Scholar: A Novel in the Imager Portfolio (62 page)

Since he was concerned about his ability to carry heavy shields for any length of time, Quaeryt held the lightest of shields with trip points set to register any intrusion and strengthen his shields. Even so, he still worried, because every impact against the shields weakened him, and he’d seen enough to know that he needed shields to survive. He just wasn’t that good a warrior.

“I’ve been riding this road for years,” said Meinyt in a low voice. “Still looks different every time. It’s not just the light, either.”

“Trees grow and change,” suggested Quaeryt.

“More than that.”

Quaeryt had no answer. He just nodded.

Another glass or so passed, when the faintest patter alerted Quaeryt to the incoming volley, and he immediately flattened himself against the mare’s neck.

“From the right!” snapped Meinyt. “First and second squads!”

That didn’t include Quaeryt, but he didn’t see any point in staying on the road, not by himself. Because continuing alone would have made him an even more obvious target, he followed Meinyt across the yards of cleared ground flanking the road and toward the trees, keeping himself low on the mare, while trying to extract the half-staff from its leathers. He almost had it free when he entered the trees. In the predawn gloom, he thought he saw riders ahead, but he wasn’t certain.

He definitely heard another volley of arrows and quarrels, but none touched him or his shields. Just as he congratulated himself on that, a figure appeared ahead and to his left and hurled something at him—a large throwing ax. While his shields did stop the weapon, he could still feel the muted impact.

The astonishment of the hill raider froze him for a moment, long enough for Quaeryt to bring up the staff and catch the man at the juncture of arm and shoulder and fling him from the branch to the ground. Quaeryt kept moving, following Meinyt and keeping low until he heard the sound of the recall horn, when he eased in beside the captain, and the two trotted back to the road, without speaking.

As they cleared the trees, Meinyt turned. “You didn’t have to come with the squads.”

“It seemed like a better idea than staying on the road alone.”

“You might be right on that.”

Quaeryt didn’t think the captain sounded totally convinced.

Another glass passed before there was another horn signal, this one from the front of the column. All in all, after that, two more quick attacks occurred before late midafternoon, when a ranker rode back to inform the captains and undercaptains to ride forward to meet with Major Skarpa.

That meeting didn’t take long, because in little more than a quint Meinyt came riding back to rejoin his company. “We’ll be setting up camp in a meadow about two miles ahead.”

“Won’t they try a night attack?” asked Quaeryt.

“They might, but the meadow’s large enough that they’ll have to leave the trees even to get within bowshot range.”

So we’ll lose sentries.…

“It is war, scholar,” replied the older captain, as if he’d read Quaeryt’s thoughts. “They know the governor’s serious now. It’s not just skirmishes.”

But then, Quaeryt was so tired that he might have actually spoken the words. He did remind himself that he needed to keep his feelings hidden, in the fashion in which he’d had no difficulty in Solis or in the Telaryn Palace.
Is there something about the possibility of death in battle that makes men less guarded … or is it just because you’re still not really used to this?

He suspected it was the latter, since few of the officers revealed anything on their faces.

The encampment on Vendrei night was unlike the others, with patrols encircling the large meadow that held the camp site, and a sense of worry among more than a few of the officers. From what Quaeryt could remember, the regiment had halted only slightly beyond a point two-thirds of the way from Boralieu to Waerfyl’s hold, seemingly not all that far from where Quaeryt had been wounded on that first “routine” patrol.

Supper was cold, again, biscuits, cheese, and mutton jerky. This time, Quaeryt forced himself to chew some of the jerky. It wasn’t quite as bad as he recalled, but that might have been because he was hungry … and so exhausted that he was asleep not all that long after full darkness.

Quaeryt was so tired that he wasn’t certain whether he heard first the horn call to arms or the shouts of “Repel attackers!” It took him a moment to pull on his boots and raise his shields, and he had to grope around for his staff.

By the time he was on his feet and fully alert, the attackers had retreated to the woods surrounding the camp site. He glanced skyward, catching sight of the crescent Artiema and the slightly less than half-full Erion It had to be his imagination, but the smaller moon seemed redder, bloodier, than usual.

Imagination,
he told himself firmly.

“Pack up and mount up!” ordered Meinyt from somewhere to Quaeryt’s left.

“Now, sir?” asked a figure in the gloom.

“Now! The governor said that it’s not that long until dawn so that we might as well head out. None of you’d sleep anyway.”

Quaeryt had to agree with that. He wouldn’t.
Not now.

He returned to where he’d abandoned his blanket and gear, arranged them, and then rolled everything up and put it in his kit bag. He stood carefully and looked around. Most of the others in the company were already heading toward their mounts.

As Quaeryt trailed the rankers toward where the mounts were tethered, his boot slipped. He looked down. Under the boot on his bad leg was a crossbow quarrel. He reached down and retrieved it, bringing it close enough to his face that he could see it better. In the dim light, it appeared similar to the one that had wounded him. He quickly slipped it under the cords with which he’d tied his kit bag to the rear of his saddle. He’d study it later.

81

The sun was well up, although it was barely midmorning, when the hill holders attacked again, this time out of the trees on both sides of the road and into the middle of the column. The column slowed, but kept moving, and before long, Quaeryt saw leather-clad bodies lying alongside the road, more than two score, left where they had fallen, and untouched, except that their weapons had been removed. Since he hadn’t seen anyone loading weapons into the wagons ahead, he suspected that they’d just been strapped to spare or captured mounts. He also thought there were more than a few bodies in the trees flanking the road. Again, he was carrying light shields, because it was going to be a long day.

Just before noon, the column halted near a stream, where company by company, the horses were watered, and the men had a chance to stretch their legs.

“How soon before another attack, do you think?” Quaeryt asked Meinyt.

“Sometime in the next few glasses. Surprised that they weren’t laying for us here.” The captain paused. “Except they would have had to make good time through the woods. The road is faster. If they split their forces…”

“It would be even harder to regroup”

Meinyt nodded.

A glass later, there was another halt, but no signal of any sort of attack, but Quaeryt could see several engineers and one wagon pull onto the shoulder and head forward.

A bridge out?
He didn’t recall any bridges on the road ahead.

More than two quints passed before the column began to move again, and Quaeryt rode almost a mille before he came to a section of the road where it appeared that the rebels had dug a trench across the road, almost a yard wide. There were also bodies beside the road there, one of them a Telaryn mount.

After yet another glass, ahead Quaeryt could see the column turning to the right and moving uphill, doubtless through the two pillars that served as “gates” to Waerfyl’s hold proper. Before long, the wagons before Sixth Battalion had lumbered through the natural stone posts, but they only continued for another fifty yards before coming to a halt.

Once more, Meinyt left for a quick meeting with Skarpa and then returned to give orders to the squad leaders.

“We’ll be forming up once we leave the trees. That’s another three or four hundred yards up. Five-man front. We need to take enough ground to get the engineers within a few hundred yards of the hold, and we’ll have to hold that ground…”

When the horn signaled again, the column rode slowly up the lane that climbed gently through a small area of woods, then crossed a level meadow beside a pond. The red flies and mosquitoes seemed less numerous than on Quaeryt’s last visit, but that might have been because they had far more men and mounts on which to feast and were just spread out over more victims, but for whatever reason, he was glad that only a few pestered him, few enough that he could fan most of them away.

Once past the pond, the regiment re-formed on the meadow, with perhaps a third of a mille between the front ranks and the beginning of the gentle upslope to the top of the low ridge on which were located the holding buildings. Archers crowded the top of the modest stone tower at the end of the higher adjoining ridge, and shafts arched toward the regiment under the high gray clouds, but all fell short. All the shutters on the narrow windows of the hold buildings were fastened shut, and not a person was to be seen.

Quaeryt glanced back. While he could not see what was happening, he had no doubts that the engineers were assembling their bombards. He looked forward, but outside of the archers he saw none of Waerfyl’s retainers. Nor did he while the engineers continued to work.

Less than half a glass later, after several ranging stones, the first crock flew over the regiment and hit the stone terrace, short of the heavy log walls, but the chunks of flaming bitumen skidded across the stone, some coming to rest against the logs. More crocks flew. One never burned. Several burned out without igniting the walls, but the engineers kept up the bombardment. Before long, a corner of the large hold building showed signs of beginning to catch fire.

At that point, hundreds of men in leathers, perhaps as many as five hundred, less than a third of them mounted, poured out from behind the hold and over the ridge and down toward the regimental formation.

“Hold until they’re on the flat!” ordered Meinyt.

Quaeryt could hear other captains giving the same order.

A horn signal followed, and the regiment charged as one. Quaeryt let the captain take the lead, keeping himself in the second line. This time he had the staff ready long before the horsemen of the battalion crashed into the hill forces.

Almost immediately, the lines mixed, and there were footmen in leathers, horsemen in uniform, and those in leathers, all thrown together. Unlike the skirmishes in the trees, Quaeryt found, here there was only a little room to move, but he saw a footman with an ax, and he thrust with the staff, catching the man in the chest—and a Telaryn mounted ranker slashed down with a sabre.

Even as he thrust away a leather-clad rider, he had to wonder why he’d joined the charge, but he had little time for wonderment as another rider pressed between two rankers toward him. He used the staff to knock aside the oversized blade carried by the hill attacker, then managed to swing the staff over the mare to catch another rider on the back of the head before he slashed a ranker on his unprotected side.

For the next quint or so, he used the staff and his shields as much to beat back the men on foot who were trying as much to cripple or kill the mare and other mounts as they were interested in attacking the horses’ riders, although a few more times, he thrust at hill riders … and might even have injured one or two.

Before long, on the top of the ridge, the holding house was burning so fiercely that Quaeryt could feel the heat on his face, as he struggled just to keep men from the mare. Then, in a space of what seemed moments, the opposition faded away, and seemingly abruptly, the soldiers of the regiment were left alone. The main hold building was burning fiercely, but only the closest outbuilding was also afire.

Quaeryt found that he was panting and that his arms burned. He lowered the staff. Blood was smeared across the end, some of it already dried. He didn’t recall hitting anyone in a way that would have drawn blood. He looked to Meinyt, but the captain had eased his mount over to a ranker.

“You’re the squad leader now, Noyan. You know what to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Give me a report as soon as you can.”

Quaeryt eased the mare back and tried to inspect her from the saddle. He saw no injuries, and she wasn’t limping. He did not look eastward at the bodies strewn across the matted grass at the base of the ridge, or those lying across the slope, not for more than a few moments.

“See you’re still with us, scholar,” called Meinyt as he turned his mount.

“So far.”

“Sixth Battalion officers!” Skarpa’s voice rang over the hubbub.

Meinyt rode toward the major, and Quaeryt followed to where Skarpa had gathered the battalion officers, staying back and listening.

“I’ll need reports in the next quint. We’ll camp here and head out early tomorrow. Odds are that there will be more attacks. They’ll be more vicious…”

Quaeryt could understand that. What he didn’t understand was why the hill holders had thought that the governor would ignore them forever. Or had that been because the Khanars had let them do as they pleased, at least among themselves, so long as they paid token allegiance to the Khanar?

In a way, Rescalyn acted as the Khanars had until he had the force to do otherwise.

Yet Rescalyn had been able to do it with less tariff revenue, effectively, than had the Khanars. Because the princeps was more efficient at getting and using tariff golds? For all the answers Quaeryt thought he had, there were still many questions for which he had none.

“… Commander announced that sow’s ass Waerfyl was one of those killed. He was with the first attackers. His people didn’t even seem to miss him. Likely some of the other holders will be better commanders. Each holding attack is going to be harder than the last, but there won’t be any peace in Tilbor until we’ve gotten rid of the worst of these arrogant leeches.”