"We can try, sir. It's getting rougher."

The pteridon strained, and the blue wings lifted them higher, until they were almost level with the edge of the bluff. For a moment, Dainyl could make out a golden archway-hidden back inside a natural cave, but they swept past, and the rock blocked his view.

Then the pteridon's left wing was buffeted upward, and they slid sideways through the air, losing hundreds of yards, before Falyna and the pteridon recovered, all too close to another jagged ridge that had been well below them moments before.

"Better head back, Colonel." Falyna gestured to her left, where the clouds had moved closer and gotten darker.

"Go ahead." If Dainyl had been flying solo, he would have made another pass, but the pteridon was carrying double. That reduced maneuverability and the altitude the pteridon could reach.

Dainyl looked back once more, but he could see nothing of the mysterious cave.After they had landed in the courtyard and dismounted, Falyna turned to Dainyl. "A little touchy there, Colonel. I'm sorry we couldn't get any closer, but the wind was picking up, and there was a good chance of another downdraft-"

"In better weather, could you set me down on that bluff?"

Falyna frowned. "If we went at dawn. The air would be colder, and calmer. That'd be worth another couple hundred yards in altitude." She paused. "Might I ask why, Colonel, sir?"

"There's a building inside that cave. We didn't build it. I don't think the locals did, either."

"You think it's the rebel miners?"

"I don't think they built it, but they might be using it."

"Maybe both Quelyt and me should come. We can circle there if we're not carrying you. Flame anyone if you get into trouble."

Dainyl smiled. "Maybe you should."

"Glass before dawn, sir?"

"A glass before dawn." As he left Falyna, Dainyl had another idea.

Rather than head for his quarters, he made his way to the headquarters building, where he found Captain Benjyr in his study.

"Colonel, sir... ?" Benjyr jumped to his feet.

"I have a favor to ask, Captain. I'd like to talk to a handful of your rankers about their duties at the mine."

"Ah... yes, sir. Third and fifth squads are on standby."

"Good. If you would escort me there?"

Dainyl followed the captain across the courtyard to the barracks. He had loosened his jacket, but not taken it off.

Benjyr stepped into the second doorway and called out, "Stenslaz?"A squad leader jumped up from where he had been sitting on a foot chest. "Yes, sir?"

"The colonel here wants to ask the men a few questions about their duties."

"Yes, sir." The squad leader looked around. "There's no study here, sir."

Dainyl smiled. "It's nothing that has to be too private, and it won't take much time for each man. We can just talk outside in the courtyard."

Dainyl walked out into the sunlight with the captain. After the chill of flying, the warmer air and sun in the courtyard felt good. "You can stay if you want, Captain."

"If it's all the same, Colonel... there are a few reports..."

Dainyl grinned. He understood about reports. "Go take care of them."

"Thank you, sir." Benjyr nodded, turned, and walked quickly back across the courtyard.

Through the open doorway, Dainyl could hear the Cad-mian rankers.

"What's he want with us?"

"Wearing a jacket, and he looks cold..."

"... say they like it hotter 'n we do..."

"Daclyt, you go first," called the squad leader.

A few moments later, a ranker appeared. He looked barely old enough to carry a rifle. "Colonel, sir?"

"Yes. I have a few questions for you. You can tell anyone you like about what I'm asking." Dainyl offered a smile.

It didn't seem to help. Daclyt still looked frightened as he stared up at the colonel.

"What are the prisoners-the miners-like?" asked Dainyl.The Cadmian ranker moistened his lips. "I'd guess they don't want to be there. They don't work any harder than they have to. They complain about the smell. They complain about the food. They shouldn't. We eat the same stuff for the midday meal."

"Exactly the same?"

"Pretty much. It's the same chow line. We just get to eat first... well, half of us do."

"Have you ever shot a prisoner?"

"Shot at a couple. Captain told us not to shoot to hit 'em on the first shot, not unless one of us might get hurt. Never hit one. Solisyr's the only one in the squad ever hit one. Fellow had a big stone... was trying to brain another prisoner..."

After a glass and a half and talks with almost twenty of the Cadmians, Dainyl thanked the squad leader and walked slowly back toward his quarters. He had a better feel of how the rankers felt and acted, and that just made matters more puzzling.

Dainyl was certain that everyone he had talked to was telling the truth as they saw it. It would have been much simpler if he had discovered an ill-managed mine with brutal guards-except for four things. First, the kind of men sent to the mines weren't the type to throw themselves off of bridges or cliffs or try to scramble over stockade fences with armed guards watching them. Second, the Cadmians he had seen and the ones he'd talked to weren't brutal. Third, Devoryn had known far too much about alectors. Fourth, the marshal and the Highest had sent a battalion of Cadmians-and Dainyl-and neither the marshal nor the Highest had been in Dramur. Nor was there any record of any other alector having been there recently.

And then there was the matter of the submarshal's death. That was hardly a coincidence, Dainyl felt, although he could not have offered a shred of proof as to why he felt that way.

19.

The Duarchs' Valor docked in Dramuria a good two glasses before dawn on Duadi, at the one pier large enough for deep-sea vessels, but itwas well past dawn before Mykel and Bhoral led the troopers and mounts of Fifteenth Company down the ramp to the stone pier. Even so, the half-disc of Selena was still bright overhead, although Asterta had long since set.

There on the pier, Fifteenth Company formed up behind Seventeenth and Sixteenth Companies, closer together than Mykel would have preferred. As the last mounts of Thirteenth Company formed up on the pier, Mykel looked back toward the ramp. Above and behind the ramp, cranes were swinging into place, preparing to off-load supplies, including ammunition, spare rifles, and fodder for the battalion's mounts.

Mykel was ready enough to head out. The vessel itself bothered him.

The ship had no sails, and, unlike the lander river craft or the river tugs on the Vedra, it didn't use coal or steam. There weren't any stacks, and the vessel hummed its way through the ocean. Yet almost all the equipment abovedecks was powered by the crew, from the winches and the capstan to the water pumps. The engine compartments were sealed, according to what several crew members had told Mykel, and only the chief engineer or the captain and the exec ever entered them. One of the deckhands said it was the same on all of the Duarchs' ships.

"Another mystery," he murmured. He'd never liked mysteries, especially ones that suggested great power being hoarded. While the ship itself had disturbed him, that unease was as much a symptom of the situation in which he was finding himself as the ship itself. The alectors had built a ship that could travel faster than a mount over all but the shortest of distances. They had pteridons and skylances, and weapons that could turn a man to ashes-and yet they needed a battalion of mounted rifles to deal with a few handfuls of rebel miners?

Finally, Majer Vaclyn gave the order to the battalion. "Mount up!"

Mykel waited before he relayed the order. He and his company still had to wait almost a quarter glass before the rear ranks of Sixteenth Company began to move out.

From the saddle, riding off the pier at the head of Fif-teenth Company, Mykel took in what he could of Dramuria. He hadn't been all that impressed with the view he'd gotten from the deck of the ship. There were but two piers in the harbor, and the Duarchs' Valor had barely fit at the larger one, while the vessels at the smaller inshore pier had all been fishingvessels, most of which had cast off before dawn. His eyes took in the handful of warehouses, all of graystone, and looking ancient, just beyond the piers.

A light wind blew out of the south, barely enough to keep the morning from being unpleasantly warm. Even so, he occasionally had to blot his forehead. There was also an acrid and unpleasant smell carried on the wind, something between manure, offal, and rotten meat.

Mykel surveyed all that he could, taking in the stone gutters that separated the sidewalks from the street, deep enough to suggest that at least some of the time rain was heavy, and lingering on the signboards over the shops- with neat images and lettering, yet with faded paint.

Early as it was, there were already a few people on the stone sidewalks bordering the wider street up which the battalion rode. Some looked at the riders, and some didn't, but most of those who looked were children or younger adults, usually men. The young women might have looked, Mykel felt, but did so more discreetly.

Very few of the buildings along the main street were of more than one story, but whatever their height, all had roofs of dull red tile, and most of the dwellings and structures lacked shutters. Even the main road itself was of the same graystone, with hollows worn by years of iron-tired wagons.

"Place seems worn-out," said Bhoral quietly.

"It's hot here. It's late in harvest, and nearly as hot as midsummer in Faitel or Elcien. I'd be worn-out working here, too." Mykel offered a low and rueful laugh. He wasn't looking forward to serving even two seasons in Dramur, al-though the winter might prove pleasant. He hoped it would, if it came to that.

The sound of hoofs on stone echoed through the morning, loud enough that Mykel couldn't hear if the people along their way were saying much of anything. The main street was straight as a quarrel, aimed northwest at the mountains, and Mykel wondered if the Cadmian compound happened to be in the hills below the jagged peaks. As his eyes traversed the higher peaks, a mix of red and black rocks, with intermittent greenery, he sensed something. What he couldn't say, but he looked northward more intently.

Two huge birds were circling a peak to the northwest. He looked again."Those are pteridons."

"Does look like pteridons, sir."

There was no doubt in Mykel's mind, none at all.

Seventeenth Company turned onto a narrower but still stone-paved road that crossed over a stream, certainly not the main river, then headed uphill, presumably toward the Cadmian compound. Sixteenth Company followed, and so did Mykel and Fifteenth Company.

He glanced back over his shoulder. He could only see one pteridon in the sky over the peaks, but there had been two. Why was Third Battalion being deployed to Dramur if the Myrmidons had already sent in pteridons?

"You're not liking the pteridons, sir?" asked Bhoral.

"I have to wonder what we're getting into," Mykel replied cautiously.

"No one mentioned pteridons."

"It's always that way. They never tell us everything." Bhoral laughed.

"Me, I'm happier that they're here."

Mykel wasn't, but he smiled anyway, because he couldn't have explained his feelings except in a general way. Any place that had problems requiring both Cadmians and pteridons was not someplace where the duty at hand was going to be easy.

20.

A glass before dawn on Duadi found Dainyl standing with Quelyt and Falyna, between their pteridons in the courtyard of the Cadmian compound.

"You want down on that little bluff below the peak, sir?" asked Quelyt.

"I'll land with you, and Falyna will circle. That way, I can cover you, and she can make sure nothing else comes up or down the peak." He smiled ruefully. "She's a better shot, too."

Dainyl had been about to suggest that, but, instead, he just nodded.

"Good plan." Although he was wearing his uniform tunic and paddedflying jacket, another shot to his injured shoulder, and he'd be facing a good three weeks before he could move it without pain, if not longer. It was still sore and bruised from the single shot he'd taken.

There was also the unspoken credo of the alectors, which applied especially to the Myrmidons: Alectors were invulnerable. There were so few that the steers could never be allowed to consider them vulnerable like other mortals. Too many shots, and Dainyl would find that image hard to maintain. If he showed vulnerability, he might well find himself removed from the Myrmidons and relegated to necessary menial work within the Duarch's Palace, or at the Vault of the Ages in Lyterna-if not worse.

He looked to Quelyt. "We'd better get flying."

"Yes, sir. It's still cool and calm. No sign of clouds around those peaks."

Dainyl waited until Quelyt had mounted, then climbed into the second silver saddle. The pteridon's wings extended, and, with the sharp burst of Talent, they were air-bome, moving eastward into the wind off the ocean.

Dainyl looked to the south, where he could see a large vessel moored at the ocean pier. That had to be the Duarchs' Valor, with the Cadmian battalion. What the Cad-mian mounted rifles could do, Dainyl had no idea, but his orders were very clear. He was to observe, not to interfere...

unless something went terribly wrong. If it did, he would have to act quickly; and then, if the situation got worse, all blame would fall on him.

He forced his concentration back to flying and their destination. As the pteridon's wings moved, and they gained speed and altitude, Quelyt guided them back around to the northwest, setting a course toward the higher peaks opposite the smugglers' cove. Unlike the afternoon before, the air was far calmer, and much colder. Despite his jacket and gloves, and the insulating properties of his boots and uniform, Dainyl could feel the chill seeping into his feet and fingers. Acorus was a beautiful world, but it was a cold one.

Quelyt had clearly decided to gain altitude before they neared the peaks, climbing through the more stable air away from the mountains.

"That one?" called Quelyt.

"No! Farther north. The summit's angled."Quelyt had to circle several of the peaks with various outcroppings just below their summits before Dainyl located the one for which they were searching.

"That one there! With the angle, and the flat space below."

"Be tight to land there, sir. Hang on."

The pteridon managed to make it onto the space, although its left wing tip seemed to graze the rugged stone escarpment above the cave.

Quelyt sighed, then smiled. "Don't want to do that often, sir."

"Let's hope not."

After dismounting, Dainyl drew on lifeforce to hold deflection shields, then unholstered the light-cutter before stepping toward the irregular opening of the cave, which looked to be about three and a half yards tall at the highest point. Behind him, Quelyt had the skylance ready.