Mage-Guard of Hamor

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Drakeyt laughed, harshly. His eyes glittered like a mirror before a brilliant lamp for a moment. “He wouldn’t have listened. Or he would have blamed me for not instructing you in more detail. Or the overcommander for assigning an inexperienced mage-guard.” The older captain looked at Rahl. “Besides, it isn’t true.”

  “I’ve never done this before,” Rahl replied. “I’ve only been a city mage-guard.” He looked up as the servingwoman walked back toward them carrying a glass beaker and a large mug.

  “Here you are, sers. Be back with your food in a moment.” This time, she did sweep up the pair of coppers before she left.

  “Only a city mage-guard?” Drakeyt raised his thin and silvering eyebrows. “I’ve been around, and I’ve talked to the other captains, and I talked to the majer for a moment after the marshal dismissed us. The majer doesn’t recall any mage-guard assigned to the High Command who could tell where the enemy was from the distance you were doing. The submarshal’s looking for people to blame even before the campaign gets going. The majer didn’t say that, but he might as well have.” Drakeyt took a sip of the Vyrna. “You’re not just a plain city mage-guard. The overcommander wouldn’t have planted you on me if you were. Do you want to tell me why he did?”

  “I can’t,” Rahl admitted. “I asked him, but all he’d say was that I needed the experience, and that there were good reasons for it.”

  “How good are you, Rahl? Compared to other mage-guards, that is?”

  Rahl took a slow swallow of the lager before answering, trying to compose a truthful answer that didn’t reveal too much. “I don’t know exactly. I’ve been tested, and I do better with weapons than all the other mage-guards of my experience. I have more control of some abilities than most of the regular mage-guards, but how that compares to the higher-level mage-guards, I just don’t know.”

  Drakeyt grinned. “I think that says that you’ve been put on point in a dangerous maneuver. Dettyr doesn’t know how good you are, or how capable the overcommander is, and the overcommander doesn’t want him or the marshal to know that.”

  “How can he not know about the overcommander?” Rahl almost burst out that Taryl had been a former Triad, but stopped those words.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are only a handful of Mage-Guard Overcommanders, and I’d guess that all of them are capable of becoming a Triad. Any one of them could remove or destroy Dettyr without raising a sweat.”

  “I doubt that thought has ever crossed the submarshal’s mind. Mage-guards are just peacekeepers among civilians to him.”

  “Do most officers in the High Command feel that way?”

  “Too many.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  Drakeyt grimaced. “I did, but I’ve been watching and getting reports on you from the squad leaders. They’re impressed. Most officers don’t impress them much. The other thing is that you’ve learned to ride better than most officers.”

  That had to do with Rahl’s sense of what the gelding would do and his ability to project what he wanted to the horse…although he had learned to stay glued in the saddle, painful as it had been. “I had to. It hurt too much not to.”

  The older captain laughed, then stopped as the server returned with two crockery platters heaped with burhka and noodles. Each had a sliced pearapple on the side.

  “Thank you,” Rahl said. “It’s been a long day.”

  “I thought it might have been.”

  Rahl knew she was angling for something extra, but he was happy to give it, and slipped her a copper. So did Drakeyt.

  “Much obliged, sers. Much obliged. I’ll be seeing if you’d like more to drink in a bit.”

  Rahl was so hungry that he took several mouthfuls of the burhka and noodles before looking up to see that Drakeyt was also eating heartily. The dish didn’t even seem that spicy.

  The captain swallowed, then took a sip of the Vyrna, and asked, “What orders did you get from the overcommander?”

  “He said my job was to keep Third Company from taking casualties. He wouldn’t say more than that.”

  “I can’t disagree with that…much.”

  “He actually said ’too many casualties,’” Rahl added.

  “That’s more realistic.”

  “He’s very realistic,” Rahl said dryly. “About everything.”

  “It’s good someone is.” Drakeyt shook his head. “You know, after all that this afternoon, nothing’s changed. The majer said we’re to make a thorough sweep of the road to Dawhut in the morning. Then the submarshal will decide.”

  “Decide what? We have to go through Dawhut to get to Nubyat, don’t we? We haven’t found any sign of any rebels. Does he think they’ll appear overnight?”

  “They might be closer to Dawhut,” suggested Drakeyt with a smile.

  “We haven’t found any in over four hundred kays, and there are three companies in Dawhut, and we’re going to run into rebels in the ten kays between where we stopped patrolling and the city itself?”

  “We just follow orders,” Drakeyt replied. “There’s no point in questioning stupid orders that are just stupid when no one is going to get killed.”

  Rahl nodded, although he certainly didn’t like the implication. Not at all.

  XLIV

  After dinner, Rahl cleaned up and changed his sunburst insignia, finally comparing the old and new sunburst and insignia. Side by side, he could see the difference, but without looking for it, or knowing that there was such a distinction, he never would have seen it—and hadn’t. The tips of the two sunburst rays in the middle—the ones that extended directly out from the side of the center—were straight in the junior insignia, but the very tips curved up in the senior insignia. That small difference would not even be visible from more than a few cubits away, even on the larger insignia for his visor cap, let alone on the smaller collar devices. He doubted that Drakeyt would notice, and he wasn’t about to tell the captain, because that would only confuse the troopers.

  He thought about writing more to Deybri and telling her that he’d been promoted, but that would have been read as boasting—and it would have been. Besides, he could always add it at the appropriate time in the next long letter he wrote, assuming he had time now that Taryl and the submarshal had arrived.

  Tired as he was when he collapsed into the narrow bed, he lay awake, his thoughts alternating between Deybri, the campaign ahead, and the insinuations and implications raised by Taryl’s words. Why hadn’t the overcommander said more? Or was Rahl supposed to figure things out as he went along? Taryl was attempting a deep and dangerous strategy. That was obvious. It was also clear that Rahl had a part to play, but not immediately. Rahl just wished he had some idea of what Taryl had in mind. All he could figure was that Taryl was on the same side as the Emperor and Jubyl, and the other two Triads might not be, and that it was possible that one or both of them might actually want the rebellion to succeed—or at least take a long time to fail.

  In time, he did drift into sleep…and nightmares he could not remember when he woke.

  Sevenday morning dawned gray and cold, with a bitter wind out of the northeast. The clouds were high and dry, and Rahl doubted they would have rain or snow—not for several days, in any case. When he rode up to the house serving as headquarters right after he and Drakeyt had mustered Third Company, Taryl was again waiting on the side porch, wearing a heavy riding jacket.

  Rahl dismounted and vaulted the railing to join the overcommander.

  “Here’s the letter, ser, and five silvers.” Rahl didn’t have that much left in the way of coin, but he couldn’t think of a better way to spend it than on letting Deybri know how he felt.

  Taryl took the letter, smiling and weighing it in his hand. “That’s a heavy letter.”

  “I had a few things to say, ser.”

  “I hope you said them well. At your age anger is expressed too often, and gentler feelings too seldom.”

  Rahl shrugged, hoping he had written the
right things but not wanting to say so.

  Taryl slipped Rahl’s letter into a leather case slung on a strap over his shoulder, then lifted out a cloth pouch and extended it to Rahl. “Before I forget, here’s your pay for the time since Kysha. From here on out, as a senior mage-guard, you get five silvers an eightday. I can’t promise regular pay after this, but I can promise you’ll get it all in time.”

  “Thank you, ser.” A half gold an eightday? Rahl never would have dreamed that he’d make that much. No wonder there was respect for the senior mage-guards. He slipped the pouch into the wallet he carried inside his trousers.

  “I can’t have a senior mage-guard without coins. There are two extra golds in the pouch. Those are for expenses—special supplies or to help Third Company. It’s not much for what you’ll be doing, but I will need to know on what they’re spent when the campaign’s over or when we hold Nubyat.”

  “Yes, ser.” Rahl paused. “Might I ask what we will be doing in the next few days?”

  “Submarshal Dettyr intends to ride into Dawhut on oneday. He wants no losses and no surprises,” Taryl said evenly. “You and Third Company, as well as scouts from other companies, will spend today and tomorrow making sure there are no surprises. By the time you return to the company, Captain Drakeyt should have those orders.”

  “After that…”

  “He intends to build up supplies and wait for the marshal.”

  Rahl winced.

  “He’s the kind that wants others to take the losses.”

  “Won’t waiting just give the rebels more time and cost us more troopers?”

  “That’s usually what happens,” Taryl said mildly. “I’m working to persuade him that losses are inevitable and that early action will reflect favorably upon him, and that he can assign the most perilous duties to those officers he does not care for so that they will incur such losses.”

  “Meaning Third Company?”

  “And others. The officers he does not like are generally those who look to be most effective. He has his own ideas of what makes a good officer.” On Taryl’s thin face, the smile that followed his words looked close to predatory. “Now…you’d better get back to Third Company. Don’t bother sending me any more dispatches. If I want to know something, I’ll find you, and if you discover something I should know urgently, it’s best if you come to me directly.”

  “Yes, ser.” Rahl offered a smile, a nod of respect, then turned and swung over the porch railing.

  On the short ride back to the Dun Cow, Rahl reflected on what Taryl had not said, not directly. One of the principal deficiencies of poor commanders was that they encouraged poor subordinates and discouraged able ones. Was that true in Recluce as well? Certainly, Puvort had that tendency, and Kadara had been the least accomplished of the magisters and magistras with whom he had come in contact—and she’d been the most critical.

  Then he checked his pay—almost two golds, in addition to the two golds for expenses. He wouldn’t have to worry nearly so much about coins, not for a while.

  LXV

  Over the next two days, neither Third Company nor the scouts of any other company could discern any sign of rebels or traps on the road to Dawhut or in the area around it, and on midafternoon on oneday, the long column of Imperial forces rode into the city. Under a clear and cold green-blue sky, with a blustery westerly wind, Third Company rode directly in front of the submarshal’s headquarters company, and behind the array of outriders and scouts. Word had obviously spread among the locals, because the road was empty except for the Imperial forces. Every stead and dwelling was shuttered, and all the chimneys appeared cold and smokeless.

  As Third Company came over the last low rise before the road descended to the bridge over the Awhut River, the odor of the distilleries enveloped Rahl. He glanced at the scattered chimneys to the south, and while half appeared to be cold, the odor from those in operation was still most objectionable.

  “How do they live with it?” he murmured.

  “Some people get used to anything,” replied Drakeyt.

  Rahl supposed so, but he had his doubts that, if he lived in Dawhut, he would ever be able to ignore the odor. Certainly, he’d never been able to ignore the aspects of Recluce that had bothered him.

  Once they reached the city itself, crossing the northernmost of the two bridges over the river, the column turned south on the river boulevard. The dwellings and shops in Dawhut itself were not shuttered, but the sidewalks and side lanes were mostly deserted, and those people who watched the Imperial forces did so from windows, porches, and, occasionally, balconies. As elsewhere in Merowey, the structures were mainly brick, with a few of stucco and timber, and a comparative handful constructed of worked stone. The roofs were all tile, but the colors varied widely.

  According to their orders, Third Company was supposed to form up with the others in the River Square that was the center of Dawhut. The square was midway between the two bridges, a half kay south of the north bridge. Rahl did not see or sense any mage-guards anywhere, and that bothered him.

  Just before noon, they rode into the square, a paved open space a good two hundred cubits on a side, surrounded by brick-and-stone buildings, with a modest circular monument, with a statue of a man on horseback—doubtless a famous emperor or local hero. Rahl glanced ahead to the south side of the square, dominated by a large three-story redstone building with green trim and shutters. The oversized signboard proclaimed the River Inn.

  From there, he surveyed the square, noting the problem almost immediately. While the square might accommodate a regiment of heavy infantry, there was no way that three regiments and a headquarters company would fit there, even with mounts shoulder to shoulder.

  “We won’t all fit in here,” Rahl observed to Drakeyt, “even squashed together.”

  “We’ll have to try. Those are the orders. I hope that all the scouts are right that there aren’t any rebels around, because with all of us in one place, we’re grounded geese.”

  The river side of the square ended in a low gray-stone wall. Rahl could sense that the east side of the wall dropped to a walkway, and the side of the walkway next to the river was actually the top of a stone levee that formed a river wall. There were people walking along the river, but the walkway was enough lower that he could not see them from the square.

  Third Company formed up facing the river, as ordered. The submarshal and a small group rode toward the inn. Rahl could see that Taryl was with Dettyr, but the companies that followed them into the square restricted the effectiveness of Rahl’s order-senses. Rahl could not follow Dettyr’s actions, except intermittently, since he was facing away from the inn, and since the growing number of mounts and men blocked his vision when he tried to look back over his shoulder.

  “They can’t get any more into the square,” Rahl said. “Not many, anyway. There’s still a little space at the edges.”

  “That’s so the submarshal can ride around to the front and tell us…whatever he has in mind.”

  Rahl suspected Drakeyt had almost said something far less complimentary.

  Before long, since the square was filled with mounted heavy infantry, the submarshal rode out from somewhere near the inn and along the south side of the square and then along the river wall toward the midpoint of the section of the wall that formed the river side of the square. Taryl rode the mount beside and slightly behind the submarshal.

  Just as the submarshal and his escort from the headquarters company almost reached the midpoint of the narrow space between the companies and the square wall above the Awhut River, a man appeared on the wall, less than a score of cubits from the submarshal, carrying a horn bow and a quiver of long arrows. He wore a maroon jacket and khaki trousers—garb similar, if not identical, to the uniforms worn by the rebels who had manned the cannon that had damaged the Fyrador. His first shaft was away before almost anyone noticed—except Taryl, because the arrow skittered sideways just before it would have penetrated the submarshal’s should
er.

  Taryl gestured, and a firebolt flared toward the would-be assassin from a mage-guard farther back in the submarshal’s small entourage. Even so, the archer had loosed a second shaft, and was nocking a third when the firebolt flared across his chest.

  Rahl had already urged his own mount forward and out of the front rank toward the wall, his truncheon in hand, because he could sense three others even before they vaulted onto the top of the river wall, bows at the ready, and quivers full.

  Rahl’s shields deflected the arrows aimed at him, but he could sense that some of the others had struck either troopers or their mounts, and that more archers had appeared on the square wall farther to the south, but closer to Taryl and the chaos-mage.

  Rahl slammed the long truncheon, backed with order as well as all the force he could impart, into the nearer archer’s leg. He could feel the crunch, and the man toppled forward, flailing, toward the paving stones of the square. Rahl kept his mount moving, somehow managing to swing the truncheon clear of the falling rebel, while moving to attack the next archer. The rebel loosed his shaft point-blank at Rahl.

  Rahl’s shields took the force, but the impact rocked him back in the saddle, and he had to struggle for a moment to hold his seat. Then he was almost past the archer, and he had to backcut, but the truncheon took the archer in the side of the knee, and he also tumbled off the wall and into the square.

  The third archer had fled, scrambling down the back side of the wall and sprinting across the walkway below the wall. A firebolt flared across his back and shoulders, and he collapsed on top of the river wall, twitching but for a moment.

  Rahl reined up. Even using both sight and senses, he could detect no other rebels—at least not along the square wall or the river walkway below—and he turned his mount back toward Third Company. Troopers from the headquarters company had taken both fallen archers prisoner. The second archer glared at Rahl as the mage-guard rode past. Rahl ignored the hatred, but he wondered how someone could hate so violently a man he’d never met. Rahl might hate Puvort, and the magisters of Land’s End, but they had acted vindictively and dishonestly against Rahl personally. All Rahl had done was to prevent the archer from killing troopers. Several had been wounded, but he had not sensed any deaths besides those of the two rebels killed by the chaos-mage from headquarters company.