Cadmians Choice (50 page)

Wearing his flying
jacket and carrying his own gear, Dainyl stepped out into the cool morning air
that still filled the Myrmidon compound. Although the sky was a cloudless and
bright silver-green, the sun had not yet cleared the higher peaks of the
barrier range to the east of the compound, and the courtyard remained shadowed.

He had barely left
the senior officers’ quarters before Captain Fhentyl approached.

“Good morning, sir.”
Fhentyl inclined his head. “Is there anything ... ?”

“There is.” Dainyl
smiled. “Fit one of the pteridons in first squad with a second saddle.”

“Yes, sir.” Fhentyl’s
eyes dropped to the gear bag Dainyl carried. “Would you like that stowed on
that pteridon?”

Dainyl couldn’t help
grinning. “That would be helpful. Has anyone else figured it out?”

“No, sir. Well... if
they have, no one’s saying.” Fhentyl took the gear bag.

“Good.”

“Sir? Can you tell me
... ?”

“Not yet. We still
have an inspection to carry out. After the inspection, hold everyone in
formation, and I’ll brief you and the squad leaders. Then we’ll lift off.”

“Right then?”

Dainyl nodded. “We
have a very difficult situation facing us.” He paused. “Do you have any
trainees who might become riders?”

“Just one, sir, that
would be ready for a pteridon.”

“Better bring him,
too.”

“Her. Her name is
Brytra.”

“I hope we won’t need
her, but it’s possible.”

“Let me take care of
your gear and the two extra saddles, then, sir.” Fhentyl turned toward one of
the support alectors and gestured.

Dainyl turned away
and walked along the low pteridon squares, taking in the activity as the
Myrmidons readied for muster. He listened as well as watched.

“... full gear
inspection ...”

“... don’t like
that... means trouble ... especially with a submarshal...”

“Especially this
submarshal...”

Dainyl forced himself
to keep walking.

“... pteridon he was
flying got destroyed and he fell onto a pile of rock and survived...”

“... he got rid of
two commanders ...”

“Careful. That’s him
over there.”

It seemed that no
matter how much Dainyl had tried to keep matters quiet, things still filtered
out, and usually inaccurately. He turned and walked briskly back to join
Fhentyl at the front of the assembled company.

“Stand by for
inspection!” Fhentyls voice carried across the compound, and the few murmurs
died away.

The company commander
turned to Dainyl. “Submarshal, Fifth Company stands ready for inspection.”

“Thank you, Captain.”
Dainyl nodded and walked toward the first squad.

The inspection took
only about a glass. Fhentyl had clearly passed the word, because Dainyl found
no discrepancies—and he usually did. He’d been a ranker long enough to know
where the fliers might cut corners, but from what he could tell, no one had.

After Dainyl
completed surveying the last pteridon in the fourth squad, the two officers
walked back to the front of the formation.

“I’ve seldom seen a
company this well prepared on such short notice. What exactly did you tell
them?”

Fhentyl smiled
faintly. “Well, sir, I just said that I was a relatively new commander, but
that you’d spent something like forty years as a ranker and had forgotten more
tricks than I ever knew and that you liked to see things done right.”

Dainyl didn’t doubt
Fhentyl’s words. He also suspected Fhentyl hadn’t told him everything he’d
passed on to his squad leaders. “Call up your squad leaders.”

“Yes, sir.” The
captain turned. “Squad leaders, forward!”

Once the officers
arrived, Dainyl surveyed the four undercaptains—three men, one woman. He could
sense the experience, probably more experience than Fhentyl had, but the
captain held a certain charisma, as well as forethought. Dainyl had gathered
that from his previous meeting with Fhentyl, and from the captain’s reports to
headquarters.

After a moment, he
spoke. “Captain, Undercaptains, Fifth Company is flying out this very moment. I’ll
be directing the flight. I will announce our destination at the first rest
break. I realize that this is an unusual procedure, but we face unusual
circumstances. These will become clear as we near our objective.”

Fhentyl swallowed,
ever so slightly.

“Any questions? Other
than our destination, that is.”

“Can you tell us how
long we’ll be gone?” asked Fhentyl.

“No. What happens in
the next few days will determine that. It could be a very short deployment or
one far longer. A great deal will be asked of you and your Myrmidons, and I
think it’s fair to say that you were selected for this because you are the only
company that could possibly accomplish what needs to be done.”

“Can we let anyone
know?”

“Not at present.
Surprise is important. Later, yes. I’m not taking you off somewhere, never to
be heard from again.” Dainyl laughed. “Remember, I’m with you, and I also have
a wife who’s expecting a child.”

He could sense a
certain lessening of tension after his last remarks.

“Once you return to
your squads, we’ll lift off immediately. I’ll be flying lead and point for the
first leg.”

“No one leaves the
courtyard,” Fhentyl added. He turned to Dainyl. “Is there anything else, sir?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Dismissed to squads.
Prepare to lift off.”

“Yes, sir.”

As the squad leaders
headed back to their squads, Fhentyl cleared his throat. “Sir, I have you
flying with Galya in squad one. She’s one of the younger fliers, but very
skilled.”

Dainyl recalled the
Myrmidon, because she had been the only woman in first squad—and petite for an
alectress. “And because she’s small... and less load on the pteridon?”

“Yes, sir.”

‘That’s fine.” The
other reason was unspoken. Fhentyl understood that whatever Dainyl had in mind
was dangerous, and he didn’t want two officers on the same pteridon.

Dainyl walked across
the courtyard toward first squad. According to the maps, and what he recalled
from his own flying, there was a lake on the east side of the Upper Spine
Mountains that would make a good restaging and briefing point.

Mykel felt belter on
Tridi—except when he moved suddenly—and riding out from the old garrison was
almost a pleasure in the cool breeze from the northeast. The cooler weather was
a welcome change from the hot dry air that had blanketed Hyalt for the past week.

He rode beside
Culeyt, since Fourteenth Company would be relieving Thirteenth Company at the
new compound. He would have preferred to have had all seven companies in one
place—the new compound—but it would be weeks at best before that was possible,
given the mess inside the walls. He’d hoped to be able to move the battalion
sooner, but, as always, everything took longer than planned.

As they rode east
from the high road along the dirt track that Third Battalion’s mounts had
turned into a rough road, Culeyt cleared his throat.

“Sir? Where do you
think all the strange creatures are coming from?”

“That’s a good
question,” Mykel replied. “I wish I knew.”

“Never seen anything
like them, and no one else has, either.”

Mykel had the feeling
that wasn’t quite true. “Unless the alectors have. Maybe that’s why they have
pteridons.”

“If that’s so, sir,
why aren’t they here?”

“Maybe they will be,
once the Marshal of Myrmidons gets my reports. In the meantime, Captain, they’re
our problem.”

“Yes, sir.” Culeyt
was silent for a time, then cleared his throat again. “Doesn’t it seem sort of
funny, sir? I mean, the Myrmidons have their pteridons and skylances, and all
we have is rifles and horses, but we’re here, and they’re not.”

“They were here,”
Mykel pointed out, although he’d asked himself the same sort of questions more
than a few times.

“But they didn’t
stay.”

“No, they didn’t. The
only thing I can figure is that mere aren’t that many of them. There’s nothing
in the organizational charts that says how many Myrmidons there are.”

“There isn’t?” Culeyt
sounded surprised.

“No. I’ve done some
figuring and listening, and I’d be surprised if there are more than ten
companies of them. Their companies are much smaller man ours, maybe only
twentyfive pteridons to a company. I heard somewhere that they have five to a
squad. There’s a company in Elcien, and one in Ludar, and a couple in Alustre,
and one in Dereka. That’s five. I’m sure there are others, but I haven’t seen
anything on them. Now ... how many companies do we have just in Elcien?”

“Four battalions ...
twenty companies ...”

“And there are four
battalions out of Alustre alone. We’re training two more companies here, and
Majer Dohark is building up to a battalion in Dramur.”

Culeyt nodded slowly.
“You’re saying that they only handle the worst of things because they have so
much to cover.”

“I’m just guessing,
but nothing else makes much sense.”

“They travel faster
than a mount.”

“That’s true, but it
takes two days for one of their pteridons to fly from Elcien to Dramur. That
would mean that it would take a full day to fly here from Elcien and almost
that from Ludar. And they use them for urgent dispatches as well.”

Culeyt laughed. “So
... it’s the same as always. We get left scraping out the barrel with a short
spoon.”

“Pretty much,”
returned Mykel.

“Why did you join the
Cadmians, sir, if I might ask?”

“I didn’t want to be
a tiler or a crafter, and my hands don’t work that way. I’m not smart enough to
be an engineer, and the idea of grubbing coins in trade didn’t appeal much
either. I couldn’t see spending my whole life in Faitel. What else was there?”

“Think you would have
done it different if you knew what you know now?”

Mykel laughed. “That’s
a fool’s question, Captain. We don’t get that choice. Anyway, all of us could
learn from our mistakes, but who’s to say that we just wouldn’t make different
ones?” There were so many decisions he’d made that had been unwise, yet would
he have learned what he had if he’d always made the “prudent” decision? And
even when he had made the “prudent” decision, as in the case of finding Rachyla
with a rifle in her cart, that prudence had gotten him into more difficulties
than imprudence ever would have.

‘There is that, sir.”

Mykel just nodded. A
man—particularly a Cadmian officer—-could go crazy second-guessing himself. He
looked ahead toward the walls of the new compound, rising from the flat knoll
just ahead. As the roan carried him up the gentle south slope to the front gate
area—where the gates had yet to be installed—he could see that the stable walls
were nearly complete, and that another group of crafters was beginning to hoist
the roof timbers into place on the end of the building where the walls had been
completed.