Quaeryt turned to Zhelan. "If you'd pass word to the company officers?"

"Yes, sir."

Before long, Fifth Battalion neared the first hamlet mentioned by the squad leader, a gathering of close to forty dwellings and more than a few outbuildings, one or two of which looked to be large and solid. All the dwellings and buildings were of timber, much of it unpainted or stained so long ago that the wood had grayed to the shade of untreated and weathered wood. A few wisps of smoke rose from some of the chimneys, but it was clear the villagers had fled.

Zhelan, again riding beside Quaeryt, shook his head. "Poor folks. Don't even know what it's all about. Just hope that we leave them something."

"We've left more than Kharst's men have."

"Just hope we haven't ended up leaving it for them."

So did Quaeryt.

Another quint brought Quaeryt and Fifth Battalion to the smallest hamleta"the one assigned to Fifth Battalion. It looked to be far older than the hamlet Meinyt's regiment was doubtless already occupying. As Zhelan directed the companies, Quaeryt remained mounted, half watching as Third Regiment rode by on the old stone road. When they had passed, Quaeryt took a moment and crossed the road to take a look at the narrow, grass-filled canal that still seemed to him that it once had led to Nordeau. He frowned. The stone walls ended less than half a mille west of the hamlet. Beyond that point, a low swale continued westward in a straight line, but there was no sign of stonework.

Someone must have mined the canal for stone. But who? And why?

With that thought in mind, he rode back across the road and toward the large center cot, where Zhelan had positioned himself. "What do you think?"

"Most of them will want to sleep outside. The cots a they a well, they stink."

That didn't surprise Quaeryt. Still a he wondered. Most cots, humble as they might be, didn't. So he dismounted and tied the mare to a tree beside the cot, then walked to the dwelling.

The roof was barely level with his eyes. Why would anyone build a house with such a low ceiling? Then he looked at the entry and realized, belatedly, that the steps led down to the doorway, and that the lower section of the walls were constructed of finely fitted gray stone, while the upper walls consisted of rough planks, with a reed-thatched roof above that. They used the foundations of an older building for the lower wall.

The door was open, and a trooper stepped out and looked to Quaeryt. "Sir a no one's here. Banked the hearth and ran, it looks like. There's even food." He wrinkled his nose. "Doesn't smell inside, but it sure does here."

Quaeryt could sense a faint odor, but it eased as he moved to the steps. When he moved back along the side of the cot, the odor was greater, almost as if wastes had been dumped around the cot. He shook his head and walked to the next cot, a smaller dwelling, and then around it. The lower side walls were of the well-fitted gray stone, but the lower rear wall, while of the gray stone, showed almost crude workmanship, as did the lower walls flanking the front door and, again, steps led down to the door, offering entry to the cot a yard or so below ground level.

He walked through the center of the hamlet, looking at the cots and their small wooden outbuildings. When he finished, he nodded. At some time in the past, there had been a complex of well-crafted gray stone buildings. Had they been the Naedaran equivalent of a high holding, a fort or the like, or something else? With the closeness to the road and to the canal, it made sense, but why had it all been abandoned?

In less than a glass, under Zhelan's direction, the battalion was mostly settled into the hamlet, at least as settled as they were likely to be, reflected Quaeryt as he stood outside the largest cot, waiting for the imagers to join him, still puzzling why the stones had been removed from just the section of canal closest to Nordeau. Had the stones been used in building dwellings farther west? He'd just have to see.

He wasn't looking forward to drills with the undercaptains. He suspected that they weren't, either, since none of them had yet appeared, but he'd scheduled the drill before the evening meal, because Skarpa had sent word he would brief the subcommanders at sixth glass.

Quaeryt glanced around again, then nodded as he saw Khalis and Lhandor walking toward him. Lhandor was carrying what looked to be an oblong grayish stone, and Khalis held something in his hands. When the two reached Quaeryt, Khalis nodded and then stepped forward.

"What is it, Khalis?"

"I'm not sure, sir, but when the cooks were digging one of the firepits a they found these a this, I mean." The young imager opened his hands to show fragments of a stone statue of some sort. "Well a actually they found the stone Lhandor has and then these."

Quaeryt looked closely, but the darkness of the stonea"most likely black marblea"made discerning what the fragments had comprised difficult. "What is it?"

"That's what I wanted to know, sir. So I pieced it together." A smile crossed the young man's face. "It's a coney, sir a a black one. Well, it was before someone smashed it. It was buried under the stone."

Lhandor handed the stone to Quaeryt, a heavy oblong some nine digits wide and perhaps fifteen long. Quaeryt lifted it and studied the brief inscription that had been chiseleda"shallowly but cleanly, as if by a trained stone carvera"into the grayed white marble. While the letters were largely the same as those used in Bovarian and Tellan, there were several that were unfamiliar, and the words looked like nothing he'd ever seen. Naedaran?

Why had someone gone to the trouble of crafting the figure, and then smashing it, but burying it under a stone with a carved inscription?

"Where did you find this? Near which cookpit?"

Khalis turned and pointed. "That one. The cooks were going to dig more to the right, but there are stones there, almost like a floor."

More evidence of a far larger holding or base or fort?

"It's not like any coney I ever saw, sir. If you'll come over here, sir?" Khalis moved over to the side of the cot beside a window that had a narrow ledge.

"Might I ask why you think that?" Quaeryt followed the young undercaptain.

"It a well a sir, it feels different. It looks different, and it scared the cooks." Khalis laid the pieces out on the ledge, arranging them with care until he had them together.

Quaeryt leaned forward and studied the pieced-together figure. The head of the rabbit was in only two sections. Abruptly Quaeryt realized that the stone was black marble and that it had been shattered with care. Black marble? We haven't seen anything like that in any of the dwellings, not even in the few High Holdings.

He reached forward and touched the stone with his fingertips. Despite the warmth of the late afternoon, the stone was cold, seeming far colder than it should have been. He wondered, then looked at the fragmented shape and concentrated. Light flickered around the sections of black stone a and the black coney was whole.

As a whole statue, the coney, upright and balanced on its hindquarters, was no more than eight digits tall, but looked much taller. It was also a skillfully done representation, with the stone's texture giving the impression of realistic black fur. Even the toenails were carved in place. And the face a "It looks a spiteful," observed Khalis.

"It does." Abruptly Quaeryt laughed.

"Sir?"

"I'm just guessing, Undercaptain, but I'd wager that to whoever buried this hundreds of years ago, the black rabbit symbolized bad luck, and when they smashed it and buried it, that was to bury black luck."

"You put it back together, sir." Khalis's voice contained a note of worry.

"It was their bad fortune, not ours. And their ill fortune might well be our good fortune."

"The rabbit, sir?" Khalis picked it up and extended it to Quaeryt. "You repaired it."

"Don't break it, but find a safe place to bury it." Quaeryt certainly didn't want to carry around a spiteful-looking black marble rabbit. And if it is bad luck, it needs to stay here. "Bury it deep enough that the locals won't find it."

Khalis frowned. "It doesn't feel cold anymore."

That surprised Quaeryt. The statuette should have felt colder, if anything, after being imaged back together. "Just bury it, with the oblong stone over it, but put the inscription side down." Why he'd said that, he didn't know, but it felt right.

"Yes, sir."

The two hurried away from the cot and toward the cooks, where Lhandor asked for and received a small spade, before the two continued toward a small woodlot to the rear of the cot.

Quaeryt turned to watch as Shaelyt and Desyrk approached.

Shaelyt's eyes followed the younger Pharsi imagers.

"They'll be back. I gave them a task." The Nameless only knows what they'll tell Shaelyt. "No one gets out of exercises and imaging drills."

Quaeryt had to wait another half quint before all the undercaptains gathered. He ended up working with them slightly less than a glass before dismissing them to eat. He grabbed a few rations himself, gulped them down, and then went to find Zhelan.

After checking with the major, Quaeryt walked to where the mare was tethered, outside one of the outbuildings, untied her, and mounted. As he rode westward to the largest hamlet to meet with Skarpa and the other subcommanders, he found his thoughts going back to the hamlet that had been something far more imposing a and the Naedarans.

What happened to make a great land collapse, or any land? Some ended up being conquered and absorbed by other lands, as had happened with Tilbor and Tela. Some were conquered from outside, in the fashion that the Yaran warlords who had been Bhayar's forebears had conquered Telaryn and made it their own. From what he'd read of Naedara, though, the land had been strong and prosperous. Then it had not, and by the time the Bovarians began to expand, the cities of Naedara were shadows of their former greatness, offering little or no resistance.

Even in his brief time as a provincial governor, Quaeryt had seen the underlying problems facing Bhayar, especially the difficulty of holding both governors and High Holders accountable without requiring a large force of troopers. And as he'd seen with Rescalyn, whoever was in command of an army also posed a threat. Could a force of imagers be somehow trained and organized to support Bhayar? Would they provide the force necessary to keep the governors and High Holders in line? And keep Bhayar and his successors from becoming tyrants like Kharst?

Quaeryt laughed softly at the arrogance of the idea, even as he considered how it might be possible.

As he neared the larger village, he saw a squad of riders formed up at the road that led south toward the center to the houses and buildings.

"Subcommander, sir, the commander is waiting at the large dwelling off the square. It's maybe four hundred yards on the right side."

"Has Subcommander Meinyt arrived?"

"Not by this road, sir."

"Thank you." Quaeryt guided the mare onto the rutted side road, past two small fields that separated the first cots from the old road. Why aren't they located directly off the road? In bad weather, access would be so much easier.

Around every cot, everywhere he looked as he rode into the center of the village, there were troopers, and those were only the men of Third Regiment. The other thing that struck him was that none of the cots were built of the gray stone that had lined the ancient canal. So where had all those well-cut stones gone?

In less than a fraction of a quint, Quaeryt reached the square. It was literally just that, a square expanse of gray stone, but the stones were, surprisingly, not the same size as the evenly cut and sized stones of the canal, but much larger. On the west side was a chandlery, while shops dotted the north and south sides. Quaeryt turned the mare toward the two-story dwelling on the east, a weathered wooden structure that would have been considered modestly large in most Telaryn cities, but which towered over the other dwellings. Khaern and Skarpa stood on the narrow porch. Neither spoke as Quaeryt reined up and tied the mare to one of the hitching rings beside the gravel path.

"Good evening," offered Quaeryt as he stepped onto the porch, his words punctuated by the creaking of worn planks beneath his boots.

Khaern smiled and nodded pleasantly.

"Evening," replied Skarpa. "Porch is like everything else around here. Barely held together. Didn't see Meinyt, did you?"

"He wasn't close behind me, and the watch squad hadn't seen him."

"Not like him. Must have run into a problem. How is that hamlet you're in?"

"Old," replied Quaeryt. "A number of the cots are half built out of Naedaran foundations, and there are gray stones everywhere just below the ground around the cots."

"Everything around here is old," observed Khaern. "It's old and worn-out."

"That doesn't make much sense," said Skarpa. "Farther east, it isn't like that. It's almost like the Namer cursed this part of Bovaria."

Quaeryt couldn't help but think about the black coney, and the superstitions surrounding it. Had the area always been worn-out and tired? Not if the Naedarans built that canal and had buildings all along the old road.

"What are you thinking?" asked Skarpa. "You've got a funny look."

"Just that the Naedarans had a canal that looks to go twenty milles or more with large estates and buildings along it. It's been unused for years, centuries, probably, but it couldn't always have been worn-out and tired."

"Maybe the Namer cursed the Bovarians who drove out the Naedarans," suggested Khaern almost laughingly.

"Who knows? Who cares?" said Skarpa, turning and pointing. "Here comes Meinyt."

The three waited as the last subcommander rode up, dismounted, and tied his mount beside Quaeryt's mare.

"I'm sorry I'm late," said Meinyt as he hurried up onto the porch. "My mount came up lame just after I left the camp. Had to walk him back and saddle a spare."

"Those things happen. Better now than in a fight," replied Skarpa. "I'd have you sit down, but it's a lot cooler out here, and this shouldn't take too long." He cleared his throat. "I have the first reports from the scouts." Skarpa glanced to Quaeryt. "You were right. The entire south side of Nordeau is walled. The walls are not high, about three yards, but they're solid stone. There are only two sets of gates. Both are heavily fortified, with much taller gate towers. The gates are ironbound. There may even be a portcullis in the gate towers behind each set of gates."

"What about the north side?" asked Quaeryt.

"The north side is walled as well, at least the older part of the city. Both walled cities are connected by a stone bridge which is anchored to an isle in the middle of the river. The isle is also walled on all sides. On the north side, dwellings, shops, and other buildings have been built well beyond the old walls. The walls are well maintained on the south side. They appear that way on the north. There's no way to tell how many men are behind the walls, but if they've got even what we have, it's going to be cramped."

Quaeryt could see that the other three officers were all looking at him. After a moment he spoke. "Until I can study those walls and gates myself, I can't offer you any idea of how we can take the city." Or if we can without losing thousands of men.

"Thought as much," replied Skarpa. "Won't hurt the men to have a day or so of rest."

Quaeryt could sense what the commander hadn't saida"that he didn't want to wait any longer than necessary. Neither did Quaeryt, if possibly for very different reasons.

56.

Quaeryt and first company set out early on Vendrei because he hadn't slept that long and because the days along the River Aluse got warmer and wetter as the day progressed, and he was tired of feeling hot and miserable when he didn't have to. He had left all the imagers, with Voltyr in charge of working with Threkhyl, Desyrk, and Baelthm, and Shaelyt in charge of the newer undercaptains.

He kept looking to his right, but the road and what remained of the ancient canal continued westward in a straight line along flat land that rose or fell by no more than a yard or two at most. After a mille, the fields ended, and to the right of the road and canal swale rose woods, not thick forests, but well-tended trees, spaced well apart. By then, even with the cool morning air, Quaeryt was blotting his forehead and readjusting his cap. Ahead, the woods ended, giving way to meadows or pasture, because the ground was green, and most crops, except beans and a few others, would have turned or shriveled by the last month in harvest.

When first company reached the end of the woods and Quaeryt was surprised to see that they were roughly two milles from Nordeau, and that there were no trees at all between where he rode and the walls. Nor were there any structures at alla"not a one.

"Company! Halt!" Before proceeding, he wanted to take in what he saw.

The River Aluse curved back southwest, so that the low grassy swale that had once been a canal ended in a hillock at the river's edge less than a half mille south of the gray stone walls of Nordeau. Quaeryt couldn't help but believe that the low hill covered some sort of ruin. He'd studied the map again before setting out, and where the river curved, northeast of Nordeau, it also narrowed, suggesting a difficult passage for boats or barges. The fact that the Naedarans had built a canal more than twenty milles long indicated to Quaeryt that they'd had a reason for it, and that reason had to be trade. That raised questions that he needed to put aside while he concentrated on the problem at handa"how to get Skarpa's forces inside the walls.

He saw no one on the road that ran straight toward the walls, and finally he gestured for the company to proceed.

The closer they drew to Nordeau, the more obvious it was that south Nordeau was a fortress that had been built to last. While Quaeryt looked in every direction as they moved toward the walls, no one emerged from the one set of gates he saw, the ones to which the ancient road led, as straight as a quarrel.

"Do you see anyone, Ghaelyn?"

"No, sir. Scouts haven't signaled, either."

At slightly more than a half mille from the closed ironbound gates, Quaeryt reined up. He could see another road, also gray and apparently paved, that led from the western side of the walls that arced around the city, but because of the curvature of the walls, he could not see the other set of gates. The walls held no banners, and he saw no defenders, but since there were embrasures at regular intervals in the walls, defenders could have been watching him and first company, and probably were. He did see wisps of smoke rising from chimneys beyond the walls, enough so that it was clear that Nordeau was not deserted.

But why aren't there sentries on the walls? Why hasn't anyone come out to challenge us?

After several moments, he shifted his weight in the saddle and turned to Ghaelyn. "Undercaptain a we're going to ride closer, but I'm going to try something, and I want silent riding. Not a word. Tell the men to be ready to turn and ride back at a moment's notice."

"Yes, sir."

While Ghaelyn rode back and conveyed the orders to all the squad leaders, Quaeryt slowly raised a concealment shield, trying to do so in a way that might give the impression that he and first company had slowly withdrawn.

The undercaptain returned and said, "Ready, sir." His voice was low.