Colors of Chaos

CXXIV

WITH THE GROWING warmth of the day and the white-orange sun pouring down through the clear green-blue sky, Cerryl unfastened his jacket, shifting his weight in the saddle as he did. He rode slowly, letting the gelding walk another hundred cubits or so before he reined up. The lancers before him reined up as well, their eyes searching the spring green of the bushes beside the road and the damp clay of the road itself for fresh tracks.

Cerryl tried to extend his senses, searching for any trace of black iron or chaos of some sort, wishing in some ways that Leyladin were alongside him. Her senses of order would have been useful. Then, she was safer with the reserves, especially with the scattered arrows that arched over trees-or from across gullies-anywhere there was no possibility of quick pursuit.

The light breeze out of the north still bore a trace of chill along with the smell of damp soil and new growth. The higher parts of the ruts in the road had turned a lighter brown where they had begun to dry, but much of the road was the darker brown of damp soil and clay.

Cerryl glanced toward the shoots in the fields to the west of the road, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and nodded to Hiser. “Another two hundred cubits-or three if it seems clear.” He glanced toward the woods that began somewhere short of a kay ahead on the left side of the road, then toward the thin line of trees perhaps 150 cubits downhill on the eastern side of the road. The trees stood a dozen cubits above the River Gallos.

“Yes, ser.” Hiser flicked his mount’s reins.

Cerryl did the same, and the two rode slowly northward.

Patrolling the roads, again, and after almost two eight-days of plodding down the road to the west of the River Gallos, Cerryl had discovered nothing, not a single black iron trap.

Of course, the moment you don’t, there will be something.

All the traps had been on the river itself, as if the smith Dorrin had belatedly recognized where the true danger lay.

Cerryl tried to use his eyes and his senses as they rode closer to the woods that began ahead on the west side of the road, the sort of place that would be ideal for another attack by the Spidlarians, for all that, they had not even seen a hoofprint in kays.

Thwing! Thwing! A series of arrows flew past-except one that slammed into the lancer riding beside Hiser.

Cerryl jerked his head around. Concentrating as he had been on seeking order foci, he really hadn’t sensed the approach of the blue archers.

“There they are!” Hiser stood in the stirrups, gesturing toward the side trail that wound toward a gap in the woods ahead on the west side of the road.

The narrow side trail…Cerryl’s eyes flashed toward the trail, his senses following.

A half-score of riders started forward at a fast trot that threatened to become a gallop.

“LANCERS, HALT!” Cerryl yelled.

The riders continued, though Hiser reined up in confusion, glancing at Cerryl as if he could not believe his ears.

Whsstt! Cerryl lofted a firebolt over the heads of the riders, far enough that it sprayed harmlessly across the damp clay. “HALT! You worthless dark shadows!”

The lancers milled to a halt, and Cerryl took a deep breath and rode forward. “Back!”

“…why’s he want to go first?”

“…let him…be target…”

One step at a time, Cerryl took the gelding onto the narrow trail, trying to keep eyes and ears and senses all searching.

Thwinng! This time Cerryl ducked even before he heard the arrow, and he could feel where the archer might be.

Whhhstt! The firebolt arced over the vegetation in the direction from which the shaft had come.

“Aeiii…”

Was there a line of greasy black smoke? Cerryl wasn’t certain, but there was no doubt about the sound of departing hoofs that followed the firebolt and the short scream.

He kept the gelding to a walk, but there were no more arrows. As he had suspected, around the curve was something-something metallic and very ordered. He reined up and beckoned for Hiser to join him.

The subofficer wiped the dampness from his forehead as he halted his mount beside the gelding.

“There’s a trap about two hundred cubits ahead,” Cerryl said quietly. “I don’t feel anyone around, but we’ll have to go slowly.”

Finding the trap was anticlimactic. Two thin wires so black as to be invisible, especially with dust raised by mounts in the air, ran across the trail. On one side, wedged behind a fallen tree trunk, was a black iron bar to which the wires were secured. At the other end of the wires was a second bar, nearly two cubits long, set in the fork of a tree.

Once they had loosened the bars, two lancers slowly wound the wire around them while Cerryl studied the area with both his senses and his sight.

Nothing. Nothing except a black-smeared section of ground on the trail fifty cubits beyond the trap, an area three cubits across where nothing remained but ashes.

“Frigging blues…”

The blue raiders had left nothing, except the first casualty they had taken in two eight-days. Cerryl eased the gelding back toward the main road until he found Hiser. The subofficer was strapping a body over a saddle-the lancer who’d been riding beside him.

“What do we do, ser? If we could ride after them…”

“We would have lost more lancers.”

“But we’re not getting to them.”

Cerryl had no real answers. If they proceeded slowly, they’d lose some lancers to arrows. If they hurried, so as to keep the blues from having time to set things up, they wouldn’t lose as many to shafts, but every so often they’d lose a lot to traps. “We’re taking their land. Before long, they won’t have any place to run.”

“Hope it’s not that long. Begging your pardon, ser.” Hiser gave the rope a last knot and swung into his saddle and gestured to the lancer with one arm bound from an arrow taken earlier in the day. “Muntor, you hang back and take care of the mount here.”

“Yes, ser.” The sandy-haired lancer took the rope lead from Hiser.

“Back to the main road, ser?” asked the subofficer.

“Back to the main road,” Cerryl confirmed. Back to patrolling and being targets, and all because…because why?

He shrugged. The answers that had seemed simple in Fairhaven seemed almost irrelevant along a booby-trapped river road in a war no one really wanted and yet one that no one seemed able to avoid, a war that seemingly sucked in more and more from Fairhaven-Leyladin, Faltar, and a half-dozen young mages without, Cerryl suspected, the real talents to see order traps or avoid the iron crossbow bolts that could prove fatal.

Then…can you keep avoiding them?