L. Modesitt - Magi'i of Cyador

“ … order dung!”

“ … never seen an officer do that …”

Lorn hears the comments, but keeps the lance leveled for a few moments longer before flicking the fire stud to the safety position and replacing the weapon in its holder. The acrid and metallic scent of chaos fills his nostrils for a moment, then is carried off by a gust of cold wind. He turns the mare slowly as Nytral and the rest of the squad rein up. “Have someone get those mounts.”

“Ah … yes, ser.” The senior squad leader gestures. “Get the mounts!”

“Yes, ser!”

Nytral’s face is stiff, not quite pale, as he looks at his undercaptain. “Ser … that must’a been a good hundred cubits.”

“More like seventy.” Lorn knows his smile is lopsided, knows that he should have waited until the riders were closer. “Might have been a bit lucky.”

“ … once … luck … not twice …”

Nytral’s eyes go to the lancer whose voice had carried, and the eight lancers all close their mouths. The remaining two are farther east, leading back two riderless mounts.

Lorn looks to the northeast, where the flashes of firelances have died away. He gestures toward Nytral. “Let’s make sure everything’s right with Dubrez and Shofirg.”

“Follow the undercaptain!” Nytral orders.

Lorn lets the mare walk evenly back eastward along the southern side of the pond.

Dubrez and his squad are formed up at the northeast end of the iced-over pond. Shofirg and the half squad he had taken have already joined with Dubrez’s squad, and Shonrg offers a head bow to Lorn as the undercaptain nears. Lorn returns the gesture. After searching the dead raiders, several lancers mount hurriedly, without looking in Lorn’s direction.

One lancer’s saddle is empty-or rather two lancers are strapping a lancer’s body across it. Two other lancers are tying seven mounts into a tieline of sorts. Three other mounts are loping northward, the steam of their breath lost against the frosted brown of the hills.

“Stopped’em all, ser. Fought like black angels, but did’em no good.” Dubrez gestures. “Got some mounts, too. Leastwise, good for cart horses or the knackers.”

“I imagine the sub-majer will decide that,” Lorn says. “You did a good job.”

“What we’re here to do, ser.” Dubrez pauses. “Any come your way, ser?”

“Just two,” Lorn answers. “We stopped them. You and your men did the hard work.” He gestures toward the southwest. “Let’s head back to the homestead there and join up with the Third Company.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Four abreast!” orders Nytral.

“Column by fours!” echo Shofirg and Dubrez.

“Captured mounts to the rear,” adds Nytral.

For a time, the only sounds are those of the mounts’ heavy breathing and their hoofs on the frozen ground.

“Are the raiders always like that in the winter?” asks Lorn.

“Pretty much, ser,” answers Nytral. “They’ll run if they can, and fight if they can’t. In the spring and summer, they fight. Don’t ever seem to run then.”

Lorn nods, his eyes searching the area to the west, but the slight rise beyond the holding blocks any view of the Fifth Company, and there are no flashes that would indicate the use of firelances.

As they ride westward, past the dike and the end of the stock pond-if that is what it is-Lorn studies the buildings of the holding. The door of the house hangs crookedly on one iron strap hinge, and a single figure in gray lies beside the door. Lorn cannot tell whether the corpse is a man or a woman. Another dark-haired figure lies on a bale of hay beside the barn door. That figure is of a girl, one not yet a woman, all clothes ripped off her. Lorn swallows as he sees the slash across her throat. He swallows again.

As they reach the west side of the holding, beyond the barn, Lorn can see over the rise where the Third Company has formed up. Zandrey’s lancers are walking their mounts toward the holding and Lorn’s company.

As the captain sees Lorn and his company, Zandrey gestures for the Fifth Company to halt.

“Halt them,” Lorn tiredly tells Nytral.

“Company halt!” orders Nytral.

“Squad halt,” echo Shofirg and Dubrez.

Zandrey rides up toward Lorn, and Lorn continues toward the captain. Both officers rein up with less than a score of cubits between their mounts.

Lorn’s eyes are flat, cold, as he waits for the senior officer to speak.

“Good job!” booms Zandrey. “Not a one got away. Most of the time, we can’t do that with one company, and some escape.”

Lorn nods.

“You did just the right thing in charging them toward us,” Zandrey continues. “Too bad about the peasant holders, but if we’d have charged before you got down the hill, most of the raiders would have escaped.”

The wind whines, and the chill drops around Lorn. He glances up to see that, sometime during the fighting, the sun has dropped behind the hills to the west, and the cold of winter in the Grass Hills had returned.

“We’ll overnight here,” Zandrey says. “Barn’s big enough for the men, and the dwelling for us and the squad leaders.”

Lorn nods, unwilling to speak for the moment, his thoughts on the dark-haired, dead herder girl not that much younger than his own sister Myryan … and the charge that Zandrey had never considered making.

IN THE DIMNESS of his cold quarters, under the flame of a single lamp, Lorn sits on the edge of the narrow bed, holding a green-silvered book, marvelling at the clarity of the angled characters that date back to the founders. The cover remains pristine, unmarked, its silver shifting from one faint shade of green to another as he turns it in his hands. With all he has had to learn, and the tiredness that comes from that and seemingly endless riding, he has read little. He looks at the back cover, but it too is untouched by time.

Yet the slim volume is missing two pages, and Lorn suspects that one would have been a title page and the other would have born the name of the writer, for there are no inscriptions anywhere within it that say when the book was written or for what purpose or by whom. There are no numbers, no strange cursives or codes. There are just the poems, and no one in Cyad writes poems, not publicly, not that Lorn knows. And no one has in generations, at least not poems shared beyond a family or a lover, and not that there is any restriction on writing them. It is just not done.

His lips curl. Just as it is not written that a student mage who is not properly reverential shall not become a full mage.

He fingers the pages of the book again. He can scarcelysee where the cuts had been made to remove the pages, and the material of each page seems stronger than shimmercloth. No knife he knows would cut such tough material so cleanly. But the pages have been removed.

He opens the volume, almost at random. He has promised to read it, every page. He knows Ryalth must have had a reason, a reason well beyond sentiment, for though she has feelings, those emotions will not betray her.

He reads the words on the page before him once. Somehow, unspoken, they are not satisfactory. He murmurs them softly as he reads them again.

Although the old lands are in my heart,

in towers that anchored life with certain art,

in eyes that will not again see bold

the hills of Angloria or surf at Winterhold,

I greet the coming evening, and the night,

proud purple from the strange and setting sun

and the towered ragged course that I have run,

towers yet that hold the chaos of life,

and struggle with order’s unending strife,

for endless may they hold our light

against the long and coming night.

Worlds change, I’m told,