L. Modesitt - Scion of Cyador

“Ah…ser…”

“I’m leading the charge, and I expect everyone to be with me.”

“Yes, ser.” Esfayl smiles.

“Six-abreast, and three trailers,” Lorn orders.

“Six-abreast. Move up as needed! Lances ready!” Esfayl’s voice is tight, but clear above the muted din coming from the gently sloping way ahead.

The lancers’ mounts pick their way over and around perhaps a score of fallen greensuits, but the rear of the ever more swiftly moving phalanx is almost open. Lorn can see that Cheryk is retreating more quickly uphill and toward the Palace. Has the older captain seen Lorn’s force, and is he trying to lure Sasyk forward so that the former lancer will not check his rear? Lorn hopes so.

The halfscore of archers stands behind large mirror shields that require both arms for the guards who shield them. The archers continue to loft shafts toward the retreating lancers.

“Charge!” Lorn orders.

“Discharge at will! Short bursts!”

So occupied are the archers in lofting arrows toward the retreating lancers under Cheryk, that only two look up, initially, as Lorn and Esfayl’s single squad bears down on them.

Hssst! Hssst!

“Last rank to the rear! Last rank to the rear!” comes an order from somewhere among the green figures.

Hssst!

One archer turns and tries to loose a shaft, but is transfixed by a firebolt from one of Esfayl’s lancers.

Lorn directs one burst, then two, with his own personal chaos, felling two archers immediately, then a third.

Within moments, most of the archers are down, but almost a halfscore of the green-suited shieldmen have banded together, and Lorn can see some of the pikemen trying to swing the polelike weapons to fend off Lorn’s attack.

“Now!” He digs his heels into the gelding’s flank. If they do not break the shield wall while it is forming, they will not break it at all.

“Follow the majer!”

Lorn lays chaos in all directions before him, slashing with the sabre that cuts as no blade should, and firing power-bolts from the lance. The gelding lurches, and Lorn has to fight to hold his seat even as he slashes down with the chaos-aided sabre to cut aside one shield-bearer, and then another.

“Major’s through! Widen the gap!”

The words seem to float past him as sabre and lance flare. Behind him a mount screams.

Every green tunic he sees that moves gets a bolt of chaos or a cut from the sabre, and he knows he must cut through the green tunics ahead. The tightness of Sasyk’s formation now helps, because the green-clad guards have nowhere to go, except to break formation and face the firelances and sabres before them, or risk being cut down from behind.

Lorn wheels the gelding short of the first line of pikemen still facing uphill, and begins to chaos-slash and hack his way eastward.

The disciplined phalanx has begun to disintegrate.

“Charge!” comes the command from Cheryk, and a full company of lancers sweeps downward, chaos-bolts flaring.

Then pikes fall and the green-clad guards begin to run.

Lorn charges after three, cutting one down with his firelance, the second with the sabre, and the third with the lance.

He turns the gelding, using the short lance to knock aside a single pike, then aims it and dispatches the pikeman. He knows, somewhere, that he has no charges left in the lance, and that he is drawing chaos from where he can find it. He will pay for that-but pay he will…later…for if he does not use chaos now, there will be no “later” for him to consider.

So he rides one lane, then another, then a road, then a way, leading perhaps three lancers, perhaps four, although he does not turn to count, using sabre or chaos or both, as necessary, on fleeing forms in green.

It is midafternoon, or later, when Lorn reins up in the white stone street. He glances around, finally recognizing that he is still on Second Harbor Way West. The white granite is red-and-pink most places, those where it is not covered with blood-smeared silver shields or green tunics. Black splotches appear in places on the walls of the shops lining the street. Bodies-those of men and mounts-lie everywhere, but most are clad in green.

“Ser!”

Lorn wheels the gelding, sabre and firelance ready, but the call comes from Cheryk. The veteran rides toward Lorn slowly.

“It’s over, ser.”

Lorn blinks. His eyes water, and he realizes that he can barely see, so bright are the flashes of after-chaos that flare before his eyes. His head throbs, and that will get worse, he knows. Or, rather, he will feel it more.

“Maybe a halfscore escaped. Once you broke their back…they had nowhere to go.”

Lorn nods, slowly. “You’d better send out a few men as scouts…down to the Plaza…and to the west piers. Make sure there aren’t any more armsmen forming up.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn doubts his forces could fight more than a handful of armed men after the carnage and the cost of the street battle. He winces inside, thinking about the mirror shields and pikes. How could he have missed those? On an open field, the lancers would have an advantage, but not in the streets of Cyad, and Sasyk had known that. Then, Sasyk had been a lancer, a corrupt one, but corrupt did not mean stupid. And Sasyk knew he would be working against the Magi’i and had doubtless kept himself away from the shields and pikes so that their presence would not have been detected.

Cheryk turns his mount, and Lorn just sits on the gelding, trying to watch, his eyes watering, his head splitting, letting the remaining squad leaders supervise the collecting of weapons and the stacking of bodies in the wagons someone has commandeered.

After a time, shivering in the afternoon chill, he eases his mount into the full sun as the wind rises.

“Ser…” Cheryk rides back to Lorn and reins up. “No sign of any trouble anywhere. City is quiet everywhere.”

“Everyone’s in shock,” Lorn says. “The first time ever, or since Alyiakal, when there’s been blood on the streets here.”

“Was there any other way, ser?”

“No one seemed to know it. I didn’t.” Lorn pauses. “I haven’t seen Esfayl…Did he…?”

“Yes, ser.” Cheryk looks at Lorn. “Only six of you broke through. You slaughtered close to fourscore, but…”

“There wasn’t anything else we could do. At least, I couldn’t think of anything that would work in time.”

“Ser…you made something work that no one else could.”

“We haven’t done the task as well as any would like.” Lorn smiles raggedly. “How many of them…?”

“Our count is rough, but the men say we took down almost twentyscore here on the streets.”

Lorn shakes his head.

“Ser…could be more.”

“Cheryk…I’d guess your count was right. There were close to tenscore on the piers, and that doesn’t count the sailors we fired with the cannon.”

“Chaos-fire, ser…” Cheryk is the one to shake his head.

“Sasyk?” Lorn asks.

“You cut him down, ser. Don’t you remember?”

“There were so many. I just went for whoever was giving the orders. It was a bloody mess breaking that phalanx.”

They both look down at the stones that are no longer white.

Lorn straightens in the saddle, conscious that his entire body aches, that his eyes water, that he has trouble seeing, and that his head is being cleft with a dull ax. “I need to report to the Majer-Commander.”

Cheryk gestures, and two pair of mounted lancers ride toward them. “Escort the majer…wherever he goes.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn rides slowly back up to Mirror Lancer Court, the four lancers he does not even know by his side. There, he dismounts by the front entrance, and hands the gelding’s reins to one of them. “If you would wait…”