“Once we get closer, I’ll give more orders, but, remember, we want to take the harbor and the warehouses first.”
“Yes, ser.”
Lorn looks at the scouts. “You need to head back out and see if there are any armsmen or barbarians forming up to attack-or defend.”
As the scouts ride off, Lorn still wonders at the lack of resistance. Or will the Jeranyi wait until he has almost returned to Inividra, without firelance charges, before they mount a final attack? He shrugs to himself.
Roughly a kay later, the road sweeps upward perhaps twenty cubits over the distance of half a kay and northward. At the top of the low rise, the harbor and Northern Ocean stretch out before Lorn, with the city’s buildings and dwellings set on an incline to his right, and the warehouse and harbor directly before the riders. To the left, the river widens so that it is difficult to tell exactly where the river ends and the harbor begins
Less than a kay ahead is the first section of the stone riprap of the seawall, and there two redstone pillars flank the road. The pillars are without gates or a gatehouse. Riding up the incline from the seawall are the two scouts, moving at almost a gallop.
As Lorn starts down the incline toward the approaching scouts, he can feel the wind shift from barely a flutter to a strong breeze out of the northwest, bearing the scent of salt air and the less appetizing odor of dead fish. He glances upward, but the sky remains hazy, a white film covering the clear green-blue that he had seen earlier in the morning.
The scouts ride in beside Lorn and begin to report, even without waiting for an order. “Armsmen ahead, ser. Maybe twoscore-with boards and blades.”
“How far?”
“A kay, mayhap, beyond the pillars, but afore the warehouses, it looks to be.”
“Shields? What kind?”
“Sort of look like Mirror Shields.”
Lorn glances at Rhalyt. “Send a messenger to have the captains join me here again for a few moments. We aren’t stopping.”
“Yes, ser.” The undercaptain turns and relays the message.
Lorn studies the road and the harbor. While he cannot be sure, there appear to be two vessels still tied up at the long spindly pier that juts well out into the harbor. There are carts and people jostling toward the pier, and a reddish block of figures that must be the armsmen the scouts have reported. The sub-majer keeps riding.
Emsahl and Cheryk arrive first. Then come Esfayl and Gyraet, and finally, once more, Quytyl.
They are less than a hundred cubits from the redstone pillars when Lorn begins to talk. “There’s a company or more of armsmen trying to block us from the harbor. They’ve got polished mirror shields and armor. Who has the most firelances working?”
“We do, I think,” ventures Cheryk.
“I’d like you to take the lead. Have your men aim the firelances for the mounts. Bring them down quickly. I’m going to take First Company and Second Company and get behind them if we can.” Lorn glances toward Esfayl, then Rhalyt. “You ready for that?”
“Yes, ser.”
“Fourth Company to the fore! Fourth Company to the fore!” Cheryk’s deep voice rises over the sound of hoofs and mounts and lancers murmuring.
Lorn turns to Rhalyt and Esfayl. “Once we pass the pillars, move your men to the right shoulder. When I signal, have them follow me.”
“Yes, ser.”
“Gyraet and Emsahl…you support Cheryk.”
“Yes, ser,” reply the other two captains.
Lorn eases the gelding to the right to pass through the stone pillars. To his left is a long line of rose-thorns covering a brick wall of almost five cubits. Behind the wall is a short open space, and behind that, the brick-walled backs of older buildings, few with windows, some shuttered, others boarded.
As the Mirror Lancers ride toward the harbor wharfs and warehouses ahead, along the uneven cobblestones that have replaced the dirt and clay of the roadbed beyond the pillar gates, the echoes of their mounts’ hoofs clatter into the pale midday. The high thin clouds of morning have thickened just enough more to blunt the sun’s light into a bright haze.
Ahead is a line of armsmen, mounted, and three-deep. As the scouts have reported, each wears a breastplate, armored gauntlets, and a crimson tunic. All bear shimmering mirror shields and iron blades longer than sabres, but shorter than the massive barbarian blades.
“Lancers!” calls a voice. “You let the merchants depart, and we’ll leave the city to you!”
“You surrender and let us have the merchants, and the ships, and we’ll spare you!” Lorn counters.
“Prepare to die!” calls back the voice.
Lorn turns to the senior captains. “Cheryk! Remember! Use the firelances we have left on the mounts! Bring them down!”
“Fourth Company! Prepare to discharge firelances. Aim at the mounts! At the mounts!”
As Cheryk orders his men, and Gyraet and Quytyl move up their lancers, beyond the massed armsmen, along the wharf, Lorn can see figures scurrying out of one of the warehouses. “First Company! Second Company! Follow me!” He turns the white gelding back along the first lane to the north, past the side of what appears to be a tannery, away from the barrels and the stench, and he wonders why the Jeranyi ever allowed a tannery in the city itself. Beyond the tannery, he turns the gelding westward on the empty street, half mud and half ancient cobblestones, past a large cooper’s shop, and then past a building that is but half-built.
Some five hundred cubits farther westward, almost to where the street ends in a brick wall, he finds a side lane, between a cabinet-maker’s and an unmarked structure, and rides through it. As the gelding quick-trots out of the alleylike lane, a gray-haired woman dashes to escape, but the gelding knocks her to one side. Lorn hopes she can get clear of the riders that follow.
He turns the gelding to his right, toward the first of the warehouses and the long and angled pier beyond that which he has seen so often in his chaos-glass. Figures are moving, some running toward the pier and the ship beyond. The three-masted ship at the end of the pier is red-hulled-Hamorian.
“Rhalyt-take the second squad and block the pier-don’t let anyone on it-if you can. Keep anyone from boarding that ship! First squad, stand by me!”
As Rhalyt rides up with the first squad of first company, the undercaptain starts to separate out the second squad, and Lorn quickly surveys the seawall and the harbor. A blue-hulled vessel has left the pier and, in the darker water beyond the immediate harbor, spread its sails.
Lorn waits until he sees the first part of Second Company. “Esfayl, attack the armsmen from the rear!”
“The armsmen from the rear. Second Company!” orders Esfayl, turning his mount back toward the battle.
“First Company, first squad!” Lorn rides toward the pier and toward the end warehouse where a figure in gray runs with a torch toward the building. Lorn lifts the firelance, and triggers it. The man who had been running toward the warehouse with the torch, pitches forward into the clay, and the torch drops on the cobblestones.
Lorn keeps riding toward the pier, his squad almost up to Rhalyt’s as they pass the end warehouse. Behind him, he hears shouts, the hsst of firelances, and the sound of metal on metal.
“Frig! Bastards are behind us!” yells someone.
“Quarter! Quarter!”
“No quarter! No quarter!” Lorn yells, turning and trying to send his voice back toward the pitched fight. “They’ll be sending blades to kill you in a year! No quarter!”
He hopes his words are heeded, but he rides toward the merchant or factor running beside a heavy-laden handcart filled with wooden footchests. The cart and merchant have almost reached the foot of the pier, when the bearded man looks back. The factor or trader-in a gold-trimmed crimson tunic-then begins to sprint toward the pier, leaving the handcart. Two guards scramble after him.