“Back!” orders Sillek, after a quick glance at the armsman, who nods. “Quick trot!”
The Suthyans are less than a hundred cubits behind when Sillek’s horse crosses the hill crest and he orders his mounted troop to swing to the west.
“Get the pikes set!” snaps Gethen. “Horse on the flanks! Archers-stand fast! Between horse and flank!”
The Suthyan horse is a ragged line by the time the riders surge over the crest chasing the “fleeing” Lornian forces.
Fully twenty horse and riders are spitted on the waiting pikes. The others slow into a milling mass.
“Archers!” shouts Gethen, and the arrows turn half the remaining Suthyans into pincushions.
Perhaps a dozen horse troopers swing out to the flanks, only to be encircled and brought down by Sillek’s troopers on the left, and Gethen’s reserves on the right.
“Move up! Move up!” snaps Gethen, and the pikemen and the foot move forward.
“Measured pace! Measured pace! Archers forward and to the flanks,” orders Gethen.
Sillek brings the wizards back to the hill crest. By now the Suthyan foot are more than halfway up the hill.
“Firebolts!” he orders.
Jissek strains, and a small ball arches into the left side. Greasy smoke rises, along with the shriek of a man who rolls in the damp grass-in vain as he writhes before subsiding into a blackened lump.
“Terek.”
The chief wizard casts another bolt, and two Suthyan troopers turn to flaming brands.
A trumpet bugles, and the Suthyan forces begin to trot uphill.
“Idiots,” mutters Sillek, looking over his shoulder to seethat the pikes are set in the forward position. Then he signals, and his horse troopers reform in a double line, waiting.
As the Suthyan forces halt at the hill crest, wavering in sight of the pikes, Gethen drops his arm, and arrows sheet through the Suthyans.
The line wavers, and then breaks, ignoring the shouted commands from the Suthyan commanders.
Gethen swings his arm, and the Lornian horse charges.
Less than twoscore Suthyans scramble into the river, and less than half those make it across the ford.
On the west side of the river, Sillek reins up and watches. His eyes stray, not to the hundreds of Suthyan bodies, nor to the fallen horse, but to the relative handful of fallen Lornians. He turns to Gethen.
Gethen cleans his blade and turns to Sillek. “They’ll call you a butcher, Lord.”
“I don’t care what they call me, just so long as they respect me.” Sillek takes a deep breath and looks to see that they are beyond easy earshot of the wizards and the chief armsmen, who are directing the looting and burial details. “Fighting is not glorious, and anyone who thinks so …” He does not finish the thought, but shakes his head.
“Many in your land would dispute that, Lord.”
“Even as I save their sons, yet.” Sillek laughs harshly. “Would you dispute me, Gethen?”
“No.” Gethen laughs harshly. “You have learned young what many never learn. But do not speak it except to those as gray-haired as I, or those who have buried sons lost in useless battles, not unless you wish to kill them.”
“I won’t.” Sillek tightens his lips. “Is this useless battle?”
“It is less useless than most, My Lord. Else I would not be here.”
“On to Rulyarth.”
“On to Rulyarth,” echoes Gethen.
“After our gloriously victorious troops claim their just rewards,” Sillek adds darkly and under his breath.
LXXXVIII
NYLAN TAPPED THE brick level on the mortar and troweled away the excess mortar. That finished the base of the forge. Sometime, Huldran and Cessya and the others could set the roof timbers. He had to finish the forge and start making more weapons … for more killing.
“Need more mortar, ser?” asked Huldran.
“No.” He glanced toward the west, but the sun was just above the peaks, and they wouldn’t have much time before the evening triangle rang. He rubbed his shoulders. After a year, things should be easier, but it didn’t seem that way. He paused as he saw Ayrlyn hurrying toward the unfinished smithy. “I sense trouble.”
“We’ve got more than enough, ser,” said Huldran. “That new one, Desain, she thinks that showers are unhealthy, and the other one, Ryllya, she had a fit when the healer cut her hair. Said her strength was in her hair. Things like that remind me how strange this place is.”
“It is strange.” Nylan wondered what was driving Ayrlyn.
“Here comes the healer,” announced Huldran.
“Gerlich is gone,” Ayrlyn announced even before she stepped inside the brick-framed doorway of the smithy. Her face was flushed.
“How do you know?”
“Day before yesterday, he said he’d be gone for two days-that he’d been having trouble finding game. He took a mount and the old gray for a pack animal. Llyselle found that out when she was cleaning the stables. She told me, and I told Ryba. Today, I happened to look at his space, and both bows were gone. There were rags folded where his clothes were. I started checking, and he took all the coins in the strongbox I had hidden on the fifth level.” Ayrlyn wiped herforehead. “Ryba has the golds somewhere, but that’s a lot of silvers, and a bunch of coppers. He also made off with a handful of blades-the poor ones in the back of the chest.”
Nylan nodded. “He’s also been sneaking arrows out of the tower.”
“You didn’t say anything?”
Huldran’s eyes widened as they moved from Ayrlyn to Nylan and back again.
“I didn’t know. All I knew was that every time he went hunting he came back with a few arrows missing, sometimes more than a few shafts. Then the morning he left, Fierral told me he’d taken fifty shafts hunting. I just thought he was a poor shot, but didn’t want to admit it. Now …”
“It makes sense,” pointed out Ayrlyn.
“Narliat’s departure was no accident, either, then,” Nylan continued. “That bastard Gerlich has something arranged.” He turned to Huldran. “Can you clean up? The healer and I need to find the marshal.”
“Yes, ser.”
The engineer and the healer headed toward the tower.
“Where is she?” asked Ayrlyn.
“Up in the tower, I think. I carted Dyliess around this morning. Bricklaying is slow with an infant strapped to you, but she liked the motion. I only had trouble if I stood still.”
Nylan and Ayrlyn found the marshal on the fifth level, working with one of the newcomers. Saryn sparred with another and Fierral with a third. At a break in the sparring, Nylan motioned to Ryba.
The marshal stopped. “With two of you, it must be serious.” Ryba turned to Saryn. “Desain needs to stop letting her wrist droop.”
“I can manage that.” Saryn laughed.
“And Fierral,” added Ryba. “Nistayna doesn’t have any follow-through. She’s afraid she’ll hurt someone. If she doesn’t, they’ll kill her.”
Ryba racked her wand, and the three walked up the stone steps.
On the top level of the tower, Ellysia sat in the rockingchair, holding Dephnay on her knee with one hand and rocking the cradle containing Dyliess with the other, the cradle that now rested at the foot of the two separated lander couches.
“Thank you, Ellysia,” said Ryba. “You can go now.” She crossed the room and opened both windows wide.
Behind her Ellysia shivered as the wind gusted into the room, then stood and picked up Dephnay. Dyliess started to murmur the moment the unattended cradle began to slow.
As Ellysia, shivering, her face flushed, started down the steps, Ryba eased Dyliess from the cradle. “You’re about to wake up anyway, little one.”
Ryba sat in the rocking chair and unfastened her shirt. Dyliess began to nurse, as greedily as always, reflected Nylan.
“What is this problem?” asked the marshal.
“Gerlich is gone,” said Ayrlyn. “He also took all the silvers from the lower strongbox.”