L. Modesitt - Magi'i of Cyador

“Thank you.”

Lorn turns and makes his way to the next building, considerably smaller, with a plain weathered white oak door, standing ajar. He peers inside, at the two lancers who sit at opposite sides of a large table on which are stacked scrolls of various sizes and sorts.

“ … need three more for the replacement company …

“ … good thing you got the mounts …”

Lorn steps inside, and, at the slight whisper of his boots, the older and bearded squad leader stands, followed by the younger.

“Ser? Can we help you?” The senior squad leader pauses, studying the weary junior officer. “Would you be the new undercaptain for Isahl?”

“That I am,” Lorn admits. “Undercaptain Lorn’alt.” He shows the seal ring. “I’m supposed to find a squad leadernamed Nytral. I have his orders.” Lorn extracts the somewhat battered smaller scroll from his tunic.

“I’m Byrten, ser. Senior lancer clerk for the outposts.” As the man shifts his weight, Lorn can sense the stiffness and the pain in his motions.

“It’s good to meet you, Byrten.” Lorn shrugs. “I’m supposed to report here, but I wasn’t given much in the way of details.”

Byrten hides a smile. “Chorin … go find Nytral. Tell him his undercaptain’s here.”

“Ser? By your leave?”

Lorn nods and steps aside to let Chorin by him.

“Be the day after tomorrow afore all the supplies and replacement lancers be ready, ser. Till then, you’ll have a room in the officers’ building-that’s second back, and I’ll show you after you’re set with Nytral. Or he can show you.”

“How many replacement lancers are there?”

“Two score,” replies Byrten.

“And how often do they need replacements?”

“When Sub-Majer Brevyl needs them-sometimes once, sometimes twice a season.” Byrten’s smile is thin.

Two score lancers six times a year? From one outpost on the edge of the Grass Hills? Lorn nods thoughtfully, deciding not to ask how many undercaptains are needed as replacements.

“How long a ride is it to Isahl?”

“Three days, more or less.”

“And what sort of supplies will we be taking?”

“You’ll be escorting five wagons-four horse team on each.” Byrten glances toward the door, where the rail-thin Chorin reappears, followed by a ranker with a single green slash on his sleeve. Both halt just inside the door. Nytral is short and stocky, and his right cheek bears a faded purple starburst scar. His thick black hair is cut short, and his thick black eyebrows are bushy. The deep brown of his eyes conveys a flatness, as if Nytral has seen too much for his eyes to reveal. The flat eyes look at Lorn, eyes that are wary, waiting.

Lorn extends the set of smaller scrolls. “Undercaptain Lorn’alt. These are your orders.”

“Yes, ser.” Nytral takes the scrolls, then looks at Lorn’alt.

The two other lancer rankers watch, eyes flicking from Nytral to Lorn.

“You can unroll them,” Lorn says. “They’re yours, but one copy has to go to Commander Thiataphi’s clerk.”

“Ah …” suggests Byrten.

“You take it first?” asks Lorn.

“Works better that way, ser,” suggests Nytral. “Byrten draws us supplies, and he can’t draw for more than we got on roster.”

Lorn nods, wondering how much more he needs to learn, and whether he can-in time. “If there’s nothing else Byrten needs to tell me …?” He looks at the senior clerk.

“No, ser. Just check every morning. Tomorrow we should have the replacement roster done, and the supply list.”

“I’d like Nytral to look at those with me,” Lorn says.

“Yes, ser.”

The undercaptain looks at his squad leader. “Let’s go on outside, Nytral.”

“Yes, ser.” Nytral’s voice is deferential, but level.

After leaving the support building, Lorn crosses the small courtyard until he stands in the shadowed corner on the southeast side. Then he turns to Nytral. “I understand you’ll be able to let me know what I should know and don’t on the way to Isahl.” Lorn offers a smile, one simultaneously open and yet professional.

Nytral does not return the smile. “Could be, ser.”

Lorn laughs, gently. “I know chaos, firelances, and blades. I don’t know lancers and barbarians, and you do, or you wouldn’t be a squad leader assigned to a green officer. I also don’t know what supplies we should have, and what we might get shorted. You do.”

Nytral’s lips crinkle slightly. “There be that, ser.”

“More than that, I’m sure.” Lorn laughs self-deprecatingly. “Do you know where I draw a mount? And how we can find out about just what our replacement lancers are like?”

“Wouldn’t be much good to you, if’n I didn’t, ser.”

“Let’s start with finding my room so I can drop off this kit, and then look for the kind of mount that will be best for Isahl.” Lorn smiles. “Lead on.”

Nytral gestures toward the three-story, narrow, barracklike building in the northeast corner of the compound. “There.” He walks out of the shade across the white paving stones of the courtyard. “Front entrance there is to the officer’s rooms. You can take whatever one you want on the top level. Stables are out back, beyond the wall ….”

Lorn matches steps with the squad leader, listening, and yet studying the compound, trying to memorize where everything is.

AFTER HAVING SELECTED a mount, and getting a tour of the rest of the Mirror Lancer compound from Nytral, Lorn finds himself yawning more and more as they walk back from the armory, a heavy-walled and squat building located inside another set of walls in the northwest corner of the compound. Lorn’s boots are scuffing the stone as well.

“Ser … begging your pardon, but best you get some sleep afore you eat with the senior officers tonight.” Nytral glances at Lorn.

“Because they’ll be sizing up the new undercaptain? You’re probably right, and there’s not too much more I can do until tomorrow anyway.” Lorn yawns again. “I’ll see you in the morning, and we can go over the supplies and everything.”

“Yes, ser.”

Lorn turns and walks back to the quarters building, and up two long flights of steps. His room is stark-one narrow pallet bed, a small table by the bed with an oil lamp, a single armless wooden chair, and a set of wooden pegs on the wallfor hanging uniforms. The single window bears ancient glass, and the shutters are inside the casement.

After slipping the latch bar in place behind him, Lorn levers off his boots and strips to his small clothes. By then he is struggling to keep his eyes open.

Despite his fatigue, Lorn wakes in mid-afternoon, in a chill. As he was sleeping, someone had been screeing him, and it had not been his father. But why? To see that he was indeed where he had been sent?

He rolls upright and rubs his eyes. Since he is awake, he rises and then uses the cold shower in the semi-communal bathing chamber in the middle of the uppermost floor. After drying and dressing in a clean set of lancer whites, he heads back to the outpost support building where some discreet inquiries of Chorin locate the officer’s laundry service, set, obviously, in the rear of the ground floor level of the quarters building.

Lorn returns to his room and carries his soiled whites down to the small room where a gray-haired and bare-footed woman in gray stands over a wash tub, swirling the wash with a wooden paddle. A second thigh-high tub stands to her right. The odors of warmish water and soap fill the barewalled space.

Lorn waits, but the woman does not turn in his direction. Finally, he clears his throat.

She looks up, then steps toward him. “Ser … ser … those I cannot wash until tomorrow.”