Colors of Chaos

XCVI

THE HAZY CLOUDS of morning had thickened and turned into heavy gray masses that filled most of the sky, with but occasional patches of blue-tinged green. Despite the clouds, the day was warm and sultry, without even a hint of a breeze. The light rain of the morning had given way first to mist and then to the damp heat that permeated everything.

Cerryl felt that if he so much as lifted an arm or shifted his grip on the gelding’s reins, he would burst into sudden sweat.

“Damp,” murmured Hiser. “Makes it seem hotter.”

“Get hotter yet ’fore summer’s over,” answered Ferek.

“This is where they join.” Cerryl reined up and surveyed the road and the draw that held the narrower way that the Spidlarians traveled from the north. He shook his head, thinking about how the narrow strip of clay actually curved eastward for several kays, around the hills, before swinging west and south to join the Axalt-Elparta road.

Behind him, the column slowed and stopped. The scouts had already vanished behind the woods a kay or so ahead, around which the main road curved.

“They won’t be coming that way,” suggested Ferek, spitting onto the patchy grass of the main road’s shoulder. One hand gestured toward the wooded hills to the right of the road and toward the defile that held the narrower road from the northwest.

“How would you come?” asked Cerryl.

“Those fields back a ways…they be a trace steep, but they be open. They slope to the main road. I’d bring the mounts up that way. Specially after knowing what you done to ’em in narrow places.”

From his mount to Cerryl’s left Hiser nodded.

What Ferek said made sense, but would the Spidlarians see it that way? And if they did, what could Cerryl do with an open field? As Cerryl recalled the meadows, the slope from the narrow road was uphill. Would any lancers advance uphill?

Cerryl dismounted and handed the gelding’s reins to one of the lancers drawn up behind Hiser. Then he extracted the glass and set it on an even patch of ground on top of its leather case. With the heavy clouds overhead, there was no direct sunshine to worry about.

Cerryl concentrated on the glass, trying to bring up the image of the Spidlarians, ignoring the perspiration that intensified when he attempted screeing or employing either order or chaos. Slowly, the silver mists cleared, and an image of lancers appeared. From what he could tell, they remained on the same road as before, heading in a generally southward direction, but at least a day north of where Cerryl and his forces were positioned.

You hope. Then, Cerryl had been screeing and hoping a great deal over the past several eight-days. Finally, he repacked the glass, pausing to massage his forehead for a moment.

“Ser?” asked Hiser.

“They’re still riding this way.” Cerryl remounted and looked eastward. “We should ride back to those fields,” he decided. “Not everyone, just a half-score or so. The others can stand down here.”

“Now?” asked Hiser.

“The blues won’t be here for almost another day, not at the pace they’re making.”

“What if they go across the hills to cut off distance? They could do that,” suggested Hiser.

“Don’t think so,” offered Ferek. “From what the mage has shown in the glass, that north way be open. Till the last few kays, leastwise. Cross the hills, and too many places there for a mage to hide and throw fire.”

“Best we lay out the encampment,” suggested Ferek.

“And send out scouts and pickets,” added Hiser.

“Ferek,” Cerryl ordered, “you take care of setting up the encampment. Hiser will lead the half-score lancers from his company who will ride back to that meadow field with me.”

“Yes, ser.” Ferek nodded. “Men could use an early stop and some rest. We’ll have it all set up when you get back.”

Cerryl turned his mount back eastward, letting Hiser ride ahead of him and issue the commands to select the half-score of lancers that would accompany the two of them. He would have preferred to stop and rest himself.

How are you going to handle a force that could be five or six times yours? Especially when they know how to attack a White mage? Cerryl shifted his weight in the saddle. He didn’t have any answers, just hoped that there was something about the fields that would give him an idea.

Hiser eased his mount up beside Cerryl as the smaller group separated from the longer column of White Lancers. For a time the only sounds were the plodding of hoofs, the breathing of horses, and scattered murmurs of the lancers trailing the two.

“How are we going to face some tenscore lancers? Can you destroy them all with wizard fire, ser?” Hiser finally asked.

“Not if they spread out the way they usually do. That’s why we’re riding back there. I need to see what else I might do.”

When they reached their destination, Cerryl could sense that it was well past midafternoon, despite the still-thick gray clouds.

Once he reined up, a lone vulcrow cawed and flapped away from the higher grass downhill from the main road. Cerryl studied the slanting fields once more. He let his order-chaos senses slide under the long, sloping field, probing for concentrations of order or chaos, but the ground felt no different from any other patch of soil, except that some order seemed slightly more concentrated near the small stream to the west of the lower road that lay beyond the broad and slanting meadow.

Through a small gap in the clouds a thin line of sunlight arrowed across the afternoon, briefly lighting the edge of the hardwoods that defined the eastern edge of the meadow, a meadow nearly a kay wide. The light faded as swiftly as it had appeared, and the green leaves of the woods appeared gray-green once more.

The distance between the two roads was closer to two kays, and to Cerryl’s eyes the main road appeared nearly two hundred cubits higher than the other, far narrower road, which wound back into the lower woods to the north and west. The lower road flanked the stream for perhaps four kays before actually meeting the main road to the west, and both stream and road wound through relatively thick woods.

“Two hundred cubits higher, even, maybe,” Cerryl murmured to himself. The slope between the two roads was greater than Ferek had thought and than Cerryl had recalled.

“A bit steep to bring up a mount,” suggested Hiser.

“Could be, but it’s nearly two kays, and they can spread out. If they take the road, they get bunched together.” Cerryl shrugged. “If they do, we go back to where the camp is. Between the hill gap and the woods, their lancers will get all bunched up.”

“They’d not like that.”

Less than coming up the meadow. Cerryl rode the gelding slowly out and down into the meadow. While the ground was uneven in places, the footing seemed firm and the slope not so steep as it had appeared from the higher road.

The grass was thick and green, nearly knee-high. Later in the year it would burn well, but not now. What if he loosed the order bounds right beneath the surface? What would that do? Cerryl frowned. He couldn’t just leave order free. Could he shift it into other parts of the ground?

He swallowed and tried to reshift some of the order and chaos, strengthening the ground beneath the surface in thin lines and then breaking the order ties in other places.

Grrrrr…The ground shifted ever so slightly, and Cerryl swallowed.

“What was that?” asked Hiser.

Cerryl didn’t answer, struggling as he was with his battle to change the order-chaos balance of the rocks and subsoil, shift the strengths and the bonds that had knit the ground together. Sweat rolled down his forehead, and he absently blotted it away from his eyes.

A flock of blue-winged birds fluttered from the hardwoods, shrieking as they did. A sudden buzzing filled the sodden air, and dozens of flying grasshoppers rose out of the grass and hummed their way eastward and north, away from the ground Cerryl strained to alter. A single deer bolted downhill, then turned as she saw the White riders and bounded back into the woods.

“…little closer and we’d a had a good meal…”

“…real good meal…”

“…better be still…He’s got that look.”

“So’s Hiser.”

Cerryl squinted and blocked away the low-voiced comments from the lancer squad. Even as he continued his efforts, he began to sense a roiling, almost a boiling, and an ebb and flow of order and chaos, far, far deeper than the subsoil where he worked.

Coils and lines of black order wound around unseen but clearly felt fountains of chaos that rose and fell sporadically in the depths beneath the meadow. Should he send his senses below? Would it help?

No…not now. Too much to do here. He forced his concentration back to the task at hand.

In the end, the meadow grass concealed a churned mass of clay beneath a thin layer of soil holding the long green grass, clay that, Cerryl suspected, more nearly resembled quicksand than clay. Cerryl had also left just enough support in thin pillars and layers of order to hold a few riders and mounts-in case the Spidlarians wanted to scout the meadow. Some of that order he would have to shift later.

The thoroughly sweat-soaked mage finally took a deep breath in the late-afternoon air, then another. He closed his eyes for several moments, perhaps longer, to shut out the sparkling flashes of light that disrupted his vision, before turning in the saddle to Hiser. “Make sure that no one rides across that meadow. It’s likely to be the last ride they take.” Cerryl’s tone was dry as he turned back toward his horse.

“Ah, yes, ser.”

Cerryl remounted the gelding, his thoughts still on the sense of entwined order and chaos that he had sensed deep below the meadow. How far into the depths do they extend? He shook his head. Those speculations would have to wait. Besides, his entire body was screaming that he’d done enough, more than enough. He turned to Hiser. “We’ll head west, back beyond where the trees start. That way, if they send out scouts, they won’t see us anywhere near the fields.”

“There be nothing ’tween them and the next wagons and levies, then,” pointed out the blonde subofficer, tugging at his beard.

“We travel faster than they do. If they turn east, we can catch them unless they want to founder their mounts, and then…” Cerryl shrugged dramatically.

And in the meantime, we wait…