The town turned over Baholyn, or there wouldn't be any town. Gave everyone a glass. Said that every quarter glass that passed after that, they'd torch another house, and they'd start with the biggest." The man shrugged. "Took a glass and a half before Baholyn's daughter told 'em where he was. Her place was next. They flogged him in the square till he was dead, and then they burned his body to ashes."

"How long ago was that?"

"Not quite ten years."

"What do people here think about the guano mine?"

"It doesn't do us much good. The soil here isn't that good, and we could use the bat shit here, but folks can't pay what they will in Southgate or wherever they ship it."

"What about the miners?"

"They say some of them escaped. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

"Has anyone seen any?"

"No. Don't know anyone who has. Leastwise, no one who's talked to me about it.""We keep finding tracks of horsemen around Jyoha, but I can't say that I've seen more than one or two people riding. Most use carts or wagons-or walk. Who are the riders?"

"Don't know as I could say, Captain."

"I don't mean names," Mykel said with a laugh. "I meant... Are they young bloods, the younger sons of growers, riding around because they've golds and little else to do? Or are they raiders? Or these rebel miners that everyone talks about and no one seems ever to have seen?"

"Can't say as I know."

Mykel laughed. "I know. No one knows, but you've prob-ably got a better idea than most How about a guess, Harnyck?"

"Don't have enough growers around here for bloods. Land's too piss-poor for even one seltyr. Same's true for raiders. Same'd seem to be true for rebels, as well."

"So... who are we talking about?"

"Seems to me, Captain, that you're doing the talking."

"You've got me again." Mykel waited.

"Lots of smallholders don't have coin, can't pay their land rents. Can't stay there, neither, or the growers'd catch 'em and send 'em to Dramuria for a judgment. They'd have to work it off in the mines. Even if they paid off one, there'd be another waiting. Law says you can't take their land if they spend at least one night a week there. Doesn't say how long on that night." Harnyck smiled, brittlely. "What else are they going to do?"

Mykel had the feeling that the chandler was telling the truth, but only because he'd chosen his words carefully. The captain wasn't sure that he'd learned much of anything when he left the shop. Outside, he only waited a few moments before the two squads returned.

"What did you see?" Mykel asked after he mounted and joined Dravadyl. Followed by the two squads, they rode away from the square and toward the stone bridge over the small creek on the west side of Jyoha."Nothing we haven't seen before. We get the looks that tell us to go away. People keep away, and it's like any other small town, far as I can figure. Did you have any luck, sir?"

"Not really. The chandler said the Myrmidons burned the sawmill. They also flogged the owner and burned him in the square back there. They told him to close it. He ran it at night."

"Stupid. You don't mess with alectors."

Mykel nodded.

The arched bridge was barely wide enough for two mounts abreast, and the sound of hoofs echoed dully on the stones. Once past the bridge, Mykel ordered, "Scouts out! We'll take the lane to the left."

"Scouts out, sir!"

The narrow lane showed few signs of travel, except by livestock, probably the small sheep that were among the few domestic animals besides horses resistant to the night-wasps. Less than five hundred yards up the lane, the meadows ended, replaced by low trees, the tallest no more than head high, and all set amid a forest of large stumps.

After rising gently for another hundred yards, the lane leveled and brought them out onto a flatter area, one without trees. It had been the sawmill site. The ground still held depressions that once might have been wagon tracks, and on the left were the ruins of the old sawmill.

Mykel let his eyes rove over the rains. All that was left were the stone sides of the dried-up millrace and the mud-brick walls of the foundation, both blackened from the flame of the skylances. The sunlight glinted off glassy parts of the rained brickwork. Nothing grew around the foundations. The nearest clumps of grass were ten yards from the blackened foundation.

"Ten years ago? Just ten?" asked Dravadyl. "Looks like it happened a lot longer ago."

Mykel thought so, too, but he knew that the chandler had not been lying."Hoofprints here, sir!" called one of the scouts at the south end of the open space. "Squad-sized. Some group as before, looks to be."

Mykel rode forward to where the scout waited. "How old?"

"Not today. Hasn't rained since we been here. Could be a week. I'd say more like three-four days."

"We'll follow them and see what we can find."

For a glass and a half, Mykel and the two squads fol-lowed the tracks-carefully-with the pace slower and slower as the lane became a path that turned into a trail through more of the low trees, growing between the stumps of old-growth pines and firs.

"This must have been where they were cutting the trees," mused Mykel.

"Pretty large ones, sir," replied Vhanyr, who had moved up to ride with Mykel and Dravadyl. "Like those over there."

Mykel looked more closely. The shorter trees and seedlings ended less than half a vingt ahead. Beyond that, the taller old-growth pines rose like a brown-and-green wall. The smallest of those giants was thirty yards high.

"Look sharp!" he called to the scouts.

The trail ended in a clearing beside the creek short of the forest to the south. Whoever they had been tracking had used the clearing as a campsite, with cookfires, long since cold.

"They forded the creek and headed into the forest," reported Dhozynt, the fifth squad scout. "Do you want us to follow them?"

"Not today," Mykel said. "We'll head back."

He wasn't about to take just two squads into a massive forest he didn't know, not when they'd had more than enough problems on relatively clear roads and trails. If Ma-jer Vaclyn wanted that, the majer would have to show up and lead the company into the woods.

Just looking at the giant pines gave Mykel an uneasy feeling, as if there were something beyond. He laughed, softly. There was-a group of rebels with mounts and hostile intentions toward him and his men.He forced himself not to look over his shoulder as they started the ride back to Jyoha. He would send a report to the majer about what the chandler had said-that the riders were poor men who were trying to keep their lands in bad times.

33.

The morning was chill, not so bad as the time Dainyl had been in Blackstear and his breath had been frozen fog-that had been during what the locals had called late spring-but the day promised to be clear. In the early light, the peaks of the Murian Mountains stood out against the silver-green sky when Dainyl crossed the courtyard, wearing his blue flying jacket as he made his way to the officers' mess.

As always, the pair of local Cadmian officers avoided even looking at him as he seated himself. The steward brought him an ale immediately.

He sipped it slowly, thinking about what he had overheard and the patterns revealed by Majer Herryf's latest reports. Most important of all, while escape attempts had continued, the pattern of those escapes had changed. Far fewer mals were diving off the bridge or trying to climb the stockade. Despite the use of more Cadmians as guards, a greater fraction of the escapees was vanishing without a trace. Both Sturwart and Donasyr had tried to conceal that the escapes had risen significantly in the past few months. Was that because they didn't want more Myrmidons coming to Dramur? Or because they didn't want to lose control of the mine to the growers? From his observations, it was also clear that neither the local Cadmians nor the landowners had anything to do with the escapes.

The steward returned with a platter and a basket of bread, slipping them onto the table silently. Dainyl took another swallow of the ale before trying the heavily fried egg toast.

Using Talent to boost his hearing, he listened as he began to eat.

"... still wonder why he's here...

"... hear that they sent the captain who found those rifles out to chase the escaped prisoners... Jyoha's the ass end of the east..."

"Their majer makes what we got look good. The one officer that finds something, and they give him shit duty..."Dainyl mentally marked that comment and kept listening, but neither Benjyr nor Meryst said anything more of immediate interest to him. After he finished with his breakfast, lacking, as usual, any sensibilities of finer taste, he left the mess and stepped back out into the light but chill breeze that swept across the courtyard.

As he looked to the northwest, he sensed something, a use of Talent that wasn't normal. He hurried toward the squares where the pteridons were hosted, hoping either Quelyt or Falyna was there.

Falyna stepped forward as she saw the colonel approaching. "Sir?

Something wrong?"

"I don't know. Are you ready to fly? With a passenger?"

"Yes, sir. We're the duty, such as it is-"

"Good. Let's go. Head for where we found that ancient tunnel."

"Yes, sir."

Dainyl didn't feel like explaining. How could he? He couldn't afford to reveal that he was following a Talent-trace, not when he'd been careful to hide that he had any significant Talent besides shielding. While that had been true many years before... it wasn't now, and he didn't want to lose the advantage of being underestimated in that fashion, especially not after Tyanylt's death and what he had discovered so far in Dramur. Nothing known to more than two people, and sometimes not even that, remained secret from the High Alector of Justice.

After Falyna mounted the pteridon, Dainyl followed, settling himself into the silver saddle behind her.

With a spring and a burst of Talent, the pteridon spread its wings and leapt into the sky, headed eastward into the prevailing wind. Within moments, taking advantage of the thermals over the wanner water off the coast, Falyna and the pteridon were high enough that Dramuria looked like a toy village below. Then the Myrmidon turned the pteridon to the northwest and continued climbing as they headed toward the peak of the ancients.

With the air so chill, the pteridon could climb higher, but the coldseeped through the insulating fabric of Dainyl's uniform and even through the flying jacket.

Falyna looked back at the colonel. "Straight to the peak, sir? You want me to set down there, like before?"

"Circle it, first. I'll let you know. Keep your lance ready when we get near."

"Yes, sir."

Abruptly, the pteridon dropped a good fifty yards, then began to climb again.

Dainyl looked down to his left as they drew abreast of the mining complex, but he could feel no Talent being used there, although he could make out a column of miners entering the mining compound. How many more would vanish today? And how?

He forced his attention to the terrain ahead.

As they drew nearer to the angled peak, Dainyl could still sense, faintly but clearly, the use of Talent, almost two lines of Talent, one red-violet and the other greenish gold, although the two seemed interlinked.

"That peak there?" called back Falyna.

"The one that angles, just to the left."

"Got it, sir. Don't see anything, not any more than last time."

"Can you circle a bit higher?"

"We can try."

As the pteridon swept past the cave, Dainyl caught a glimpse of the golden green arch-and of two figures, one stocky and one far smaller. The stockier figure seemed to be of red-violet, the slighter one of golden green.

"Don't see anything there, sir!" called out Falyna.

"Make another circle!""Yes, sir."

The red-violet vanished from Dainyl's Talent-perception. One instant, it was there; the next it was not.

As Falyna brought the pteridon around for another pass, Dainyl studied the foliage and the rocky slope below the cave/tunnel and the bluff. He thought he could sense several landers or indigens several hundred yards below.

"Skylance ready!" he called.

"Lance ready!" returned the Myrmidon ranker.

The pteridon swept past the opening to the short tunnel again.

Dainyl could make out, literally suspended in midair, a hazy sphere of golden green. In that instant, as he watched, the sphere-at least he thought it was a sphere-vanished. It didn't move; it just wasn't there.

"Nothing there, sir."

There wasn't, not any longer, but Falyna hadn't seen either presence, and that meant some sort of strong Talent-shielding, although Dainyl hadn't sensed it.

Crack!

As Dainyl was rocked back in the pteridon's second saddle, pain lanced through his right shoulder, the one that had barely healed from the last set of braises. Dainyl raised shields around his neck and head, all too aware of the drain his action would place on the pteridon.

"Sir!"

"I'm fine. Use the lance!" snapped the colonel. "Straight below the bluff." The lifeforce-imbued uniform and jacket had kept the bullet from breaking through his jacket and tunic, but he would feel the impact for days.

"Coming round, sir. Hang tight!"

The pteridon began to lose altitude, if slowly."Can't stay up here, sir!"

"Go right over that grove of trees ahead. Flame the center."

Crack! Crack!

Dainyl could feel the force of one of the bullets against his shields, and, the corresponding loss of height by the pteridon.

A line of bluish flame arrowed from Falyna's skylance toward the stand of evergreens that clung to the slope ahead and below. Yellow-and-blue fires flared, flame fountains that almost reached up to the pteridon as it passed overhead, a good hundred yards above where the trees had stood, amid the steeper rocky slopes and cliffs.

With those fires, Dainyl could sense the deaths of the men who had hidden in the trees.