Alector's Choice (54 page)

In the darkness close
to three glasses before dawn, Mykel stood on the back side of the ridge,
looking at Bhoral. “You can let the men sleep or rest for another glass. We’re
aiming at riding through the defile at the base of the cliffs at a glass before
dawn, while it’s still dark. I don’t want it to be dark that long, though,
because they’ll need the light once we’re in the forest and clear of the rocks.
When you get word from Jasakyt or one of the scouts, you’ll have to bring the
men through in single file and quickly.”

“Yes, sir.” Bhoral
nodded stiffly.

Mykel understood the
older squad leader’s feelings—that the only dangerous thing officers were
supposed to do was to lead charges against enemy fire, and that was something
Mykel had always preferred not to do until he’d found a way to change the odds.
One simple way of changing the odds was sneaking through the darkness in which
he could see better than could most people, then shooting sentries with his
gift—was it a talent?

“Every so often,”
Mykel went on, “have someone near the crest of the ridge fire a rifle. Not at
the forest, either.” He didn’t want to get hit by his own men, even by
accident. The occasional shots were another cover. Mykel hoped his own use of
the rifle, with shots from outside the forest, would be heard as an
intermittent exchange of fire between scouts and sentries.

“Yes, sir. Jasakyt
and Dhozynyt will be watching the defile for your signal. They’ll bring your
mount.”

“Good.” Mykel lifted
his rifle and walked up the hill toward the first of the scrub oak bushes,
keeping low so that he would not be outlined against the sky. He wore crossed
ammunition belts over his chest, heavier than he would have liked, but he was
afraid he might need every cartridge.

Behind the first
scrub oak, he paused, looking across the flat section of the ridge and planning
his route from oak to oak toward the dark and looming mass of the pine forest.
Keeping low, he slipped from behind the first scrub oak and moved at a quick,
but measured pace, still staying low. He crossed a space of thirty yards before
he reached the second, where he stopped and caught his breath, peering through
the leaves toward the forest.

He didn’t sense any
of the tension he felt when people were watching him, but he also didn’t want
to feel that instants before a bullet blasted into him.

After several
moments, he slipped downhill toward the next scrub oak, a distance of less than
ten yards. His boots skidded as he stopped, and a small stone skittered down
the steeper section of the slope, clicking several times before it came to
rest. Cool as it was in the darkness, Mykel had to blot his forehead with the
back of his sleeve to keep the sudden sweat from running into the corners of
his eyes.

He looked through an
opening in the leaves, focusing his eyes on the darkness of the forest, but
while he could make out tree trunks, and some undergrowth, he could see no
sentries. He knew they were there and could sense their presence in that clear
but undefined feeling he had always had, but which had become more and more
certain since he had been in Dramur. Absently, he wondered why, then pushed
away the question.

The next scrub oak
was back to the right, more than twenty yards away. Mykel was halfway there
when he could feel someone, something looking at him.

He flattened himself
on the ground, just before the crack of a rifle. Then he scrambled forward over
the last ten yards, zigzagging erratically before dropping flat behind the base
of the small bush, just before two more shots sounded.

Mykel did not move,
waiting to see what would happen. His head and chest were shielded, but a
really good shot might hit his legs—if the shooter were far enough to one side.
From what Mykel could tell, the shooter seemed to be directly south of him.

Slowly, he eased the
rifle into position, still waiting, and looking out the right side of the base
of the tree. Nothing happened.

He eased himself
sideways, just a fraction and aimed at where he thought the shooter was, and
fired once. The return shots were high, but Mykel marked the slight flare of
the muzzle flash and took aim and fired, once more willing his shot to its
target.

He could sense that
he had hit the other, with a flare of emptiness.

Not waiting, he
scrambled forward, dodging forward and behind several scrub oaks in a row, but
without the sense of anyone looking for him until he was within a few yards of
the edge of the forest. Once more he half flattened, and half scramble-dived
toward the roots of a huge tree. His chest slammed into a root that felt as
hard as iron.

Crack! Crack! Crack!
At least one bullet struck the trunk love him at enough of a glancing angle to
drop fragments bark across the back of his all-too-damp neck. He squirmed
around the base of the tree so that it was between him and the direction of the
shots. For a time, he remained silent, letting his straining lungs take in air
until he is no longer breathing hard, while listening intently. The rock pile
lay to his right, but there was at least one sentry in the trees to his left.
The sentry he thought he had killed lay somewhere more immediately to his
right. For a moment, he froze. How did he know the man was dead? He’d been
acting on those kinds of feelings more and more, the longer he’d been on
Dramur. He’d always had some sense of where people were, but not to the degree
he did now, and the sense of knowing death was far more recent. Was that part
of the talent the ancient soarer had been saying he had to find?

In the darkness of
the forest, he shook his head. Now wasn’t the time for that.

A shot from up on the
ridge, from the area of Fifteenth Company, echoed through the darkness. Mykel
nodded, then eased, as quietly as he could, from the trunk of the one ine to
the next, trying to keep trunks between him and here he thought/felt the
nearest sentry was. As he moved, he picked up sounds that became more near as
he moved eastward.

“… shots… swear one
came from out there… like the last one… you heard it.”

“… Dhurcan’s always
shooting at shadows… wastes ammunition…”

“… saw something…
sure I did…”

“… could have been a
forest cat… seen some here…” Mykel stopped, then stepped sideways behind a
slender pine trunk. There, less than ten yards away, three yards back from the
northern edge of the forest, were two rebels, kneeling behind a crude log
barrier, looking out into the darkness.

Slowly, he raised his
rifle, aiming, and firing.

The sentry on the
right dropped. The other dropped behind the logs, his head below the topmost,
but clearly still visible from where Mykel stood.

Mykel fired again. He
did not move for several moments, but heard nothing. He quickly but quietly reloaded,
then began to move back through the forest to the northwest. He kept his senses
alert, knowing that at least one more sentry was stationed somewhere between
where he was and where the rock pile was. He had to keep moving, because he had
less than two glasses before it started to get light. Should he have started
earlier? That had risks as well, such as running into changes in the watches.

The last sentry in
the forest was in the same kind of revetment as the pair had been. Like them,
he never seemed to have considered someone approaching from behind. Mykel
dropped him with one shot.

That left the men in
the rock pile, and Mykel had to remove them all, if he possibly could.

He circled to the
south in the darkness, still remaining in the darker shadows of the trees. As
he moved southward, a slight clearing appeared between the forest and the
rocks. He stopped and moved back northwest, halting behind the trunk of one of
the last giant pines. Then he peered around the ancient trunk, studying the
jumbled mass of scrub pine and rock at the far side of the clearing, directly
west. At one time in the past, part of the cliff farther to the southwest had
peeled off and fallen, leaving the jumble of rock and trees from which the
rebel sentries could rake the approach to the defile between the cliff and the
rock pile, barely wide enough for a single mounted Cadmian at a time. If any
sentries remained, the Cadmians would be better targets than tethered chickens,
even in the darkness, standing out against the face of the cliff.

He eased around the
tree, moving as quietly as he could toward a large boulder at the base of the
rock pile. From what he could sense, there were only a handful of rebels in the
rocks, perhaps as few as four or five. While he would approach them from the
side, almost the rear, coming up rom the southeast, he would have to be
careful, because the outhern part of the rock jumble overlooked the rear of the
forest, the area where the rebels had set up camps.

Mykel would have
placed more men to guard the flank, but even the rebels only had so many men,
and the rocks looked impassable, especially to men on horseback. He moved up
the back of the rocks, a boulder at a time.

The first sentry
heard something, and turned. “That you, Juirstyn?”

Mykel put the single
shot through his forehead.

“Stop the target
practice!” came a call from Mykel’s left.

Mykel coughed,
loudly.

“What’s the matter
there, Visort?”

Mykel made choking
sounds, even as his eyes, ears, and senses tracked the oncoming squad leader.
He assumed that the man was something like that.

Scraping sounds and
the clicking of small displaced rocks suggested that the squad leader was
descending from a position slightly higher and to the west.

Mykel just waited.

As he did, another
shot rang out from the ridge, followed by one from the far side of the rock
pile.

“Stop it! They’re
firing to see if you’ll fire back so they can figure out where we are.” The
man’s voice carried across the rocks, as though he were within yards, but Mykel
still couldn’t see him.

Another rock bounced
past Mykel’s foot. A large figure appeared three yards or so upslope, sliding
down the flat smooth surface toward Mykel. The Cadmian barely had to aim.

The shock of the
other’s death slammed through him and he took a half step backward, before
catching himself, he’d sensed death before, at least recently, but he’d not
felt a physical impact. He shook his head, trying to clear it.

“What was that?”

“Don’t know, squad
leader went down to see Visort.”

Mykel noted the
general direction of the second voice and started to make his way up through
the rocks. He was getting tired, and the actual operation hadn’t even begun.

The last two sentries
were less than ten yards apart, one at each end of a boulder that had split.
The rear section had dropped, leaving the forward part as a near perfect stone
revetment.

Despite his care, his
boot scraped on the rock as he moved into position behind and above the two.

“That you, squad
leader?” The nearer sentry turned his head, but not his rifle or his body.

Mykel hated to shoot.
He did. Then he hurried his shot at the second man, who whirled, looking around
blindly.

Mykel forced himself
to concentrate on the last shot. Then he just stood there for several moments.
There were no sounds, no voices, and no sense of any other rebels nearby.

He reloaded, his
fingers seeming stiff, but he managed, before he began to climb down the
northwest side of the rock pile. When he reached the corner, where the defile
started, he whistled, once.

Two low whistles
responded.

He returned a
triplet, and waited.

After what seemed a
good quarter of a glass, but was probably less, Jasakyt appeared, riding
slowly, peering into the darkness, his face tight with apprehension. Mykel
wanted to laugh, seeing the scout with a look that mirrored a belief he was
about to be shot.

“Jasakyt…” he hissed.
“Just ahead on your left.”

“Captain?”

“Right here. Get the
others. We don’t have as much time as I’d hoped.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sky was beginning
to show signs of silver gray to the east by the time all of Fifteenth Company
had ridden irough the narrow defile and formed up behind a copse of rees below
the southwest comer of the rock pile.

“We’ll ride by squads
around the back of the rocks. If no one challenges us, we’ll move into the edge
of the trees and keep moving south toward the cookfires. We’ll walk the mounts
as close as we can. If they give an alarm, or when I order a charge, we’ll ride
to a firing line on the north side of the cookfires, then fire until they start
to regroup. That’s when we’ll switch to sabres and use the trees.” Mykel looked
across the squad leaders. “Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s head out.
Silent riding.” According to any tactics manual or training Mykel had received,
what he was doing was unsupported and dangerously foolish, but there was a time
to follow standard tactics and a time not to. He hoped he was right in choosing
the time not to.

He and first squad
rode close to half a vingt, around the ock pile, and another three hundred
yards just inside the rees at the back edge of the forest, on the flat short of
vhere the ground rose toward the rocky and sandy plateau above and to the west.
The sky had lightened into the silvery gray that immediately preceded dawn.

Then, from the trees,
came a shout. “Cadmians! They’re lere! Cadmians!”

“Forward!” Mykel
urged the chestnut into a fast trot, as much as he dared while dodging trees
and branches, angling out of the forest and pushing his mount into greater
speed toward the northernmost of the cookfires.

A good three hundred
rankers were gathered, either in lines at the cookfires or standing or sitting.
Others were still laying on their bedrolls and blankets. At the sight of the
mounted Cadmians, rebels in blue scrambled for weapons and for cover.