John Dalmas - The Lion Returns

On the other side, they disappeared into the forest. Horgent had his orders and four great ravens. He looked forward to what a Tiger would think of as the experience of a lifetime.

Two days farther east, Macurdy's short cohort had crossed before dawn, at the confluence of the North Fork, and headed north. For a day and a half they rode through rough, mostly wooded country, neither pushing their horses nor dawdling, and saw no one. Then they entered the fertile, gently undulating North Fork Plain.

Over the next two days they saw some furtive civilians, but no military personnel. Not one. The country had been razed, as if a large force had ranged south to loot and burn, and kill anyone they met. But the job had not been thorough. Humans, and perhaps some ylvin mixed bloods who could pass, had moved back into villages and towns only partly destroyed. Macurdy and his Tigers had spoken to none of them; their speech would give them away as not rakutur. At night they'd rousted people roughly from their shelters, slept in them, then left at first dawn.

Vulkan traveled cloaked.

On their third and fourth days, they'd met three platoon-sized cavalry patrols, none of them accompanied by voitar. No one had hailed the "rakutur" in passing. In fact, the hithar had passed them apprehensively. This hadn't surprised Macurdy. He'd known only one rakutu, Tsulgax, but if Tsulgax was an example, the hithar undoubtedly feared them.

Now Macurdy sat his horse where a road crossed a modest rise. It was afternoon. He was waiting for Blue Wing, his Tigers behind him in a column of fours. Their horses' breath formed a cloud around them. In the distance, across snow-covered fields, lay the ruins of Colroi. A single unburned neighborhood remained.

The devastation had been blanketed and obscured with white. Its extent was suggested by the walls of scattered, burned-out buildings, presumably of stone or brick. The city had been large for Yuulith, but not as large as Duinarog, Macurdy decided. And unlike Duinarog, must have been built largely of lumber.

Clearly it had been burned by the invaders, not the ylver. The unburned section appeared to have been military, spared by the voitar for their own use. Most of its buildings were large. One had a tower. Others seemed to have been old barracks. Men could be seen on foot and horseback, moving among them.

Just north of the city, on a modest promontory above the river, was what must have been the imperial palace. What seemed to have been defensive walls and enclosed buildings, now were snow-capped rubble heaps. It seemed to Macurdy that to have wrought such utter destruction of a fortress, with the time and forces available, would have required explosives.

Or powerful sorceries. He remembered Felstroin's description of the great lightnings called down upon Balralligh. Concentrated and prolonged, they might have caused something like that.

When Blue Wing returned, he did not circle down to Macurdy. It was best not to be obvious. Instead he flew at a few hundred feet, approaching from the west. Vulkan dropped his cloak, and the bird landed on his shoulder.

"Continue on the road," Blue Wing said. "The center of activity is in the unburnt buildings you can see. They include a stone building with a bell tower and guards, and a large stone stable across the street from it. Nearby to the east is a very large building by the river, also of stone. I do not know if it is the food storage building you asked about or not, but it is guarded, and has large haystacks outside. A number of wagons are parked there."

Macurdy gazed northward for another long moment, then turned to his trumpeter. "Let's move," he said.

The Tiger raised his trumpet and blew "ready," then "march." Macurdy trotted off, Vulkan invisible by his side. His cohort followed. This, he told himself, would be the voitar's biggest shock since the storm of darts, boulders, and water in the Copper River Gorge. Not in losses, but symbolically. For Colroi had been Kurqosz's great symbolic victory, and it was some two hundred miles behind the front.

They rode unchallenged all the way to what had been the main fire hall, and was now Colroi's military headquarters. As they approached it, Macurdy wondered if there'd be rakutur there. If there were, would they see through the pretense? But the guards proved to be hithar, humans, quite military looking, but inadequate for what they were about to experience.

Macurdy dismounted in front of their sergeant, who frowned, perhaps troubled by some anomaly in the "rakutu's" behavior or appearance. Macurdy drew his dwarf-made saber and ran the hithu through. There were shouts. While others disposed of the remaining guards, Macurdy and several Tigers pushed their way through the front door. Hithik administrative personnel took refuge behind furniture.

Three voitar were there, sabers drawn. Macurdy engaged one of them, leery of the voitu's reach and presumed training. Within seconds he'd cut his opponent badly. The voitu dropped his sword, and Macurdy ran him through. None of them lasted much longer, then his Tigers mopped up the staff.

No one, voitu or hithu, had rung the alarm bell, so Macurdy had one of his Tigers ring it. It was a lot quicker and less trouble than hunting down and rooting out the soldiers. Several hundred responded to the bell. When they found themselves attacked by what appeared to be rakutur, most tried to flee.

The Tigers killed those who didn't flee fast enough, and dug out and killed those who took refuge in buildings. The only Tiger casualties were three wounded, none severely enough that he couldn't ride. Most of the hithar had given up without a fight. Like a rat cornered by a weasel, Macurdy told himself.

Blue Wing had correctly identified the provisions warehouse. It held not only thousands of sacks of grain, but quarters of beef, large wheels of cheese in stacks, and loaves of bread. All frozen, of course.

First Company provided warehouse security guards. Platoons not on guard duty would move into whatever quarters their commanders chose. Some of those quarters, Macurdy supposed, would have stashes of wine, beer, or liquor. He reminded the men that unfitness to travel or defend the cohort because of drunkenness, was punishable by death.

Tiger punishments were commonly draconian.

Macurdy bunked with Vulkan in a single residence that seemed to have been that of the voitik commander. He took his boots off for the feeling of freedom it gave him, and lay back on the featherbed, hands behind his head. "I wonder what Kurqosz will make of this," he said. "I suppose he'll see it in the hive mind."

‹An event like this is likely to cause a vector change,› Vulkan replied. ‹In this instance, however, I sense no change yet.›

"You don't tell me as much as you used to. I hope I'm not missing out on too much."

‹I will advise you when I deem it useful. So far your decisions have seemed quite suitable to the circumstances. Early on I did more tutoring, but now the need seldom arises.›

"The Bible says 'Thou shalt not kill.' "

‹Indeed. And in general it is good advice. But that same venerable book proclaims as heroes many Hebrew warriors who took lives in wars. Neither the Voitusotar nor any other ruthless conquerors can halt the evolution of consciousness indefinitely. Some may even accelerate it. But the Tao foresees the infinite vector sprays infinitely. And if the Voitusotar prevail, the future will be ugly for a long time. That is why I was sent here. And why you chose to come.›

"I chose but you were sent?"

‹In a manner of speaking. Your essence nudged you at critical points, but you the person chose freely, without knowing the circumstances. I also chose, but I knew something of what the stakes would be. And are. So for me the choosing was different, my decision a foregone conclusion.›