Cadmians Choice (37 page)

There are
comparatively few alectors, guiding hundreds of thousands of other beings. This
has always been so and will continue to be so. What is it, then, that
distinguishes an alector from those beings, or from another alector who is no
better than the masses? Size and strength are often cited, but bulls are bigger
than alectors, and so are sandoxen. Intelligence is also cited, but many among
the masses have intelligence close to that of alectors, and in some cases,
equal to ours. Nor is Talent enough to claim distinction and leadership.

Those who lead and
guide others must possess not only superior physical and mental capabilities,
but the personal honor and integrity to assure that their decisions lead to the
best possible lives for those they guide. Each individual should have the
opportunity to employ his or her abilities to their greatest possible extent in
a beneficial, peaceful, and productive manner. To seek power for its own sake,
or wealth, or any other excess is but to confirm that the individual who does
so lacks the integrity required of an alector who would lead.

All respect a crafter
who creates an object of quality and beauty, and all are repulsed by one who
would attempt to pass off an inferior product for the same price. Yet all too
often respect is granted to the leader or administrator who administers in a
fashion that favors one group unfairly over another, but is this not an
inferior product of leadership? While equality of ability and accomplishment
does not exist in any society, and any society which expects such is doomed,
equality of opportunity to excel within one’s field must be granted to all.
Similarly, respect must be accorded to excellence in every trade and service.

Fostering equality of
opportunity and respect for honest accomplishment, and not just for the few who
accumulate masses of gold or power over others, those are the virtues of worth
for an alector, and only so long as those virtues are held in high esteem will
we endure, for personal honor and integrity are the basis of all that we have
accomplished....

Views of the Highest

Illustra

W.T. 1513

In the end, Mykel
chose Fifteenth Company to investigate the quarry, partly because he had
decided to accompany that force and partly because more than half the company
had seen strange creatures in the last battle on Dramur. What with all the
other arrangements, including getting directions to the quarry, Mykel and
Fifteenth Company didn’t get away trom their temporary quarters until mid
morning on Sexdi.

Mykel and
Undercaptain Fabrytal rode side by side, with a pair of scouts ahead by thirty
yards, not that they would be much help if someone attempted an attack from a
window of a building in Hyalt. Mykel had not seen anything to indicate that was
likely, not with the streets and lanes holding women and children, and a
handful of men. There had been no reports of any violence in the town, either,
and people didn’t look fearful, except of him and the Cadmians. Still, he kept
looking, and trying to sense if anyone might be targeting them. He didn’t feel
that, and in Dramur that feeling had been trustworthy.

Ahead, just short of
what looked to be a chandlery, he saw a woman, with long blonde tresses plaited
into a single braid down her back. She had taken one of the four children with
her by the arm. Mykel watched and listened.

“Garytt! I saw that “

Mykel smiled. He’d
heard words like that when his sister Sesalia had addressed one of her brood
who’d misbehaved. Before long, she’d be having her fifth. Five children? He
hadn’t even found any one with whom he’d thought of having children—let alone
five.

He gave a wry laugh
under his breath. That wasn’t entirely true, but Rachyla was about as
unobtainable for a Cadmian majer as an ancient might be for an alector. He
smiled more broadly as he neared the young mother, but at the sound of the
horses, she ushered the four into the chandlery without even looking toward the
Cadmians.

Mykel’s eyes went
back to the structures on each side of the high road. Unlike Southgate or
Dramuria, the houses and buildings were of different ages and styles, although
all were built of stone or brick or some combination of the two. Some few older
houses had split slate roofs, but most had grayish red roof tiles. As Fifteenth
Company rode southward on the main boulevard—the eternastone high road—Mykel
observed the side streets and lanes. Roughly every third street was paved with
red-stone, and had redstone sidewalks, as did the boulevard. The alleys and
lanes between the paved streets were of packed reddish sandy soil and had no
sidewalks.

Except for a few
larger structures clearly belonging to factors, the houses and other buildings
were all of one story. The smaller dwellings had few windows, and that made
unfortunate sense because wood for shutters was tariffed, and glass was not
cheap.

“Hyalt seems like a
poor town, doesn’t it, sir?” asked Undercaptain Fabrytal.

“I haven’t seen many
poorer, not of its size,” Mykel admitted.

“Makes you wonder why
they’ve got alectors here, I mean, with not that many folks or that much trade.”

“There are some mines
to the south and west of the quarry. Tin and copper.”

Near the south end of
Hyalt, the high road turned eastward, but Fifteenth Company continued heading
south for another quarter vingt on a older road paved with red-stone blocks,
many of which were cracked and chipped, and some of which were missing, their
space filled with packed dirt or clay. After another half vingt, the road
split, the paved section turning west-southwest.

“The one to the left!”
Mykel called out.

The quarry road had
deep ruts that had been weathered down and filled with fine reddish sand and
dirt. There were no recent tracks of either horses or wagons. Before long the
road began to rise and did so for close to half a vingt before leveling out
onto a stretch of scrubby grassland that ended at the foot of a low hill. From
a vingt away, Mykel could see where the hill had been cut away and the redstone
layers exposed.

There might not be
anything at the quarry, but... being prepared made sense, and if there were
not, the exercise wouldn’t hurt. Mykel turned in the saddle, looking at
Fabrytal. “Order a line abreast, by squads, five across. Rifles ready.”

The faintest hint of
a puzzled frown crossed the undercaptain’s face, but he pulled his mount to the
side and stood in the stirrups. “Fifteenth Company! Line abreast— by squads.
Five across. Third squad centered on me. Rifles ready!”

Fifteenth Company was
reformed within moments, then continued riding across the grasslands.

Less than a hundred
yards from where the excavation began, Mykel looked to Fabrytal again. “Have
them halt here.”

“Company! Halt!”

Mykel surveyed the
area to the south. He had only seen one quarry before in his life, and that had
been the massive granite quarry to the north of Faitel, where he had grown up.
The quarry at Hyalt was far smaller, less than half a vingt from side to side,
and extending only fifty or sixty yards into the hillside, with tiers cut out
of the stone, like stair steps up the redstone. There was a muddy reddish pool
less than ten yards across in the southeastern corner of the lowest level.

“Just a big hole in
the ground,” said Fabrytal.

“That’s what quarries
are—holes in the ground where people have taken stone out. This is a small
quarry.” Mykel surveyed the quarry once more. Something about it bothered him,
but he couldn’t pinpoint either a specific source or location. Finally, he
turned to Fabrytal. “Forward at a walk. Rifles ready.”

“Fifteenth Company!
Slow walk! Forward! Rifles ready!”

Mykel had his own
rifle out as well, disregarding the unspoken adage that a commander should
concentrate on tactics, rather than engage in direct combat.

The company had moved
forward a good thirty yards toward the unused quarry when a dark shadow
appeared just above the base of the quarry, in the western corner where the
stonework ended and the hillside remained relatively untouched. Mykel blinked.
The shadow looked black, but it felt like an ugly pinkish purple. Then it was
no longer a shadow, but an enormous catlike creature that raced toward fifth
squad, the westernmost troopers of the company.

“Company! Halt! Fifth
squad! Fire at will!” Mykel snapped. “Fifth squad, fire at will!”

“Company, halt! Fifth
squad ...” echoed Fabrytal.

Mykel watched
intently for a moment, then scanned the rest of the quarry, but he neither saw
nor sensed anything else that felt threatening. His eyes went back to the giant
cat, its body at least a good two yards in length.

Fifth squad’s first
shots did little good, and the cat creature accelerated silently toward the
troopers. The creature jerked and stumbled as several shots ripped into it, but
Mykel could see no wounds, although the cat slowed somewhat. Continual fire
poured into the creature as it neared fifth squad. Less than a handful of yards
short of the squad, it fell forward, legs twitching.

“Keep firing!” came
the command from Vhanyr, the fifth squad’s leader.

More shots struck the
wounded creature, and it writhed, then slumped onto the ground, but its body
still twitched.

“Hold the company,
rifles ready,” Mykel ordered Fabrytal. “I want to get a good look at that
creature.”

“Yes, sir. Company
hold! Rifles ready!”

Mykel rode along the
front of the arrayed company at a fast walk.

Vhanyr had ridden out
from his squad several yards, but reined up short of the fallen creature, still
twitching on the reddish sandy ground that sported but sparse grass. Mykel
reined up beside the squad leader, his own rifle still out and ready.

“Sir.” Vhanyr held
his rifle in the general direction of the cat. “We must have put fifty bullets
into it before it went down.”

Mykel would have
judged far less than that, but he’d seen over a half score impact the giant
black cat. As he watched, it lifted its head and struggled to rise, jaws opening
and revealing teeth that seemed half-crystalline, half-yellow. Was it healing
itself? He lifted his own rifle and fired—once, twice, three times, and again.
His shots tore away half the creature’s head, and it dropped onto the ground.

The creature had not
bled, Mykel realized—unless a purplish blue ichor staining a clump of grass was
what the creature had for blood. Nor had it made a sound in the entire span of
its attack.

“What is it? Do you
know, sir?” asked Vhanyr.

“I’ve never seen
anything like that,” Mykel admitted. He’d never read about anything that
remotely resembled the black catlike giant.

As he watched, the
clumps of grass around the fallen beast shriveled and blackened. The dead
creature appeared to lose its shape, disintegrating into a long pile of a
greasy-looking purplish black substance. Then, abruptly, bluish red flames
burst from the disintegrating corpse, the heat so intense that Mykel eased the
roan back away from the pyre.

“... what the frig!”

“... never seen
anything like that...”

Mykel wrenched his
attention away from the bluish flames and studied the quarry again. He could
see or sense nothing. That didn’t mean another of the cat creatures might not
appear again at any time.

“Fifth squad, reload!
Now!”

Vhanyr’s command
reminded Mykel to do the same. He did not replace the rifle in its case, but
rested it across his thighs, one-handed.

“Sir?” asked Vhanyr.

“We’ll be advancing
shortly,” Mykel told the squad leader, then turned his mount back toward the
center of the company. He doubted they would see another of the beasts
immediately, but he could definitely understand

why the quarrymen
were leery of the place. That meant at least two squads on duty all the time
the stone was being cut and carted away.

He reined in the roan
beside Fabrytal’s mount. “Forward at a walk.”

“Forward...”

Mykel kept studying
the quarry, the courses of stone, and the hill that surrounded them. Strange
creatures indeed.

Dainyl and Lystrana
sat in the darkness of their bedchamber, Lystrana reclining on the bed, and
Dainyl sitting on the chair beside her.

“The quiet in Elcien
is disturbing,” Dainyl said. “We know that Ifrits, and it could be scores of
them, are coming through the Tables to the east of Corus. Zelyert knows as
well. It’s fairly certain that the engineers of the east are constructing
additional equipment of some sort, probably of a military nature. Three of the
four eastern Myrmidon companies are under Brekylt’s and Alcyna’s control, and I’d
wager Second Company in Ludar is aligned as well. If Brekylt can present his
position as supporting the Archon, Samist will agree to whatever they have in
mind.”

“What is your point,
dearest?” asked Lystrana.

“Why isn’t anything
being done from here?”

“It is.” She laughed,
ironically. “One of the recorders who supported Brekylt is dead. One Myrmidon
majer and one RA are also dead. Several engineers are dead. More than a few
know that it is dangerous to oppose a submarshal directly.”

“Yet all that has
changed nothing,” Dainyl pointed out.

“Why would it? Khelaryt
cannot act unless he has proof that they are subverting the goals set by the
Archon. Zelyert and Shastylt will not offer what they know because they cannot
prove what is happening. Voicing the uncertain always risks losing power.
Neither wishes to do that, if for different reasons.”

“What am I supposed
to do?”

“What you always do
... what is right. But you cannot do it until you have an opportunity. I have
no doubt that you could go to Alustre and destroy Brekylt and Alcyna. If
Zelyert had been wise enough to remove them from power ten years ago, it would
have made a difference. How would that change matters now? Except to assure
that you would have all those who support them opposed to you, and that you
would lose any support from Zelyert and Khelaryt.”