Imager’s Battalion

27

A quint or so past eighth glass on Vendrei morning, under gray clouds that did nothing to reduce the heat, Quaeryt and Fifth Battalion rode in the middle of the column, behind Fifth Regiment and in front of Third Regiment, although Skarpa rode at the front with Meinyt. The clouds were high enough that rain didn’t appear likely, or not soon.

Roughly a mille ahead, the hedgerow ended, replaced by a few scattered trees with rough piles of rock between them. Even the ground that sloped generally upward from the road showed patches of dirt and clay, and little more than scraggly and sickly weeds. As Quaeryt rode closer, he could see that the hedgerow had not so much ended as had been hacked down, leaving dead brush, but no large sections of wood. With each yard he traveled, the picture of desolation grew more obvious, and more at odds with the verdant harvest landscapes of fields and forests, pastures and orchards they had recently passed, or even the grounds on the river side of the road.

All that remained of a long structure set on a rise in the fashion of many of the main dwellings of High Holders were the lower portions of the outside walls, all of them charred. Clumps of masonry and brick lay amid the dirt and weeds beneath the severely truncated walls. The same destruction had been wreaked on the outbuildings-or what remained of them.

Quaeryt frowned. The charring on the walls was still blackish, and not all that faded, and some of the trees, the few that had not been felled or were not leafless desiccated remnants, had leaves that were outlined in brown and broomlike twigs at the end of their branches.

“What do you think happened there?” asked one of the undercaptains riding behind Quaeryt and Major Zhelan.

Quaeryt smiled ironically, and asked, without glancing back, “What does it look like?”

“It burned, sir.”

“Why might all of the buildings have burned?” asked Quaeryt.

“There was a high wind…?”

Zhelan shook his head, ruefully.

“Sir?” asked Shaelyt.

“An accidental fire wouldn’t have burned every building that completely, and fire wouldn’t have knocked down the walls,” replied Zhelan.

“A fire wouldn’t have ruined the land, either. Places that have burned often have more growth,” added Quaeryt.

“Someone did it all deliberately?” blurted the youngest undercaptain. “Destroyed the entire holding?”

“They even plowed salt into the ground, it would appear,” added Quaeryt.

“I’ve heard of that,” said Zhelan, “but to see it … What a waste!”

Quaeryt had another thought-just how many men and horses and how much salt had it taken to create that devastation? It had to have been done at Kharst’s bidding. And for what? Why hadn’t Kharst just turned the lands over to another favorite?

He studied the extent of the devastation, then nodded. The actual area reduced to uselessness, while not small, measured perhaps a half mille on a side, from what he could see, likely only a small fraction of the lands of a High Holder. Still … achieving that level of destruction had to have taken a significant amount of time and resources-just to punish a High Holder? And it would have increased the costs to whoever took over the lands.

It also suggests the men and golds available to Kharst.

Quaeryt had known the campaign would not be easy or quick. After what he had seen in the last few days, he had an idea that it would also be bloodier and more brutal than any of them had thought. After a moment he turned to Zhelan. “This is what Kharst will do on a whim, and that’s what he’d do to Telaryn, given the chance. Pass it back.”

“Yes, sir.”

As Zhelan turned in the saddle to relay those words to Fifth Battalion, Quaeryt studied the road ahead, running straight for at least another two milles. Then he glanced to his right, but could not make out the River Aluse through the regularly planted trees that sloped down to the water.

Before that long, the road curved northward, following the river, as it generally did, but not precisely, because Quaeryt could see that it cut through a low swale in a ridge that continued northward and formed a point jutting into the river. He eased his map from his tunic and studied it as he rode. The point on the river was shown on the map, but not named. The map did show, if he squinted and looked closely, where the road cut across the base of the point. That made sense, he supposed, since a road following the point would be several milles longer and there appeared to be no towns there, although the map displayed an indentation on the west side of the point that might have been a cove or a bay, but no road to it that might have indicated a hamlet.

When the last companies of Fifth Regiment drew nearer to the cut in the ridge, one that had to date back generations, because there was no indication of an older road going around the point, Quaeryt could see where, beyond the narrow gap, the first companies in Fifth Regiment were slowing as they followed the road back to the south.

Some obstacle ahead in the road? he wondered.

Then he glanced at the brush-covered slope to the right of the road, almost but not quite too steep for a mount to climb, with scattered trees rising out of the undergrowth, one of the few places they had passed throughout the morning that showed no signs of ever having been cultivated, grazed, or logged or used as an orchard or woodlot. Is that because the ground beneath that brush is too rugged or rocky?

The air was heavy and almost oppressively still. Even though Quaeryt was a ways from entering the narrow cut, he could have sworn that some of the leaves on the bushes higher on the slope were moving, but he could feel no breeze. Nor could he see any other signs of even the lightest of winds.

Abruptly, more than a company of archers in the gray-blue uniforms of Bovaria appeared, rising out of the brush and from behind trees on the upper reaches of the north side of the cut, almost as if from nowhere. They immediately began loosing shafts down upon the last companies in Fifth Regiment.

Quaeryt immediately expanded his shields across the front of his own Fifth Battalion, but from the impact of at least one shaft on his shields before he did and from the yells behind him, he was too late to shield his battalion from the first volley.

“Imagers! Image on the archers!” he ordered. “Iron pieces to the head.”

Quaeryt followed his own advice, as quickly as he could, forcing himself to ignore the troopers ahead of him, trapped in the cut. He cut down one archer, then another, and a third, and a fourth …

Close to a score of troopers in Fifth Regiment turned their mounts uphill, deciding to try to reach the archers, rather than remaining as near-passive targets. Two of the mounts went down immediately, their legs going out from under them on the unsteady dirt and rocks beneath the leafy brush.

More troopers went down, but Quaeryt could also see archers other than those he was targeting toppling, one after the other.

Two troopers, near the eastern end of the cut, had found a place where the ground was firmer, and others began to follow them, although several went down with arrows in their chest and shoulders.

Then, as quickly as the attack had begun, the archers disappeared into the brush and trees at the crest of the ridge, while the squad or so of pursuing troopers were joined by others scrambling, if slowly, after the fleeing archers.

Quaeryt had the feeling that the pursuing troopers weren’t likely to have much success, not given the care behind the ambush. The archers had been placed on a slope that the Telaryn mounts could not climb, or not easily, and the shafts not loosed until the targeted troopers were effectively blocked in place by those in front of and behind them. There did not appear to have been any tracks in any place that scouts could have found them.

He turned in the saddle. “Good work, Undercaptains. Your efforts likely forced the archers to leave sooner than they would have, and that saved many troopers in Fifth Regiment.”

“Sir…” began Shaelyt, who broke off his words. “Nothing, sir.”

“Keep your eyes open. We’ll see more of that.” Much more.

“Yes, sir.”

Once the rest of the Telaryn force had passed through the gap, now watched from the north side of the slope by two squads from Fifth Regiment that had reached the top of the cut, and casualties were taken care of, Skarpa called a halt in an open area another mille farther east, then summoned Meinyt and Quaeryt.

The three met under an oak that offered shade, but little other relief from the harvest heat and soggy still air … or the red flies that seemed to be everywhere. Quaeryt blotted his brow and waited for the commander to say what he would, absently shooing away the flies.

“We got too complacent,” Skarpa said bluntly. “We can’t afford losses like that. I mean, losses for no real purpose. They knew where we were and what we were doing.”

“We haven’t seen any scouts, and not even many boats on the river,” said Meinyt.

“That doesn’t mean there weren’t any.” Skarpa snorted. “It doesn’t mean there were, either.”

Quaeryt was afraid he knew exactly what the commander was suggesting, but decided to see if Skarpa would spell it out.

“They might have found it out from the other side of the river.”

“Spies in the main body, you think?” said Meinyt.

“Where there are golds and armies, there are spies. Here or there, doesn’t make much difference. From now on, we’ll have to be doubly careful of places where we could be ambushed. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many casualties?” asked Skarpa, looking to Meinyt and then to Quaeryt.

“Thirty-two dead, a hundred and two wounded,” replied the older subcommander, “and ten of those probably won’t make it.”

“Three wounded, one seriously,” added Quaeryt.

“Your imagers killed thirty-one of the archers.” Skarpa’s voice was even. “Our best count was that there were two companies up there.”

Quaeryt understood the unasked question. “Under those conditions, each imager has to concentrate on an individual archer. There are six imager undercaptains. That works out to more than five for each undercaptain in less than half a quint. The fact that they were killing archers is what prompted the Bovarians to withdraw when they did. Otherwise…”

“… they would have kept shooting down at us far longer.” Skarpa shook his head. “I’ll need to brief the scouts. Just because a place looks impossible to get to doesn’t mean that it is.”

“How did they get there, sir?” asked Meinyt.

“They used flatboats, probably in the dark last night or the night before, and pulled up in a cove on the north side of the point. You can’t even see it from the road because of the trees down there. Then they hiked up here and waited. The trail they took was too steep and narrow for the troopers to follow it down on horseback. By the time we had enough men to do that, they were on their flatboats heading across the river.” Skarpa looked to Quaeryt. “With everyone jammed up, I couldn’t get word to you quickly enough to get the imagers to where they could deal with the boats. That brings up another question. Could your imagers have set the upper slope afire? Could they do it again?”

Quaeryt considered before answering. “They might have been able to, but anything strong enough to fire green brush and kill archers might have been powerful enough to sweep down and kill some of our men.” He smiled wryly. “I’d like to claim I’d thought of that at the time. I didn’t. It just didn’t seem right.”

“You might keep that in mind in other places,” said Skarpa. “Sticky as it is right now, doesn’t mean we’ll get rain you can freeze.”

Quaeryt nodded.

“According to the scouts, there’s another town some eight milles ahead. Road looks clear, and there aren’t any more steep slopes or swamps along there, just fields and a bunch of orchards … and another holder’s place that looks deserted, but I’ll leave that to you and Fifth Battalion, Quaeryt.”

“Do you want us to take the lead?”

“Might as well. That way, you can stop and look the place over, then bring up the rear when you’re done. I’ll have the supply types bring up a couple of empty wagons just in case.”

“We can do that, but I’d wager it’ll be cleaned out.”

“I won’t be taking that … but you never know with High Holders.”

Quaeryt had known that for a long time, and the events of the last year had more than reinforced that lesson.