XXIII
The van of the Mirror Lancers rode four abreast, heading east on the great North Highway, and yet there was room for a steamwagon beside them. The white stones of the roadbed, which shimmered at a distance, would have displayed slight pits and hairline cracks if examined too closely.
Behind the van came the full Second of the lancers, then the Fourth, and then the Sixth. Even four abreast, the column of horse stretched almost a full kay.
Then came the steamwagons, only half a score, for all their individual bulk and power, their iron-tired wheels rumbling, engines puffing, brass rods and pistons moving and glittering under the white-gold sun. Each wagon pulled two long trailers laden with supplies and covered with white tarpaulins.
Behind the wagons rode the Eighth Mirror Lancers, and then the Tenth, and behind them streamed the Shield Foot, followed, a half kay farther back, by the Shining Foot. All in all, the assemblage of horses, wagons, and foot extended more than three kays along the North Highway.
In the first third of the column, immediately before the steam wagons, rode Majer Piataphi, with two captains flanking him. All wore the white and green of the lancers, and their saddles were of hard-finished white leather.
“The Shining Foot cannot walk as fast as the lancers or the wagons,” observed the balding captain to Piataphi’s right. “We are slowed to their pace.”
“I doubt the barbarians will note, Captain,” responded the majer. “They are convinced it will be seasons before we act.”
“It will take more than an eight-day to reach Syadtar, even with the steamwagons, and another eight-day through the Grass Hills to the mines,” pointed out the other captain.
“From the screeing mirrors, we can tell that the barbarians have few armsmen left from their petty wars, and fewer coins. There are no horse moving, no foot being gathered, not even their ragtag levies. We will be at the mines before they can gather forces.” Piataphi coughed as the wind swirled ashes and cinders from the steamwagons around him. “Taking the mines will be harder than holding them. These barbarians will sneak through the trees and the hills, and loose their jagged-edged arrows and be gone before you know they are there. Screeing glasses are not much good for small bodies of fighters.”
“Is not that why the Lord Protector of Cyador told us to clear the area around the mines?” asked the balding captain.
“Yes, Miatorphi.” Piataphi lowered his voice. “We still have to maintain that area. It is one thing to destroy or drive out everyone; it is another to hold it-as his great-grandsire found out. That is why we must strike quickly and annihilate everyone.” He coughed again as the following wind swirled down more smoke. “Let us ride up with the van until the wind changes.”
He guided his mount to the clear left side of the white stone high-way, then urged it to carry him ahead of the exhaust gases from the mighty wagons.
XXIV
The mare was breathing heavily as she carried Nylan out of the narrow space in the rocky defile where the road finally leveled and started back down once more.
Nylan glanced ahead, where the orange white sun had just dropped below the Westhorns, and where the shadows cast by the peaks to the west had cloaked the road and the wooded valley ahead in gloom. The smith shifted his weight in the saddle and, as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, rubbed his forehead in relief from the glare he had been facing for what had seemed so long.
“It’s hard riding into the sunset,” he said, half over his shoulder to Ayrlyn, whose chestnut followed.
“Gaaa-dah!” answered Weryl, windmilling his arms.
“By this time of day, any riding is hard,” Ayrlyn snorted. “Even your son thinks so.”
“He has sense. Tell me again why doing this is a good idea.”
“Because all the other ideas are worse,” suggested the flame-haired healer.
“That has some merit, but not the sort of thing you read about or see on trideo screens.”
“We saw our last trideo screens a long time ago,” she pointed out, “but you’re right. Fictional characters always have one good choice. They just have to find it.”
“And us?”
“The least of terrible choices, and sometimes all choices are bad.”
The smith straightened his legs, easing himself up in the saddle, prompting another set of arm-windmills by Weryl. Ahead appeared two crude long walls, forming a half-roofed triangle that faced a stone-ringed firepit. To the left was an overgrown path-leading presumably through the trees to the stream. Nylan could smell the dampness from the marshy flats beyond the structure, borne on the cooling light wind out of the west.
“That looks like a rough sort of way station,” Nylan said.
“It is,” said Ayrlyn. “We used it once, I think. There are lots of mosquitoes on the path to the stream. I remember that.”
“Should we go on?”
“There’s not much else. The road gets rocky and narrow beyond the valley, and winds away from the stream.”
“Great. I hate mosquitoes.”
“It’s quiet,” said Ayrlyn, as they rode toward the triangular shelter.
Nylan strained his ears, in between Weryl’s interruptions, but could hear nothing, not even the normal whirrs and insect chirps. His eyes went to the road, and he frowned, then pointed. “Hoof prints, there.”
“They’re more recent,” Ayrlyn said, standing in her stirrups and scanning the area behind the shelter.
The smith’s eyes flicked to the structure, but no one lurked in the back, and the flat area around the fire seemed untouched in the growing dimness. He studied the trees again, but the thick foliage revealed nothing.
Twirrrppp…twirrrppp…
Nylan didn’t recognize the annoyingly cheerful bird call, and only saw a flash of yellow-banded black wings. “What’s that bird?” He felt there was something about it he should remember.
“They’re noisy.” Ayrlyn frowned as though she were trying to recall something as well.
The yellow and black bird perched on a shrub on the other side of the rock-circled firesite, its head cocked in a perky attitude. Twirrrppp…twirrrppp…
Nylan started to extend his senses beyond what his eyes could see when he heard the faintest of clinks, and his hand reached for the blade in the shoulder harness, realizing all too late that he should have drawn the blade first. The bird was a traitor bird!
“Daaa-dah!” Both Weryl’s chubby hands grasped at his arm.
“No.” Nylan eased his hand free and grasped the blade. “No!”
Whhsstt! One arrow hissed past his shoulder, and he lurched forward, before he stopped, the reflex halted by Weryl’s strangled yell and bulk in the carrypak.
A line of fire creased Nylan’s left shoulder, and he spurred the mare in toward the shelter, hoping that he could use the log walls as a barrier to the archer, and knowing that he was too close to flee without becoming an even better target.
Hoofs thundered out of the woods toward the two angels. Awkwardly, Nylan struggled to get his blade free, hampered by Weryl’s very presence and the boy’s anger at being nearly squashed-and two very active and windmilling arms. He didn’t look at Ayrlyn, having his hands full in trying to turn the mare and raise his own blade.
Five riders burst up the path, led by a tall and bearded man on a roan, who wore brown leathers and swung a hand-and-a-half blade like the crowbar it resembled toward Nylan’s head with a yell. “Haaaiii!”
All too conscious of Weryl on his chest, Nylan somehow parried the first brigand’s wild cut, half-ducking as the man rode past and toward Ayrlyn. He barely managed to get the blade back up before the second and third riders were on him.
The second rider, in gray, missed with a slash, and the third, in tattered brown leathers, lifted a rusty blade with a black-toothed smile.
Desperately, Nylan threw his first blade, as he had learned through much trial over the past two years. Then, trying to yank the mare away from the two with one hand, he struggled with Weryl, the mare, and his unsteady seat in an effort to clear the second shortsword from the waist scabbard. The mare skittered sideways.