L. Modesitt - Mage-Guard of Hamor

He hadn't hit the man that hard, had he? Or had the archer been influenced by chaos? With so much death around, Rahl wasn't all that certain. What was certain was that there were no other rebels in the small dwelling, and he hurried out and remounted.

After that, the pattern in the next three cots was exactly the same, and none of the archers even tried to surrender, but threw themselves at Rahl and the Imperial troopers. All the rebels died.

As he rode up to the next cot, Rahl could sense a difference. There had not been quite so many arrows, and he had the feeling that there might be others in the cot beside rebels. He dismounted, careful to hold his shields firm.

Rahl held his truncheon ready as the trooper wedged the pry bar in place, then heaved, once… twice… and on the third attempt the door broke away from the hinges. Before the trooper had barely stepped back from the door, it sagged to one side, then fell back into the dwelling with a dull thud.

One of the rebel archers stood there. He held a knife to the neck of a girl, not quite a young woman. "You come any closer, and I'll kill her."

Rahl could feel the girl's terror, and the look in her eyes reminded him of Jienela. He hesitated.

"I mean it."

"Why do you want to hurt an innocent girl?" asked Rahl, keeping his voice calm.

The rebel did not look at Rahl, but at the trooper with the pry bar. "You're killing everyone else. I just want out of here."

"Let her go, and you won't be hurt," Rahl said. The rebel might later suffer, but not now, not with the girl's life at stake.

Abruptly, the rebel turned toward Rahl. His eyes widened. "No! Not one of you!" The knife slashed, biting deeply into the girl's neck, so deeply that crimson spurted everywhere. Then the archer flung the girl at the trooper with the pry bar and darted away from Rahl.

Rahl didn't even think, leaping after the rebel and striking with the long truncheon, reinforced with order and fury. The man died instantly, his skull crushed. For a long moment, Rahl just looked at his body, then turned back toward the girl. She was dead.

He could feel his eyes burning. Then he swallowed. "We need to check the cot." He stepped inside. Immediately, he could feel death. An older woman lay, half-naked, on a pallet. She might have been pretty once, but her throat had been slashed. Another archer lay dead beside her.

Rahl swallowed, then turned and stepped out into the somewhat cleaner air outside, standing there silently. After a moment, he wiped the truncheon on the tunic of the man he'd killed. "Let's root out the rest of them."

He remounted the gelding without another word and waited for the squad to re-form, then rode toward the next cot. The door was open, and there were tracks in the dust.

Rahl could see a mere handful of men in maroon hurrying toward a shed. In moments, they had recovered their mounts and were galloping southward.

"They saw what happened," suggested Dhosyn.

"They must have seen some of what we did before," Rahl said.

"Yes, ser, but it was the way you crushed the last one that broke them. You flattened the back of his head like a rotten gourd."

He had? Rahl frowned. He could have, given how angry he'd been.

After a time, he took a long and deep breath. "We might as well see what lies ahead." He turned the gelding back to the paved road.

There was no sign of any more rebels in the small dwellings along the road leading into Nubyat. The streets were deserted, and all was so quiet that the echoes of hoofs on stone sounded more like quick hammerblows. The dwellings were all shuttered, and Rahl sensed many were empty.

A movement to his right caught his eye, and he turned in the saddle. He found himself watching a scruffy black-and-brown hound easing into an alleyway.

Slowly, the squads of Third Company rode the main side streets, coming back to the main avenue that the highway had become, all reporting no sign of rebels… or much of anything else. Before long, Rahl rode into a square, certainly a major square, because it had a central plaza and a pedestal bearing the statue of one of the emperors of Hamor. Rahl smiled. The statue was old, but the face could have been that of Emperor Mythalt.

"We'll wait here for the other companies to close up some."

"Yes, ser."

Rahl looked around the square, much like any other square in Hamor, with an expansive inn on one side, a smaller across from it, and shops set around the open area. The main avenue entered on the northern side, but two equally wide avenues branched out on the far side, one angling northwest, most likely toward the harbor, and the other continuing southward.

By midafternoon, Rahl and Third Company had reached the southern end of Nubyat, but instead of more olive orchards, there was an expanse of rough and grassy ground, through which the pavement ran, arcing back uphill to the west and up the side of the ridge-like promontory. The side of the road facing him was a sheer cliff, and it had clearly been smoothed with chaos-fire years if not centuries before, for it was so smooth that no one could have climbed it. Some hundred cubits uphill, at the point where the cliff-like side of the road was almost thirty cubits above the ground below, was a barricade across the road.

"Hold up," Rahl told Dhosyn.

"First squad, halt!"

Rahl studied the stone-and-timber barricade across the wide, paved road leading up to heights and the Administrator's Residence and the walled High Command compound. He could see yet another barricade set in place a good half kay farther up the road from the first. Then he looked southward. Where the ridge turned inland, several kays away, it narrowed. Even from that distance, he could make out the earthworks across the narrowest point of the slope up from the valley. While he could not see the far side, another sheer cliff comprised the edge closest to him. That suggested that there were but two approaches to the rebel stronghold. It also suggested why Golyat had not attempted to defend the city proper all that strongly.

At that moment, a hail of arrows lofted from behind the head-high stones of the barricade, arcing skyward, then angling back down toward Rahl and first squad.

Rahl extended and angled his order shields, and the arrows clattered onto the stone pavement.

Then another flight soared toward the squad.

"To the rear, ride!" Rahl ordered. He was tired, and there was no sense trying to block arrows. They could wait for the rest of Second Army back out of arrow range.

Rahl could still see the terror in the girl's eyes. He had the feeling he might always.

In the early morning light of twoday, under a green-blue sky tinted with a light haze, Rahl and Drakeyt once more studied the barricades blocking the road up to the Administrator's Residence. Neither officer was mounted, given their orders, nor was Third Company, but all the lancers held the reins to their horses and were ready to mount, if necessary. Behind the two barricades across the road were hundreds of rebels, if not more, and the road provided an easy route from above for reinforcements to reach the defenders. Third Company was stationed on the south wing of the regiment, for "contingency duty." The fog of the previous day had lifted when a warmer wind off the ocean had blown in, and a light ocean breeze still blew.

Taryl's instructions to the two officers on oneday night had been succinct. "You and Third Company are assigned to Fifth Regiment under Commander Shuchyl. Fifth Regiment is being tasked with the attack on the fortified road on the north side of the promontory. In practice, it is unlikely that you will be able to make much headway there. The real purpose is to keep the rebel force bottled up while the main body of First and Second Army attacks the more accessible slope to the south. Third Company is not to take part in the attacks, except in cases where either the battle would be lost or where you can clearly break the enemy and gain the top of the promontory."