Nytral frowns.
“I came from a Magi’i family. I didn’t take to being kept in a granite tower playing with chaos. The Magi’i didn’t want me dabbling in trade. So it was strongly suggested that I become a lancer.”
“Ah … being a magus family, ser …?”
“When the head of the Magi’i, who sits at the right hand of the Emperor, suggests that a young man become a lancer officer, it’s generally a good idea to agree. Besides, it got me out of the towers,” Lorn points out.
Nytral glances at Lorn. “That be making more sense, ser.”
“Because Isahl is one of the places that the barbarians always raid, and we lose a lot of lancers and officers here?”
“They tell you that, ser?”
“No.” Lorn laughs cheerfully. “They sent me here.”
Nytral shivers and looks away.
Lorn shrugs. Best that Nytral knows Lorn’s background early on, and understands that Lorn doesn’t intend for it to bother him, or adversely affect him. He turns and studies the riders behind him again. Then he turns his mount and rides back along the column, looking at each lancer as he passes.
Only a handful meet his amber eyes.
Near the end of the column, where the wagons rumble along, he turns the mare again, and lets her keep pace so that he rides beside the lead teamster.
“How are the wagons going?” he calls.
“Be fine, ser,” answers the gray-bearded lancer with the crossed green sheaves on his sleeves, his right hand on the leather leads for the four-horse team. “A mite heavier than I’d like, but the roads stay dry, for another day, and all be well.”
Lorn nods, raises his hand, and urges the mare back toward the front of the column, riding almost on the shoulder of the road and letting her move just slightly faster than the lancers, so that he can study each as he rides past, without seeming to do so.
When he reaches the front of the column, the road has begun to curve between yet another set of hills, and Lorn can see that it slopes gently upward at an angle along a ridge that extends a kay or more both east and west.
“Have to climb this one, ser.”
Lorn nods as he eases the mare closer to the squad leader’s mount.
“Sent out another pair of scouts,” Nytral says quietly. “Been a few attacks here,’cause you can’t see the road.”
Lorn follows Nytral’s gesture. A pair of scouts has reined up at the ridge crest, where they pause before one turns his mount and rides down the road at a quick trot.
“Trouble …” mumbles Nytral. “Knew it!”
The scout has barely reined up before the words of his report tumble out. “Barbarians, ser. On the rise a kay northeast of the top there.”
Lorn glances past the scout at the half-kay of road that remainsbefore the first of the column reaches the crest. “How fast are they moving?”
“They’re not riding, ser. They’re waiting.”
“A kay away and they’d have to ride down and then up?” asks Nytral.
“Yes, ser.”
“We’d be better to get to the top,” suggests the squad leader.
“Order it,” Lorn says.
“Quick trot! Quick trot!”
Lorn keeps the mare abreast of Nytral, letting the squad leader set the pace as the column hurries toward the ridge top, raising heavy dust that the teamsters and the trailing riders will have to breathe. After reining in the mare at the crest of the hill, beside Nytral and the two scouts, Lorn looks out, squinting against the sun that barely warms the mid-afternoon.
“Barbarians …” Nytral says. “Don’t look like raiders, but you can’t ever tell, crazy as they are.”
The score of mounted figures on the opposite hilltop are less than a kay away. The riders are bearded, with large blades in shoulder harnesses. Several have shields fastened somehow to their saddle in front of their left knees, and some have shields strapped over the bags behind their saddles.
“They won’t attack … not now,” Lorn observes.
Nytral raised his eyebrows. “With them … you never know.”
“Do they use those shields?”
“Yes, ser.” Nytral looks toward the barbarians. “They could have those out in a moment.”
“Let’s just wait and see if they do.”
Nytral turns his mount. “Form up-eight abreast. Lances ready! Four abreast. Lances ready!”
Lorn watches the barbarians as Nytral chevies the raw lancers into formation. Abruptly, the barbarians turn their mounts and begin to ride back northward along the ridge line.
“They won’t do that in the spring,” Nytral prophesies ashe turns his mount and eased up beside Lorn. “And they’ll have more.”
Lorn has few doubts about that.
“We should wait, ser. Make sure they’re well along.”
“Good idea. That will let the wagons catch up, too.”
“Wagons … wish the firewagons and the paved roads came out this far,” murmurs the squad leader. “We’d get more supplies faster.”
Lorn laughs. “No, we wouldn’t. They’d just move us farther north, then.”
“Probably right about that.” Nytral shakes his head, his eyes still on the riders headed northward.
After a moment, Lorn says, “Oh … Nytral. There’s a lancer back there, about the third back on the left. Tall fellow, but he’s swaying in the saddle. Might be sick … or something worse.”
Nytral looks at Lorn. “That be Beryt. Used to be a squad leader. He likes the malt too much, ser.”
“But he fights well out where there isn’t any ale or brew?”
Nytral smiles. “Yes, ser. One of the best.”
Lorn nods, then readjusts the white garrison cap, still watching the barbarians as they dwindle from sight.
XXII
THE ROAD CLIMBS over a low rise between two hills, running westward. From the saddle of the white mare, Lorn can see a long and shallow valley ahead, one with more than a handful of Cyadoran-style brick dwellings dotting the eastern end of the valley, all with thin plumes of smoke rising through the cold air toward the cloudless green-blue sky overhead. The only trees are the infrequent and scraggly scrub cedars.
“There you are, ser,” said Nytral. “Isahl’s at the far west end. Be a bit afore we can see the outpost.”
“We haven’t seen that many farms until now,” Lorn says, hoping Nytral will offer more information or opinion.
“Ha! Wouldn’t see any here, except that they’re all welcome in the walls if the raiders did come. They won’t though. Not while Sub-Majer Brevyl’s here.”
“How many lancers are assigned here?”
“Don’t tell me that, ser, not in figures, but we got five companies, and that’s ten squads. When we’re all lined up in formation-happens once in a while-I counted near-on tenscore, and that didn’t take in the cooks and such.”
“That should allow plenty of patrols.”
“Not that many. Figure you need a company for a recon patrol; and a company to deal with a small raider band, and near-on everyone if all the barbarians in a tribe join a raid.”
“Does that happen often?” Lorn leans forward and pats the mare on the neck.
“A full-tribe raid? Nah … not more than once every few years, if that. Once three summers afore last, but it was dry in the north. Figure they were hungry … or something.”
“The raids, have they been happening for years? Or just in recent times?”
“Long time. Once heard Commander Thiataphi say he’d been an undercaptain out here. You tell me how many years that is, ser.” Nytral laughs.
“More than a few.” About fifty cubits back from the road, on both sides, Lorn notes the even irrigation ditches, bricklined, and the miniature dams and sluice gates designed to channel the water to the fields, though the ditches are empty under the winter sun. “The barbarians try to tear the irrigation systems?”
“No. Mostly, they’re after women and weapons, and horses-and whatever lancers they can kill while they’re at it.” Nytral lapses into silence.
Lorn looks northward as they pass a homestead, one with a house that could have been dropped into the outskirts of Cyad or Syadtar, with its green ceramic privacy screen before the front door, privacy hedges in the rear of the dwelling, and green shutters. The two outbuildings are of brick, but larger than those Lorn has seen elsewhere in Cyador. Theone barn is nearly a hundred cubits long and twenty high-at the top of its tiled roof.