Colors of Chaos

XCIV

OVERHEAD, A HANDFUL of widely scattered and white puffy clouds barely moved through the green-blue sky. The air was hot and damp from the soaking rains of the day before, and the road clay remained dark, but not sloppy, except in the handful of places where muddy water had puddled.

The road ran from east to west along a low ridge that bisected a meadow and formed the southern boundary of the vale. A stream, surrounded by wet ground and intermittent marshy spots, wound back and forth across the center of the lower ground. Irregular clumps of low bushes dotted the marshy ground.

On the far west end of the open valley were a half-score cots, outbuildings, and cultivated fields that showed lines of green. A handful of figures appeared to be toiling in those fields, and a thin line of smoke rose from the chimney of one cot. The presence of peasants was a measure of just how far north he and his lancers had followed the Spidlarians, Cerryl reflected.

The White mage reined up and studied the vale, trying to ignore the damp midday heat and the sweat that bathed him.

Cerryl could see the Spidlarian forces on the western end of the ridge that formed the northern horizon. “Looks like they’re all there.”

“If we try to get to them, we’ll have to ride down into the valley and back up the other side,” Ferek pointed out. “We ride to them…and we’ll lose men. They got archers.”

“We don’t try right now,” suggested Cerryl. “Just let them see that we’re here. They’d have to ride through the marshy ground below to reach us, and they won’t do that.” Just like we won’t. Besides, if they tried it, you wouldn’t have any trouble dropping more firebolts on them, and they know that.

“No way to fight.”

“We’re not interested in fighting unless we can win,” Cerryl pointed out. “We’re keeping them from getting to the supply wagons and from harassing any levies traveling to support the High Wizard.” If any more ever show up.

Cerryl shifted his weight in the saddle and studied the blue-clad figures on the far ridge. After a time, he shifted his weight again. The Spidlarians did not move. A brief whisper of a breeze passed over the White mage. Then the air was still and sodden once more.

Finally, Cerryl dismounted.

“Ser?” asked Hiser.

“I want to see if they’re all really there.” Cerryl took out the leather case and set the mirror on the grass. He knelt beside it and concentrated.

Ferek and Hiser dismounted and stood on the road behind Cerryl. From there they could see the screeing glass.

As Cerryl had suspected, behind the two or three squads silhouetted on the near horizon the majority of the Spidlarians were slipping down the far side of the ridge and forming up on a narrow trail that seemed to lead back eastward. Probably south as well, and they’re trying to get behind us and toward the supply road.

“They’d be a-sneaking off,” opined Ferek.

“So they can flank us,” suggested Hiser.

Cerryl nodded and tried another image, hoping to trace out the trail where the Spidlarians were assembling. He needed to see where it led-and if there were a way in which he could block them from the Axalt-Elparta road, a way that didn’t cost him any of his too-few lancers.

The narrow road or trail where the Spidlarians were marshaling wound southeast, behind a line of rises too gentle to be hills. Perhaps the way was a farm road of some sort-or the longer and original road-since it rejoined the road Cerryl and his lancers had taken, perhaps four kays to the east.

Cerryl frowned as he let the road image fade. He rubbed his forehead. Did he dare move his lancers while some of the blue forces were still observing them?

He squinted in the bright afternoon light, trying to call up the image of the Spidlarian lancers once more. His head ached by the time the silver mists cleared and he had a sightly misty image of the opposing force. Sweat dribbled down the back of his neck and oozed down his forehead.

The Spidlarians had started to move southeast, and at almost a quick trot, and the last blue squads had vanished from the ridge.

Cerryl lifted the glass and began to pack it. “Ferek, Hiser, have the men turn. We’re headed back to that higher hill three kays or so back, the one with the low bluff just beyond the rodent pond.”

The two subofficers mounted.

“Form up! We’re headed back.” Ferek’s deep voice rumbled across the ridge.

“Form up!” echoed Hiser.

Cerryl slipped the glass into the saddlebag and remounted, easing the gelding up beside Hiser and riding beside the young subofficer to the head of the column headed back to the southeast.

“Ride to one place…wait…watch him throw a fireball. Then turn and ride some more…”

“Shut up, Burean…Ride all day if’n it be saving my ass.”

You hope you’re saving them, Cerryl thought. If you’re not…? But what choice did he have against a larger force that he needed to keep from the supply lines?

Cerryl found his eyes drifting to the north and east as he rode beside the two subofficers, back along the same stretch of road that they had ridden that same morning. He couldn’t sense the Spidlarians, nor hear any sign of another force, but his eyes flicked in the direction of the trail road nonetheless. The sounds of the mounts drowned out any murmurs of insects or birdcalls-if there were any.

“You sure they be headed back this way, ser?” inquired Hiser, his voice deferential.

No. “As sure as anything is, Hiser.”

The blonde subofficer nodded.

“I’ll check again in a while,” Cerryl said, “once we get back to the higher ground on the road.”

“Always take the high ground.” Ferek bobbed his head.

Cerryl was sweating more heavily when he reined up on the grassy bluff, flanked by gentle grassy slopes that slanted downward to the narrow trail where he expected the Spidlarians to appear. He frowned. While he’d remembered the central bluff and the overlook well enough, he hadn’t recalled how gentle the inclines were on each side.

He glanced over his shoulder back along the road and the higher ground where his force had mustered. Farther to the southeast, the small pond created by the water rodents glimmered silver between two rises, almost like a distant screeing glass. He turned in the saddle, looking sideways at Ferek. “This overlooks where the trail joins up…but our road is better, and we should have gotten here before them. I’m going to try the glass again.”

With another look to the trail road below, he slipped out of the saddle and tried the glass. The headache that came with the image of Spidlarian lancers was worse than the last, and flashes of light sparkled in his eyes, light that bore the white of chaos, chaos not from the sun.

A quick study of the image in the glass reassured him that the Spidlarians continued on their track, with a handful of scouts out ahead, and he released the image as quickly as he could, trying not to stagger as he collected the glass and straightened.

His tunic was damp through, and the headache remained. Behind him he could hear the murmurs of the lancers and the breathing of their mounts, at least those nearby. The horses probably needed water, but he dared not let them seek the stream farther back along the road, not when the Spidlarians were approaching.

From where he stood on the road Cerryl glanced up at the two subofficers. “Ferek…have the men stay down on that side of the hill-just below the crest. I don’t want the Spidlarians to see them.”

Ferek’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows lifted.

“I want to give them a little surprise. I can’t if they see our lancers.”

After a moment the older subofficer nodded, then turned his mount.

“The same for your company, Hiser.”

“Yes, ser.”

Cerryl rubbed his forehead, then stepped toward the gelding to repack the glass. He found his hands trembling. When had he last eaten? He tended to forget that mustering either order or chaos-or using the glass to spy out the enemy-required that he eat more often.

Tiredly he pulled a stale, hard biscuit from his saddlebag and chewed slowly, moistening his mouth with occasional swallows from his water bottle, his eyes on the trail road. Abruptly he shook his head and remounted, turning the gelding back down the road, just far enough that he could barely see the trail on which he hoped the Spidlarians continued to ride toward him.

He fumbled out another road biscuit and crunched on it, until all that remained were crumbs. Unhappily, the headache remained also, if slightly diminished.

A whispering sound intruded on Cerryl, the faintest of whispers, and he pulled himself more erect in the saddle. No longer was he sore each evening from riding, but even all his recent riding experience hadn’t made him any less susceptible to fatigue.

Cerryl motioned to the subofficers for quiet, watching the trail road, waiting as the lead Spidlarian scouts appeared, followed by a vanguard of perhaps half a squad. Shortly, as the scouts disappeared from view under the short bluff, Cerryl began to gather chaos to himself as he eased the gelding uphill.

Whhhstt! A firebolt arched out toward the angled trail, splashing across the damp clay well back of the lead Spidlarian scouts, but short of the main body of riders. Cerryl eased the gelding back downhill a few dozen cubits and flattened himself against his mount’s neck and mane, trusting that the opposing lancers would ride a few dozen cubits farther.

As the sounds of mounts grew louder, and as Hiser and Ferek glanced worriedly at him, Cerryl rode back uphill and out onto the downslope that led to the narrow bluff overlooking the trail-just in time to see several scouts point in his direction.

A half-score mounted archers spurred their mounts along the gentle slopes that flanked the bluff overlook, angling their mounts in toward him.

You waited too long. Cerryl mustered chaos once more and focused it on the two leading lancers-into a narrow beam of lance fire.

Both archers went down, vanishing into ashes, leaving a thin line of black smoke rising into the clear afternoon sky.

Whhsttt! Cerryl followed the light lancer with another firebolt, one that sprayed across the lancers behind and downslope of the archers.

Greasy black smoke seemed to puddle around the front lines of the blue-clad lancers, swirling back upon itself in the damp and still air.

An arrow hissed past the mage’s shoulder, and Cerryl jerked around in the saddle to see another pair of archers renocking their bows from mounts less than a hundred cubits to his right-almost as high on the grassy inclines to the west of the bluff as he was on the center.

His mind felt as clumsy as frozen hands had on cold mornings at the mill as he struggled to raise more chaos and fling it against the two bowmen.

Whhstt! Small as the firebolt was, the White mage’s aim was good enough to turn one archer into flames and ash and send the second spurring his mount down the grassy slope. The retreating archer tried to beat flames out with one hand and guide his careening mount with the other.

Squinting into the afternoon sun, Cerryl ignored the smell of burned flesh and focused on the blue-clad lancers nearly half a kay away on the trail road, lancers who seemed to be turning.

After a deep breath, Cerryl launched another large firebolt.

Wwhhhssttt! The globe of fire arched sedately over the grassy slope and dropped, splashing chaos fire across the second line of Spidlarians and their mounts.

Cerryl reeled in the saddle, points of light flashing before his eyes and his head throbbing. When he could see, he found that Hiser had ridden up beside him.

“They’ve turned, ser. You killed another half-score.”

Only another five score to go. Cerryl nodded slowly. “Send a scout to watch the trail on the far side. We need to make sure that they’re actually moving back.”

“Yes, ser.” Hiser rode back toward where his company had been mustered, waiting.

The gray-eyed mage struggled to get to his water bottle, his fingers trembling so much that he had to concentrate totally on unstoppering the bottle. He drank slowly, and the water seemed to reduce his shakiness and the frequency of the flashes before his eyes, but not the headache or the boneweariness he felt.

The sun was clearly nearing late afternoon, hanging over the low hills to the west, when Hiser returned.

Cerryl glanced up, taking in the sun and the shadows cast by the scattered trees and bushes. Had that much of the day gone?

“They’re going,” announced Hiser. “One of the scouts says they’re heading back along the road to Kleth.”

“For now,” Cerryl said. For now. He took a long and deep breath. One thing was becoming increasingly clear. Chaos fire was far more suited to either ambush or defense, not to direct-on attacks, not unless he could count on the enemy remaining massed in one place, and that seemed unlikely, to say the least.

The constant use of chaos, even on a small scale, seemed to be close to unworkable-at least for him-no matter how much order or chaos he could handle at longer intervals. He didn’t even want to think about why he was out in the backlands, fighting off Spidlarian armsmen with far too few White Lancers for the task, needing to muster chaos all too often-or about the lengthening separation from Leyladin.