Alector's Choice (55 page)

“Fifteenth Company!
Firing line!”

Mykel reined up and
took aim at a man dressed in blue and silver, wearing something similar to what
Seltyr Ubarjyr had worn. He fired, and the seltyr dropped. He turned his rifle
on a captain and fired again.

He had dropped more
than five bluecoats and reloaded once before the rebels began to return fire
with more than scattered shots—and those faded away quickly. He surveyed the
space around the cookfires, taking in the bodies lying at so many odd angles,
and swallowed. Now what? The rebels had melted into the trees.

Only a fraction of a
glass had passed, or so it seemed, but the angled rays of the early-morning sun
sifted through the tops of the giant pines.

Mykel caught sight of
mounted rebels to the southeast. “Sabres! Fifteenth Company! Forward!”

Pressing the attack
seemed less dangerous than trying to withdraw through a forest he did not know,
and going back through the defile would take too long and allow the rebels to
regroup and fire at Fifteenth Company when the Cadmians would be in a position
where they could not return fire effectively.

While he did not know
how much of Fifteenth Company followed his lead, he could hear the hoofbeats
and sense riders behind him, and several moving up abreast of him, if separated
by the pines.

Mykel had his sabre
at the ready as the chestnut carried him toward the middle of a single squad of
rebels. Several had rifles up. Mykel ducked as shots whispered past him.

Then he was among the
rebels, slashing the shoulder of a too young ranker, then parrying a thrust
from an older rebel.

“South! To the
cliffs! South!”

‘To the cliffs… to
the cliffs!“

The surviving
bluecoats spurred their mounts up the gradual slope to the southwest and away
from Fifteenth Company, now spread in the trees. Mykel didn’t like that, and
realized he’d pushed too much.

“Fifteenth Company!
Reform! Reform!”

The company hadn’t
been that scattered, because he had his men back in squads in less than a
quarter glass, and they were following the fleeing rebels. When they came out
of the trees at the top of the gradual slope, there were other bluecoats riding
slowly southward, less than a hundred yards away.

“Full firing line!”
Mykel ordered.

He waited only until
his men were in a rough semblance of a firing line. “Fire at will!”

After the first shots,
the rebel laggards began to spur their mounts. Even so, another ten or fifteen
rebels went down before those fleeing vanished into the welter of boulders,
although Mykel could see dust and sand rising in various places.

“Cease fire!”

At the top of the
slope, as he reloaded, Mykel studied the area before him more closely, a sandy
plateau, with boulders and long and short rocky ridges rearing up everywhere.
The ridges were as short as ten yards, but in length some seemed to stretch for
a hundred. A few of the boulders were as small as his foot. Most standing alone
were larger than a peasant’s cot, and one to his right was as large as a
seltyr’s villa.

Should he follow the
rebels?

A shadow flashed over
him, and he glanced up. Two pteridons circled overhead. One bore two riders,
the other but a single Myrmidon.

A skylance flared
down, then another.

“By squads!” Mykel
ordered. “Toward the cliffs! Measured pace! No quarter! Third squad on me!”

“First squad! Toward
the cliffs…”

“Second squad…”

“Third squad! On the
captain!”

“Fourth squad…”

Mykel followed the
tracks of the rebels rather than trying to navigate a new path. That way, he
hoped, he could avoid pitfalls in the sandy soil. For the first several hundred
yards, that also meant riding around fallen mounts and men.

He glanced to the
southwest, where another line of blue fire lashed down from one of the
pteridons. Mykel could sense a wave of deaths.

From the sand and
dust, he could see that the remaining rebels—those that had fled the
forest—were gathering under a rocky point jutting out from the cliffs, as if to
make a stand.

Mykel couldn’t help
but feel sorry for them. Gathering was the worst possible tactic against
Myrmidons and their skylances. They had to know that. So why were they doing
it?

He glanced upward,
looking for the pteridons, but they had circled back around.

Maybe the tactic
wasn’t so stupid. Could it be that there was some angle to the rock or a
protected area there?

Mykel certainly
didn’t want to assault a natural stone fortress, but he couldn’t see more than
a hundred yards ahead. He didn’t sense anyone that close, but he slowed the
chestnut to a walk. “Measured walk! Measured walk!”

They weren’t going to
catch the rebels immediately, and the base of the cliff where the rebels were
looked to be less than a vingt away, although it was hard to tell with the fine
sandy dust raised and the long shadows cast by the early-morning light.

Mykel had ridden less
than a hundred yards farther when the profusion of low rocky ridges and
boulders ended, and a flat expanse of low sandy hills replaced the rocks. Half
a vingt away, the rebels were reforming with their backs directly to the low
cliffs.

“Fifteenth Company!
Halt! All squads! Halt!”

Something was
happening on the rocky point above where the rebels gathered. There was a
greenish cast to the air just above the point. The green intensified, growing
into a glowing greenish sphere. Side by side in the center of the sphere were
two of the winged soarers.

Fhe lead pteridon
ignored the sphere, and Mykel took an trawn breath, sensing power still rising
in or from the lere until it began to glow more brightly, almost as if terta
had appeared over the plateau in all her green glory,‘t Mykel could feel no
heat.

“Fifteenth Company!
Stand fast!” He didn’t want anyone tting any closer to the soarers, especially
with the Myrmidons closing on them. “Stand fast!” repeated Bhoral.

A line of blue flame
flared from the skylance of the first yrmidon, angling down toward the gathered
rebels. Mykel winced, waiting for the eruption of flame and the hundreds of
deaths. Instead, the blue flame flared and then curved backward, turning and
twisting back toward the myrmidon’s lance. A line of green flashed and joined
the blue flame, and the lance of blue and green tore through the myrmidon and
into the pteridon. “Oh…”

The pteridon’s wings
folded inward, and like a duck shot midair, it seemed to cartwheel downward in
an arc toward the massed rebels.

A squad of bluecoats
bolted from the right side of those gathered beneath the red walled cliff. They
rode hard, galloping to the northwest, sandy dust rising from the hoofs of
their mounts. None of the other bluecoats moved, seemingly frozen in place.

The injured pteridon
struck the cliff twenty yards above the remaining mass of rebels. Blue flame
exploded out from the impact, spraying across the rebels below. The few screams
of mounts and men were brief, and most came from the stragglers of those
galloping northward. Those closer never had a chance to react. The heat from
the impact blast washed over Fifteenth jmpany like that of a forge fire in a
gale, but subsided almost instantly.

Mykel’s eyes flicked
back to the soarer’s green sphere. It had paled and remained so for several
moments before beginning to regain its intensity. Only a single soarer remained
within the sphere, although Mykel could not have said when the other had
vanished.

The second pteridon
turned toward the sphere and the soarer within. A line of blue flame flashed
toward the single soarer.

Once more the flame
did not reach its intended target, but twisted back, turning into a mixture of
green and blue before striking, then knifing through the forward Myrmidon and
into the chest of the second pteridon. The pteridon’s wings bent upward and
back as the pteridon nosed down and began to drop, more swiftly, toward the
southwest of Fifteenth Company.

The remaining soarer
and the green sphere had vanished.

One of the Myrmidons
separated from the falling creature, and Mykel watched—fascinated—because he
could sense something happening. Was it the Submarshal? Whoever it was,
whatever it was, he fell far more slowly, in an arc that carried him toward the
rocks to Mykel’s right.

“Third squad! On me!”
Mykel turned the chestnut and urged him into a fast walk.

Barely had he done so
when another explosion of blue flame flared from the cliffs to the southwest,
the heat washing once more over the Cadmians, then dissipating.

Mykel glanced up once
more. The Myrmidon was tumbling, end over end, but falling far more slowly than
he should have been. Even so, he was falling, and disappeared behind a long
ridge of rock a good hundred yards ahead of Mykel and third squad.

Mykel had covered
another twenty yards when he could sense someone ahead. “Rifles ready!” He had
his own weapon up even before he finished speaking.

Crack! The shot was
close.

Catching sight of a
figure in blue behind a low boulder, i fired. The man dropped.

More shots came from
behind the rock ridge.

“Third squad! Drop
back and take cover!” Mykel

Couldn’t see losing a
squad—or even several men—at a time when the majority of the rebels had been
destroyed.

He guided the
chestnut back behind one of the larger boulders, finding Chyndylt and his mount
coming around the other side.

“Fancy seeing you
here, sir,” offered the squad leader.

“You too.” As he
flashed a grin to Chyndylt, Mykel juld sense a faint purpleness farther to the
west, to the right of where the rebels seemed to be. Was that purpleness a
Myrmidon? Could it be the Submarshal?

Crack! Another bullet
smashed into the boulder behind which he had taken cover.

“Chyndylt, keep the
men under cover, but keep them firing at those rebels. I think the Myrmidon
colonel’s still live, but he’s out to the north of where they are.”

“Must be hurt, or
we’d know it. He’d use that weapon of his.”

Mykel dismounted.
“I’m going to circle around.” He reached up and handed the chestnut’s reins to
the squad sader.

“Yes sir.” Chyndylt
sounded doubtful.

“If he survives,
would you want to be a captain who left him out there?”

“No sir. I see what
you mean.”

“Just keep the squad
firing enough to occupy the bluecoats.”

“We can do that,
sir.”

Mykel moved to the
right side of the boulder, then crouched before he peered around it. The rock
ridge that sheltered the rebels was high enough that they would have more trouble
aiming at a man on foot.

He dashed across the
five yard space to the next rock, one less than a yard and a half high, but
enough shelter for a man. More shots peppered the area, most of them high and
ricocheting off the taller ridges behind him.

The next dash was a
shade longer, but the cover was higher, and longer.

As he moved to the
northwest, more and more outcroppings blocked the rebels from getting a clear
view of him. He could sense the purplish pinkness that had to be the colonel,
and felt that he was getting closer, but he was also getting a sense that there
were others nearby.

Ahead, behind another
series of more jumbled boulders, he heard voices.

“Just shoot him. Too
big to move him.”

“If he’d wake up… we
could use him to get out of here. Won’t do us much good dead.”

“Won’t do us any good
alive…”

Mykel inched forward,
peering around the base of an eroded chunk of reddish sandstone, trying to move
more into a better position without being seen. Three rebels stood over the
prone figure of the Myrmidon Submarshal, who had apparently dragged himself
into a half sitting, half lying position against the rocks before losing
consciousness. Mykel could see that the Submarshal’s right arm and left leg
were bent at angles suggesting they were broken. If they were not, then
alectors’ bones were very different from landers‘, and Mykel doubted that. He
was amazed that the alector had been able to move at all.

“Need to get the
others over here,” said one of the rebels.

That was the last
thing Mykel needed.

He raised the rifle,
aiming and firing.

The speaker dropped,
and both the other rebels whirled.

Mykel fired twice
more. The others fell where they stood.

He listened, and
tried to sense whether there were other rebels nearby. He didn’t hear anything,
except rifles exchanging fire to the south and sensed no one. After several
noments, he eased around the boulder and moved toward the Submarshal.

Crack!

The impact on his
left shoulder spun Mykel around and to the ground.

Several more shots
went overhead.

Mykel’s left side was
a mass of fire. He still held the rifle in his right hand, but doubted he could
aim it that well. He might be able to prop it to get a shot in the general
direction of someone. Why hadn’t he sensed the other rebel? Had he been too
worried about the Submarshal?

He had to scrabble,
slowly easing himself into a position cropped against the rocks. He could see
the blood welling across his tunic.

“… Certain dangers…
to commanding from the front, Captain…” The Submarshal’s voice was labored.

Mykel glanced toward
the alector. He could hear the Crunch of boots on the sandy ground, and he
doubted those boots belonged to a Cadmian. He levered the rifle up, across his
knees in at least the right direction—he hoped.

“Well… look what we
got here…” A bluecoat stepped around the boulder directly across from the
Submarshal, his rifle held at the ready, swinging from Submarshal Dainyl to
Mykel and back again. “Like to take you for a ride, but looks like neither of
you is going anywhere.”