Recluce 07 - Chaos Balance (37 page)

AS THE SQUADS rode southward, following the back trail, the sun poured its heat through the green-blue sky.

   Nylan took another long swallow, finishing the water in the second bottle, then recorked it and replaced the bottle in the holder. The heat just baked the moisture out of him, and he was always facing dehydration. He blotted his forehead with his forearm, then half-stood in the saddle, trying to stretch the muscles in his thighs and legs.

   He turned in the saddle. With no breeze, the yellow-gray dust raised by the single squad they had brought died away quickly, and he could see no signs of other riders, such as white lancers. In fact, he saw little except hills covered with browning grass, grass that got sparser with each key they rode southward.

   Riding to his right, Ayrlyn juggled the crude map, her eyes going from map to trail and back again.

   “How are we doing?”

   “If the map and the scouts are right; we should be reaching a stream before too long.”

   “Hope so.” His eyes dropped to the two empty water bottles. A third-still full-was fastened to his saddlebags.

   Ahead, the trail seemed to wind over and around yet another set of brown-grassed hills. With each hill they passed, another set appeared, almost as. if they stretched to a horizon they would never reach. The last tree had been kays behind them, not all that far from Syskar.

   “Have faith,” Ayrlyn said with a laugh.

   “I have faith. Faith that everything will work out in the most difficult manner possible.”

   “That's skepticism, not faith.”

   “I have faith in skepticism.”

   Tonsar cleared his throat but said nothing.

   From the riders behind came a low hum of words barely above a mumble, words their speakers did not wish to reach their leaders. Nylan could guess at the general tone and content.

   Nylan had drunk a third of the last water bottle, and the sun hung nearly overhead when the trail suddenly dipped into a depression, not quite a gorge because the slopes remained mostly grass-covered, with some smooth boulders protruding in places where the narrow and winding stream had undercut the ground.

   “See?” Ayrlyn grinned at Nylan.

   “So Siplor, he was right,” said Tonsar.

   “Good.” Nylan glanced south and then west, but nothing moved. There were only the brown-covered hills and the sun-and them.

   “Make sure that all the water bottles are filled-upstream from here-and all the mounts fully watered,” ordered Ayrlyn.

   “It's going to take awhile,” noted Nylan, with a glance at the stream, not more than a cubit wide. “And we'd better use whatever you call that water ordering.”

   “I'd planned to.”

   Tonsar turned his mount and stood in his stirrups. “Watering time! Take turns! Do not foul the water, and fill your bottles upstream. Keep your mounts' hoofs out of the stream!”

   A low murmuring rose and faded. The burly armsman eased his mount back toward the two angels.

   “This is the last stream, then?” Nylan dismounted and stood on the dusty bank beside a scrubby gray-leafed bush while the mare drank.

   “That's what the map says,” Ayrlyn said after dismounting. “It vanishes a few kays south of here, and the trail turns west and intersects the main road from Lornth to someplace called Syadtar. The mines are on the road, and I'd guess it was once a trading road before the Cyadorans closed off free trading.”

   Nylan looked at Tonsar.

   The armsman spread both hands. “I do not know. I am from north of Lornth, closer to Carpa. Siplor, he be from a hamlet east of Clynya, and he says that there are no more streams, but. . .”

   Nylan unstrapped his three water bottles and glanced toward Ayrlyn. “You want to watch the mounts while I refill ours?”

   “You can carry six?”

   “I'll manage.”

   “Three water bottles each?” Tonsar balanced on a thin strip of gravel beside where his gray slurped up the stream.

   “It's cooler where we come from,” said Nylan. “Remember?”

   “But this . . . this is not even full summer.”

   “I can't wait,” said Ayrlyn dryly.

   Nylan carried the bottles southward, upstream, trying to ignore the commotion behind him. “Stop mucking the water, Ungit. . .”

   “. . . keep that beast's ass away from the water ...”

   “. . . take the reins . . . get water for us both . . .”

   Whhheeeeee . . . eeeee ...

   Nylan shut out the noise and concentrated on filling each water bottle and using his control of the order fields to ease the residual chaos-bacteria?-from each.

   When they resumed riding, heading westward, Tonsar began to study the horizon, then the trail behind, then the trail ahead, then to stand in the stirrups and peer ahead again. “Settle down, Tonsar,” Ayrlyn suggested mildly. “South of the mines, that is where we will end up,” predicted Tonsar as the short column continued westward on the trail that might have once been a road. “And there will be white demons everywhere.”

   “We're already south of the copper mines,” Ayrlyn answered, “and we haven't seen a single white demon. We won't, either. Not unless we see a huge cloud of dust, and if they have that many riders, they won't be able to keep up with us.”

   Tonsar pointed westward, toward a spiral of dust. “The white demons ... at least we will perish with honor.”

   Ayrlyn's eyes semiglazed, and she swayed in the saddle as the mare carried her westward and as Nylan eased closer to her. He always worried when she did that.

   After a time, she straightened and turned to the burly armsman. “Tonsar, that's just a dust devil. Besides, with what we're working on, if the Cyadorans aren't afraid of us yet, they will be.”

   Despite the heat, Nylan almost shivered at the healer's words, words uncharacteristic of a healer, but getting to be more characteristic of Ayrlyn. Was that what Candar was doing to them-turning them harder and colder? Did they have much choice if they wanted to survive?

   He wondered about Istril's visions . . . and her faith that Nylan could provide a better life for Weryl. So far . . . Weryl probably would have been better off in Westwind-but that hadn't ever been the question. It was what would have happened as the silver-haired boy grew older. But how often did people sacrifice the present for the future? And how wise was that when there might not be a future?

   Forcing his thoughts back to the road and what they needed to find, he glanced at Ayrlyn. “There's scarcely any wind. Why ...”

   “A dust devil?”

   He nodded.

   “You get swirls out of the air above, because of the heating and some of the colder winds out of the Westhorns. I'm guessing, but it's sometimes like an inversion, and the colder air presses through ... or something. I'd guess that the winter winds here are something. Probably not too cold, but strong, and then there are drenching thunderstorms in the spring. That's what supports the grass. Then it dries, and”- Ayrlyn smiled brightly-“it starts all over again.”

   “The horse nomads left because of the winds. That was what my grandmother said,” Tonsar volunteered.

   Almost as suddenly as it had appeared, the distant dust devil vanished.

   “I have a question, Tonsar,” Nylan said quietly.

   “Ser?”

   “About Sylenia. How do you feel about her?”

   Tonsar swallowed again. After a moment, he coughed, then shrugged. “I like her. I like her very much. Is that wrong?”

   “She seems like a good young woman.”

   “Her man was Yusek. He died on the Roof of the World. Her little girl died of the chaos fever. That is why she can be a nursemaid.” Tonsar wiped his forehead, something Nylan hadn't seen from the burly armsman before. “She was close to Enyka.”

   “Enyka?” asked Ayrlyn.

 
  “My sister. She went to Rulyarth with Gidser when ser Gethen and Lord Sillek opened the port to our traders.” Tonsar swallowed. “Gidser says that trading is easier there.”

   “Do you have a consort?” Nylan asked bluntly.

   “Me? No, ser. It is a long tale, and once I almost did, but she left me for a merchant, like Enyka took Gidser. Armsmen, they do not find consorts easily.” Tonsar offered a wary smile. Nylan could sense the other's apprehension, but not the chaos that seemed to go with deceit. His eyes crossed Ayrlyn's, and she nodded.

   “Are you interested in asking Sylenia to be your consort?”

   Tonsar looked down at the mane of his mount. “I would ... but I do not know ... she has lost one who was ... an armsman.”

   Nylan wanted to laugh. The outgoing, almost boastful, armsman was timid, or worried, or self-conscious.

   “I think she would have you, Tonsar,” Ayrlyn said. “If you do not wait too long to ask her.”

   “And you, angels?”

   “We have no problems with her being your consort, if that's her wish,” answered the healer.

   “If you treat her well,” Nylan added.

   After a long look at Nylan, Tonsar finally grinned. “I worried. I worried many nights, and she said all would be well. But I worried.”

   “Trust her.” Ayrlyn's tone was both dry and prophetic.

   Tonsar's grin got wider.

   In the silence that followed, Nylan studied the browned hills, and he could almost sense the rockiness beneath, as though the soil had been laid over rocks without the depth that natural processes would have created. He frowned. There was also something else, an orderliness, a thin line of order that separated the topsoil and the topmost subsoil from the underlying stones, stones that his order senses registered as preternaturally smooth.

   “There's a funny line of order under the soil,” he finally said.

   “I do better with clouds,” Ayrlyn said. “Unless I'm lying on it, the ground is just ground. Even then it's hard to sense much.”

   Nylan felt just the opposite-sensing order in metals and earth was far easier than in the swirling currents of the atmosphere.

   “It has to be sloppy planoforming,” Ayrlyn added. “Even without your senses, I can tell it's not going to hold that much longer. The rocks are beginning to show through. If there were a lot of rain, the erosion would be fierce. As it is, there's some grassland stability, but it won't last much longer.”

   “Grassland stability?” asked the engineer.

   “There's a thin line between grasslands of this type and desert. Grasslands can actually create rain that wouldn't be there otherwise.” Ayrlyn shook her head, still surveying the area ahead.

   “So can trees.” Nylan lowered his voice. “I'm still dreaming about them. Is that because we never see any?”

   “Could be. Except . . . what are you dreaming? Is it the same stuff about dark and white flows?”

   “It's never been anything else.”

   “Not for me, either, and that's beginning to bother me.”

   Just beginning? Nylan questioned silently.

   Surprisingly, it was not that long after midday when the trail turned along a ridge line and began to parallel a wider track just to the west.

   “Is that the road you want?” asked Ayrlyn.

   “That's it. We need to find some ambush spots, places where they couldn't see if the road were blocked, and where they couldn't drive a wagon around the barricade. We'll also need stones-big ones-nearby.”

   “You don't want much, do you?”

   Nylan shrugged. “If we can't find everything, we'll work out something else.” In some ways, that was exactly what he feared.

THE CYADORAN MAGE walked slowly toward the ash-covered wall. His once-white boots were gray and matched trousers that were so ash-encrusted that they would never be white again.

   Behind him walked Fissar, trimming his longer steps to remain behind the mage.

   Themphi stopped a good hundred cubits short of the line of white stone and turned to the lanky apprentice. “You have the case?”

   “Yes, mage Themphi.” Fissar extended the whitened leather container. His eyes flickered from the gaunt visage of the mage to the knee-high green shoots that rose from the ashes. Those ashes stretched nearly a half kay away from the white stone wall that once had marked the definitive south border of the Accursed Forest. The latest set of shoots remained confined to a space one hundred cubits from the wall. Themphi eased the glass from the soft leather, careful to touch only the edges as he slowly lifted the glass and turned it to catch the sun. Covered with soot, his hands shook. His brows furrowed, but his eyes flashed.

   The air around the white mage seemed to twist, and scattered shadows flickered through the cloudless sky.

   From the glass poured a line of fire that struck the greenery. Ashes exploded like water striking cherry-red iron from a forge, sparking and spraying away from the sunflame that Themphi played across the ground. In time, he lowered the glass.

   Fissar took it from his shaking hands, and offered him a silver flagon.

   The mage drank, deeply, then relinquished it to his apprentice.

   Beyond the haze, Themphi could see the line of white stone, fissured and cracked. He also sensed fresh shoots of green ready to edge upward through the ashes, as they did in all places along the southern walls when the mages were not present. He tried not to think of the kay-wide stretch of new forest, more than waist high, sometimes man tall, that had grown along the north wall. All that despite the redoubled efforts provided by two journeymen and two apprentices, and three more companies of Mirror Foot. Despite his efforts and theirs, the Accursed Forest continued to threaten. If not for his efforts, would it reclaim all of eastern Cyador? “Not while I am here,” he murmured. “No.” Fissar opened his mouth, then closed it.

   The white mage sighed and closed his eyes, standing silent in the sun for a time before reopening those tired orbs and starting to walk westward toward the next section of green-infested ash.

HANGING JUST ABOVE the western horizon, the sun beat against the right side of Nylan's face in the stillness that came with late afternoon or early evening-not that there was any real difference between the two in southern Lornth. Both were hot. Beneath him, the mare half-panted, half-whuffed. Swaying with the motion of the dark mare, the engineer rubbed his nose gently, trying to take away the itching from the gritty yellow dust-without rubbing it raw and bloody. Finally, nose still itching, he forced his fingers away and looked eastward to rest his eyes and face from the glare of the sun, rather than in hopes of seeing anything. “Grass and more grass.”

   “Real grass is green, not faded brown,” suggested Ayrlyn as she rode to his right.

   On his left, Tonsar grunted or mumbled, but the engineer made no attempt to decipher the sound.

   A dozen of the more able levies rode behind the three, the last two leading the pair of packhorses bearing the catapult and the clay fire grenades. All rode quietly enough that the loudest sound was that of hoofs on the hard surface of the trail, a surface so dry and hard that not even the dust muffled the hoof impacts.

   Ayrlyn's eyes glazed over, as they did periodically when she resorted to using the infrequent breezes and the upper winds to scout the land ahead.

   “That way,” she said abruptly, pointing to the right and toward a hill slightly higher than those around it.

   “The mines are ahead,” said Tonsar.

   “So is a Cyadoran patrol,” answered Ayrlyn.

   Nylan turned in the saddle. “Toward the hill there. Follow us.”

   A chorus of “yes, ser” followed the order. Nylan ignored Tonsar's frown, even as he squinted into the almost-setting sun. At times, he didn't feel like explaining, and Tonsar needed to realize that.

   The hill was farther than Nylan realized, and he began to look over his shoulder, but he saw neither dust nor riders. His eyes watered with the shift in vision from the glaring orange sun and the long shadows.

   As the levies reached the depression between the hills that led to the western side of the designated hill, a cloud of dust appeared on the southern horizon where the trail disappeared over a ridge.

   “A great many horses,” murmured Tonsar, “a great many.”

   “Discretion is the better part of valor,” said Ayrlyn, with a half-laugh.

   Nylan blotted his forehead, perpetually burned and raw, it seemed. At least the Grass Hills harbored few flying insects. Dust and grit and heat, but not much in the way of flies, mosquitoes, or the like.

   After having the levies dismount behind the hill, the three left their mounts and walked up the slope, a slope offering uncertain footing with dry slick grass and crumbling soil. From just behind the crest of the hill, the angels and Tonsar lay in the grass and watched as the dust rose out of the south along the trail they had been taking. The cloud of dust was a detachment of Cyadoran lancers-if as many as threescore riders could be called a detachment.

   Yet, even before the white forces reached the flat expanse where Ayrlyn had waved the squad off the road, the Cyadorans reined up, remaining stationary for some time, their white banners hanging limply in the windless afternoon heat.

   “What do they do?” whispered Tonsar. “If they rode a half kay farther, our tracks-”

   “Patrolling a perimeter of sorts--just to check things out,” Ayrlyn said. “They really don't want to find anything-at least the officers leading this group don't.”

   Nylan smiled faintly, wondering in how many times and places patrols and scouts had avoided discovering the unpleasant. He bet that the entire group had remained within a few kays of the mines-a perimeter patrol.

   “I wouldn't want them after us,” Tonsar muttered. “With not even two squads here.”

   “Numbers won't help us,” Nylan pointed out. “Not with something like score-fifteen or twenty mounted armsmen inside those, walls. And all of them bunked behind earthen walls.” Tonsar looked back toward the pack animals and frowned. After a time, almost as abruptly as they had appeared, the white troopers turned and rode back southward.

 
 “It is strange,” observed Tonsar. “Even Lewa would not be such a fool.” He looked at Nylan guiltily.

   “I won't say anything, Tonsar, but I'd be careful around ser Fornal.”

   “Yes, ser.”

   “We're less than four kays from the mines.” Ayrlyn stood and stretched after the last of the Cyadorans had vanished to the south. “We can move in slowly to the last line of hills before the mines, so long as we stay out of sight. Then we'll set up, and after dark, the catapult team will ride down into that gully to the south of the walls. They won't be looking at the south, not so much anyway. Tonsar, you'll keep the rest of the squad ready to ride out at a moment's notice.”

   “They may not even want to chase us, but we can't count on that,” Nylan added. After dropping incendiary canisters where you intend to drop them? Are you deluding yourself? Even Fornal will be furious . . . but there isn't any choice.

   Ayrlyn only raised her eyebrows, and Tonsar actually nodded.

   The three eased their way over the dry and slick grass and back to the rear of the hill and the waiting levies.

   “The whites turned back to the mines. It was just a patrol,” Nylan said.

   “We'll head for where we'll leave most of the armsmen,” Ayrlyn explained as she mounted. “It's no more than four kays, if that.”

   A low groan, almost inaudible, greeted her announcement, but both angels ignored the sound, watching as the levies who were becoming armsmen mounted.

   Before they reached the base of the hills flanking the mines, the sun touched the horizon. As it dropped behind the western hills, a reddish orange glow spread across the brown of the grass hills, creating the impression that the hills were smoldering, like the banked coals of a forge.

   “Some day, this will be that hot,” predicted Ayrlyn, “like a forge or a furnace.”

   “It is already,” protested Nylan, half-standing in the stirrups and stretching his legs. His knees creaked. At least, that was the way they felt.

   “The ecology's fading, and it'll get worse.”

   Was she seeing visions, too, like Ryba? Nylan moistened his lips.

   “Not visions. Common sense.”

   “Sorry.”

   “It is hot,” Ayrlyn said. “Makes us jumpy.”

   After riding into a lower spot, sheltered from both the mines and the road, Ayrlyn reined up. “This is as good a spot as any.” Her voice was flat.

   “Stand down,” ordered Tonsar, his voice low, but firm. “And keep it quiet. The noise-it carries across the grass.”

   Reins still in one hand-there was nothing to tether the mare to-Nylan stretched out on the hard and dusty ground, ground that the dried grass did little to soften.

   Ayrlyn sat beside him. “You're worried.”

   “Wouldn't you be? We can't reach most of their troops, not behind earth walls. What I'm planning won't set well with anyone.” He sat up and shook his head. “But not doing it will ensure we lose, and before long. Damn honor, anyway.”

   “Do you ever think we'll get away from this?” she asked. “I hope so, but I have my doubts. I've been thinking. It takes strength and power to manage a comfortable living away from society.”

   “But people make it harder,” she observed.

   “Do they? That assumes people are different from nature in a fundamental way, and I'm not so sure we are. Trees-”

   “Trees again?”

   “Trees want to grow and survive-or they act that way,” the smith continued. “So do animals. And when resources are limited, and they always are, those who have greater control of their environment survive. That's usually power of some sort. I don't know that you can escape it.”

 
 “So you want to be world ruler?” she asked dryly.

   “Hardly. Civilization has a tendency to smooth things out, where power isn't so direct for people-but sometimes it's even harder on the rest of the ecology. I wonder if there's a way to get that smoothness, that balance, across the ecology without reducing people back to animals-”

   “It's an interesting thought,” Ayrlyn said.

   “I know. But for now, we've got to reduce the power of a self-centered xenophobic culture that believes all other humans are barbarians and animals, and we'll do it by becoming even more savage in warfare.” He sat up and shook his head. “Is it time to do the nasty deed?”

   “Almost.” She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I do love you, you know. Part of that is because you are an engineer. You do try to find answers, even when it seems impossible. And you still care.” She gave his fingers a last squeeze and stood.

   He squeezed her hand back, then rolled over and up, brushing the dust off his trousers and shirt, far more stained than when Zeldyan had presented them.

   “Borsa, Vula? Do you have the pack animals ready?” Ayrlyn glanced at Nylan, who nodded in the dimness that was not quite full night.

   “Yes, ser.”

   “The canisters are ready, and so are the fuses and the striker,” added Nylan.

   “Let's mount up, then,” ordered the redhead.

   “Tonsar,” Nylan said. “Stand by. When we head back here, we'll need to be moving-immediately.”

   “Yes, ser.”

   Nylan swung into the saddle and glanced toward Ayrlyn.

   “You ready?” she asked in a lower voice. “I can see a bit, but-”

   “Ready.” Nylan's night vision-another result of the Winterlance's involuntary subspace transition from one universe to another-gave him a small advantage as he led the other three riders and the pack animals downhill toward the swale between the two hills. Beyond the swale was a narrow depression that might have been a stream or runoff channel in wetter years, and that channel led in a circling way around the west side of the semiplateau on which the mine complex stood, getting closer to the walls as it meandered south.

   An acrid odor drifted over the riders, and Nylan wrinkled his nose. The Cyadorans were clearly doing something with the mines. He glanced upward at the still unfamiliar pattern of stars-cold and clear even in the summer night's heat.

   Once clear of the hills' cover, the smith could see the yellow flickers of some type of watch lanterns on the walls, but their light only illuminated a few cubits of ground beyond the outer walls, and dimly at that.

   Slowly, slowly, the six horses walked through the darkness, carrying their four riders along the gully that circled south of the mine's walls. Nylan could sense an occasional trembling of the ground. Were the Cyadorans working the mine shafts at night as well?

   He studied the ground. They were almost due south of the walls, walls still but barely lighted in places, and seemed to be opposite the corrals and stock area, from what Nylan could tell. He glanced at Ayrlyn.

   “Looks good here,” Ayrlyn murmured, and, with a gesture to the two other members of the catapult team, she dismounted.

   So did Nylan.

   In the comparative silence of the gully, Borsa and Vula began to assemble the catapult with quick, practiced motions, slipping the pegs into place, while Nylan took the first canister from those strapped to the second packhorse. The animal stepped sideways, and the engineer patted her shoulder, trying to project some reassurance, and saying, “Easy there, easy.”

   An occasional horse noise might not alert the sentries, but the more time before they were discovered the better. The engineer kept glancing at the mine walls, but the lanterns did not move.

   Nylan laid out several rows of the alcohol-filled canisters. He wrinkled his nose again. The semidistilled liquid still smelled like places he'd rather never visit, but he doubted the odor would carry, or prevail above the stench of the mineworks.

   “It's ready, sers.”

   Ayrlyn glanced through the darkness at the silver-haired smith.

   “Can you sense where the few tents are? We'll start there.”

   “There are only a few.”

   Nylan sighed softly. “We'll hit the tents first, then the corrals. I don't like it, but... a lancer on foot. . .”

   The healer nodded in agreement, but Nylan could sense the sadness. He just couldn't do that much about it, not the way matters were playing out. If the choice were between Lornth's survival and Cyador's horses, the horses had to lose. He didn't like it, but war wasn't exactly a matter of what one liked.

   “What about the wagons?” he asked.

   “They're more scattered.”

   “Is there any place where there are a couple together? And hay or fodder. That should burn easily and make life harder for them,” Nylan added.

   Silence followed while Ayrlyn sent her senses out on the light breeze that had risen with the night.

   Nylan tried to follow her perceptions with his, but he was far more aware of the strange wrongness of the ground beneath, and the time-smoothed boulders that lay not that far beneath the drying grass and soil.

   “Wind it up,” ordered Ayrlyn, her voice low.

   “Ser,” agreed Borsa. The faintest creaks followed his efforts. “Set, ser.”

   The angel engineer eased the fuse into place in the canister tube, then placed the canister in the catapult cradle. He took the striker. “You ready?”

   “Ready, ser.”

   Whhsst-click. The fuse caught, and Nylan let his senses check to make sure the flame was solid.

   Ayrlyn did something to the frame angle, then tripped the catch. .

   Thunk! The release of the catapult echoed dully along the shallow gully.

   Nylan could feel Ayrlyn's order senses doing... something . . . although what he couldn't tell.

   A flash of light flared from behind the stone and earthen walls that loomed uphill from them.

   “Wind it up!” hissed Ayrlyn to Borsa. “Don't wait for me to tell you.”

   Nylan slipped another grenade from the pack and roughened the fuse, holding the striker ready. When the arm was back and the catch clicked, he flicked the striker again, using his own senses to strengthen the flame as he placed the next canister in the fitted cradle.