Colors of Chaos

CXXVII

THE MIST ROSE off the edges of the River Gallos, shrouding the far bank as Cerryl squeezed Leyladin a last time.

“Remember what Kinowin said,” she whispered. “Do what you must do, but no more.” Her lips brushed his cheek as she stepped back, still holding his hands in hers.

That will be hard. “I understand, but it’s going to be hard.” He released her hands and stepped away from the shadows of the healer’s tent, walking downhill toward where the others were gathering, feeling her green eyes on his back.

Faltar nodded to Cerryl but did not speak. Cerryl nodded back, offering a smile of encouragement, one he wasn’t sure he felt.

Standing by the High Wizard’s tent, Anya surveyed the group, then turned and murmured something Cerryl could not hear. Clad in whites that shimmered in the gray of predawn, Jeslek stepped from the tent. His red-rimmed but still glittering sun-gold eyes raked across the mages assembled there. A half-pace back stood the squat Eliasar, his face impassive. Behind him was the goateed Bealtur, who glanced away as Cerryl looked toward him. On the gradual slope above and behind the mages were the captains and overcaptains, some in the green of Certis, some in purple, some in gold and red, and one in the cyan of Lydiar.

“Today, we begin the advance to take Kleth,” began the High Wizard. “The blues are gathered there, and once they have been crushed there is no other bar to our redemption of Spidlar. Eliasar or Anya or I have talked to each of you about your duties, but I will parse them out again so all know what the others’ tasks are.”

As Jeslek paused for a moment to let the words settle on the group, the faintest tinge of orange light glimmered on the eastern horizon.

“The heavy cavalry of Gallos will be the van proper…” Jeslek’s eyes flicked from the overcaptain with the broad purple sash downward to Cerryl. “Cerryl, since we have no peasants to march before the levies, you and your light lancers will patrol the road before the main part of the vanguard. Your task is to detect any Black sorcery. Buar will work with you.”

Cerryl nodded.

“Behind the van will follow the first of the heavy levies, those of Gallos, then the first section of White mages. They will burn the fields back away from the road.” Jeslek snorted. “There will be no cover and no crops. Let them suffer.” His voice rose ever so slightly. The sun-gold eyes glittered with the same intensity, despite the red that rimmed them. Chaos smoldered around the High Wizard, more chaos than ever, so much chaos that Cerryl’s own eyes wanted to twist away from Jeslek.

“Then the lancers of Certis and the Certan foot…”

Cerryl continued to listen, but his thoughts drifted from the High Wizard’s words. At times, the whole purpose of the Guild seemed fruitless. How could anyone bring prosperity to lands where rulers and greedy traders wouldn’t even pay for the roads that brought them prosperity? And how could Jeslek think that mere destruction would force them to change their minds?

“…you know your orders. Carry them out.” A line of fire sparkled upward toward the orange-tinged puffy clouds and dark green-blue sky.

Cerryl turned and began to walk toward his lancers, where dust already rose and mixed with the smell of horse droppings and cook-fire smoke.

“Lot of horse and foot out here-good thing they don’t have mages to throw firebolts,” said Ferek, looking down from the saddle.

They’ve got a Black mage who might do worse-except I don’t know what that might be. “We’ll have to make sure they don’t have something else hidden.” Cerryl turned as he saw Buar approaching.

“Do you know what we’re seeking?” asked Buar.

“No-except that it will have order surrounding it, as if it were black iron or something like that.” Cerryl finished checking the girths, which seemed tight enough, not that he was the most expert of horsemen, if far, far better than a year before. Then he mounted. “Are we ready?”

“Yes, ser.” Both Hiser and Ferek nodded as they spoke.

The dampness from the winter ice and the melted snow and ice had vanished days earlier, and the horses’ hoofs already raised dust as Cerryl’s lancers turned northward on the west river road.

“Doesn’t the road get better?” asked Buar, drawing up beside Cerryl.

“Four, five kays up, or so,” Cerryl answered, trying to get his thoughts off more distracting subjects-like Leyladin and the growing chaos around Jeslek and the shortsightedness of various Candarian rulers. “That’s where it widens.”

Two scouts rode past the column on the shoulders of the road, leaving low dust trails in the still morning air. Two scouts, Jeslek’s concession to some prudence.

The Gallosian heavy lancers had moved onto the road behind Cerryl’s force, and from behind them came cadenced marching songs and the measured step of the Gallosian foot. The column plodded northward along the river road. The sun crept higher into the eastern sky, bringing more light and increasingly unwelcome warmth to the land, the road, and the riders. Nothing moved anywhere except the riders and the armsmen, northward toward Kleth.

As the sun climbed, Cerryl struggled to keep his eyes and senses on the road. The line of packed clay curved eastward in an arc that followed the river, then curved back westward. To the west of the road were fields, showing even shoots of green, green that Faltar and the others would sear as they had those already left behind the column.

As they rode around the curve to the west, Cerryl studied where the road ahead changed. As he had seen in the screeing glass, the last ten kays, those closest to Kleth, were almost like a White highway, with oblong paving stones, radiating a faint order, set edge to edge. The paved center of the road itself was nearly fifteen cubits wide, enough for two wagons abreast.

“Better here,” said Buar.

“Looks to be so.”

The paving stones looked normal enough, and the low stone walls were set back more than ten cubits from the edge of the paving stones. The walls were just a shade less than two cubits high, hardly tall enough to harbor the invisible knives that the blues had placed in more wooded areas. Not unless they can make them invisible or they’re aimed at the horses.

Cerryl rode at the front of the van, on the western side of the road, with a lancer between him and Buar, who rode the eastern point. As they neared the beginning of the paving stones, Cerryl tried to get a feel for the road. He could sense nothing out of the ordinary except the faint nagging order of the oblong paving stones-and that this part of the road was not new, but old. Had the entire road been paved at one time? Or had the traders run out of coins for paving?

“…like one of ours.”

“…don’t even think it.”

The gelding’s hoofs struck the paved way, and Cerryl continued to study the wall and the paving stones, yet all he could sense or see were the stones and the strong residual order they held.

“Riders ahead!” called one of the scouts riding but a hundred cubits ahead of the column and along the shoulder of the road.

Cerryl strained.

A small company of blue lancers appeared from behind a low hill, riding at an angle to the road. They reined up abruptly, drew bows, and loosed a double handful of shafts.

Cerryl raised a chaos barrier, struggling as he did to trace any possible order concentrations.

Whhstt! A shaft tumbled past Cerryl, its momentum killed by his barrier.

Thunnk! A second shaft plowed into a lancer somewhere behind the mage, who winced at the sound.

As quickly as they had halted and loosed their shafts, the blue lancers wheeled and rode northward.

Cerryl forced his senses onto the road, even as Teras sent forth a line of Gallosian cavalry to pursue the blues, who swung around the curve in the road that brought it more eastward. Cerryl’s eyes and senses picked up the Spidlarian lancers on the crest of the hill toward which the road curved and climbed-the lancers and something else. The Black mage-the smith.

Cerryl’s guts tightened. Why would the smith be with the blue lancers? Cerryl’s eyes surveyed the road, but it remained a road, oblong paving stones and all, a road flanked by a stone wall, nothing more. Even his senses could discern nothing besides the faint order of the stones.

But why is the mage here? Cerryl turned in the saddle. The columns marched along behind him and the vanguard, with Jeslek so far back that even the High Wizard’s banner was unseen. The riders and foot soldiers stretched two kays back toward Elparta, led by two squads of cavalry just behind Cerryl’s small group, cavalry under the purple banners of Gallos.

Behind the combined vanguard were the first Gallosian levies, and behind them was the first group of White mages-those headed by Ryadd. Around Ryadd, there Cerryl sensed the reddish white of chaos marshaled but for destruction and the tongues of chaos that leapt forth, blackening and shriveling the grass and the shoots in the fields beyond.

The Gallosian lancers slowed as they caught sight of the larger blue force on the top of the low rise.

Cerryl blinked. The Black mage remained with the lancers on the hill ahead. Why? Yet Cerryl could still find no sense of inordinate order, no sense of black iron-just the confusing order of paving stones and wall stones.

“Darkness!”

At the exclamation, Cerryl flicked his eyes to his right and back as a Gallosian lancer pulled a suddenly lamed mount out to the side of the column. The single laming did not slow the advance of the purple banners of Gallos, nor that of the white banners that followed, shimmering in the sun.

As the vanguard approached the long, gentle incline, the column slowed ever so slightly, and Cerryl felt mounts moving closer to the gelding. He had the insane urge to spur the gelding clear of the column, despite the mounted blue-clad lancers on the knoll ahead.

Teras bellowed another command, and another score of Gallosian and White Lancers pulled to the side of the road and began to ride forward to reinforce the first detachment sent after the blues.

CRRRRRuuummmmmpppp!!!! Earth, stones, bodies, blood…undefined shreds sprayed skyward. Cerryl felt the ground shiver under the gelding, wondering, his eyes darting over his shoulder, at the explosion behind him.

“How…?” demanded Buar, puzzlement and anger flashed across his face.

Cerryl opened his mouth, then shut it, ducking.

CRRRRRuuummmmmpppp!!!! A second gout of colored soil, stones, and flesh erupted into the sky.

CRRRRRuuummmmmpppp!!!! By the third gout of gore, Cerryl found his eyes seared from the pain that had blasted through him, and he tottered in the gelding’s saddle, glancing rearward again.

The first line of white banners had vanished, along with the second group of levies and the third. From pits below the knoll perhaps a score of archers appeared and began to fire upon the vanguard and the remaining Gallosian levies.

Cerryl stood in the saddle, urging the gelding forward. “Back off! Back off!”

The vanguard circled, then charged the knoll, right into the storm of arrows.

Cerryl’s mouth was dry, his orders to back off ignored.

Of the mounted Gallosians but two remained, and they rode back toward the decimated Gallosian levies, already retreating, back toward the green banners of Certis.

Cerryl glanced around, back at the bodies, at the suddenly organized and milling forces, at purple banners being reraised. Then he looked northward, at the now-empty knoll, empty as if the Black mage and the blue lancers had never been there.

What happened? How could it happen? Cerryl had never felt any strange type of order, or even an untoward concentration of order, but whatever the smith had done had been concealed beneath the paving stones. How could you have failed so badly?

He glanced toward the space where the young White mages had been riding, but…amid the carnage…nothing moved. Nothing. The sparks of power that had been mages-nothing.

Faltar!

How…? That question would not go away, not for a long time…if ever.

He swallowed again, his throat still dry. His eyes flicked back at the gap in the column, and his lips tightened. You were supposed to find such traps, and you and your lancers were supposed to be the ones who triggered them-not Faltar. Not even Myredin and Bealtur. Sweat ran down his forehead, burning his eyes, but he didn’t bother to wipe it away.

Faltar-Faltar shouldn’t have been killed by the Black mage’s trap.

“Now what, ser?” asked Hiser.

Cerryl didn’t have an answer, and his eyes went to the messenger that galloped toward him, one doubtless ordering a reforming of the attack force.

The messenger kept trotting along the road when, spying Cerryl, he eased his mount toward the mage. “The High Wizard…ser…camp at the bend in the river…to the east there. Already scouted, ser.”

“Thank you,” Cerryl rasped.

“About time,” Hiser muttered. “No sense in milling around here. Blues are gone.”

Cerryl’s eyes went back, but nothing moved. The white banner that had flown so freely lay broken across the eastern low stone wall of the road. Just a broken banner…explosions…and a broken banner…and Faltar was gone.

The trumpet signals confirmed the orders, and Cerryl nodded to Hiser.

“Off the road, to the east!” the subofficer relayed.

Cerryl rode slowly beside the subofficer. He looked but scarcely saw the two kays of the side road to the campsite, where, doubtless, Jeslek and Eliasar would re-form the force.

Once there, Cerryl went through the motions of ensuring the two companies were organized and stood down but found himself standing stock-still, apart from his men and subofficers, in the middle of men and mounts and tents and wagons, almost without thoughts.

At the sharp sounds of a mallet striking a hard surface, Cerryl jerked his head toward where a pair of lancers erected the white tent of the High Wizard. Beyond the tent, Jeslek dismounted, handing his mount’s reins to a lancer.

With a deep breath, Cerryl finally stepped toward Jeslek, barely remembering to hold his shields in readiness, although a part of him didn’t care.

“Ah…Cerryl…” Jeslek just looked at the younger mage. “Your failure was costly. Six young mages…because you could not discern the trap of this Black mage-even after all your warnings of his cleverness.”

What can you say? That you tried…that he couldn’t have done better? You still failed, and people-including Faltar-died. Cerryl looked blankly at the High Wizard. “I know.”

“Is that all you can offer?”

What else could Cerryl say?

From behind the partly erected tent Anya stepped toward the two mages, a cold smile on her face, a chill and half-satisfied expression.

“The peasants might have been more effective,” suggested the white-haired mage, eyes glittering.

“Yes, ser.” Cerryl felt numb. Why couldn’t you find that black iron or whatever it was? Why not?

“Finding those devices was your responsibility,” Anya added. “You failed on the river, and you have failed here.”

“I failed here,” Cerryl admitted. Not on the river.

“And what will you do about it?” asked Anya. “That will not cost us any more mages?”

Cerryl wanted to shrug but didn’t.

“I am certain Cerryl will be most happy to lead the vanguard all the way to Kleth,” Jeslek said. “Will you not?”

“I will do my best.” Cerryl’s voice was flat, and he lacked the energy to make it more convincing. Faltar…how…? How could you have failed Faltar so miserably?

“You will do what is necessary,” Jeslek said coldly, turning. “I will talk with you more later, when you have had time to reflect on the seriousness of your failings.”

“They were grievous failings,” Anya murmured to him. “You have much to atone for.”

Not to Anya…but for Faltar and those who relied on you.

Cerryl stood alone in the late-afternoon sun, looking toward the river he did not see, still half-dazed, half-wondering.

“I heard,” Leyladin offered quietly.

Cerryl wondered how long she had stood behind him.

“I was supposed to discover those devices.” He turned, then swallowed. The healer could barely stand, so drained was she-from trying to heal those injured by the explosions he had failed to prevent. He took her arm. “You need some rest…something to eat.”

Not only had he failed Faltar, but his failure had put greater demands on Leyladin. His lips tight, he guided her toward where the cook fires were being set up. They’ll have something for a healer…they will. They must.