A shift in the breeze suddenly thinned the smoke pouring up from the burning farmhouse. It hadn't been much smoke, compared to what was pouring up from Mrathos two miles to the east, but it had been enough to screen Verkan's patrol of the Mounted Rifles from what lay beyond the hedges bordering the farmyard. Now the screen was gone, and Verkan was staring at more than a hundred of Styphon's Red Hand, and particularly at a mounted officer who was staring back as though one of Styphon's fireseed devils had suddenly materialized out of the haze.
Verkan was the first to break away. His pistol shot missed the officer but nicked his horse, which kept the Guard Captain busy enough for Verkan to shout, "No dismounting! We had orders to find the Styphoni and we've done it! Pull back!"
By the time the Captain of Styphon's Own Guard had his mount under control and was sending his men through the gate in the hedge, Verkan's twenty-five Riflemen were trotting away across the farmer's now well-trodden barley. They were on the far side of the field and approaching the boundary with the next farm before the Red Hand opened fire, at long range for musketoons.
Long range, but not impossible, with fifty men volleying at a single target. Verkan had just enough time to realize that he was the single target, when his horse screamed and reared violently, something went wheeet past his ear, and something else went whnnnnngggg off his breastplate. Verkan flung himself to the left to avoid falling under his horse, smashed into something solid and hard enough to knock the wind out of him, then found himself suspended clear of the ground with what seemed to be blunt knives digging into his ribs.
He gulped in air, shook his head and discovered he was caught in the half-rotted framework of an overturned farm wagon. He must have been right on top of it when the Styphoni killed his horse, then smashed most of the way through when he leaped clear. For a long moment he wriggled like a child in the arms of a determined mother, then the rest of the framework gave way and he dropped through to the ground.
The timbers of the bed of the wagon were less rotted, a piece of good luck for Verkan. Bullets thunked into the wood as the Guardsmen blazed away with more enthusiasm than accuracy. The sound of incoming fire didn't drown out Ranthar's orders to dismount and return fire. The Mounted Rifles were falling into fours with the ease of long practice-three to open fire and one to hold the horses. Ranthar himself was staying mounted, his rifle still slung across his back.
Verkan couldn't see all his men, but from the sudden burst of rifle fire he knew everyone but the horse-holders must have let fly. Two more volleys were punctuated by a cry of pain and several gleefully triumphant shouts, then the massed fire gave way to individual fire. The thunking of bullets into the wagon bed became less frequent as the Styphoni found it prudent to keep their heads out of the sights of rifles, even rifles in the hands of despised heretics and demon-worshippers.
Then Ranthar Jard was riding toward Verkan and extending a hand down from the saddle. "This is a lousy place for a vacation, Colonel. The roof leaks, the plumbing's blocked up and the neighborhood is too noisy." A Styphoni bullet kicked up dust between his horse's hind legs, and another drove splinters into Verkan's left hand hard enough to draw blood.
"That's what comes of taking advice from tavern friends," Verkan said. He took the hand, gripped the saddlebow with the other and swung himself up onto the neck of Ranthar's bay. A few more bullets whistled by, then they were out of range and behind the team of Riflemen who took their Colonel's rescue as the signal to start mounting up.
They'd only lost one man, and from the back of the dead man's horse Verkan looked toward the Styphoni position. It was now decorated with a score of red-clad corpses and the body of the Guard Captain's horse. A few of the Red Hand were keeping up a sporadic fire, while the rest seemed to be either lying low or holding their glaives, ready to stand off the Mounted Rifle's charge.
Verkan hoped they'd have a long, hot, thirsty wait, and a royal reaming-out from the next Hostigi detachment to come along. He glanced back at his dead mount. It was a pity he couldn't retrieve the saddlebags, but everything compromising in it was in one simulated-leather pouch equipped with a dead-man timer and a charge nobody on Fourth Level, Aryan Transpacific could find, let alone disarm. When the timer ran out, the charge would give a remarkably good impression of a demonic visitation to anyone far enough away to survive.
Meanwhile, in spite of his own embarrassingly minor role in the skirmish, the patrol had done its job. It had found Styphoni so far west of Mrathos that it was obvious they'd be able to meet Harmakros' attack in force if he delayed it much longer. The advantage Harmakros had won from the stand at Mrathos and Captain-General Aesthes' lack of control over his wing of the Harphaxi could be lost-if not completely, enough to make the next stage of the battle on the Hostigi left a lot bloodier than it would be otherwise.
Then Harmakros might lose some of his reputation, and either try something foolish to restore it and get killed, or be shoved aside by rivals who also had a claim on Great King Kalvan. Either way, Kalvan would be losing one of his best field commanders, which would be the equivalent of losing a fair-sized battle.
To prevent that, Verkan Vall would have steered much closer to the line between contamination and noncontamination than he would have to now. After all, he was a trusted field officer reporting to the general who'd ordered him out on a scouting mission; he would be expected to offer advice. The rest could almost certainly be left to Harmakros' wits.
Nobody who knew anything about war could call that contamination. Of course, not everybody knew anything about war, a fact that Verkan Vall would have been resigned to as long as the ignorant didn't rise to high rank in the Paratime Police, Paratime Commission, Executive Council or the Outtime Trade Board. As things really were…
The thought of how things really were made him dig his spurs into his horses flanks, pushing it from a trot into a canter.