“Frig.” Nylan’s hand touched the blade in the shoulder harness, and the one at his waist, moving both to see that they would not bind if he needed them. “Should we cut across the fields?”
“There are only three. They know the roads, and their mounts are probably fresher.”
“You really don’t think we can talk our way out of this?”
“No. But it might work, and we’ll create more of a surprise than if we start running right now.”
That made sense, but Ayrlyn usually did, often more than he did, Nylan reflected. Still, there were three armsmen waiting. And only he and Ayrlyn were armed.
Three men in green, all holding white-bronze sabres and mounted on dark brown horses, waited at the crossroads.
“Sylenia, you stay back.” Nylan reined up a good twenty cubits back from the local patrol, his hand ready to draw the Westwind shortsword.
“You must come with us,” announced the center rider.
The tongue was unadulterated Old Rationalist, and it took a moment for Nylan to make the mental adjustment.
“Why?” asked Ayrlyn. “We have bothered no one.”
“You are strangers. Strangers are not permitted. Cyad must not be polluted.” The almost leering look of the speaker contrasted with the flat speech.
Nylan studied the area behind the armsmen, but could see or sense no one.
“Come!” snapped the Cyadoran leader, as though it were inconceivable that he would be defied.
Thunk!
Nylan gaped as Ayrlyn’s mount darted forward and her heavy blade slammed through the speaker’s shoulder. Seemingly too slowly, he pulled his own blade from the waist scabbard, and urged the mare forward.
The armsman to the right glanced from Nylan to the sagging leader and back to the angel before raising his sabre. Nylan beat the white-bronze blade aside, and slashed through the other’s shoulder, then knocked the blade from the armsman’s hand on the recovery.
“Ser!”
At Sylenia’s scream he turned in the saddle to see the third Cyadoran bearing down on Ayrlyn, who held her second blade weakly before her. Reacting rather than thinking, he threw his heavy blade, smoothing the order flows.
The backflash of chaos froze him in his saddle. His vision flared into the nova of a powerflux, and he shuddered, blind and trying to grope for the blade in his shoulder harness.
“You don’t have to, ser Nylan.” Sylenia’s voice wavered in and out of his hearing. “You don’t have to. They’re all dead.”
He lowered his hand, his eyes still clinched shut-futilely-against the sparks of chaos that flared through them.
“What do we do?” asked the nursemaid.
“Just ride. Fast walk,” gasped Nylan. “Need to get to a woodlot or somewhere…sheltered…but not close to here. You lead.”
“I…I could not.”
“You’re the only one who can see.”
“Oh.”
Nylan shivered in his saddle, letting Sylenia lead the way, letting the mare carry him forward. He knew Ayrlyn was in worse shape, barely able to ride. But she had been right to attack first. Had they any choice? Not in this situation. Not outnumbered and with Weryl and Sylenia vulnerable. Not against a culture to whom outsiders were worthless.
Again…and again…only force mattered. It was all that anyone respected. Not feelings, not reason, not balance-just force.
…glare-damned…frigging force…
He swallowed and tried to stay in the saddle, trusting the mare to follow Sylenia.
CXIV
A cricket…or grasshopper…or something…chirped in the darkness from the grass beyond the trees of the woodlot. The faint reiseralike odor simmered in the late-evening stillness.
Nylan glanced briefly through the darkness toward where Sylenia and Weryl slept, then toward Ayrlyn. “Aren’t you tired?” He closed his eyes as the intermittent light-knives stabbed through them.
“Yes, but I’m not sleepy. My head still aches…”
“I know.” So did Nylan’s, and every so often his vision blurred, and white flashes or sparks kept blinding him, sometimes so that all he had been able to do when riding away from the river was hang on and hope the mare didn’t carry him into trouble, hope that Sylenia would just find somewhere halfway safe.
It seemed as though they had ridden through eternity, through a rainstorm that, paradoxically, had relieved the worst of the chaos backflash agony.
Where exactly they were, he wasn’t sure, except that they were farther south and closer to the forest. He hoped so, anyway, but he was too tired to worry or ride anymore.
“A lot of this doesn’t make sense, not to me,” he confessed.
“That’s because you’re not a comm officer or a sociologist,” she pointed out. “It didn’t make sense to me at first, either. Look at it rationally, though, or Rationalistically, if you will.”
He groaned at the pun, then rubbed his temples.
“This is a highly regimented and organized culture-and one in which women are held in very low esteem-as valued property. There has to be something like an aristocracy with some pretty high-handed privileges. That whole town screamed it.”
“Huhh?” Nylan’s head continued to throb. Then, he’d been the one to kill two of the locals.
“All the houses are shuttered, despite the heat. The entrances are screened with bushes, or, in the towns, barred with grates. There are no signs indicating where anything is, and all the houses look pretty much alike. Have we seen a single girl? Just one pregnant woman. The only horsemen have been armsmen in authority, and everyone runs from anyone who’s mounted, even before seeing who it might be.
“Why do you think I attacked first? It’s not because I liked the idea, or that I’m bloodthirsty,” she pointed out. “We were mounted, strangers, and bearing arms. That meant we were not only fair game, but that they would have attacked as soon as we refused to come with them. The good news is that no one is actually chasing us right now,” Ayrlyn finished.
“We’re strangers, and we knocked off three of the local police or the equivalent, and no one’s chasing us? Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’d bet those three armsmen were the entire local constabulary. They got killed. Now, that was outside of town. First, few if any of the locals are going to have the initiative to go see what happened, and those that do aren’t about to say because it would implicate them. That means every local can deny involvement, and most probably will. Plus, in this kind of system, who is going to want to travel to the next town or military district or whatever, to explain what happened-and risk rather direct interrogation? The reaction is bound to be slow.”
“Systems like that don’t work.”
“Oh, yes, they do.” She said grimly. “These…Cyadorans have a highly developed sense of passive resistance and absolute military or aristocratic authority over anyone who doesn’t fit. It’s pretty obvious that any woman out in public is free game, but safe behind her house walls. Local men are probably respected by the aristocrats so long as they scrape and bow in public, and the local men stay as far from the aristocrats as possible. Look at the houses. Unless you’re a local, how would you even be sure who lives where? The nonaristocrats aren’t allowed weapons, and I’d bet that even the aristocrats face stiff social restrictions on how and when they can use theirs.
“Except for stealing from the fields, we can’t and won’t get supplies, because they’re locked up to ensure rigid accounting, and because every store will slam a very heavy door before you can get there. If we did get inside the walls, then the local rules would make us fair game, and these people have a lot of pent-up aggression, I’d bet.
“Every armed force has the right to kill or torture us,” the redhead continued-“or rape Sylenia and me-or you, if that’s how they’re inclined. The borders are closed, and geographically isolated, which limits strangers, and singles them out.” Ayrlyn yawned. “No, as long as they can keep out large numbers of strangers, the system will work fine. And in some ways, probably better than other societies in Candar.”