The Mongrel Mage

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “We are. Since you and Beltur are both undercaptains who joined the company at the same time, right now, you have equal seniority. The only way to show that in a three-officer grouping is with each of you on a side and with me a pace forward of you.”

  Beltur immediately moved to Gaermyn’s left. Zandyr was markedly slower.

  “That’s good. Come to attention when I order it.”

  Beltur had no idea exactly what that meant, but decided he’d just copy what everyone else did.

  As the chimes of the city drifted out over the piers, Gaermyn called out, “Company! Attention!”

  Beltur immediately copied the erect position taken by all the rankers and waited.

  “Squad leaders, report!”

  “Squad One, all present and accounted for, ser.”

  Each squad leader reported the same way, and after the last report, Gaermyn turned to face Captain Laugreth, who had taken a position to the right of the senior undercaptain during the reports. “All squads present and accounted for, ser.”

  “Very good, Undercaptain. Dismiss them to duties.”

  “Company! Report to duty stations! Dismissed!” Gaermyn looked to Zandyr. “You report to the captain. He’ll be working with you this morning.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Beltur could tell that Zandyr sounded less than pleased. Beltur guessed that being subordinate to an undercaptain who had worked his way up through the ranks bothered him.

  “As for you, Beltur, we’re headed for the stable, such as it is. You can saddle your own mount, I take it?”

  “If the saddle and girth aren’t too different from what I’m used to, ser.” Beltur doubted there would be much difference, but, if there were, he wanted a reason to explain possible clumsiness.

  “I doubt they are. There aren’t that many ways to make a useful saddle. Before you saddle up, we need to go over a few basics.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “There are a number of ways an officer or a squad leader can deploy a squad to find out what the marshal or the officer in charge of the evolution needs to know. Techniques and scouting tactics depend on the terrain, the disposition and the weapons of the enemy, the weather, and the time of day. Those are just the obvious ones,” concluded Gaermyn. “I can’t go over all of them, or when they’ll be used. Just keep in mind there are reasons. Don’t question a squad leader in front of his rankers, but feel free to inquire, politely and deferentially and out of hearing of the rankers, as to why something is being done a given way. If you were a regular undercaptain, you’d have learned all that earlier. But you’re not, and we’ll need your abilities long before we could train you as a proper undercaptain. We’ll try to give you as much information as possible before we have to deal with the Gallosians.”

  “I appreciate that, ser.”

  “First Squad will muster in the open space east of the building. You are to walk your horse outside before you mount. Then ride to where the others will be mustering. The First Squad leader is Vaertaag. I’ll tell him to be on the lookout for you. He’ll be going over things with the squad before they saddle up. That should give you some extra time with your mount.”

  “Tharmyn … would you show Undercaptain Beltur to his mount?”

  “Yes, ser. This way, Undercaptain.”

  The big brown gelding was a large horse. At least, he looked large to Beltur, certainly larger than the horse he’d ridden in Analeria.

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Not that any of us know,” replied the ranker holding the gelding’s bridle, “except maybe Slowpoke.”

  “Does he have any nasty habits I should know about?”

  “Sometimes, when you’re saddling him, he puffs up his belly. Just knee him in the gut—here—firmly, but gently. If he doesn’t whuff, do it again. He’s not mean. To him, it’s almost a game. Your saddle and blanket pad are here on the stall rack. Your blanket and ground cloth roll up behind the saddle. Begging your pardon, ser, but don’t ever forget them. You can never tell when you might not get back here to sleep. Not in a recon company.”

  “Thank you.”

  The saddle looked similar to the one Beltur had used before, except both the pommel and the cantle were a bit higher and thicker, and there were two leather holders off the cantle on each side that held water bottles.

  “I’ve filled the water bottles today,” offered the ranker.

  “But it’s my responsibility from now?” asked Beltur with a smile.

  The ranker smiled back. “Yes, ser.”

  Beltur was glad that he had a little extra time to saddle the gelding.

  While Slowpoke was certainly not high-strung, he did need a certain firmness, Beltur immediately discovered when the gelding moved to one side of the stall so that his right shoulder and hindquarters were pressed against the planks. Beltur stepped to that side and tapped his shoulder. Slowpoke didn’t move. Beltur thought about using the bridle, but wasn’t certain that would get the desired result. Also, there was the question of whether the gelding would make getting the bridle on more difficult in the future.

  After a moment, Beltur created a narrow shield between the planks and the gelding. Then he looked at the gelding and said, firmly, pointing to the left, “Move.” As he spoke, he widened the shield, and to prevent Slowpoke from sidling up to the other stall wall, created another shield. Then he shortened both shields to keep the gelding’s hindquarters in the middle of the stall so that he could finish saddling the gelding.

  While the effort of using the shields was work, and he was beginning to sweat a little, the gelding just stood there as Beltur finished saddling him and then dropped the shields before leading Slowpoke out of the stall and warehouse. Once outside, he mounted and rode along the north side of the former warehouse toward the east.

  Once past the end of the warehouse, he saw a group of riders in a loose column of two abreast, with a single rider at the head. Since that was the right number for a squad, he used the reins in order to turn toward the riders, but the gelding keep heading straight. Beltur kept the pressure on the reins and created a small shield alongside the left side of the gelding’s head and used it to push Slowpoke’s head in the direction he wanted to go. The gelding immediately turned. Beltur wondered how long it might take before he could use just the reins. Oh, well, it’s another kind of shield practice.

  He ended up using shield pressure twice more before he halted opposite the squad leader. Slowpoke did respond to a direct pressure back on the reins to halt, as a flick of the reins would start him, but, as for turning …

  “Undercaptain Beltur?”

  Beltur nodded. “You’re Squad Leader Vaertaag?”

  “Yes, ser.” Vaertaag looked at Beltur. “I see that they gave you the big brown. I thought he was assigned to Undercaptain Zandyr. Did you have … any difficulty?”

  “He starts and halts easily enough. He does like one side or the other of the stall, and he seems to require a bit more direction,” Beltur said dryly. “We’re working it out.”

  “You seemed quite in control. Others have had difficulty with his occasional willfulness.”

  “He’s beginning to understand.” You hope. Beltur also had the feeling that the choice of his mount had been a test of some sort … possibly from Vaertaag’s words, one for Zandyr, a way of telling a new officer that there was much he didn’t know, but that applied to Beltur, not that Beltur didn’t already understand that. The past two seasons had made that very clear.

  “I see.” Vaertaag nodded. “You’ve never ridden with a squad like this, I take it?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “We’re not a parade guard or anything like it. We can hold any formation, but that’s not our task. We’ve scouted the approaches to Axalt, and we were the ones who had the first fight with the Suthyans nine years ago. We sent their recon units packing.” Vaertaag paused.

  “You want to know what I can do for the company. I can keep a squad hidden for as long as you want
. You won’t be able to see, but I can sense anyone coming. If you don’t trust my senses, well, I could leave you unconcealed, and hide the rest of the squad.”

  The squad leader frowned.

  “Let me show you.”

  Beltur dropped a concealment around himself and Slowpoke. He could sense the horse tense. “Easy, there.” After a moment, he lifted the concealment.

  Slowpoke shook his head.

  “Now, I’ll conceal the squad. Tell your men that they’ll be surrounded by blackness, but not to move. You stay a yard away from the nearest one.”

  Beltur waited until Vaertaag had passed the word, then looked at Beltur. “Now what?”

  Concentrating, Beltur raised a concealment around the twenty mounts and men. It was the largest he’d ever done, but it was much easier than holding four separate shields. He enjoyed the startled expression on the squad leader’s face when his squad seemed to vanish. “They can still hear you.”

  “Are you there, Khalyst?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Beltur dropped the concealment. “Now, I’m going to put one around you so your men can see what it looks like, and you’ll know what they experienced.” He raised his voice. “Troopers, I’m going to conceal your squad leader. He’ll be in darkness the way you were.”

  Beltur held the concealment for the count of twenty, then dropped it.

  Vaertaag looked to the closest trooper. “Could you see me?”

  “No, Squad Leader. It was like the mage said. You were gone.”

  “What else can you do?”

  “I can shield a small group for a short time. Take out your sabre. Ride to about two yards from me and try to swing it at me. I wouldn’t swing too hard.”

  Vaertaag rode forward and struck. He could barely hold on to the sabre as it bounced back from Beltur’s shield. He shook his head, then asked, “What else?”

  “I can move, slowly, while concealed. I can sense where objects and people and animals are, but it’s like moving on a very dark night.” Beltur shrugged. “That’s pretty much it.”

  “Pretty much it?” Vaertaag laughed softly. “An officer like you might come in very useful.”

  “I’ve never had any weapons training, and I wouldn’t know the first thing about handling a blade. And the concealment has its limits. You can still hear or smell someone under a concealment, if you’re close enough.” Beltur added the last words because he didn’t want the troopers to think the concealment would allow them to get too close without detection.

  “Here comes Undercaptain Gaermyn, ser.”

  Beltur turned in the saddle and watched as the second-in-command rode toward them and then reined up.

  “It appeared to me, Undercaptain, that you made the squad disappear, and then did the same to Squad Leader Vaertaag.”

  “Not disappear, ser. I just concealed them. They were still there, and they could hear anything around them. They just couldn’t see. It’s like being in a deep black hole with no light.”

  “It is,” affirmed Vaertaag.

  “Show me,” said Gaermyn.

  Beltur immediately surrounded him with a concealment. “You should still be able to hear us.”

  “I can. You’re right, though. It’s pitch dark in here.”

  Beltur lifted the concealment.

  Gaermyn shook his head. “I don’t know…”

  “I can sense things and objects, but you have to be a mage to do that. A few healers can, too.” Beltur was thinking of Jessyla when he said that. “I could also conceal all of a squad but one person. That was what I was showing the squad leader.”

  “That might be useful.” Gaermyn frowned for a moment. “I’ll have to think about that. This morning, we’re going to ride south to the border. It’s a little more than five kays. Undercaptain Zandyr and Third Squad did that yesterday. We’ll be doing a number of patrols like that in the next few days.”

  Beltur had an immediate thought. “Could we spend a little time practicing moving under a concealment?”

  “That might be a very good idea.”

  In fact, the little time turned into almost a glass, for which Beltur was glad, since Slowpoke was initially hesitant to move in darkness, until Beltur gently prodded him with shields.

  Finally, when Gaermyn was satisfied, the older undercaptain and Beltur rode at the head of a two-breast column of armsmen, down a road that was scarcely more than a wide path, unlike the wide road that angled to the southwest away from the single pier on the far side of the river.

  “Take a good look at the road,” ordered Gaermyn. “What do you see?”

  “It’s barely wide enough for two riders or a single cart, but it’s been well-traveled.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  “That it’s likely used mainly by herders.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “The main road is across the river. Also, the ground on the east side of the river south of here is rough and rises steeply from the river. There aren’t any large towns, and not much level ground. But people travel the road. The only people I can think of who would live in this direction are herders, maybe a few small growers.”

  “How do you know about the ground beside the river?”

  “That’s how I came to Elparta, by flatboat.”

  Gaermyn nodded. “You’re likely right about the road, but check the tracks in the dirt. If there are matched pairs of hooves side by side, you’re most likely talking armsmen. A single pair of hoofprints means travelers, and a single horse or ox is most likely someone local. Why am I telling you all this when you won’t likely be in command of a squad? Because you never know. Here are a few simple rules. A scout is just to let you know what’s immediately ahead. A reconnaissance starts more than a kay from the squad or company. Never send a single rider out on a reconnaissance mission against an armed enemy. Five is usually the minimum. They can be spread, but they all need to be in sight of two others. Why?”

  “Because if one gets wounded or killed, the others will know it and can return and let the squad leader or officer know?”

  “That’s right. Also, they can regroup quickly to deal with a pair or a trio of opposing scouts, or even to keep a larger group from picking them off one by one.”

  As the squad continued along the dirt road that wound around hills that grew larger as they moved south, Gaermyn’s questions and instructions continued, and Beltur tried his best both to listen and to take in the surroundings beyond the road, recalling that the captain had questioned Zandyr on that very point.

  Close to noon, Gaermyn called a halt, and turned his mount, raising his voice to address the entire squad and pointing to two cairns of reddish stones, one heaped on each side of the road. “That’s the border. It goes roughly east-west from here. If you ride to the rise to the west there, you can see the river.”

  The rise, Beltur noted, was just an expanse of scattered grass, dirt, and some scraggly bushes, clearly unsuited to growing much or even more than occasional grazing.

  “Below the rise,” continued Gaermyn, “it’s about five hundred yards away across the sand flats. There are pockets of quicksand amid the dry sand. It can be treacherous, especially after times of high water. Right now, it’s probably safe enough to ride across except within a few yards of the water.” He turned to point eastward. “The hills here get higher and rougher, but it’s still possible for armsmen and horsemen to flank the road and attack. I’ve been told that less than a kay south of the border, the road turns almost due east and continues only another few kays before it comes to an end. If we rode straight ahead, we’d run into rough and rocky ground, and after another few miles, a steep rock escarpment that marks the end of the Border Gorge. That’s why the Gallosians have to cross here. It’s the only place they can near Elparta. On their side of the border, anyway.”

  By the time first squad rode back to Elparta and dismounted outside the doors of the converted warehouse, slightly before third glass, Slowpoke was responding to
the reins alone. The only question was whether the gelding would remember that the next time Beltur saddled him. Beltur had the feeling he would, especially since he had no trouble while he unsaddled and groomed the gelding. If not, you can repeat the exercise until he does.

  He had just walked away from the stall when Captain Laugreth appeared.

  “Beltur.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Gaermyn tells me that you demonstrated what your magery could do. He thinks there are times it might be most useful.”

  “I would think so, ser, but he would know better than I would.”

  “Come with me. You and the other officers need to hear the latest.” Laugreth led the way to a small room where Gaermyn and Zandyr already waited, standing on the far side of a battered round table. Four equally worn and scarred stools were spaced around the table. A single pallet bed stood against the wall, indicating that the captain slept in what doubled as a study.

  “Might as well sit down,” suggested the captain.

  Beltur followed his example, slightly surprised that he wasn’t even sore. But then, unlike the time before his first rides in Analeria, he’d been working fairly hard at the smithy, mostly with the bellows, and between that and all the lifting and carrying, he’d been getting a fair amount of exercise.

  “The naval marine units won’t be coming to Elparta after all,” began Laugreth. “Not for a time, if they come at all.”

  Gaermyn frowned.

  Beltur hadn’t known that any marine units were expected.

  “The Council doesn’t believe that sufficient numbers can be gathered in less than two eightdays, and it could take that long for them to travel here.”

  “They’ve known about the danger for almost a season, and they’re just now thinking about gathering those forces?” Gaermyn shook his head.

  “Most of the marines are aboard ships,” said Zandyr. “They cannot be gathered until the ships port. Most traders would not wish to leave ships unprotected until they are certain of a Gallosian attack.”

  “I’m certain the Prefect, or his arms-mage, counted on that,” replied Gaermyn dryly.

  “The good news,” continued the captain, “is that the Chief Councilor of Axalt has conveyed to the Council that they will not allow any forces through their land. That means that they don’t want the Viscount of Certis getting involved, and he’s unlikely to do so if he has to fight Axalt before he can get to Spidlar.”