Scepters (51 page)

Alucius’s
lips tightened. He should have expected a Matrite Talent-officer. He should
have, especially protecting the spear-thrower.

“Aim
to your right more. Just sweep the area.”

In
the darkness, Alucius scrambled toward the edge of the gully, dropping into a
ditchlike depression just short of a far deeper drop-off.

Shots
pierced the predawn gray, and he could sense the bullets a fraction of a yard
above his head. Lying there, with more bullets passing above him, he extended a
Talent-probe downhill, seeking the brighter lifethread of the Talent officer.

She
was riding uphill in his direction, with a small squad, calling out
instructions. Those instructions were far too accurate.

Alucius
would have preferred to use his rifle, but the Matrite shots were so close that
lifting his head could have been fatal. Doing nothing was also likely to be
fatal before very long.

He
extended the Talent-probe toward the officer, seeking the lifethread nodes. Her
main node was unprotected, and he twisted. An unseen spray of brown and green
was followed by the fall of her lifeless body from the saddle.

“Talent-wielder
got her!”

“Keep
shooting!”

“Where?
There’s no one anywhere.”

“Got
to be somewhere!”

A
sheet of bullets passed overhead. Alucius resisted the urge to fire back and,
keeping on the precarious edge of the gully, began to crawl, then scramble
uphill. Going in a half crawl, half crouch was hard on his legs, his feet, and
his lungs, and he kept having to stop to catch his breath. The rifle felt like
a long, heavy weight. The sky was turning from deep black green to dark silver
green by the time Alucius had scrabbled his way uphill another three hundred
yards.

He
tried once more with his Talent to explore the spear-thrower, but it was still
depowered. He was also stretching to reach it with his Talent.

The
small squad that had been with the Talent officer had begun to move forward toward
a point just below where Alucius had almost been shot, but they were moving too
carefully, he thought, to be able to track him before he got into position to
do something about the crystal spear-thrower.

He
kept moving, making another fifty yards, so that he was at the edge of the
gully, flat on his stomach on a slope that was steep enough that he would slide
down into a fifty-yard drop if he moved incautiously or lost his footholds.
Although his Talent was supposed to be shielding him from view from below, he
felt horribly exposed.

The
sense of a
crack
echoed around him, and he could
feel the energy building from the spear-thrower, which was positioned only a
half vingt below the ring road, with its discharge formulator pointed at the
road itself.

“There
they are!”

A
single trumpet blast echoed across the ridge from the ring road, and a company
of Southern Guards appeared and charged downhill.

Alucius
winced. He hadn’t even begun to try to work out how to deal with the weapon. A
nimbus of pinkish energy flared up around the spear-thrower, followed by a
humming that quickly rose to a high-pitched whine and abruptly stopped. With
the end of the whining, miniature crystalline spears formed a yard beyond the
crystal muzzle of the device, then flashed outward so quickly that sunbeams
seemed to radiate from the weapon rather than crystal projectiles. The deadly
spray struck the center of the oncoming lancers, disintegrating them into a
pinkish spray.

Alucius
forced himself to ignore the wave of death and concentrate on the weapon
itself, extending a Talent-probe. The probe was repelled from the nimbus of
unseen pinkish light, repelled by the strength of that light. Alucius forced
himself to probe around the weapon; but the only place where the shield did not
extend was that point where the spears seemed to form before they were
accelerated outward.

He
turned his probe and extended it behind the formation point.

The
shock of raw power slammed back through his probe with such force that Alucius
had to release the probe and concentrate on keeping his balance to avoid
slipping, then sliding, to the drop-off below him.

His
shield wavered in the effort.

“There’s
someone up there!”

He
managed to get his balance back and recover the Talent shield.

“Where?”

“Up
there, below the machine on the side.”

Another
wave of Southern Guards vanished in pinkish spray, and their deaths washed
across Alucius. He swallowed and tried to get his concentration back.

What
about using the rifle, wrapping lifeforce around the bullets?

He
crawled upward and forward until he could just ease the rifle over the edge of
the rim of the gully. Then he focused on infusing the bullets with lifeforce.
He aimed at the spear-thrower, narrowing his concentration, and squeezed the
trigger, once, twice, three times.

A
brief flare of energy flashed from the side of the spear-thrower with each
impact, but there was no sense that even one of the bullets had had any real
effect on the Matrite weapon.

A
line of bullets plowed into the rim of the gully less than five yards below
him.

What
could Alucius do? The soarers said that everything had nodes. Could he find
something like a node in the weapon, something that would undo a key part?

He
extended his Talent probe again, this time keeping it flexible.

There
were no nodes—not like those of people or ifrits. But there were hard
diamondlike glittering Talentlike points that rotated around the point where
the spears were formed. Alurius tried to slow them in their rotation, but that
was like trying to halt a huge iron wagon wheel headed downhill. If he hung on,
he’d be crushed.

What
if he pushed it faster?

He
lent his strength to try to hurry the diamond nodes.

Suddenly,
the tiniest thread trailed from one diamond node, and Alucius grasped it with
his probe and began to pull it. The node unraveled, and the following node
shifted, as if to try to take the place of the first, and additional smaller
threads appeared.

Alucius
could suddenly feel the discharge formulator, hard and impervious crystal,
begin to sag, as if melting. He used his probe to tug at more and more of the
threads.

Then…
a surge of power, seemingly rising from everywhere, poured into the
spear-thrower.

Alucius
dropped his probe and concentrated on forming a greenish Talent-shield around
himself, barely getting it over himself when a roar of flame and force exploded
from the spear-thrower.

Metal
and crystal exploded everywhere, and in all directions, scything outward.

So
much death followed the destruction of the weapon that for several long
moments, Alucius was numb, deaf, blind. He just lay under his shields, waiting
for the patter of metal and crystal rain to stop.

Then
he began to inch his body upward and over the top edge of the gully.

“Companies!
Forward!” came Feran’s order from below on the adjoining ridge.

Slowly,
Alucius stood and surveyed the flat ridge before him. The explosion had scythed
crystal and death through the Matrite force and through the few remaining
Southern Guards who had attempted to attack the spear-thrower before Alucius
could disable it. He had to swallow hard to keep from retching. Everywhere were
small gobbets of things—flesh, wood, metal, brush, dirt, and all were pinkish.
He looked down. There was even a pinkish film on his own boots.

The
destruction had created a circle only a vingt or so in diameter, and there were
still two companies or more of Matrites lower on the ridge. Feran’s charge had
caught them while they were still stunned by the devastation.

Rifle
in hand, Alucius began to walk down the ridge.

He’d
covered about two hundred yards when three riders appeared leading his gray.
Dhaget was in the lead, and Alucius was more than glad to see him.

“Sir!
Thought you might like a mount!”

Alucius
swung into the saddle, but by the time he had ridden down toward the fighting,
the few surviving Matrites had pulled clear and were riding southward hard. A
sense of more regret and anger washed over him. He wished he’d been able to be
part of the attack, to wield his sabre somehow, tired as he was. But the
Matrites had retreated so quickly that pursuing would have been stupidity.
Besides, there was still another spear-thrower to destroy.

Feran
had ordered a recall, and the three companies re-formed as Alucius neared.
Alucius reined up short of the overcaptain.

Feran
looked at Alucius. Alucius knew he was a sight, black skull mask still in
place, with smears of blood and other things across his uniform. Jultyr and
Deotyr rode up within moments. All three officers looked at Alucius.

“Sir,
we engaged and broke off as ordered. Fifth Company, three dead, five wounded.”

“Sir,
Thirty-fifth Company, ten dead, eight wounded.”

“Twenty-eighth
Company, seven dead, six wounded.”

“Thank
you. We’ll ride straight up to the ring road, banners ahead.”

“Banners
forward, column, forward!”

Feran
rode up beside Alucius. “How did you manage to escape that?”

“I
was hanging over the side of the gully when it exploded.”

“I
won’t ask about the rest, Colonel.”

“You
don’t want to know,” Alucius said tiredly. Belatedly, he realized that he hadn’t
fired a single shot from his rifle at any of the Matrites—just three useless
shots at the spear-thrower.

“I
learned that a long time ago. How many Matrite companies were there up there?”

“Three…
could have been four. There was a Southern Guard company, too. Most of them had
been killed before…” Alucius shook his head, reaching down to take the rifle
out and reload it. He should have done that sooner.

Again,
behind him, he could hear the murmurs.

“…
walked out of that…”

“…
blood all over him… none of it his…”

Except
, Alucius thought,
I’m
responsible for all the blood
.

Even
before they had reached the top of the ridge and the ring road, Alucius sent
Roncar ahead to the main road fort to report the total destruction of one
crystal spear-thrower and three Matrite companies. He’d also worried off the
skull mask and slipped it inside his tunic. At the top of the ridge and the
edge of the ring road, a Southern Guard squad leader rode forward from the
handful of lancers that remained from his company.

“Sir?”
The squad leader’s eyes took in the insignia and the blood streaks across
Alucius’s uniform. “Colonel, sir?”

“Yes?”

“Do
you have any orders for us, sir? Majer Storynst and Captain Chelopyr… they got
taken out by that spear-thrower… most of the companies, too.” His eyes
narrowed. “You were the one walking across the ridge, sir? “

“I
was the one,” Alucius replied hurriedly, taking in the no more than two squads
remaining from what had to have been two companies. “For right now, you’d
better patrol this area. You see that road down there? That offers the Matrites
easy access to the ring road. We need to be heading east to deal with the other
spear-thrower, and someone needs to make sure that they don’t change their
position and try this approach again. I’ll let the marshal know that you’re
here. What company?”

“Seventeenth
and Nineteenth, sir. What’s left of them.”

“If
you see any sign of more Matrite forces, send a messenger to the marshal.”

“Yes,
sir.”

As
he finished speaking, Alucius could feel his body shaking all over. Once his
force had all reached the ring road and formed up in a column heading eastward,
he managed a long swallow from his water bottle and began to eat some hard
travel bread, followed by some salted almonds they had gotten from the
quartermaster.

They’d
traveled less than a vingt when Alucius could see another body of riders moving
toward them at a quick trot. By then he’d eaten and drunk enough that most of
the shakiness had subsided.

“Banners
forward!”

Before
long, Alucius was reined up opposite another colonel.

“The
Matrites are attacking on the south ends of the ring road, both east and west,”
said the captain-colonel, a man Alucius had seen at officers’ call but had not
met. “Are you sure, sir, that you should be headed east?”

Alucius
fixed the other with silver-gray eyes that turned metal-hard. “We’ve been
fighting since well before dawn, Colonel. We’ve destroyed one of the crystal
spear-throwers, and we’re riding toward the other one to see what we can do
before it slaughters most of the Lanachronan forces on the east side of
Southgate.”

For
the first time, the older colonel’s eyes took in the blood and gore on the
Northern Guard uniforms. His eyes did not quite meet those of Alucius. “Ah…
yes, sir.”

“Two
Southern Guard companies attacked the spear-thrower prematurely, before we
could take it out. There are fewer than two squads left. They’ve mounted a
patrol there, to watch for any other Matrite companies. You can obtain the
details from them, if you’d like. The longer we delay, the more Southern Guards
will die. Good day, Colonel.”

“
Good day, sir.”

Alucius
moved to the right side of the road. “Single file, until we pass!”

“Single
file.”

Neither
Feran nor Alucius spoke until they were past the four companies of Southern
Guards.

“Idiots…”
Alucius finally muttered. “Told Alyniat that they wouldn’t do a frontal
assault. Told him we shouldn’t do any against the spear-throwers. No wonder
they’re losing what they’d held.”

“It
makes you wonder,” Feran returned. “You still think supporting the Lord-Protector
is that good an idea?”