Legacies (32 page)

The Reillie swallowed.

“They want to test your woodworking skills. Good carpenters or cabinetmakers are hard to find. You could do well with that…if you're any good.”

The squad leader returned within moments, alone.

Alucius did not even think of moving. Where would he have gone?

The remaining four were marched back the way they had come and then through the open courtyard to another building, and then into another stone-walled room where several troopers waited.

One of the troopers—a dark-haired and black-eyed man with olive skin of a shade Alucius had never seen—stepped forward and handed Alucius a wooden sabre, of the Matrite pattern with the slightly curved blade.

“You are to spar with him,” said the escorting squad leader. “It does not matter how many times you strike him. The test is to see whether you can keep him from striking you without giving much ground.”

Alucius set his parka on the floor stones, then hefted the weapon, not so heavy as a real sabre, but thicker so that it wasn't that much lighter.

The black-haired trooper bowed, then lifted his blade, also wooden.

Alucius was sweating when the squad leader called for a halt, but he had managed to avoid being struck by the other trooper, who actually had smiled once the two had lowered their weapons.

“He's good with a blade. Class one.” The words were not Lanachronan, or the version spoken in the Iron Valleys, but Alucius understood their import.

Once all four had finished working with the wooden sabres, they were led through another warren of stone corridors until they walked through a set of double doors. There, Alucius looked out on an enclosed and roofed arena—one that was at least a hundred yards in length and seventy-five in width.

“This is the indoor maneuver area,” said the squad leader who was leading the four. “You'll be asked to ride in patterns around those posts set on the sand.”

The horse given to Alucius was a roan gelding of moderate height at the shoulder, perhaps a half hand taller than Alucius's gray. Absently, he wondered what had happened to the gray. Was he too a Matrite captive, carrying some Matrite trooper? Alucius hoped so, even if it might hurt some militia troopers. It wasn't the gray's fault that men fought.

He mounted and waited for his turn. He had to listen carefully to the instructions offered in heavily accented Lanachronan. The instructions seemed simple enough, and he followed them, he thought, accurately, returning to the point at the side of the area from where he had begun.

“He's got a good seat. Let's see how he does with Wildebeast.”

The squad leader turned to Alucius. “We'd like you to ride another mount. Dismount.”

“Yes, sir.”

Alucius could tell that the second mount—who was led in almost immediately—was not only more spirited, but, for some reason, did not care to be ridden. Even as Alucius took the reins from the ostler, also collared, the beast
whuffed
, almost angrily. Alucius took a slow deep breath and tried to project calm, then stepped up and patted the stallion's shoulder. He got another
whuff
. He mounted, still trying to project calm and control, not knowing whether he was successful, or whether the stallion settled down and accepted him because of his experience in the saddle. Either way, Wildebeast quieted, and Alucius rode him through a repeated series of the patterns in and out and around the posts and barriers. He was glad no one asked him to jump anything, but suspected that was for the mount's benefit, not his.

He reined up where he had started.

“How'd he do that?” murmured the squad leader.

The trooper acting as clerk looked at the sheet before him. “He comes from a herder family, but isn't one. Probably learned to deal with mounts as a child.”

Alucius lost track of where they went, and all the small tasks they were assigned, from sharpening sabres to looking at an injured mount and being asked questions.

It was well past sunset when they found themselves in another room, this time with eleven others who had been captives, being addressed by the same blonde Matrite officer who had greeted them. Lysal, Alucius noted, was not among the eleven, having been led off somewhere along the way.

“You all are considered to have possibilities as horse troopers. You'll be escorted to the collar-forge and have the prisoners' collars replaced with troopers' collars. They're essentially the same, except that you can go anywhere without choking and you can touch them without pain. They'll still kill you if you try to remove them, and senior officers can administer punishment through them. So can the eternal Matrial and any of her assistants.

“You'll be fed after that, and you'll sleep here tonight, and tomorrow you'll be assigned mounts and be transferred to the training corps. Good luck.”

With that, she turned and left.

“You're almost done,” one of the more senior Matrite squad leaders said, “but you should be more comfortable—and safer—with new torques.”

Safer? Again, that choice of words seemed odd to Alucius, but he took them in.

Another walk down another long corridor on tired legs ended with the eleven lined up before yet another door. Alucius was fifth. When he walked through the long archway beyond the door, he could smell the odor of hot metal, but the space did not seem excessively hot, not like the hammermill in Iron Stem.

A short, but muscular man stood between two benches. He motioned for Alucius to stand by the first one. An overcaptain stood on the far side of the bench, her eyes fixed on Alucius.

The smith looked at Alucius, then took a length of cord and measured the involuntary recruit's neck. “The overcaptain there has Talent. She doesn't need a collar to kill you. I'll remove the first collar, and she'll damp it so that you don't get hurt. I'll fit the torque and then I'll fasten it in place. After that, I'll slip the barrier under it and weld it. It's not a heavy weld, but it's enough to keep it from coming off unless someone cuts your neck in two, and then it wouldn't matter. You wouldn't want it separating on you. That's instant death, you know.”

Alucius gave the faintest of nods. He was exhausted, and the headache had returned, so much so that he felt his head was splitting. Even so, he tried to concentrate on sensing what happened with the collar, but it was almost too quick for him to take in what happened. He thought that some sort of blackness wrapped around the back of the collar for several brief moments, and then the smith held the prisoner's collar, which he set on a lower shelf of his bench. When the smith fastened the troopers' torque on Alucius, the same thing happened, except there was a flare of that evil-feeling pink, if but for an instant, and for the first time he had sensed it since he had been injured. Alucius had the vague sense that the pinkness was a thread that led…somewhere…but he was so tired that he could hardly keep alert, let alone try to send his barely usable Talent-senses out, especially with a full-Talent watching him. Still…he could feel the relief that he would have some use of Talent, perhaps not so much as once, but any Talent was better than none.

Alucius waited…and followed…and perhaps another glass later found himself standing with the others in yet another spotless barracks, if again with barred windows.

A new junior squad leader looked over the group. “I've seen better, and I've seen worse. So will you. If you make it as a Matrite trooper, life's better than you'd imagine. It's better than in the Iron Valley Militia and a lot better than in the Southern Guard.”

Alucius could well accept the second half of what the man said, and he wasn't so sure that the officers in the Matrite forces might not be an improvement over Majer Dysar. But Alucius wasn't free, and that would always bother him, because he was a herder in heart and spirit.

“There's even more freedom than you'd expect. That's if you make it.” Another gesture was beyond the line of bunks. “The wash facilities are at the end. We'll feed you first, and then you can come back and wash, and turn in. We'll wake you at dawn to dress and eat, and we'll begin at a glass and a half past dawn. Eat well and have a good night's sleep. You'll work for every bite and moment of sleep from here on in until you complete training, or until you wash out and become a laborer.”

Alucius didn't intend to end as a laborer. But then, he didn't intend to remain a Matrite trooper for life, either.

Alucius looked down at the breakfast platter he had been handed. Two large slices of something batter-fried rested beside some sort of eggs, with two golden-brown flat biscuits, partly covered with a whitish sauce or gravy. On the edge of the platter were fried sliced potatoes and a healthy pile of dried fruit, and half a lemon. He also had a mug of weak ale, and cutlery, which made a certain sense, because he'd long since been relieved of his belt knife.

Slowly, he carried his breakfast to one of the empty tables in the stone-walled and well-lighted mess, and seated himself on the bench. Shortly, he was joined by Sazium, a squarish militia trooper who he had seen but in passing at Pyret.

“Better food than I've seen in more than a year,” offered Sazium.

“Since I left home,” Alucius agreed.

“They must do a lot of fighting,” the older trooper suggested. “Otherwise, why would they feed us like this?”

“Make us feel grateful over time, maybe.” Alucius took several bites of ham and egg toast.

“Don't know as I ever will.” Sazium paused to drink some of his ale. “Can't figure out how they took so much land. We fought better.”

Alucius cocked his head. He'd thought about that. “A bunch of things. They have more people, and more golds, and more troopers. You saw what they sent past us. They also have machines like that spear-thrower thing. Their commanders have more experience.”

“But we kept killing more of them,” protested the other man.

“We were fighting on our land, and we used every trick we knew. Not one worked more than once. You really think Dysar is that good?”

Sazium laughed, if hollowly. “You're not going over…are you?”

Alucius shook his head. “I'll do what I have to, and I'll learn everything I can.” He shrugged. “What else can we do?” He tried not to think about his mother, his grandparents—and Wendra. There was no way that he knew of to send them word, and he wished that he'd taken the time to dash off a letter or two. But he had always felt rushed and tired at Soulend. He wondered if he really had been.

“You all right?” asked Sazium.

“Just thinking. No way to let anyone know.”

“You're right about that.”

Alucius ate as much as he could, first, because it was good, even the fried fish, and, second, because he didn't know when they'd eat again. Then he stood and looked for somewhere to put the platter, cutlery, and tumbler.

“Over there, in the window,” called the single Matrite trooper watching the mess area.

Alucius slipped both into the space that looked like a window without glass and watched as a white-haired man with one of the ubiquitous silver torques took both. Then he turned and walked back to the barracks where he washed up again and sat down on the end of the bunk to wait.

He waited less than half a glass before one of the junior squad leaders appeared, opening the locked door to the inner main corridor.

“Time to go. Form up. Five across.”

When the eleven were lined up, the squad leader continued. “You'll be issued mounts here. This is actually two posts in one. You'll be assigned to the trooper section. That's Eltema Post. There, you'll have your hair—and beards, if you have them—cut to trooper standards, and you'll be issued a training kit. You'll spend the rest of the day getting you and your mount settled and your gear ready. Tomorrow your real work begins. We're headed to the stable.”

As they followed the squad leader, Alucius pondered. The receiving area was huge. Did the Matrites use it for other functions? Or were they testing and processing that many captives every day? He wasn't about to ask—not until he knew more.

At the stable, Alucius almost grinned as the ostler, wearing the silver torque that all men seemed to wear in the lands of Madrien, brought forward his mount—Wildebeast.

The ostler did grin—broadly—and bowed. “Your mount, with squad leader Sywiki's compliments.”

“Thank you.”

The stallion seemed to recognize Alucius. At least, he calmed down and stopped edging sideways once Alucius had the reins, even before he led Wildebeast out into the stone paved courtyard.

When all eleven were mounted, the squad leader turned his mount to face them. “We're going to ride out about a vingt, and then come back and ride through the gates on the south side. Often, someone thinks that once we're on the highway, he can just ride away. It's true. You won't choke if you go too far.” A cold smile appeared. “It's also true that one of the Talent-officers can kill you through the collar from dozens of vingts away, if not farther. I really wouldn't try it.” He shrugged. “Every few months, someone doesn't believe me. Now…once you become troopers, you'll be riding a whole lot of places, and you'll have plenty of chances to ride off. If you want to try it, you'll have a chance. Don't try it now. Talk to the older troopers in your units first. Or let some other idiot try it so that you can see what happens.”

Even with his faint Talent, Alucius could sense the absolute truth behind the man's words. He wasn't sure which was worse, that the Matrites could so convince a trained trooper—or that they in fact had that power.

After a moment, the squad leader said, “Form into a column, by twos. Most of you should know how. Help the others.”

Only one of the eleven—Johens, a young, long-haired Squawt, Alucius thought—hadn't been a trooper, and in moments the column was formed. Alucius stayed back in the third rank, beside Sazium. The column rode out of the unguarded gates and continued southward on the redstone road. Wildebeast behaved well, and Alucius wondered if the stallion had been mistreated, or just needed a firm hand—or a herder.

Was the ride another test—with a Talent-officer somewhere watching and waiting to see if anyone tried to escape? With his bare shred of recently returned Talent-sense, he couldn't tell.

After about a vingt eastward, the small column turned south, along another redstone paved road, an older road with traces of wear on the smoothly dressed and mortared surfaces. Alucius knew that what he noted meant something beyond the obvious—that the ramps and redstone roads had been built later than the eternastone high roads and levees, yet…he could not quite grasp what that might be. He felt stupid that he could not, and frustrated by his inability to understand.

His head was beginning to ache again, and he concentrated on riding as the squad turned westward on another road, heading back to Eltema Post.