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'Alucius!& "
Despite the chill and the cold wind, by the time Delar called a halt to the
drills, Alucius was sweating and soaked inside his undergarments and glad to
get back to the stable.
Kypler looked over the stall wall. "Delar was hard on you."
'He was. I have a lot to learn."
'You were doing better than I could have."
'I feel like I'm back in camp at Sudon."
'Delar wants us all to feel that way."
Alucius laughed.
After their mounts were taken care of, the two walked from the stable to the
mess. As Delar had said the night before, the midday dinner a mutton and
potato stew was better than at Sudon, but not much. They had barely finished
when Delar appeared with Geran.
Alucius carried his platter to the messman and tried to hurry back to Delar
and Geran without giving the impression of haste.
Kypler smiled at Alucius as the three walked away from him and into the
corridor outside the mess, where Delar stopped and addressed Alucius and
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Geran.
'I'm not a scout. I never will be. Good scouts save lives. Bad scouting costs
lives. I have to leave how you scout to you two, but I hold you responsible
for the results. The more you can tell me or Ilten or the captain about what's
out there, the better we can do." The squad leader nodded. "Geran gets the job
done. I've leaving it to him to make sure you can, too."
'Yes, sir."
With a nod, Delar was gone, leaving Alucius and Geran.
'Let's go back to the mess, and sit down," the older man suggested.
Alucius nodded. He was happy to do that. They took an empty table in the
corner.
'You're a herder, and you've got that dark gray hair. That means you've got
Talent," Geran said.
'Some," Alucius admitted cautiously.
'Enough that you can sense people?"
'If they're not too far away. A hundred yards, maybe farther. I've sensed
sandwolves from farther, but I've never tried with people."
'That's good, and it's bad," the older scout said. "What I mean is that some
herders just use their Talent. It's not enough. You have to look at the
ground, the trees when we're farther west and there are trees. Talent's best
for sneaking around at night or in a storm when it's hard to see. A good scout
without Talent will live longer than a Talented scout who doesn't learn."
That made perfect sense to Alucius. "I can see that. You'll show me what to
look for?"
Geran grinned. '^We'll do just fine if you keep thinking like that."
Alucius hoped so, but he was well aware that there was all too much he didn't
know.
The winter morning on Loncu was like so many in Soulend, gray and cold, with a
thin wind whistling outside the mess, and chill air that had seeped through
the old stone walls.
'You think we'll see any Reillies today?" asked Kypler.
Alucius looked across the table from his nearly finished egg toast, toast
seemingly springier than coiled nightsheep wool, if more edible. "I don't know
what we'll see."
'You've been the one scouting the roads and the steads with Geran," pointed
out Kypler.
'That was teaching me what to look for. Tracking raiders and people is
different from watching for sandwolves and sanders." Alucius took a last
swallow of the hot cider, then stretched and rose from the table.
'How are you doing?" Kypler stood as well.
'Let's say that Geran thinks I might learn enough by the time he leaves for
Seventeenth Company. There are too many little things I don't know."
Kypler laughed. "You don't like admitting you know anything."
'I have a lot to learn."
'Don't we all?"
At Kypler's dry tone, Alucius chuckled.
The two managed to get their mounts ready and to make it into formation
outside the stable ahead of most of the new troopers, and about the same time
as the fourteen veterans.
Once everyone was present, Delar rode up one side of the double column and
down the other, offering a quick inspection, before ordering, "Squad forward!"
The wind more like a cold breeze than the harsh and bitter gales of previous
days, and the smoke from the outpost chimneys rose directly up, rather than in
the horizontal lines created by the fiercer winds. Still, Alucius was grateful
for the warmth of the nightsilk against his skin.
'Less wind," offered Delar, riding for the moment at the head of the column,
just in front of Geran and Alucius. "Might see some raiders today."
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From the outpost, second squad turned right onto the eternastone midroad,
called that because it was the middle road of the three high roads running
east through the Iron Valleys. They rode due west across the open and gently
rolling quarasote plains. Another seven or eight vingts ahead, was the
last and only
inhabited stead left near the midroad and on the eastern edge of the
Westerhills.
Just beyond the stead, in the first real hills, occasional junipers mingled
with the quarasote that grew ever more scattered as the hills became higher
and steeper.
'Scouts! If you'd ride van, about a vingt up front."
'Yes, sir."
'Squad! Guide on Vaskel!"
Alucius and Geran rode forward away from the main body of the squad.
For the next several vingts, as the road began to cut through the lower rises
that were not quite hills, Alucius studied the ground and the road. Neither he
nor
Geran saw anything except the tracks of other militia patrols.
'Wager it'll be colder tomorrow," Geran ventured.
'Why do you think so?"
'When the wind's light, usually comes before a shift." Geran grinned. "In the
winter, most shifts are colder."
Alucius could occasionally sense the red-violet of a sander, but the feeling
was different, as if the sanders were deeper underground or somehow shielded.
He could also feel but passing traces of the grayish violet of sandwolves.
Even the scattered blue-gray flashes of grayjays were few.
Close to midday, on the midroad between the lower hills beyond the last true
herder stead, where some of those slopes were treed thickly with pine and
juniper, Alucius caught a whiff of acridness, not like the scent of the
plateau with its metallic bitterness, but of fire. He glanced to Geran.
"Something's burning&
or burned."
'I smell it, too. Wood. You want to tell Delar that we're headed out to see if
there's another burned hut? I'll wait."
'Will do." Alucius turned the gray back along the road toward second squad. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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