. Fire at my command.”

  “Rifles ready.”

  As the rider neared the encampment, less than a hundred yards from the base of the slope, Alucius recognized Waris, despite the dust-coated uniform. Behind him rode nearly two squads of lancers in loose-fitting maroon tunics.

  The rebel lancers fired occasional shots at Waris, but all seemed to fall short or wide. But they were closing slowly on the scout so that, when Waris reached the foot of the slope, the oncoming rebel lancers were but three hundred yards behind him. The scout eased his mount uphill and toward the Guard companies.

  Alucius waved Waris past. “Go on.” He waited until the oncoming lancers were within fifty yards of the base of the hill. Then he ordered, “Fire at will!”

  “Fire at will!”

  A series of rapid cracks came from Twenty-eighth Company, then from Thirty-fifth Company. The deeper-sounding reports from the heavier Northern Guard rifles were more deliberate.

  Only a handful of shots from the first volley struck. Alucius saw one rebel lurch in the saddle and another pitch sideways. He lifted his own rifle and fired carefully. His first shot struck a man in the shoulder. His second took another rebel out of his saddle.

  A squad leader rode first among the maroon-clad lancers, flourishing a blade half again as long as a lancer sabre. Despite the continuing fire from the Lanachronan forces, he charged to the end of the road, then upslope toward Alucius.

  Alucius targeted the man, and his first shot slammed through the man’s left shoulder. The rebel remained in the saddle, still brandishing his long blade. Alucius paused only for a moment before putting a second shot into the man’s chest, slightly to the left of his breastbone. Still clutching the blade, the man was less than fifty yards from Alucius before the majer’s last shot smashed a gaping hole in the attacker’s forehead.

  As quickly as he could, Alucius switched rifles. He took slightly longer with each shot, trying for head shots as much as possible. He knew what he was seeing couldn’t be happening, but it looked like almost nothing besides a head shot, one through the heart, or enough fire to dismember one of the rebel lancers was enough to stop one.

  He felt as though he were fumbling every time he reloaded, but he had the rifle up quickly enough and continued to fire. He kept reloading and firing, watching rebel lancers fall. In time, he got only one shot off after reloading when he realized that there was no one moving downslope.

  “Hold your fire!” he ordered.

  “Hold your fire!”

  As the last rifle reports died away, Alucius glanced downhill. From what he could see, only a handful of his force had been killed or wounded. Then, he looked at the thirty-odd bodies strewn on the hillside. There were several loose and riderless mounts, but not one rebel had slowed or turned back.

  After a moment, Alucius rode slowly downhill, shaking his head, seeing the gaping wounds in every body. Yet he could sense only the faintest touch of Talent—certainly not enough to have kept men who were dying or already dead moving forward in an attack.

  Feran had been generous earlier, because this time Alucius had been stupid. He’d been lucky to lose so few men. He should have had them in trenches or embankments, or behind trees. He’d thought that the attackers would have turned and retreated, given their far fewer numbers, and he’d wanted to be able to pursue them. Then again, the ground was so hard it would have been impossible to have dug effective trenches…but his tactics had still been stupid.

  Near the bottom of the hill, he turned the gray and started back upslope. “Overcaptain, captains, report as you can!”

  He continued toward Feran and Fifth Company, reining up short of the overcaptain.

  Feran offered a ragged smile.

  Alucius shrugged, adding in a voice low enough that only Feran could hear, “We were lucky this time. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “Haven’t either. They using Talent?”

  “Just the littlest trace of it. Shouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “That’s scary,” Feran murmured.

  Alucius had to agree, if silently. It had taken the mass fire of three companies for almost half a glass.

  Egyl reined up, waiting. Both officers looked to him.

  “Two dead, sirs, three wounded.”

  “Thank you, Egyl,” Alucius replied.

  “Yes, sir.” Egyl turned his mount.

  While Egyl hadn’t felt or expressed reproach, Alucius knew that the senior squad leader had every right to do so.

  “Any captives?” Alucius asked.

  “No, sir.”

  Alucius looked down at the fallen rebels, then at Feran. “Can you take care of the dead? Have them checked for anything that would tell us something. Just two burial pits for the rebels, one for mounts, the other for men. Draw some men from each of the companies.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thank you. We’ll meet later,” Alucius told Feran, before turning his mount eastward toward the center of Twenty-eighth Company. Deotyr and Jultyr had drawn up their mounts side by side.

  “Three dead, four wounded. Only one seriously, sir,” reported Deotyr.

  “Two wounded. Not serious. We weren’t in their line of fire,” offered Jultyr.

  For that Alucius was grateful.

  “Were there any survivors? Any captives?”

  Both captains exchanged glances, then looked at Alucius.

  “No, sir.”

  Alucius managed not to frown. “Thank you. Overcaptain Feran will be drawing some men from each of you for a burial and disposal detail.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take care of what you need to handle. Dismissed.” Alucius raised his voice. “All companies, stand down, except for burial and disposal detail.”

  The first skirmish of the campaign was over, and he should have felt relieved. His force had killed mor
e than thirty attackers and lost only five men. But…he’d misjudged the situation, and had there been twice as many attackers, the results would have been far different. The faint touch of Talent indicated something besides ifrit involvement, but what? He pursed his lips. There had been no survivors, and none of the attackers had tried to retreat. There was so much he didn’t know.

  He looked around, searching for Waris, to find out what the scout might have discovered, only to see the scout standing grooming his mount less than fifty yards away.

  “Officers forward! Without your mounts.”

  Alucius eased the gray up to Waris. “We’ll need your report, Waris.”

  Waris was still covered in dust, and his mount had clearly been pushed earlier, although the scout had brushed out the dust from the roan’s coat, but there were still traces of sweat. Waris looked at Alucius. “Had to push him hard to get clear, sir. Saved my ass, he did.” After a pause, he added, “Looks like you had a little trouble here, too.”

  “We did,” Alucius replied. “That’s why we need to hear what you found out. We’ll be down there by the cedar.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alucius rode his gray back to the tieline, where he tethered the gelding. Then he walked partway downhill to an area shaded by the low but broad cedar he had pointed out to Waris and waited for the others to join him. His eyes looked downhill, taking in the fallen men and the lancers searching and dragging bodies to the west, where part of the hill had slumped, leaving an easier disposal site.

  He looked up as the two captains and Feran rejoined him. “Waris will be here in a moment.”

  “Elbard and Chorat are still missing,” Feran said.

  Alucius could only hope they had been delayed.

  Waris walked downhill and stopped short of the half circle of officers. After a moment, he began. “They sent three lancers after me, sir, and I took out all three. Didn’t change anything. Hadn’t gotten a vingt away when they had another three after me. Almost half a squad after one scout? Don’t understand that, sir.”

  Alucius gestured to the slope below them. “They sent a squad and a half against three companies. Not one turned back.”

  Waris shook his head slowly.

  “If they had so many after you,” asked Alucius, “how did you escape?”

  Waris grinned. “Figured if we got far enough away from their camp, they wouldn’t know to send more. I shot ’em, one after the other. They can’t shoot as well as my one-armed grandmother.”

  “Before you got rousted out, what did you find?”

  “Took the narrow dirt road, sir, like you told me. Three vingts south of here, it forks. One fork goes mostly south, maybe a little east, and the other heads due west. Tracks on both, but, well, couldn’t tell you, except I thought I ought to see about the west fork first. Follows the bottom of a ridgeline little less than two vingts through trees sort of spaced like the ones here. Goes pretty straight, though. Ends in an open space. Lucky I stopped in the trees. Was trying to see what was there, and saw some smoke ahead. So I circled around the clearing and eased up the hillside. Couldn’t get too close ’cause the whole slope is covered in that spiky thorn stuff. But…got high enough to get a pretty good view. It’s almost like a lancer post, sir. They got long sheds like barracks, and even stables. They’re on a flat. Behind them, there’s something dug or carved into the rock of the hillside.”

  “Are there any places from where you could mount an attack?” asked Alucius.

  “In two places,” the scout added. “There’s a lower meadow to the east of whatever’s dug into the cliff, and there’s an upper meadow to the southwest. You might be able to come over the top of the hill, but then it’s like a cliff coming down…have to do that on foot. They’ve also got a perimeter cleared on the west side of the hill, posts every hundred yards or so. That was where I got seen.”

  “Do they have any walls or palisades?”

  “Not much. They don’t need them. They’ve got a gate across the road to Hyalt—think it must be the road to Hyalt, anyway. It’s a good, wide, packed road…got walls on each side of the gate for maybe a hundred yards. Beyond that, you’ve got those thorn thickets and rough ground. If one doesn’t get you or your mount, seems like the other would.”

  “How many lancers are there?” asked Feran.

  “Couldn’t say for sure, sir. I’d guess maybe two companies. Could be more if they’ve got barracks in the caves. Couldn’t be too many more, though, because all the mounts are stabled. Stables might hold three hundred.”

  “We’ll need to find out if they’ve got other outposts,” Alucius said to Feran. “Somehow.” He looked at Waris. “Did you see many wagons?”

  Close to another glass passed before Alucius was satisfied that he’d learned everything that he could from Waris. Even so, he suspected he’d missed things.

  After they finished debriefing Waris, Alucius and Feran walked to the hillcrest. There they settled on two low boulders, slowly eating travel bread and hard cheese, washing the heavy food down with swallows from their water bottles.

  “Some ways, this is worse than Deforya,” mused Feran. “There, we knew what we were up against. Here…” He shook his head.

  “The more we discover, the worse it gets. Is that what you mean?” asked Alucius.

  “That charge…the lancers chasing Waris…” Feran smiled faintly. “He sounded like you. Could be that’s what we need.”

  Alucius didn’t feel like pursuing that. Was the only solution to kill more than your enemy? “We really need to know more. I hope the other scouts can find out more.”

  “It’s early yet, and we’ve gotten two back already,” Feran said.

  “We’re missing two, still. Elbard…and your other one…”

  “Chorat. He begged me to let him do it.”

  “He had the area to the south and east of Hyalt.”

  “You don’t think he’s coming back.”

  “We’ll have to see.” Inside, Alucius worried whether either of the remaining scouts would return.

  After the two finished eating, Feran headed down to check on the burial detail and Alucius walked the perimeter of the encampment, using his Talent, directing it outward to sense if anyone might be stalking or scouting them. He found no signs of outsiders to the east, south, or west, and a good glass later, he was standing a full fifty yards below the crest on the north side of the hill, trying to make sure that no one was sneaking up from the least obvious side, but there was no one there. There weren’t even many rodents, and few enough birds. He turned and began to walk back uphill.

  He looked up as a lancer hurried downhill. “Sir! Overcaptain Feran needs you, sir. Elbard’s back, and he’s wounded bad, sir.”

  “Show me!” Alucius hurried after the young lancer, back over the hillcrest and another hundred yards downhill.

  Elbard lay stretched on a ground cloth. A lancer Alucius didn’t know had bound the scout’s shoulder and chest, and Feran stood there, his face impassive, listening.

  Alucius let his Talent range over the wounded scout as he listened.

  “…one moment…was watching the town…next thing, I was…almost like sleeping…except I was awake, but I didn’t hear anything…never heard the rifle…pain of the bullet…guess broke the spell…just a boy…standing there…wore a sloppy maroon uniform…must have walked up to me…no more…fifty yards…Shot…never heard him…Hurt like…managed to get a shot off…didn’t miss…” A hollow laugh came from Elbard. “Boy…he looked surprised. Managed to get to my mount…Suppose…shouldn’t gone all the way to Hyalt…where the road led…”

  Slowly, the majer reached out with his Talent, strengthening the lifethread, and doing what else he could to knit bones and muscles together. Alucius’s vision was blurring by the time he finished.

  Elbard looked to be sleeping.

  “I think he’ll make it,” Alucius said hoarsely. He looked at the lancer who had bound the wounds. “Let me or Overcaptain Feran know whe
n he wakes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alucius began to walk slowly back uphill and away from the group around Elbard.

  Accompanying Alucius, Feran looked back at the scout, then to the majer. His voice was low as he spoke. “That takes a lot out of you, doesn’t it?”

  Alucius debated denying it, then shrugged tiredly. Feran already knew; he’d known for years, even if they’d never spoken of it. “I can only do one or two a day, if that, and nothing else. It’s useless in a battle.”

  “They say…you can’t heal yourself, can you?”

  “No. I think I heal a little faster than most people, but Talent doesn’t work that way.”

  “Why…”

  “Because he’s a good scout. Because we need to know what else he found out.” And because, Alucius had to admit to himself, he felt guilty for sending Elbard out into trouble. “What he ran into—it sounds like…some kind of Talent. I’ve never heard of anything like that, though.”

  “Nothing herders can do?”

  “Not that I know of,” Alucius admitted.

  “That would explain why none of Frynkel’s scouts got back.”

  “It might.”

  “You think there’s more?” asked Feran.

  “I don’t know, but…”

  “They wouldn’t send us—or you—unless it was something tough,” Feran pointed out.

  “There’s one thing that doesn’t make much sense. Weslyn was totally opposed to my being sent here.”

  Feran laughed. “That makes perfect sense. When you were a herder, you were out of the Guard. Now, you’re a majer. You pull this out, and you’re the Lord-Protector’s favorite. Even I can tell that Marshal Frynkel despises Weslyn, and—”

  “We’d better think more about how to pull this off,” Alucius said quickly. “Tomorrow, we’ll send a messenger back to the last manned post, letting the marshal know about it.” He could hear the reluctance in his voice. “We’ll also have to request more ammunition.”

  “You don’t like that,” observed Feran.

  “No…but he and the Lord-Protector should know.”

  “Elbard was the only one who felt this. Are you sure…?”

  “We sent out four scouts. One hasn’t returned. Two got chased back, and one of them got Talent-spelled and wounded. Frynkel sent at least a few. None of them got back. What does that tell you?”