The Chaos Balance

LXXXVI

In the late-morning sun, Nylan studied the dust rising on the straight stretch of road to the south, the road from Syadtar. Ayrlyn sat in her saddle, glassy-eyed, her senses in the hot and still air somewhere over the source of the dust.

Tonsar glanced from one angel to the other. “Will stopping their wagons help that much?”

“They can’t live off the land. There are too many of them. Even we have to get some supplies by wagon. So what happens if they start getting short on supplies?” asked Nylan.

“They send for more supplies?”

“And if their messengers don’t get through?”

“They must forage.”

“And if we keep shooting arrows at their foragers?” asked Ayrlyn, picking up the thread of the argument.

“Ah…and if they send more supplies, we do this again?” Tonsar beamed, then frowned. “But they will send more lancers the next time.”

“More lancers eat more,” Nylan said dryly.

Tonsar scratched his head.

Ayrlyn shook herself, then coughed. Her mount sidestepped on the mixture of grass and dirt that capped the hilltop, raising puffs of dust that added to the dust already coating the chestnut’s lower legs. The redhead reined up the chestnut and looked to Nylan. “There are three supply wagons. From what I can tell, there are less than a score in guards, and they’re not paying much attention.”

“Any archers?”

“I didn’t see any,” answered Ayrlyn.

The silver-haired angel nodded.

“With a glass, I have seen such screeing, but never without. Truly, she is a dark angel.” The subofficer on the mount beside Nylan coughed after he spoke.

“Thanks, Tonsar, but I’m just a healer who can sense the winds and use them to see things that aren’t too far away.” She raised herself slightly in the saddle and readjusted her position. “We need to set up.”

“Positions,” said Nylan.

“Positions for the attack! For the attack!” ordered Tonsar. “We will destroy these white demons.”

The angels eased their mounts downhill toward the curve in the road, and toward the hill that held the concealed archery blind overlooking the ambush point. Tonsar turned his mount toward the curving swale from where the rest of the squad would attack.

Two other riders-Ailsor and Buretek-eased their mounts from Tonsar’s group and drew up behind the angels. The four rode downhill to the Lornth-Syadtar road.

Nylan took a last look at the waist-high jumble of smooth boulders that had been pried laboriously from beneath the earth-a barrier that left no room at all for passage on the uphill side of the road and a steep incline on the downhill shoulder. “No wagon will pass that.”

“Especially not one driven by a white demon,” ventured Buretek.

“It wouldn’t matter if a black angel drove it,” Nylan answered.

Buretek and Ailsor exchanged quizzical glances, and the engineer repressed a sigh. A barrier was a barrier. Why did so much get personalized in Candar?

“Because,” answered Ayrlyn quietly, “everything is personal in lower-tech cultures. Patterns are obscured by the strength of personalities and by the seemingly random operation of natural forces.”

“How did you know-”

“I just did.” A faint smile followed the redhead’s shrug.

All too often Ayrlyn seemed to read his thoughts. Another aspect of order-field mastery?

The redhead turned her mount to the left and rode up the dusty road for another three hundred cubits until she came to the grassy depression that led to the rear of the hill.

The three men rode silently behind her, up the slope to the back of the hill the road climbed, to a flatter area shielded from the southern road and the ambush site.

Ayrlyn paused before dismounting, her eyes glazing momentarily. “They’re still on the road. Not any scouts out.”

“Stupid,” suggested Buretek.

“Not really,” said Ayrlyn mildly. “Who has ever challenged the might of Cyador, or attacked a supply wagon? You don’t guard against things that don’t usually happen-not the first time. Some people never do.” She swung out of the saddle and led the chestnut toward the tieline.

“…still seems stupid…” murmured the square-jawed archer as he tethered his own mount and then started up the slope.

What sort of monster are you creating by bringing the total warfare concept to Candar? One you can survive? And how many will pay for how long? Nylan winced as he dismounted and tethered his mare to the tieline that ran between two stakes he had anchored earlier. Pushing away the words in his thoughts, he hoped the anchors held, although, supposedly, a well-broken mount would not break away. He glanced at the brown mare, half-chewing on the sparse brown grass. She was certainly strong enough to break the line if she put an effort into the attempt, but hadn’t tried anything like that. Were even animals conditioned by patterns not to see the obvious? And what was he missing?

“We need to get in position,” suggested Ayrlyn.

“Oh…sorry.” Nylan unfastened the composite bow and his blades and followed her up the rise and down the slope to the trench behind the grass-and-brush screen.

Buretek and Ailsor were already waiting, one at each end of the blind, setting out their shafts.

“I didn’t see any dust from the hilltop,” said Ailsor.

“They’re taking their time,” answered Ayrlyn. “You don’t raise as much dust when you plod. They’ll get here soon enough.”

Nylan wanted to nod at that. He wasn’t looking forward to the ambush, successful though he hoped it would be.

“Wish we could do this on horse,” offered Buretek after a period of silence. “It could be chancy getting out of here if something goes wrong.”

“It won’t,” Nylan answered.

“It won’t,” Ayrlyn added, “but I’m not happy either to be on foot in the middle of nowhere.” She sat in the bottom of the narrow trench and checked her bow for the fourth time, ignoring the minute cuts on her fingers and hands from plaiting the grass-and-brush screen that cloaked the blind.

Nylan looked at his hands-fewer cuts, but he’d both dug and plaited. “The horses will be secure enough tied to those stakes.”

“Hoping it is so, ser…” murmured Ailsor from beside Nylan. Unlike Ayrlyn, the three men knelt, rather than sat. Ailsor’s hands, like Ayrlyn’s and Nylan’s, bore cuts.

Ayrlyn’s eyes glazed over again, briefly. “They’re at the bottom of the hill now.”

“Quiet…” Nylan said.

The four waited.

“…at the turn…get ready…”

Ayrlyn’s eyes cleared, and the four rose and nocked arrows, waiting, concealed by the grass and brush screen.

The creak of wagons and the low murmur of voices drifted uphill.

“Darkness! Not a rock demon-near everywhere…and then this!”

“…didn’t expect this…”

Nylan waited as the voices echoed uphill until all three wagons had stopped, and until the squad of a dozen lancers or so pushed toward the apparent landslide-although Nylan hoped none of them thought about the fact that the Grass Hills weren’t especially rocky!

“All right, fire!” hissed Nylan.

Buretek and Ailsor began to pump shafts into the close-knit Cyadorans, followed by Ayrlyn and Nylan.

“Ambush!”

“…a trap!”

“Ride toward those bushes. That’s where…”

Nylan calculated. “Drop the stones, Tonsar!”

Half a dozen more boulders, dug from just beneath the hillside’s surface, rolled down into the confined area of the road filled with riders and wagons, one after the other, and a dusty cloud rolled downhill behind the rocks.

Wheeeeee…… The scream of an injured horse rose above the voices.

“Move it!”

“…where…”

The first half-squad, led by Fuera, the blond hothead, pounded up from the south behind the confused Cyadorans. With their sharp-edged blades out and ready, the Lornians took out the first of the white riders before the Cyadorans realized they were under attack from both sides.

Nylan forced his eyes back on the white teamsters and the forward white guards, loosing another black iron shaft from his composite bow.

The shaft struck-a lancer with a green sash-and exploded. Nylan staggered as the white chaos force recoiled back up the hillside.

“What was that?” hissed Ailsor.

“Order-chaos collision,” snapped Ayrlyn. “Keep firing, demon-damn-it!”

Nylan loosed three more shafts before another hit, with a smaller explosion, but enough of one that the white-recoil jarred his fingers, and he staggered in his tracks.

He swayed for a moment, putting down a hand to steady himself, since white stars seemed to be exploding in his eyes.

“…frig…frig…” muttered Ayrlyn. “Damned recoils…”

By the time Nylan could begin to pick up images, most of the whites were down, sprawled on the wagons or the ground.

The last of the Cyadoran armsmen turned his mount back toward distant Syadtar.

Despite the fire white in his head, Nylan croaked out: “Get him, Buretek.”

It took the young archer three shafts, but the armsman fell, as the others had.

Ailsor looked tiredly at Nylan, his bow almost hanging in his hands. “That…well…it wasn’t really a fight, was it?”

“No,” Nylan admitted with a shrug. “It wasn’t.” He coughed, trying to clear his throat. “And it’s not honorable. War isn’t honorable, and the Cyadorans certainly aren’t. Is slaughtering children honorable?”

Ailsor looked dumbly at the engineer.

“What harm would it have done to let a few escape? Is that what you wanted to know, Ailsor?” asked Nylan.

The archer looked down at the tumbled plaited-grass screen.

“It would have destroyed the effect,” Ayrlyn answered, her voice hoarse and tired. “We don’t want them knowing what happened.” She set aside the bow. “Go get the shovels. We need to fill this in. Buretek can stay here. You get his mount, too.”

After a moment, Ailsor nodded.

“I’ll get them and bring back your mount,” the engineer told Ayrlyn, who nodded wearily. Nylan followed the archer, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other.

After untethering both mounts, Nylan worked loose one stake, then the other, and rolled the rope around the two before slipping them into a saddlebag. By then, Ailsor had disappeared, riding back to the ambush site leading Buretek’s mount.

The engineer mounted and led Ayrlyn’s mount around the hill and down the road to just below where the redhead stood, dismantling the screen and tossing the pieces into the trench. She reached up for the shovel before Nylan extended it.

“Are you sure you should be digging?”

“It’s not digging, just pushing stuff back in the trench. Besides, physical work helps, somehow.” She glanced up. “Drop the reins. She’ll stay.”

With the redhead’s tone, Nylan would have stayed put too, if he’d been the mare. He eased his mount down the slope, slowly picking his way above the rock barricade.

Tonsar waited on his horse on the far side. “It worked. You were right, ser angel.”

“How many did we lose?”

“Three. Winse, Ungit, and Duira. Ungit…” Tonsar shook his head. “He did not listen.”

“There’s always someone who doesn’t get the word.” The engineer turned the mare. “Siplor, you take over that first wagon. Meresat…you’ve got the second. You’ll need to replace that snapped wheel. Use the spare on the rear.”

Nylan edged the mare up to the first wagon, mostly filled with kegs.

“That’s real Cyad beer!” Siplor grinned at the angel. “And biscuits, and two wheels of cheese.”

“We’ll share it with the others at camp, but you get to dole it out.” Nylan forced a smile, flicking the reins gently to ease the mare to the second heavy wagon, filled mostly with barrels stacked on end. The white-brown powder around the waxed end-ropes indicated that some had to be flour.

Meresat looked glumly at the broken left front wheel.

“You can do it,” Nylan encouraged him, ignoring his own headache and the white flashes that blocked his vision intermittently. “Or would you rather dig burial trenches?”

“No, ser.” Meresat slowly trudged to the spare wheel mounted on the rear of the wagon.

From above the barricade, Ayrlyn cleared her throat, then ordered, “Wuerek, you and your group-let’s get those bodies buried. Over there out of sight of the road, and deep enough that scavengers don’t dig them up.”

Nylan could sense-somehow-that they shared the same, or similar, headaches and intermittent vision. Buretek and Ailsor shifted the shovel between themselves and were finishing the work of filling in the archery blind.

Ayrlyn mounted the chestnut, but remained on the uphill part of the road above the barrier.

“Fuera-the rest of you,” rasped the engineer, “get the rocks back in the places we set.”

“Why are we moving the rocks off the road?”

Nylan glanced around, but couldn’t identify the speaker, not when he had to concentrate even to see. He took a deep breath before answering. “We want the Cyadorans not to know what happened. If armsmen and lancers just disappear, that’ll make a lot of their people unhappy, hopefully with their commanders. How would you feel if your supply wagons and some reinforcements disappeared without a trace?”

“…nasty thoughts, he has…”

“…keep telling you that you don’t mess with angels…”

“…ways of the angels…”

Tonsar glanced at Ayrlyn, then at Nylan, and shook his head.

Nylan was afraid a lot more head-shaking would be going on before the fighting was all over-if it were ever all over. Somehow one battle just led to another. Was that human history on every planet in every universe?

“…the regent…call it dishonorable…”

“…ha…rather be dishonorable than dead…”

Fornal might not like Nylan’s tactics, but he wouldn’t mind the food-or the beer. Neither would the armsmen mind the improved fare.

With his left hand, Nylan rubbed the back of his neck, then his temples, but the headache still pounded through his skull.

Ayrlyn rode around the road barrier on the uphill side where most of the stones had been removed and placed in scattered locales along the uphill side of the road.

“The headaches just get worse,” the redhead said as she reined up beside Nylan.

“It seems that way.”

After a moment, Ayrlyn added, “Think about those dream trees, about both order and chaos. It helps a little.”

“Dream trees?” How could mentally re-creating dream trees help? Then again, there was a lot he still didn’t understand about Candar. Dutifully, he tried to turn his thoughts to the dark trees with their flows of both order and chaos.

Beside him, Ayrlyn smiled faintly as Fuera and his detail removed the last of the road barrier rocks, and as one of the newer levies began to sweep the road with a makeshift broom.