L. Modesitt - Scion of Cyador

They have ridden almost another kay up the gentle slope that is far longer than Lorn had thought, so gradual is its incline, and still have at least a kay to go before they reach the crest, when Lorn spies two lancers riding their mounts at a quicker walk than normal. He fears he knows what the smoke signifies, but he says nothing and keeps riding.

Swytyl rides up from the head of his squad and lets his mount flank Tashqyt’s on the right as the three wait for the scouts to meet them.

When they near Lorn, the two lancer scouts swing their mounts around to ride parallel to Lorn on the left.

“Ser…there’s a hamlet over the rise…along the stream,” offers the scout closer to Lorn.

“The barbarians have already been there?” Lorn asks.

“Ah…yes, ser.” The scout’s quizzical look begs for an answer.

“The smoke,” Lorn says, “and your haste in reporting. They aren’t there now, though, or you would have been galloping back.”

“No, ser. Didn’t see none. Didn’t see no one moving,” answers the second scout.

“Just in case,” Lorn glances at Tashqyt. “Four-abreast, firelances ready.”

Tashqyt stands in his stirrups and half turns in the saddle. “Four-abreast! Firelances at the ready!”

The other squad leaders echo the orders, except that the District Guard squad leaders merely command, “Lances ready!”

The barbarians have moved faster than Lorn has thought, and his forces have been slower in coming across the grasslands south of the northern beaches, and the small hamlet may have been one of the first results of his miscalculations. His lips tighten, and his fingers brush the half of the firelance. He can feel sweat forming under his garrison cap and oozing down his sunburned neck and then his back.

As the chestnut carries Lorn over the crest of the grassy rise, he can make out the stream that he had tracked with the chaos-glass-and to his left, a gap in the rugged hills, from which the stream runs. Below them is a hamlet.

Lorn shakes his head. Thin lines of smoke and mist hug the ground around the hamlet. There are perhaps a dozen dwellings, if that, earth- or sod-walled. The roofs of most are caved in-burned out from within, as shown by the smoke that fills the hollow.

“Ser?” questions Tashqyt.

“Barbarians,” Lorn affirms. “Yesterday, I’d guess. Everything’s almost burned out.”

Nothing moves in the hamlet, except the smoke, drifting on a breeze so light that Lorn cannot feel it as he leads the Mirror Lancers and District Guards down the grass-covered hillside and toward the stream.

The streambed is northwest of the hamlet and separates Lorn’s force from the hamlet with a miniature gorge perhaps four cubits deep. Lorn turns the chestnut northwest and rides for almost half a kay before finding a place where livestock have crumbled the edges into a ford of sorts. The scouts cross first, and the water is less than a cubit deep on the legs of their mounts.

On the other side, Lorn sees a movement and turns to his right. There, a reddish-colored dog turns and slinks down the side of a dry irrigation ditch whose banks have been trampled down. A figure in brown lies sprawled facedown in the flattened grass beyond the ditch. The back of his tunic is covered in large splotches of darker brown. The flies buzz around the dead man.

Lorn gently urges the mare away from the body and rides parallel to the ditch, along the livestock path and toward the easternmost hut. The two scouts ride almost two hundred cubits ahead, but rein up by the hut, glancing back at Lorn and the main force.

Again, Lorn suspects he knows why. As the mare nears the dwelling-earth-walled, with a single window on the east side-Lorn swallows as he catches sight of another body. As he guides the chestnut onto the dirt lane that leads southwest toward the other dwellings, he moves his head slowly from the half-naked body of a woman, perhaps nearly as old as his mother, lying as if flung against the sod wall of the hut. He does not look closely to see exactly how she was killed. Nor does it matter, save that she suffered greatly and was slain in pain.

“Just follow the track past the dwellings,” Lorn orders the two scouts. “Keep an ear for anything.” He pauses, then turns to Swytyl. “Have your lancers check each dwelling, by pairs, just to see if there’s a child or someone alive. And have different ones do each hut.”

“Yes, ser.” Swytyl turns to ride back to his squad, which is still on the livestock trail.

“You don’t think anyone’s alive, do you?” asks Tashqyt.

“No. But I wouldn’t want to go off and leave a child or an infant to die because we didn’t look.” As Lorn speaks, once more, he senses the chill of a chaos-glass, a chill that lasts but moments before it vanishes.

The sharp-featured squad leader shakes his head as the four-abreast column, lances still ready, rides along the dirt lane that approximates a road through the hamlet.

There are bodies everywhere-far more than Lorn would have imagined for a hamlet so small-but the pattern is the same around each dwelling. The men have been slain quickly, as have small children. The women have been used and killed, even girls too small to be women and women who are grandmothers.

The overcaptain could have done without riding through the hamlet, having seen the work of the barbarians too often in years previous, but few of the Mirror Lancers he leads, and none of the District Guards, have seen such. So he rides slowly past each sod dwelling, letting the chestnut carry him back toward the southwest and away from the Grass Hills. Behind him, there are no murmurs from his force, none that he can hear.

In the grassy expanse to the south, Lorn sees scattered dark shapes, cattle that have scattered after the carnage, and some grayer forms-sheep.

As they pass the last dwelling, Lorn reins up. “We’ll wait to hear from Swytyl.”

“Halt!” orders Tashqyt.

Lorn sits on the mare, under the increasingly hot and bright harvest sun. “The stream goes along the road. We’ll water farther on. The barbarians didn’t mess it, and the locals kept their jakes away from it.”

Tashqyt nods.

Shortly, Swytyl rides up. The squad leader is pale.

Lorn looks at Swytyl.

Swytyl shakes his head. “No, ser. There be not a soul living.” He swallows hard. “Even…even babes.”

“You see why…” Lorn does not finish the sentence.

“Yes, ser.” After a moment, Swytyl adds, “Ser…there be many bodies…”

“We’ll have to leave them,” Lorn says. “We don’t have the spades or the time, and if we delay here, what happens if they get to another hamlet?”

Tashqyt and Drayl, who has eased his mount forward to hear Swytyl’s report, both nod.

“We’ll follow this.” Lorn points to the narrow road or track that heads southwest, generally following the stream. Hoofprints on hoofprints cover the dusty trail. “We’ll stand down and water in a bit.”

He urges the chestnut forward, after the barbarians, wondering how many more miscalculations he will make, hoping there will not be too many more.

The sweat oozes down the back of Lorn’s neck, and the sun beats on the right side of his face as he rides southwest through the valley so wide and long that the Grass Hills that surround it on three sides are mere smudges on the horizon. Only to the southwest are no true hills visible, and that is where the river is.

Tashqyt rides to Lorn’s left, as they make their way through the early afternoon, and as Swytyl rides up to join them.

“What did they find?” asks Lorn.

“Scouts say that the tracks ahead circle to the west, and that hill over there,” the round-faced Swytyl reports. “There’s a burned-out stead at the base of the rise. Bodies, too. Not pleasant. Like that hamlet.”