The Chaos Balance

LXV

“I wasn’t ready for my first fight.” Nylan offered a grim smile to the levies ranked in three lines before the sheep-shed barracks. “That’s one reason why we’ve pushed you. I was lucky, but that’s not something you can always count on.” He nodded to Tonsar. “Have them mount up, and check each man’s gear. Then I will.”

“…never lets anything past him…”

“…he talks…she looks through you…and they say she’s warm, compared to most angels…”

Always the stereotypes-Nylan glanced at Ayrlyn as they walked toward the corral and their waiting mounts. “And they think you’re cold,” he said with a low laugh, thinking about Ryba.

“For them…I am. Ryba wasn’t far off about the men in Candar.” She shook her head. “If I appeared at all human, they wouldn’t respect me. It’s the same for you, except you’re a mean bastard and I’m just a cold bitch. Bastards get more respect than bitches.”

“Both earned with force.”

“Unfortunate, but true. Then, that was true in the U.F.A. It just wasn’t quite so blatant.” Ayrlyn checked her gear, then swung up into the saddle with a fluid grace that Nylan knew had been hard-earned.

The saddled mounts at the other end of the corral circled uneasily, as if they knew the day were different.

Nylan refocused on his mare and mounted. With a glance at the levies as they moved toward the corral, he guided his mount toward the dwelling where Sylenia stood on the front stoop holding Weryl. He reined up at the edge of the lane, beside Ayrlyn, then looked at Weryl and Sylenia. He eased the mare closer to the porch/stoop, until he was less than ten cubits from them.

“Just take care of him,” he finally said.

“I will, ser. I will.” Sylenia met the smith’s eyes.

“Take care of yourself, too.” Nylan nodded and forced a smile to Weryl.

“Daaa.”

“Be good to Sylenia, Weryl.” With a last smile, he turned the mare back toward the space to the north of the sheep shed where the levies were mounting and sorting themselves into ranks. He had to squint momentarily as he looked east, where the sun had barely cleared the low hills.

“Children make it harder,” said Ayrlyn. “Even for me.”

He looked at the redhead riding beside him.

“He’s sweet, like you must have been,” she said, the corners of her mouth not quite smiling.

“Me? The terrible angel?”

“To fight at all, gentle souls often have to be the most terrible, to overcome their nature.”

Did they, Nylan wondered, or were gentle souls really gentle at all? He looked toward the space before the sheep-shed barracks, where men and mounts milled.

“Form up!” ordered Tonsar as he glanced over his shoulder toward Nylan and Ayrlyn. “Nesru! You be the one I’m talking to!”

“Ser!”

Nylan repressed a smile as a single chicken skittered along the planks of the former sheep shed, snapping its beak down to retrieve the smallest of dark bread crusts discarded by some levy. How had it survived? Or were they the equivalent of wild chickens?

“Give them a last chance to make sure every man’s water bottle is full,” Nylan suggested in a low voice as he eased the mare up beside the subofficer. “That’s if you haven’t already.”

“Told’em twice, ser.”

“That’s once more than they deserve,” said Ayrlyn, “but they’re new at this.”

Even newer than we are, Nylan reflected, holding in a smile as he caught the grin in Ayrlyn’s brown eyes.

Slowly, he rode down the line of levies.

“Mearet…where’s your water bottle?”

“…check that rear girth…”

Finally, he nodded at Tonsar. “We’ll wait for the regent.”

“You ready, angels?” came the call-seemingly within moments.

“Ready,” Nylan confirmed.

With a last look at the dwelling where Sylenia and Weryl still stood watching the riders, Nylan forced his concentration away from his son and onto the ride to Hesra-supposedly the next target of the Cyadorans, if Huruc’s scouts were correct, although it didn’t take much guessing. After their initial swift raids, the Cyadorans seemed to be moving from the nearest target to each hamlet successively more distant from the copper mines.

Dust swirled up around the angels before the column even had left the holding that had become the Lornian camp, and sweat had begun to trickle down the engineer’s neck.

From out of the dust ahead, Fornal gestured.

“I think the regent wishes our presence,” said Ayrlyn.

“I get that impression.” Nylan leaned toward Tonsar. “I don’t know how long we’ll be, but I’m sure you can keep them in order.”

“All I have to do is tell them what you’ll do if the regent sees them acting up while you’re talking.” Tonsar offered a broad grin.

“There is that,” said Ayrlyn with a straight face, “but we will need to leave some alive for the Cyadorans.”

The burly subofficer was still shaking his head as the two angels eased their mounts onto the shoulder of the narrow road and up a column of levies, and then past Fornal’s squad of professionals.

The dark-bearded regent continued to look at the road ahead to the south for several moments after Nylan and Ayrlyn joined him, and the three rode silently.

“Your training has been good, but we’ll see how well they recall it when blades fly.” Fornal glanced back toward the three squads that trailed his professionals, the last two being those of the angels.

Nylan could sense one thing-his levies rode better, in better order, and more quietly than they had on the way to Kula.

“Look like armsmen now, anyway,” observed the redheaded subofficer riding to the left of Fornal.

Nylan glanced at the man, recalling the face but not the name, wishing he were better with names.

“This is Lewa, next senior to Huruc,” offered Fornal pleasantly. “He has the Rohrn levies.”

“I’ve seen him, but I’m not good with names,” admitted the engineer.

“Not me, either, ser,” returned Lewa. “But angels are easier to pick out.”

“How far to Hesra?” asked Nylan.

“Mid-morning. The Cyadorans will show after that. They don’t move that early.” Lewa snorted. “They only ride in perfect order, and each one carries a white-bronze toothpick just like the rider before him and the one behind.”

“Does it work?” asked Ayrlyn.

“As long as there are more of them than us…yes.” Lewa ran a hand through his short red hair.

One rolling hill followed another, with the dust growing with the day, and the grass getting sparser and browner with each hill. Whether they rode through the depressions between hills, or along the ridge lines, as the road wandered southward, each hill revealed yet another hill similar to the last.

Just past mid-morning, at the crest of one hill not markedly different from any other, Lewa nodded to Fornal and announced, “Hesra is over the next line of hills.”

Fornal grunted. When the road had carried them to another valley and turned east toward a gap between the hills, the regent gestured. “We’ll leave the road here, angle up to the south.”

“That will be a better position on the road from the mines,” Lewa explained.

A good two hundred cubits short of the browned grasses that covered the ridge line ahead, grasses that hung limply in the morning light, Fornal slowed his mount, then nodded to the subofficer.

“Rein up!” snapped Lewa. Both the Rohrn levies and the more professional armsmen halted.

Nylan slowed his mount on the dusty grass and stood in his stirrups, echoing the command.

“Rein up!” repeated Tonsar.

With little more than a ghost of a breeze, the dust began to settle immediately once the horses stopped.

Fornal eased his mount toward the angels. “We’ll ride over the top and out along the ridge. You ought to be able to get a good view from there,” said Fornal. “The white demons will branch from the road-they have so far anyway. If they see us, they’ll think we’re scouts.”

Nylan wondered, but said nothing as he flicked the reins for the mare to follow Fornal. Sweat poured down his neck, and the space between his shoulder blades itched-and it wasn’t all that far past mid-morning.

Several flies buzzed past his sweat-dampened forehead, and he brushed them away, wishing absently for the cool of the Westhorns.

“Hot already,” Ayrlyn observed.

“Cool compared to late summer, angels,” answered Lewa.

The ridge was covered with browning grass, with only two low trees breaking the grass line, and one of them was dead. Neither tree was much higher than the head of a mounted rider.

Fornal reined up at the crest, then inclined his head toward the redheaded subofficer.

“Hesra’s at the head of the valley where the stream turns. There’s an earthen dam there.” Lewa pointed toward a blue oval and a dark splotch to the left. “They use that for ground crops, and for stock water.” The redhead turned in the saddle. “That’s the road from the mines, and it won’t be long now, I’d say.”

The empty road from the southwest entered the valley at the west end, traversed the flat, and met up with the section they had taken at the gap on the northeast end, less than a kay from the dark splotch that Lewa had called Hesra. Where the road from the mines entered the valley, it was a line of reddish brown that angled down a brown-grassed hillside steep enough that the parts of the lower section of the hill were still in shadow, even late in the morning.

Was the haze beyond the hill a cloud? Nylan shook his head as the dust began to rise over the top of the hillside.

“We’ll wait until they’re on the lower part of the road,” Fornal said. “Then we’ll hit them. Lewa and I will take the lead. Your job, angels, is to seal off their rear.”

The four eased their mounts back beyond the ridge crest, far enough that they could still see the road, but so the Cyadorans would have difficulty seeing them.

Amid the dust came the shimmer of white, and the glinting of sun on polished shields, as the white lancers rode downhill. The van was less than a kay before the main body, and Nylan saw no scout-perhaps because Fornal had been more than effective over the past days in picking off scouts.

Nylan studied the precise column of white lancers, absently estimating the group-three score, in all-compared to perhaps four and a half for the Lornians, but the score and a half of his troops were greener than the hillside grasses had been a season earlier, and the engineer wasn’t too certain that the grasses still didn’t have more seasoning.

“Seen enough?” asked Fornal. “Let’s get them ready.”

“The Cyadorans are professionals,” Ayrlyn said to Nylan in a low voice as they rode back to where Tonsar and their levies waited.

“They’re well-drilled. That doesn’t make them professionals. If Gethen and the scrolls are right, we and Fornal have more experience than they do. I also didn’t see any archers.”

“Why doesn’t that comfort me much?” asked the flame-haired angel.

“Because their good drilling could still kill a bunch of our hotheads?”

“That thought had crossed my mind.”

“And because archers aren’t that effective when you’ve got two bodies of forces on horseback?”

“That, too.” Ayrlyn, slightly ahead of Nylan, reined up first.

Tonsar and the levies watched, silently, waiting for the angels to speak.

“The Cyadorans are about to enter the valley on the other side of this hill,” began Nylan. “They’ll be on the road. Our job is to hit the end of the column and seal off their line of retreat.” The engineer looked around. “We have more armsmen than they do. So I don’t expect either problems or complaints.”

Several of the levies swallowed, including Fuera and Wuerek, both of whom would be in Nylan’s squad.

“We’ll each take a squad, like we practiced,” Nylan said. “Tonsar, your group will be on the left, and Ayrlyn’s will be on the right, and we’ll make this simple. Just hit the column straight-on from the side and chop down anyone you can.”

“…just?” came a murmur from somewhere.

“Just,” affirmed Ayrlyn.

“Fighting is simple,” added Nylan. “You hit them and kill them before they hit you. You can do it, and I expect you to.” He looked around, and saw that the other squads were riding uphill.

“Let’s go.” The mare followed his flick of the reins, and he found himself leading the trot uphill.

Ayrlyn crossed behind him to take the lead of the right squad, and Tonsar flashed a grin as he lifted his blade.

Blade? Nylan wanted to kick himself as he crossed the ridge and started downhill, toward the white forces that had still not even looked up-or so it seemed. The engineer eased the dark blade from his shoulder harness. Did he wave it? The business of leading armed charges was something new to him.

His lips curled for a moment, and he made a brusque flick of the shortsword-no waves or flourishes. “Blades out!” he ordered, just in case someone else had made his mistake, but he did not look back, concentrating on the grass ahead, trying to see if there were potholes or the like in the grass.

If there were, the mare avoided them. Nylan’s squad trailed the others by nearly fifty cubits when they hit the flat before the road, but it wouldn’t matter.

Three doublets sounded from some sort of horn, and the lancers swung toward the charging Lornians, not turning to retreat, but dressing ranks, almost automatically, as the Lornians bore down on them. Glittering reflections splayed from the small polished shields, making it difficult for Nylan to concentrate on an individual lancer.

A faint white mist surrounded the detachment, similar to, but subtly different from, the whiteness that had enfolded the white wizards who had attacked Westwind. The whiteness around the lancers was more…ordered, for all the lances of light that played from the small and heavy mirror shields.

Nylan focused on a Cyadoran who seemed to lead one section, but a tall man in glittering white beside the officer or subofficer had pivoted in his saddle and a long length of metal flicked-impossibly swiftly-toward the angel-too swiftly for Nylan to turn the mare.

“That’s why they’re called lancers, idiot,” he murmured to himself as he twisted in the saddle, and beat aside the glittering lance with the dark blade that seemed so short.

The lance shattered, as though it had been made of glass, but another lancer spurred toward Nylan, a sabre glittering in the midday sun, held low and angled to bisect the engineer, more light glaring into Nylan’s eyes.

Nylan flung his blade-almost blindly against the mirror shield’s light and nearly point blank-and threw himself sideways in the saddle, feeling the sabre catch the edge of his shirt, before the lancer slumped in the saddle, grasping at the short sword buried to its hilt in his chest.

Nylan brought up the second blade, struggling to get it out of the waist scabbard, and absently noting that he should have used the blade at his waist first, because the shoulder harness was easier to get to. He forced his thoughts away from the white pain of death that flowed around him, knowing that he had to get back to Weryl.

His eyes flickered to the scattered individual skirmishes on his right. Only Ayrlyn had cut through the column, as he had, and she was surrounded by three of the white-clad Cyadorans. He turned and spurred the mare toward the three lancers around Ayrlyn.

The healer’s blade wove a web of gray, and as Nylan drew nearer, one of the white-bronze sabres snapped, the blade streaking toward the trampled reddish soil like a crippled lander. The disarmed lancer backed off, then spurred his mount downhill at the sight of Nylan.

Neither of Ayrlyn’s two remaining attackers budged, despite the hoofbeats of Nylan’s mare, hoofbeats that sounded thunderous to the angel. The attackers were spreading, to catch the healer from each side.

Nylan winced even as his blade flashed, cleaving through the unprotected neck of the lancer to the right. The engineer staggered in his saddle, half-blind again, from the white knives that slammed through his eyes and skull with each killing, but instinctively, he raised his blade, though he felt blind.

At that, the remaining lancer ducked, and pulled his mount away.

While Ayrlyn could have slaughtered the Cyadoran, she held her blade, then slowly sheathed it as the handful of lancers retreated through the grasslands, circling back to catch the road.

For a moment, the silver-haired angel and the flame-haired angel just looked at each other-almost blankly-before Nylan squinted through the burning in his skull to survey the field.

To his left, Tonsar chevied a group back toward Nylan.

“You let him go,” wondered the subofficer. His mount’s muzzle was smeared with foam.

“I had to,” said the healer tiredly.

Tonsar glanced from one angel to the other, then shrugged. “Holding off three apiece and killing two each. That is not bad.”

“Not bad…who’s he jesting?” came across the space from where a handful of Nylan’s and Ayrlyn’s levies had drawn up.

Nylan wanted to grin, despite his throbbing headache, but managed to keep a straight face.

The dust on the hillside road faded, as the handful of Cyadoran lancers rode back south toward the mines.

Nylan’s urge to grin faded abruptly as the pounding in his skull continued and as he surveyed the trampled and dust-swept road and the fields that flanked it, looking at the white lumps and the handful of dark-clad figures strewn across the grasslands, and shields that still caught and threw the light.

Was it over? Nylan took one deep breath and then another, trying to slow the pounding in his chest. His palms were sweating, and, in addition to his throbbing headache and the sharp knives in his eyes, the corners of his eyes also stung from the salty sweat that had run into them.

He took another breath, swallowed, and looked around.

Fornal’s men were already stripping the dead, and only a faint cloud of dust showed on the south road.

A short skirmish, and…what? Thirty-five Cyadorans dead, and more than a dozen Lornians, and who knew how many cut and wounded?

Ayrlyn had already dismounted beside a moaning figure, and the engineer rubbed his forehead as he urged his mare toward her. Sooner or later he had to reclaim his first blade-if someone hadn’t already-from the dead lancer.

These killings were just the beginning. That was all too clear.