L. Modesitt - Magi'i of Cyador

“You look skeptical, Lorn.”

“No, ser. I just wondered about Nytral’s promotion.” Lorn tries to make his voice as guileless as possible.

“He was overdue, actually.” Zandrey snort. “Rumor has it that he asked to serve under you, and Brevyl was so surprised that the man volunteered for anything that he promoted him on the spot.”

“He seems to know a lot,” Lorn ventures.

“He does, more than most of the senior squad leaders, but he says what he believes, and some officers and other squad leaders are less than pleased with his attitude.”

“Right now, that’s fine with me.” Lorn nods. “What about the patrol tomorrow? What exactly do we do?”

“Patrol.” The captain laughs. “We’ll ride northward, looking for barbarians or signs that they’ve been around. We might see some, and we might not, but they’ll know we’ve been looking. The one thing that is certain is that when we don’t patrol, there are more raids.”

“Nytral said that the barbarians were mostly after women, weapons, and mounts.”

“He’s mostly right, but they’ll sometimes take children, and sometimes silvers and golds, if a homesteader has any.”

Lorn frowns.

“You wonder why anyone lives out here? Simple. They don’t have any choice. Thieves, swindlers, and people who’ve failed the Empire-if they haven’t killed anyone, they can choose to homestead beyond the great highways for a score of years. Some like it and stay. Others leave, but sometimes they work a deal with someone in Syadtar-turn it over to a younger son or a troublemaker who’s headed for worse. Anyway, we’re here to protect them as well as the towns and cities farther south. Strange, when you think about it … protecting folks who’ve forfeited the Emperor’s justice.” Zandrey shrugs. “Can’t question too much here, or you’ll end up questioning your own mind.”

“Is there anything about the barbarian tactics?”

“Tactics? Most wouldn’t know a tactic if it walked up with a cupridium blade and cut them out of the saddle.”

“That would seem to make them unpredictable.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” replies the captain. “They’re direct-like a big iron hammer. And there is one thing you can count on with the barbarians. They don’t believe in doing anything that’s not honorable.” Zandrey’s words were dry. “In two years here, I’ve never seen an ambush. They don’t attack at night, or in the rain or snow. They ride at you, but they don’t cluster, and they don’t try to pick off officers. They also don’t back off attacking officers. Any Cyadoran is like any other, and they hate us all.”

Lorn wonders why. From what he knows of history, the hatred makes no sense, and that means he doesn’t know enough of history or that the barbarians are irrational. Somehow, he thinks that the history is more suspect than the barbarians’ rationality.

Zandrey stands and stretches. “Go over your squad rosters until you know the names. Last thing you need to be doing on patrol is trying to remember names. It’s hard enough to match names to faces at first.”

Lorn stands and replies. “Yes, ser.”

“And you’ll need to check the firelances in the morning, each one as it’s issued.”

Lorn nods.

“See you at dinner.”

Lorn waits until Zandrey turns before letting an ironic smile cross his face. Are all the outcasts on the northern border? He shakes his head before turning to head toward the stable to check on both his mare and his company’s mounts.

UNDER THICK GRAY clouds, the mist seems to billow out of the north and across the brown grass of the endless hills. Although it is near mid-day, the clouds and mist give the impression of twilight. The mist droplets congeal on the back of Lorn’s neck and then roll in tiny rivulets down his back under the white oiled leather of his winter jacket.

Lorn shifts from one leg to the other, putting his weight on one stirrup, then the other. He half-stands in the stirrups, just trying to stretch his legs.

They are less than twenty kays north of Isahl, and in another world. The patrol travels a narrow clay path on the north side of a valley that holds little besides a small brackish lake they had passed earlier, and a handful of scattered earthbrick dwellings and barns. The dwellings are scarcely that, without privacy screens or glass in the windows. Rough cut and oiled shutters, often pieced together from old boards, are swung closed against the damp and chill. The thin lines of smoke from the chimneys are lost in the gray of the clouds and mist.

The only living creatures visible besides the lancers and their mounts are the sheep of a single small herd-grayish lumps against the brown grass-beyond the last barn on the south side of the road.

So far, the only tracks in the road are those of the patrol and of a single cart that has left span-deep ruts in the claylike mud that has almost frozen.

Lorn glances a half-kay or so ahead, where Zandrey leads the Third Company, then back along his company’s two squads. For the moment, Nytral rides with Shofirg-the Second squad’s leader. Beside Lorn is another older lancer, Dubrez, whose bearded face holds a dourness that has been unchanged since the patrol began the day before.

The road slowly curves northward at the west end of the valley, rising to pass between two slightly lower hills, where there are a handful of scrub cedars, a few bushes and mostly taller grass.

“This place have a name?” Lorn finally asks Dubrez.

“This valley? Not that I know, ser. Most don’t, not properlike. This one’s the valley with the sour lake. Next is the one with the burned-out house. That sort of thing …” Dubrez lapses into silence.

Lorn shifts the reins from his right hand to his left, flexing his fingers, trying to warm them-inside thick white gloves that keep out the worst of the chill-but not all of it.

Cold and fat droplets of rain splat against lancers and their mounts, just enough to cover both with a thin sheet of water, before the cold rain ceases, and is in turn replaced by the finer droplets of the seemingly endless mist.

“How often are we likely to run across barbarians?” Lorn asks the squad leader quietly.

“Don’t, ser. Not in winter.” Durbrez to the hills to their right. “Up there, probably a few now. Or could be. We don’t patrol, and in an eightday, there’ll be raiders in most of these valleys. Wintertime … they don’t want to fight, and it be too cold for them to stay out too long and guess where we’ll be. We patrol … they watch some. We don’t patrol-they raid. Dung-eaters … every last one of’em.” The squad leader grunts and is silent.

Lorn studies the column ahead, and the faint puffs of white coming from the lancers’ mounts, wondering if any raids take place during the winter, or if the patrols are just to keep the lancers in shape.

“Be some raids,” Dubrez adds, as if he has thought about his earlier words. “Some raiders desperate … maybe two orthree every winter … not like the spring and summer and fall, though.”

Three or four raids-and those are considered as insignificant? Lorn looks northward at the darkening clouds.

As HE HALF-LISTENS to Nytral, on yet another patrol, Lorn studies the road and the west end of the valley they are about to leave. The road curves northward, again rising into the lowest point between two hills. Directly to Lorn’s right, there is a sheep path or trail that angles eastward through two switchbacks and over the hill, probably into the next valley in what seems an endless series of hills and interlocked valleys. The cold wind is scarcely more than a breeze, but it still chills Lorn’s ears, despite the winter garrison cap with the ear-flaps.