L. Modesitt - Scion of Cyador

“Now…let’s talk about what we can do immediately. The payroll first, because it affects how many new lancers we can train. I’ve been looking at those records.”

Helkyt remains impassive in his chair, but his eyes flicker.

“The numbers don’t add up.” The overcaptain shrugs. “We cannot change the past, and I won’t pass judgment on what has happened.” He pauses. “But it won’t keep happening. We have a payroll enough for two companies of lancers. We have less than one company. We aren’t recruiting that many young lancers, and I would guess many of their skills are suspect. So…we’ll have to make sure the lancers who aren’t so good get retrained, as well. I’d like you to begin organizing the training program-both for recruits and for those who need more training. Pick the two best riding lancers for mount and formation training and the two best for sabres. They can be the same men, or they can be different. I may help out, as I can.” Lorn frowns. “At first, with the sabre training, we’d best pad the blades to begin with, at least until the younger ones know which side has an edge and which does not.”

Helkyt nods his head up and down slowly, then takes out a piece of squarish cloth and blots his forehead.

Lorn ignores the gesture and continues. “I’ll meet with you and with the men you’ve chosen first thing tomorrow.” He looks at the next item on his handwritten list. “The pay chest is the next thing. There’s much of that payroll that seems to have disappeared. I’m sure that if you looked, you could find some of it. We’re going to need it.” Lorn smiles at Helkyt. “I’m also sure that if a good portion of the missing silvers and golds turn up and we accomplish what the Majer-Commander has in mind, he wouldn’t want to bother himself with sending more officers here.”

Helkyt nods slowly. “There are perhaps somewhat less than a hundred golds in the chest in the strong room, and some two hundred silvers. I might be able to find some others, placed elsewhere for safekeeping, now that we know what the Majer-Commander has in mind.”

“I’m certain you will do your best.” Lorn smiles briefly. “Now, how does our payroll get here?”

“We get a chest every other eightday,” replies the senior squad leader. “I take the travel chest to the Emperor’s Enumerators, and they fill it, and the guards and I bring it here and put it in the strongroom until we pay the men on sevenday.”

“When you do next receive that payroll?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“Good. From now on, each time you do that, we’ll count it here in the study, and we’ll both sign a record showing how much we received.”

“Yes, ser. I’ll talk to the enumerators.”

“That’s a good idea. They should know what the Majer-Commander has in mind, too, especially before they provide the next payroll.”

“I would think so, ser.”

“I’ll have to meet with them. Perhaps we should do it together.”

“Ah…yes, ser.”

Lorn smiles again. “I want to make sure that we’re supplying them with the services they need.”

“You said your consort was the head of a trading house, ser?”

“Yes. I’ve learned a great deal from her.”

Helkyt smiles. “I am certain the enumerators will wish to learn that the commander has some understanding of trade and merchanters.”

“You might send them a message to that effect, but I think we should meet with them tomorrow, as early as possible.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn glances at his handwritten list again. “The north wing of the barracks. We’ll need to hire a cart or a wagon and carry all the junk off. Is there a rag-picker here in Biehl that might pay us something for the cloth and the wood?”

Helkyt’s face blanks.

“You need to find out if there is. Also, we’ll need to see about whether there enough cuprite for the coppersmith to pay us…”

Lorn stops as Helkyt’s eyes begin to glaze over. “I’ve offered enough for now. Why don’t you start on working out who can do the training?” He stands. “We’ll talk later.”

Helkyt lurches to his feet. “I will have those names for you shortly, ser. Most shortly.”

The smile does not leave Lorn’s face until the senior squad leader closes the door behind him.

In the spring evening, sitting at the desk in his quarters’ study, Lorn examines the payroll and expense-draw figures once more. He shakes his head. Without additional golds, he cannot afford both mounts and saddles for two full companies, even if he does not recruit the second new squad until midsummer. He may be able to draw upon the District Guards. He shakes his head once more, then jots an addition to his list. He needs to send a message to the District Guard Commander, and then visit the commander, for another aspect of his duties is to ascertain and verify the numbers and capabilities of those guards-something that has not been done in years. He sets aside his list and picks up the payroll figures again.

After yet another series of mental calculations, he sets aside the reckonings, knowing that unless he can obtain good horses more cheaply or saddles or…something…he will not reach his goals, and so many of those goals are but within his own mind. Knowing what he must do, he tries not to dwell on the audacity required. Yet, without audacity his future is dim indeed. And without knowledge as well, he reminds himself.

He laughs to himself. Still…he assumes that a man can make the times, when it is not at all clear that such is possible, or even that the times make the man. He will see; he must see.

He slips the chaos-glass from the single drawer and sets it on the polished wood. While Lorn knows that he must be successful in using the glass in order to survive and prosper, it has been difficult enough to follow those in the glass with whom he has little connection. Yet a chaos-glass would prove most useful as a battlefield tool-if only to see where the barbarians-or any enemy-might be riding.

Lorn concentrates. This time takes longer, far longer, than when he has sought individuals he has met or known about, before the silver mists clear and display a view of riders. The image displayed is that of a raider band. Lorn’s only problem is that he has no idea where the barbarians might be, or what might be their destination.

After releasing the image, he takes a deep breath. Will he have to use the glass to map the northwest section of the Hills of Endless Grass? Or perhaps if he tries to call up an image of Jera?

He concentrates once more-and is rewarded with the vision of a town that appears much as Biehl must from above-except Jera appears to be on the north side of the River Jeranya. The sparkling in Lorn’s eyes slowly turns into needles, then narrow stilettos that stab at the back of his eyes as he tries to make out individual sections of the town in the glass.

When he finally releases the image, his head is pounding, and tiny knives continue to jab through his eyes and into his skull. He sits with his eyes closed, well into the darkness, massaging his forehead, trying to rub away the throbbing that follows extensive use of the chaos-glass. Finally, Lorn opens his eyes, slips the glass into the drawer, stands, and lights the lamp. Then he takes out the pen and a fresh sheet of paper and begins to write, slowly, carefully. First come the letters to his parents and Jerial, then a shorter one to Myryan, and finally, the one with which he would have preferred to have begun. But had he started with it, the others might not have been written.

When he is finished with the last letter, the one to Ryalth, he looks over the scroll he has written-drafted most carefully, since he has no way to send a scroll through merchanters he can trust and thus must dispatch this scroll through the normal firewagon/courier system.