“Make it quick!” bellowed Tonsar. “Cuplek! You get Fienc’s body on his mount.”
“Me?”
“You! Unless you want me and the angels to help you join Fienc.”
“Yes, ser.”
“Siplor-you and Meresat get the mount detail. We can always use more mounts, one way or another.”
Nylan turned his mare back to the place where he’d thrown his first blade, sheathing the second in the shoulder harness.
An armsman, already looting the corpse, looked up, then quickly extracted the dark gray blade. “Yours, ser?” Nesru extended it sheepishly, hilt first. “You get his purse…”
“You can keep it.” Nylan took the blade and wiped it on the cloth tied to his saddle, then sheathed it and massaged his forehead. The one man he’d killed had been enough.
Then he eased the mare toward the burly subofficer who had reined up on the center of the road. Ayrlyn was guiding her squad from the east toward the rest of the group.
“We got them all,” she said, just loudly enough for her voice to carry. Dark blotches stained her vest.
Nylan looked closely at the stains.
“Not mine. He got closer than I’d like. Those damned shields are distracting.”
“I see.” He raised his eyebrows.
“I’m not as good at throwing blades as you are. That means they get closer.”
“The shields give me trouble. That was why I threw the blade. I only do that when I’m in real trouble,” Nylan confessed, turning his mount and nodding to Tonsar.
“We’re always in real trouble…anymore,” she murmured.
With that, he had to agree.
“Form up!” Tonsar ordered.
For a time they rode quietly through the mid-afternoon, the road dust muffling the clopping of hoofs, but sifting through every opening in Nylan’s garments, or so it seemed. He tried not to scratch too much, and concentrated on listening to the low comments that drifted forward from the squads behind them.
“How did the angels know they were there?”
“…we didn’t have any scouts…”
“…you want to be a scout? White demons don’t take prisoners…”
“…don’t care how they do it…”
Nylan glanced at Ayrlyn. Despite the furrowed brow that indicated the same kind of splitting headache he suffered, he could see a glint in her eyes.
“You’re getting better at sensing people,” he said quietly.
“The weather’s easier.” She nodded. “I can almost ride the winds sometimes.”
Nylan shook his head. “How you do that…”
“To each her own-or in your case, his own. You can feel the grain of those metals you forge, and they feel like opaque blackness to me.”
Nylan took a square of worn gray cloth from his belt and blotted away sweat and mud from his forehead and cheeks, then replaced it, and shifted his weight in the saddle. The mare whickered, but did not increase her measured pace northward.
Nylan looked back southward.
“There’s no one close,” Ayrlyn confirmed. “They won’t keep letting us do this, you know.”
“The Cyadorans?”
“We’ve been getting most of their smaller parties. Life may be cheap here in Candar, but even the Cyadorans are going to stop traveling or scouting in small groups.” The healer stood in her stirrups and massaged one hip. “Won’t ever get used to this.”
“You already are.”
“Not really.”
“You think they’ll start attacking in force?” the smith asked. “Just in force.”
“That’s what I’d do. I’d have started sooner.” Ayrlyn closed her eyes for a long moment, and Nylan could almost feel the relief across the few cubits that separated their mounts.
“Why don’t they use white wizards?”
“Maybe there aren’t too many.”
“Even mighty Cyador has but few of the white mages,” confirmed Tonsar. “They do not wish to send them beyond the white walls. That is what my sister’s man said, and he once guarded the great Hissl.”
“Could it be that there are limits to white wizardry?” Nylan’s tone was mocking.
“Why not? There are limits to everything else.”
Nylan nodded. But what were the limits to wizardry, or magery, or whatever it was called, whether white or black? He looked at the dusty road northward, leading back to Kula…and Weryl.
LXX
Yesterday, you brought back ten mounts and left ten dead scouts. Three days ago, we slaughtered twenty. For nearly three eight-days, we have bled them, yet they have not left Lornth.” Fornal raised his eyebrows as his eyes went from Lewa to Huruc, and then to Nylan and Ayrlyn.
The candle stub behind the glass mantle flickered. Lewa cupped an empty mug between his hands, his eyes darting from the regent to the angels and back to the regent.
“If we had attacked them three eight-days ago,” Nylan answered slowly, “you would have few armsmen left, and the Cyadorans would be marching toward Clynya. If they didn’t hold it already.”
Fornal looked at the mug. “Hot…and sour, like your truths.” He set it on the rickety table, which wobbled. The shadows on the dingy wall wobbled as well. “So we have preserved Lornth-for now. The Cyadorans will do something. What think you, angels?”
“Sooner or later, they’ll send a big force after us,” Nylan predicted. “They’ll have to.” The wine in his mug was almost untouched. One sip of near-vinegar had been enough, even if it deadened the smell of sweat and blood.
Huruc took a quick and small sip, his eyes never leaving Nylan’s face.
“I would have acted. You would have, I think, yet they have not. What do you judge they will do, and when?” Fornal took another sip from the mug, made another face, and set it down.
“If you were the…lord of the Cyadoran forces, how would you explain how you keep losing men and mounts to a bunch of barbarians?” asked Ayrlyn. “They think we’re barbarians-that’s their attitude-and they have to do something.”
“You think so?” asked Huruc.
“What did they do to the people in Kula?” Ayrlyn raised her eyebrows, her hair glinting in the light from the single candle, despite the soot on the chipped glass mantle.
“Killed them.”
“They mutilated them,” added Nylan. “Even the children. Remember the lord of Cyador’s response to your scrolls?”
“There is that,” mused Fornal.
“When they send out large parties, we’ve managed to warn the locals, and we don’t attack. So they don’t get much. We’ve been pretty successful picking off their scouts and smaller forage parties. How would you feel?” pursued Ayrlyn.
“I would be angry,” admitted the coregent. “You did the warning, though. Did the locals heed you?”
“They said it wasn’t honorable,” admitted Ayrlyn, “but as soon as we left, so did they.”
“Peasants…they talk…” Fornal took another swig of the wine, followed by another face. “You ask questions, angel. Why do you not say what you mean?”
“Would you keep sending out smaller groups of lancers and armsmen if you had more armsmen than your enemy?”
Fornal frowned, and Nylan wanted to grin. Ayrlyn, without making a direct point of it, was refusing to be intimidated by the big young noble.
“Why…” Fornal nodded. “I see your point. What would you have me do?”
“Be ready to move,” Nylan said, “to another base. They can’t keep sending out their entire army. If they try it again, then perhaps-I may have some ideas-we can create some damage at the mines while they’re trying to sweep the countryside.”
“Some holders would call that a retreat, at least behind my back,” Fornal pointed out.
“Moving is not retreating. There is a difference. We take another position and keep fighting.”
“I will think about how I must report this so that our actions are not mistaken.” The black-bearded regent stood and stretched. “Thinking and hot wine-enough to spoil anything for an armsman.” He offered a quick grin before he strolled out of the dwelling’s main room and into the warm night.