Scholar

“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.