Alector's Choice (30 page)

In the early morning,
Mykel and Alendyr rode side by side up the stone road toward the mining camp
and the mine. Behind them followed second squad. The late-winter air was almost
warm, and there was no wind. Selena was low in the western sky, so low that it
would not rise in the east until close to midnight. Asterta was low in the
east, behind Mykel and to his right.

“Sir?” asked Alendyr.
“What does the colonel want us to do about the patrols?”

“Keep patrolling, but
with more care. I got the feeling that he wasn’t happy about having to take
over.”

“In his boots, I
wouldn’t be, either,” replied the squad leader. “Majer Vaclyn, begging your
pardon, sir, he didn’t do any of us any favors. Bhoral said that you near-on
begged him to leave those folk in Jyoha alone. Was that right?”

“I don’t know that I
begged. I did tell him that I didn’t see the use of it, and that it would just
make matters worse. He insisted that a Codebreaker was a Codebreaker.”

“When the Code says
that a man who steals for his family, cause they’re starving, has to be treated
the same as a fellow like Polynt, who just robbed and killed when he felt like
it—there’s something wrong there.”

Mykel thought for a
moment. “Theft is theft. If you treat it differently, then everyone will have
an excuse, and there won’t be any justice. What’s wrong is when a man who is
able to work is driven off his lands and turned into a thief because he has no
choices left. That’s what happened in Jyoha.”

“Happens more than
there, sir.”

Mykel took a deep
breath. He didn’t have a good answer for what Alendyr had said, and they were
headed back to deal with prisoners and escaped prisoners, and some of them were
probably no different from the men Mykel and Fifteenth Company had killed in
Jyoha. “I’m sure it does. I’m sure it does.”

The two rode another
half vingt before Alendyr spoke. “You’re being quiet, sir. Something we need to
do?”

“No. I was just
thinking.” Actually, he’d been thinking about several things, including
Rachyla. There was something about her that drew him, and he couldn’t pinpoint
it. He couldn’t even come close. She was attractive, but he’d met more
attractive women. She was intelligent, but he’d met other women who were. She
came from wealth, but from Mykel’s point of view, that was a disadvantage,
because he’d never have wealth, and probably wouldn’t know what to do even if
someone settled a pile of golds on him.

“About what, sir?”

“More than a few
things.” Mykel grinned widely. “Women. Golds. I was also thinking about the
road.”

Alendyr said nothing.

‘There are
eternastone roads everywhere—except here. Why would that be?“

“Because we don’t
need them? You get here by ship, and ships don’t need high roads.”

“That’s true enough,
but Dramur is a big island. It’s farther from one end to the other than it is
from Elcien to Lu-dar or from Tempre to Hyalt, or lots of places that have high
roads. Maybe they wouldn’t fight so much here, if they had better roads. The
only decent road is this one, from the port to Dramuria—” Mykel laughed
abruptly. “Of course.”

Alendyr looked at
Mykel questioningly.

“I’m just a Cadmian
captain. It’s trade and people. The roads are links for trade to places where
there are either goods or the people to buy them.”

“But… sir, there’s
the road from Iron Stem to Eastice. It’s more than five hundred vingts, and
there aren’t as many folks on that road once you leave Iron Stem as there are
here in Dramuria. Same’s true for the road to Soupat, or the one from Dereka to
Aelta.”

Mykel cocked his
head. “I thought I had an answer, but you’re right. There must be some reason,
but I can’t see it. Turning road paving into eternastone takes golds ?nd some
special equipment that the alectors use.”

“Maybe they’re
planning for where there will be more people,” suggested Alendyr.

“That makes as much
sense as anything,” Mykel agreed, although he wasn’t certain about that,
either.

After another hundred
yards, he shifted his weight in the saddle, but gingerly, and looked blankly at
the road for several moments. He was headed back to the mine, and he’d never
even been inside the stockade, and that was where the prisoners were
escaping—or vanishing.

He took a deep
breath. He really needed to see the mineworks, much as he dreaded doing so.
Maybe… just maybe, that would tell him something. If it didn’t, he wouldn’t
feel guilty or as though he’d overlooked something.

Almost a glass passed
from liftoff at the Cadmian compound before the pteridon cleared the highest
points in the MurianMountains west of Dramuria. From there the pteridon glided
westward on wide blue wings, slowly descending across the more densely
vegetated western hills. Falyna had followed, as Quelyt had earlier, the road
that ran through the lower section of the mountains south of the mine.

After they had crossed
the mountains and started downward, Dainyl could see the differences between
the east and the west sides of Dramur, differences far more pronounced at the
end of winter than they had been when he had earlier surveyed the area. In the
west, the trees were even greener, and the fields that had just been tilled
earlier were showing a green fuzz.

As before, Dainyl saw
no carts or wagons on the higher reaches of the road, but scattered riders and
wagons appeared on the road once they flew over the cultivated lands in the
high, rolling hills.

“A little more to the
south here, toward that estate with the two villas,” Dainyl called forward,
remembering a large riding area, one suitable for training horse troopers.

“Yes, sir.”

The pteridon banked,
then straightened, heading toward the villas of the estate.

Dainyl watched
closely as they neared the large estate, then smiled coolly as he saw dust
rising from the flat riding area to the north and east of the villas.

“Someone’s riding
hard there,” shouted Falyna.

The pteridon blanked
slightly right, then leveled out on a course directly toward the riders, about
five hundred yards above the ground as the pteridon swept over the eastern
stone wall. Some of the dust had begun to settle, since most of the riders had
reined up to watch as the pteridon flew overhead.

All the riders were
scattered in squad-sized groups across what Dainyl had earlier thought to be an
outdoor riding arena. They all wore deep blue tunics—exactly the same color—and
all had scabbards attached to their saddles. Dainyl couldn’t see what weapons
were in them.

“You see what I see,
sir?” Falyna called back.

“Horse troopers, I’d
say. You up for a low pass back over them?”

“We can do that,
sir.”

“Better have your
lance ready, just in case.”

The blue-metaled
lance was in Falyna’s hand even before Dainyl had finished speaking. For his
own part, the colonel reached out with his Talent to draw lifeforce for
shields.

The pteridon banked
steeply southward into a tight turn, losing altitude swiftly, until they were
headed back over the exercise yard at little more than a hundred yards above
the ground. Dainyl leaned slightly to his left for a better view.

All of the riders had
reined up and watched as the pteridon swept toward them. Several riders had pulled
out rifles, but someone yelled something, and the troopers lowered the weapons.
At the lower altitude, Dainyl could see that the riders also wore sabres. That
suggested that the troopers might also have been trained with the blades before
obtaining the rifles—or that the seltyr had other uses for the force.

“Another pass, sir?”
called Falyna, as the eastern stone wall passed under the pteridon.

“No. That was enough.
Climb back up and head west again.”

The pteridon’s wings
beat more strongly as the Talent-creature began a climbing left turn.

The seltyr—or his
captain—had been smart enough not to fire on the two Myrmidons, and that
indicated that someone was well aware of what a skylance could do.

“They had rifles
out,” Falyna said over her shoulder. “Good thing for them they didn’t try to
use them.”

“Yes, it was,” Dainyl
called back. “We need to look at some more estates.”

“There’s one to the
north.”

“Head over there.”

The pteridon
straightened on a northwest course. Dainyl shifted his weight in the second
saddle and readjusted his harness. He still wasn’t flying enough not to get
uncomfortable—and they had at least two more glasses before they would return
to Dramuria.

The next estate—one
that Dainyl had not overflown before—had a square field that had been heavily
ridden— but no horses or men were out or visible. Still, the field suggested
that someone had been training or exercising sizable numbers of troopers.

“Sir!” called Falyna.
“To the north!”

Dainyl glanced
northward, where he saw a line of thun-derheads rising on the horizon. “Let’s
start back!”

“On our way, sir.”

Dainyl continued to
study the ground beneath the pteri-don’s wings as the Talent-creature slowly
climbed eastward. Clearly, more than a few of the western seltyrs had their own
private horse companies—and at least one was armed with rifles—Cadmian-style
rifles in all probability.

He found it
impossible to believe that the marshal and the Highest did not know that, not
with their access to the Table in the Hall of Justice. The real questions were
whether all the high alectors and the Duarches knew, whether the marshal and
the High Alector of Justice were keeping the information for their own
purposes, and whether the High Alector of Justice and the marshal had done even
more than withhold information.

The other question
was more personal. Why had he not had Falyna flame down the horse troopers?
He’d had that right. Because, he told himself, the troopers were following
orders, and killing one set of troopers wouldn’t have solved anything—and even
the seltyr who had armed them would likely have escaped. That raised another
set of questions, as well.

Dainyl didn’t like
thinking about any of those questions, especially about their implications. The
only fact in his favor was that a Table did not reveal alectors and
Talent-creatures, so that no one with a Table would have been able to determine
where Dainyl had been and what he had observed. That was slight consolation.

Despite the aches in
his back and shoulder, and a headache that had pounded at him half the night,
Mykel struggled awake well before dawn on Duadi. The afternoon before, when
thunderstorms had just pelted the area and he had felt even worse from a long
day—even if there hadn’t been any snipers on the road—he’d finally arranged to
meet one of Meryst’s squad leaders at the guano mine a half glass before dawn
so that he could inspect the mine before any miners arrived. There clearly
weren’t enough miners or Cadmian guards to work at night.

Khelsyt—the squad
leader—hadn’t been that pleased with Mykel’s request.

Mykel had insisted.
“Miners are disappearing. You want me to tell this Myrmidon colonel that I
don’t even know where it’s happening? He already took care of Majer Va-clyn
with that light-cutter torch of his.”

“Yes, sir. Half glass
before dawn,” Khelsyt had agreed, tiredly. “I’ll have an overseer there to show
you around.”

As Mykel struggled
into his uniform and made his way to the stable in the dim light of a morning
that had come too early, Mykel half wished that, bad as he’d felt the night
before, he’d just insisted on seeing the mine then. At the time, he’d thought
he’d feel better after another night’s sleep. He did, but not that much better,
and he had no idea why he had a headache.

Two scouts—Sendyl and
Jasakyt—were saddling their mounts when Mykel arrived at the ramshackle shed
serving as a stable. Mykel’s breath puffed white in morning air that was far
colder than it had been recently, doubtless because of the icy rain and hail of
the evening before.

“Good morning,” Mykel
said.

“Sir… we figured that
lifting a saddle with that arm…” offered Sendyl.

Mykel glanced into
the stall. His chestnut was saddled. “Thank you. I am a bit stiff in the
mornings.” When he stepped into the stall, he checked the girths, but the two
had done a good job, for which he was definitely thankful. He slipped his rifle
into the scabbard and led the gelding out of the shed. He mounted easily, but
carefully. Even so, a jolt of pain went through his shoulder. The two scouts
joined him immediately, and the three rode toward the mine road.

“We’re going into the
mine, sir?” asked Sendyl.

“Just for a little
while. After talking to the colonel, it came out that none of us has ever been
in it, and I couldn’t explain why no one had.” All that was true, if totally
misleading, but Mykel doubted the colonel would object to his seeing how the
mine was laid out and operated.

Sendyl and Jasakyt
exchanged knowing glances. Mykel let them think that the colonel had picked on
Fifteenth Company and its captain.

As they neared the
outer gates of the prison compound, the sentries looked at the three riders.
The gates opened, then closed once they were past. The gray paving stones were
damp from the intermittent rain of the night before, but the sky was clear. A
chill wind blew out of the northwest. The road was wide enough for three
abreast. Mykel rode in the middle.

“Did either of you
see anything interesting or different while I was in Dramuria?” he asked after
they had ridden several hundred yards.

“No, sir. Pretty quiet
for once,” replied Jasakyt.

“Out on the road,
that is,” added Sendyl. “One of the squad leaders from the locals told me that
another two min-ers just disappeared. One moment, they were loading a cart, and
the next they were gone.”

“Like that?”

“Overseers said that
the miners hid before going down into the mine, and then the others told the
story,” Sendyl said.

“No one saw them or
discovered tracks or anything?” asked Mykel.

“No, sir. But how
would anyone get out of a cave in the rock?”

Mykel had a very good
idea, but he wasn’t about to offer it. “That’s a good question.”

“Strange place, if
you ask me,” murmured Jasakyt.

Mykel looked from the
graystone paving blocks of the road to the still-grayish green sky, and then to
the rocky hillside above the road and its walls. He should have inspected the
mine right after Fifteenth Company had been assigned to patrol the mine and
mine road. Then again, there were so many things he should have done—going to
spread formations immediately, sending copies of his reports to Colonel Dainyl,
talking to Rachyla more, perhaps even going to Colonel Dainyl earlier about the
majer. Was he always going to learn things later than he should—and perhaps pay
for it the next time with his life rather than a wounded shoulder?

The three rode
another half vingt before Sendyl cleared his throat. “Sir, how long are we
going to be here?”

“I don’t know, and I
don’t think the colonel does, either.”

The mine gates opened
as the three rode toward them and creaked shut as the three passed into the
stockade that surrounded the bluff holding the mine and the crude loading
docks.

Khelsyt waited beside
one of the empty wagons. “You can tie your mounts there.” He pointed to the
loading dock. “You’ll be out of here before we bring the prisoners in for the
day.”

Mykel dismounted and
walked his mount to the dock. Already, his nose was beginning to twitch. The
odor, more like a stench that combined the worst features of sewage and manure,
hung heavily in the air.

Standing by the
timbered mine entrance was another figure, a man clad in what once might have
been green, but was now a shapeless gray-brown coverall. His expression was
stern, just short of grim.

“Nophyt, this is
Captain Mykel. The Myrmidon colonel sent him for a quick tour.”

Mykel inclined his head
slightly. “I’m sorry to bother you, but…”

“When an alector
wants something, the rest of us don’t get much of a choice,” replied Nophyt.

“Nophyt is the head
overseer, really more of a mining engineer,” explained Khelsyt.

“Much as anyone needs
an engineer here,” replied Nophyt. “Bats took an old lava tube, and the
branches off it, just kept hanging there and dumping their droppings into it,
until it got all filled up, or mostly so. Now they use the caves farther north.
I figure that someday, we’ll be mining those. Asked Director Donasyr why we
weren’t already, and he said that there were only so many folks with the golds
to pay for the guano, and, besides, it’d last longer if we only mined one cave
at a time. Anyway, I make sure that they dig out the shit evenly so that we
don’t get a wall of it falling on someone. Check the rock walls, too, every
night and every morning, just to make sure nothing’s developed a crack.”

“Do the prisoners
have to chop away rock in places to get to the guano?” Mykel asked.

“Sometimes. Either
floors or the places bats get into where people can’t. In another month, looks
like we’ll be opening up a gallery to get to a lower cave where they did that.”
The overseer gestured toward the weathered timbers that framed the entrance. “Better
get moving.”

From the bracing and
the irregularities, Mykel could see that the mine entrance had once been a cave
mouth.

At the entrance,
Nophyt picked up a metal-and-glass oil lamp, already lit. “This is the main
gallery. It was blasted out and enlarged a long time back.” He walked back
through the gallery to the rear, where a sloping tunnel led downward. In the
middle of the tunnel floor were ruts worn into the stone. A heavy rope lay
between the ruts. Mykel’s eyes traced the rope to a windlass. Iron supports for
the windlass had been set in holes in the lava.

“Once a cart’s full
they jerk the cable, and the windlass crew cranks it up.”

Nophyt walked down
the tunnel on the left, and Mykel followed, with the scouts behind. Khelsyt did
not accompany them on the long walk down to the next level.

“Lower gallery here,”
announced Nophyt. “The cave branches off here. We use smaller carts down here.
Some places, we just have pits, and they hoist the shit up in baskets.”

Mykel tried not to
swallow or breathe deeply, but he almost felt dizzy from the stench as he
followed the overseer along one of the cave branches. Absently, he noted the
irregular sides of the tunnel or cave, but the smooth floor. In some places,
but far from all, the overhead was timbered and supported, although most of the
timbers looked old and cracked.

They passed a wooden
barrier on the right side of the cave tunnel.

“What’s that?” asked
Mykel.

“Drop tube. Goes
straight down. So far as we can tell, not much guano on the sides, and the bottom’s
a good two hundred yards, maybe more.”

The overseer headed
down another long and gently sloping tunnel, walking and explaining, until he
stopped in an open space surrounded by darkness. Without the oil lamp held by
Nophyt, which cast but a circular glow, and not a terribly strong one, the cave
would have been pitch-black.

Mykel thought that
the air wasn’t that good, although the odor seemed less. Then, it might have
been that he was getting used to the stench.

“This is the deepest
part we’ve found so far, not so much deep as far back,” Nophyt said. “We have
to rotate the crews working here. They don’t like it here. Say it’s dangerous.”

Mykel looked around,
but could see nothing beyond the circle of dim light. He closed his eyes and
tried to imagine what it might be like in the dark. Despite his closed eyes, or
perhaps because of them, he could see a faint red-purple glow from somewhere,
almost seeping in at the edges of his vision, if he had had vision with his
eyes open. Where had he seen that color?

His eyes flew open,
and the color vanished. The rock-creatures with the ancient soarer! Was that
why the miners feared the depths here? “Is this one of the places where miners
have disappeared?”

“Don’t know. No one
ever sees ‘em vanish. Some have disappeared from crews working here, but we
could never tell if the crew hid that they’d escaped or if they disappeared.”

“If the prisoners
said they disappeared… ?” asked Mykel.

“Can’t trust what
they say.” Nophyt snorted. “They’d say anything to get out of here.”

“Could you close
sections like this for a while? Until people forgot?”

“Not here. Director
Donasyr wouldn’t let us. This is where the guano is oldest, most concentrated,
and effective.” The overseer laughed. “It also smells less and gets the best
price.”

“You have different
types of guano?” Mykel hadn’t known that.

“More like different
grades. The real old stuff is almost white, powders when you hit it with a
hammer. It doesn’t smell much.” Nophyt gestured with the lamp. “Better start
back up. Won’t be long before they open the gates, and it takes longer walking
back. Doesn’t seem bad going down. Another thing heading back.”

As he followed the
overseer out of the works, Mykel knew where at least some of the missing miners
had gone. There was really no way he was about to tell Dohark—or the
colonel—what he thought. He certainly couldn’t prove it, but if the prisoners
thought that they’d be dragged into the depths and die at the hands of the
rock-creatures, he could certainly see why some of them would do anything to
escape.