“Companies halt!” The orders echo back down the long column while Lorn rides forward another fifty cubits or so to wait for the scouts.
Emsahl rides up to join him, followed by the other officers, one by one, coming as they do from farther back in the column. Gyraet, bringing up the rear with Sixth Company, is the last to rein in his mount with the others, only moments before the two scouts arrive.
“Go ahead and report,” Lorn says.
“Yes, ser,” offers the square-bearded and older lancer scout. “We took the back side of the hills, ser, like you ordered, and looked down. There be no one even looking at the roads. Men in the fields are plowing, and others be doing ditchwork and such.”
“How many people?”
“Twentyscore, I’d judge, from the dwellings, but that be including women and children.”
“Probably eightscore men of all ages,” Lorn muses aloud. “The ditchwork is along the river?”
“Yes, ser.”
“The far side?”
The younger scout nods. “Mayhap a halfscore there, could be a few more.”
“Are there many herders or others farther out in the fields?”
“Could be some. Didn’t see any, ser.”
“What about flocks or herds?”
“None more ’n kay from the town, then, ser.”
“Thank you. If you’d stand down for a few moments…” As the scouts move away, Lorn dismounts, almost slipping on the damp clay, and waits for the others to do likewise, and for the scouts and two other lancers to hold their mounts. Then he unrolls the map and hands one side to Rhalyt to hold while he points out the landmarks and begins to explain. “Here’s the town. The road comes in here. There are the ditches, and here’s the center of the town. Rhalyt-your company crosses the stream at the ford here, and heads east. Your task is to take out all the men working on the ditch. Use sabres or short bursts, and make it quick. Then come back down the road to the north of the ditches. You can kill any man old enough to bear a blade, but don’t touch the women or the children.”
“Yes, ser.”
“We’ll also send one company around the town to the road that leads northwest. That company will be Second Company.” Lorn looks at the young captain Esfayl. “Your task is to make sure no one rides out of the town-no one. We don’t want word being spread that we’re here-at least not if we can help it. You ride west on this side of the river-there’s a lane ahead, I think, and then cross the stream and hold the road west out of the town.”
“Yes, ser.”
Lorn looks at Gyraet. “Captain-you’ll stay with the main body until we reach the crossroads here on the other side of the ford. Then you take the lane out this way, to the north, and sweep through that area.”
“Yes, ser.”
Lorn looks around the officers. “Our tasks are simple. We want to kill any of the barbarians who might ride against us, but no women unless they take up arms. Once we’ve removed anyone who can raise a blade and we hold the town, we want to take all the blades, and all the mounts, and we’ll need supplies to get to the next town and mounts to carry them.”
“All the mounts, ser?” asks Esfayl.
“If they have no mounts, they can’t ride after us or send word somewhere else quickly after we leave.”
Cheryk nods, and he and Emsahl exchange glances.
“It sounds simple, and something will probably go wrong,” Lorn says, “but keep in mind that you want to make sure that this town won’t be able to attack Cyador for a good long time. This is only the first town, not the last…so have your men use sabres when they can-but only when they can safely.” Lorn rolls up the map. “Do you have any questions?”
Glances flick back and forth between the officers.
“Guess I’ll ask, ser,” offers Cheryk. “You’re planning a campaign, ser, not just a few raids?”
“If we can do it,” Lorn admits. “If things don’t work, then we change. The more towns and blades and mounts we can take out, though, the fewer barbarians you’ll face this year, maybe for a few years.”
Cheryk nods. “Best we take as many as we can, losing as few as we can.”
When no one else volunteers a question, Lorn steps to the side and slips the map into the long pouch behind his saddle. “Let’s form up. We’ll try a four-abreast front once we get to the other side of the stream.”
“Yes, ser.”
Lorn swings back into the gelding’s saddle, then waits for the officers to rejoin their companies and pass the orders. His eyes keep looking down the empty road, then back along the column that holds six companies.
“Ser?” Emsahl’s voice is polite. “Third Company’s ready.”
“Thank you. We’d better wait a few more moments.”
Lorn turns the gelding and stands in the stirrups. He watches as Gyraet rides out to the shoulder of the road and lifts his arm. “They’re ready in the rear. Column forward!”
The orders ripple back, and, as the Mirror Lancers ride to the northwest, Lorn wonders once more about what he plans. He is no better, and perhaps worse than the barbarians, for although they slaughter innocents, they were not born in Cyad.
The Cyadoran forces ride a kay or so farther, before the road swings more northward and toward the stream, but the road remains empty.
Esfayl lifts a hand in salute as his Second Company passes Lorn, and turns due west on the lane or animal track that parallels the stream on the south side. Lorn returns the salute.
“No one ahead, ser,” reports the scout who has pulled his mount around and beside the sub-majer.
“Still?”
“No, ser.”
The road curves out from behind the hills and slopes down for a hundred cubits, before twisting back around a hillock with trees spaced across it, clearly an orchard of some sort, although the limbs are near empty except for scattered and furled gray winter-leaves. As the column nears the orchard, a figure-a lanky youth in a matted sheepskin jacket-stares from behind a tree where he has been emptying a sweetsap bucket. After a moment of silence, his mouth open, his eyes taking in the lancers in their winter jackets and uniforms, he runs, yelling, around the hillside toward the small hut partway around its base, perhaps three hundred cubits to the west. Whitish smoke rises from the chimney of the hut. As he runs, the youth yells, “Demons! White demons!”
“Let him go,” Lorn says. “We need to get across the stream.” He urges the gelding into a fast walk, aware as he speaks of a sweet odor in the air. Something from boiling down the sweetsap?
He concentrates on the road, as it slopes downhill and curves back to the ford. There, the brownish water is almost fifty cubits wide, and runs swiftly, nearly knee-deep on the mounts, as the lancers cross in pairs. The water is higher than normal, running through leafless bushes on both sides. The slope on the north side bears several sets of ruts and two or three sets of hoofprints, not even recent.
The gelding sidesteps and whuffs at the top of the rise before the road resumes, and Lorn glances around, but the crossroads is empty. Lorn leads the column to the left, westward toward the town.
The first dwelling west of the crossroads and toward the center of the small town is a single-story hovel on the left side of the road, less than twenty cubits back from the rutted track. It has mud-brick walls and a thatched roof that is dark with age. A bearded man, about Lorn’s age, peers from the window as if he cannot believe what he sees.
Hsst! Lorn’s single firebolt goes through the man’s neck, and there is a scream from within the house.
“Frig!”
“Majer means to wipe ’em out…”
“…what they been doing to our folk for years…”
Lorn presses his lips together. He glances over his shoulder, but Gyraet and his Sixth Company have already veered off from the main body and quick-trot northward on the narrow farm lane. The dust farther east and behind the column shows that Rhalyt’s First Company is moving east toward the ditchworkers.