“Will we have time, ser?” questions Yusaet.
“We’ll have time, because Third Company will be on the hillside, waiting for the raiders after we ride by.” Or so Lorn hopes.
He motions to the trail that winds up the slope and turns the bay gelding toward it.
“Follow the majer!” Quytyl orders.
“Up the trail, after the officers!”
As Lorn leads the Fifth Company, he cannot help but wonder if he will ever survive to be a full majer, but he pushes the thought away, glancing back to his left to watch as Emsahl moves his lancers along the road to set up the ambush.
The gelding steps sideways, jolting Lorn, and he is forced to concentrate on the goat path that he has chosen. While he thinks they are headed where his maps show they can mount a flying attack, screeing from a distance and riding over rough hillsides are not the same thing. Not at all.
The company winds its way up along the trail taken by the scout, and Lorn worries about the slow progress through the creosote bushes. When they near the ridgeline, and the first scattered scrub oaks, he listens, and tries to use his chaos-senses to detect any thing before them, but the ridge area remains quiet.
The scrub oaks-some of their leaves red and ready to drop, the rest showing signs of winter-gray-cover the top of the ridge, beginning near the top of the goat path that the lancers follow. Once they are on the side, Lorn leads the company along the ridgeline until he finds the streambed he has seen in the glass, and they follow that dry stream downhill another kay.
The scrub oaks are thinning, and the road is in sight-no more than half a kay away across the browning grass-but not the raiders. Despite a trip that has seemed interminably long to Lorn, Fifth Company appears to have reached the end of the valley before the raiders.
Lorn holds up his arm and reins up where they remain slightly higher than the narrow trail that is perhaps a half a kay downhill. The lancers are shielded by the scrub oaks, so much so that only the portion of the road leading south and to Lorn’s left is visible. Slowly, the lancers halt.
The sub-majer turns to Quytyl. “Have them re-form two-abreast. We’ll wait until the barbarians have ridden just past us.” He pauses, then adds, “And tell the men to be quiet.”
Quytyl eases his mount back and offers orders in a low voice. Shortly, he returns, reining up beside Lorn. Slowly, the murmurs die away, and the only sounds are those of the breeze ruffling drying leaves on the oaks and whispering through the knee-high grass around the low trees. An occasional whuffing comes from one mount or another.
The breeze picks up, and then dies away, and still the lancers wait.
Then there is the faintest of sounds, and Lorn watches as two scouts-or what pass for such-ride past the scrub oaks, continuing southwest without looking back, and starting up the slope toward the low pass beyond which are stationed Emsahl and his Third Company.
The lancers wait once more, until the muffled sound of hoofs and voices rises over the sounds of the light wind, and the few insect and bird calls.
As Lorn’s scout had said, the barbarians ride two-abreast, and their voices are loud in the midday air.
Quytyl touches Lorn’s arm.
Lorn shakes his head and murmurs, “Not quite yet.” He wants the barbarians far enough ahead so that his lancers can rake the column with firelances, but not so far that they run the risk of being cut off.
Then he raises his arm, and drops it, hissing, “Now!”
As he has instructed, and not totally expected, the lancers begin to ride past the scrub oaks, and down the slope, picking up speed. He hears a horse scream, and fears he has already lost a man, but even so, the barbarians do not turn, not until Lorn is within two hundred cubits, and the surprise stretched across their bearded faces holds for yet another fifty cubits.
Lorn aims the firelance, not with sight, but with chaos.
Hssst! Hst! Hsst! Two of the three bursts strike raiders, and one tumbles from his saddle immediately.
Lorn tries again. Hsst! Hst!
Because he has to turn the gelding to stay on the road, and to avoid the rougher ground on the far side, he is not certain about the results, as his mount carries him past the head of the column. Behind him, he can hear other firelance bursts, and he risks a quick glance over his shoulder once he has the gelding running on the road.
So far as he can see, most all his men are still riding, and the barbarians are riding after them, if not so quickly as Lorn would like.
“Keep them moving!” he snaps at Quytyl.
“Keep moving!”
With the dust rising everywhere and the hissing snaps of firelances dying away, Lorn has no idea how successful his hit-and-run attack has been, beyond the three or four raiders he knows he personally wounded or killed. He glances back over his shoulder once more, then slows the gelding as it is clear, despite the settling dust, that there is a growing separation between the barbarians and the lancers.
Rather than stop just beyond the rise in the road, as he had planned, Lorn does not rein up until he is several hundred cubits beyond, nearly a third of a kay.
“Re-form on me! Re-form-five-abreast.”
“Re-form on the majer!” Quytyl’s voice joins Lorn’s.
With the jostling and confusion, Lorn fears that the five-abreast rank will not be in place when the barbarians arrive. Again, Lorn’s worries are unfounded, for the lancers are formed, and even the mounts’ breathing has settled down before he sees even the dust on the road from the approaching riders.
The barbarians do reach the crest of the hill.
“Discharge at will!” commands Emsahl, his voice drifting to Lorn on the light breeze. “Discharge at will.”
Firelance bolts hsst from the right, down into the blade-wielding warriors, but the raiders have re-formed into a wall across and beside the road more like eight-abreast-and that will clearly reduce the impact of the Third Company’s firelance crossfire.
“Charge!” Lorn raises his firelance, then lowers it, urging the big white gelding forward. He forces himself to wait on discharging his own firelance until he is within fifty cubits of the raiders, some of whom have turned eastward and are starting to charge uphill.
Hsst! Hssst!
Then Lorn is far too close to use the lance, and he struggles with the sabre even as he uses the lance more like a shield-a most unwieldy one.
In time, he finds that he has surged through the barbarians, somehow, and he wheels the gelding, then stops. Several raiders, their backs to him, are surging toward a lone lancer, whose lance has been wrenched free.
Lorn lifts his own firelance. Hsst! Hsst! Hsst!
Barely has he released the third bolt when a pair of raiders with their barlike blades are riding down on him.
Hhstt! Without thinking, Lorn throws a Magi’i firebolt at the first, and swings up his Brystan sabre to parry/slide the big blade of the other away.
Dust, blades on blades, and scattered firelance bolts fill the afternoon, and Lorn circles the field, picking off raider after raider, trying to avoid getting involved in direct group melees.
At some point, there are no more raiders-except for a score or more who have scattered and ride downhill and northward, back toward Jerans.
Lorn sits on the gelding. He has been cut somewhere on his scalp-blood runs down his cheek. His arms ache, and there is blood splattered everywhere on his uniform. He looks dumbly around.